08.28.09

Ted Kennedy: Champion of Voting Rights

Posted in Access for Disabled Voters, Election reform, Elections, FEC, Senator Ted Kennedy, Voting Rights, Voting Rights Act, voter registration tagged , , , , , , at 1:50 pm by bluebanshee

Amidst all the eulogies for the “liberal lion” of the Senate — Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts — one important part of his legacy is often mentioned in passing, if it gets mentioned at all.  That legacy is Senator Kennedy’s role in expanding and protecting voting rights for all Americans.

Because of Ted Kennedy’s work, millions of American voters are able to participate in the most basic function of a citizen in a democracy:  they are able to make their voices heard at the ballot box and vote  for the candidate of their choosing. Read the rest of this entry »

08.27.09

Hawaii experiments with internet voting

Posted in Election reform, Elections, internet voting tagged , , , at 10:04 pm by bluebanshee

Recently, Hawaii held a first-in-nation all-digital election for local district races using telephone and internet technologies.  The company providing the technological solutions hailed the election as a great success.  In reality, voter participation plummeted to a fraction of the previous levels.  If this was supposed to encourage more voters to cast a ballot by making it more convenient, it was an epic fail.  The drop in voter participation was a dramatic  83 percent — let me say this again — epic fail . http://www.kitv.com/politics/19573770/detail.html

Read the rest of this entry »

08.25.09

Worse than the fox guarding the chicken coop

Posted in DOJ, Diane Feinstein, Elections, FEC, Von Spakovsky, Voter ID, Voting Rights, Voting Rights Act, politics, voting tagged , , at 10:25 pm by bluebanshee

Instead of hiring the fox to guard the chicken coop, why not hire him to give advice on chicken coop security?   That seems to be the attitude behind the appointment of voter suppression guru Hans Von Spakovsky to an advisory position in Virginia.      http://www.virginiafreepress.org/2009/07/11/vote-suppression-expert-spakovsky-about-to-be-confirmed-in-volunteer-civil-rights-post/

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission apparently couldn’t find another way to keep Von Spakovsky involved in his favorite pastime — finding ingenious new ways to keep minority voters (especially Democratic-leaning ones) from exercising their rights at the ballot box. Read the rest of this entry »