Here is the latest from my friends at Verified Voting:

We need your help today to make sure that Congress does not reverse the nation’s progress toward voter-verified paper ballots. It is not an exaggeration to say this could be one of the most important actions you ever take on the issue of verified voting. After you take action, please forward this message to your friends.

Here is what’s happening. This Wednesday, the U.S. Senate will hold hearings on S.3212, a bill aimed at providing independent verification of ballots cast on electronic voting machines. That’s a laudable goal, but S.3212 gets it wrong - very wrong.

S.3212 would allow electronic “verification” of votes cast on electronic voting machines. If S.3212 becomes law, elections in many states would still depend on the trustworthiness of computer software. This bill also fails to require hand audits of federal election results, and contains other measures that could set back years of progress toward transparent and trustworthy elections.

Click here to tell your Senators to oppose S.3212.

If the link above does not work, here is the address of the Web page where you can send a message to Senators:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/199/t/6122/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25256

Senator Feinstein and Senator Bennett are the chair and ranking member of the committee that oversees federal election law, so this bill could become law one day  - unless Senators hear a clear message that it is not acceptable.  Even if S.3212 does not advance in this Congress, Senator Feinstein and Senator Bennett may see it as the starting point for legislation in 2009. They need to hear from you now in order to make sure that future federal legislation advances, rather than reverses, progress toward verified voting.

Click here to tell your Senators to oppose S.3212.

We have made too much progress to let this bill become law. Most states have taken steps to require verifiable voting systems, but a number have not. S.3212 could leave millions dependent on paperless electronic voting for the foreseeable future. With your help, we can prevent this bill from moving forward, and continue the progress we have made toward real verification of our elections.

Please act today, and forward this message on to your friends! Thank you for all you do.

Best regards,

The Team at Verified Voting

Overlooked in the discussions of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the bursting of the housing bubble is the plight of these formerly stable homeowners when it comes to being able to vote in the upcoming Presidential election.

The numbers of those who have lost their homes just this year is staggering.  Almost a million homes lost in the first six months of this year:

Foreclosures are up 120%. Some 220,000 homes were lost to repossession in the last quarter, and another 739,714 entered foreclosure in the first quarter. That’s one in every 171 American homes involved in what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson euphemistically calls the “housing correction”….    http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2008/7/28/142127/083

At this pace there will be another million homes foreclosed on by the end of the year, for a total of at least 2 million voters forced out of their homes.  Many of them can’t bunk down in their cars because the repo business is booming and their cars are gone, too.  Some of them will end up in tent cities or homeless shelters.   Some will find a friendly couch with family or friends.  They will be the kind of economic refugee not seen in this country since the Great Depression of the ’30’s.

In the midst of this chaos, few people will be worrying about their voter registration until it may be too late.  Most jurisdictions require the voter to contact local election officials any time their address changes.  Those who have been booted from their homes by foreclosure are likely too busy scrambling to put a roof over their head to worry about updating their voter registration.  On the other hand, election officials will find it difficult to track these displaced voters.

In many cities entire neighborhoods are suffering from a blight of boarded-up empty houses.

From Atlanta’s urban core to leafy neighborhoods filled with chirping crickets in Charlotte, N.C., some 2.2 million homes are expected to go through foreclosure – and stand empty – by the time the mortgage meltdown ends, according to Global Insight, an economic research firm. As the housing dominoes fall far from Wall Street, growing urban “ghost towns” of vacant houses are resulting in a costly crush of weeds, trash, and dereliction on a scale unseen in American cities since the Great Depression, economists say.

So far this year we have had at least 1 million voters uprooted, with more to come.

In addition to the list of voters displaced by foreclosure,  there are the hundreds or possibly thousands who have lost their homes to wildfires in California, hurricanes in the Gulf or floods in the Midwest.

One thing they all have in common is the loss of their voting residence.  In many cases they have also lost the means of proving their identity when flood waters or wildfires sweep away their possessions.

In states with stringent voter ID requirements updating voter registration will be nearly impossible.  So these voters will be effectively purged from the voter rolls come November.  Even in states without draconian voter ID requirements, updating voter registration will be just another challenge to be dealt with and may be far down the “to-do” list of many who are struggling with basic shelter needs.

Certain critical states will be disproportionately affected by high foreclosure rates.  Ohio, the state which gave George Bush his 2004 victory over Kerry, is on that list of high-foreclosure battleground states.

Columbus (Ohio) ranked 32nd among U.S. cities in the number of foreclosure filings during the first quarter of 2008, according to RealtyTrac, a Web site that lists homes on the market in most cities. Cleveland, Dayton, Akron, Toledo and Cincinnati also were among the top 50, and Ohio was ninth among states during May, with one filing for every 410 homes.

Other battleground states rank high in foreclosure filings as well: Nevada led the nation in May with one filing for every 118 homes, while Florida was fourth, Michigan fifth, Georgia sixth, Colorado seventh and New Jersey 10th.   http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/06/politics/main4235328.shtml

If the vote count is close in any of these states, the margin of victory for McCain or Obama could well hinge on whether these displaced voters are able to update their registrations and cast a ballot.

If the election is a landslide, the impact of these lost votes might be negligible.  But it is not too early to try to figure out how to re-register these displaced voters — just in case.

Those who have been wounded in service to their country deserve better.  The Veterans’ Administration has decreed that voter registration drives may not be conducted in VA facilities.  The VA is putting unnecessary barriers between veterans and their right to vote. At any given time there may be 100,000 vets living in VA facilities — and the number is growing as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on.

Who more than our wounded warriors deserves to have their right to exercise the franchise?  Who indeed?  These vets have put their lives on the line and now the VA says that voter registration activities would “interfere with” delivery of services at VA facilities.

Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz,  expresses the frustration of many Americans when hearing of the VA policy against voter registration drives.

“The practice of banning voter registration drives at veterans facilities is a slap in the face to people who have served, put their lives on the line and sacrificed the most for our fundamental freedoms,” Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, a Democrat, said in a Friday [July 12] news conference. http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080712/NEWS/80712006/-1/rss

Bysiewicz is among top election officials from ten states protesting the VA ban on voter registration drives in VA facilities.  These include Republican Sam Reed of Washington, as well as the Secretaries of State from Vermont, Ohio, Montana, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Kansas, New Hampshire and Maine.

Non partisan groups like the League of Women Voters have been barred from conducting voter registration drives at VA facilities in a number of states.  Even the chief election officers in several states have not been able to enter VA facilities with voter registration forms in hand ready to sign up eligible vets.

The problem is compounded by the fact that injured vets are frequently rehabbing at places far from their home towns where they may have previously been registered to vote.  Now they are in a new city and possibly a new state with unfamiliar election laws and no circle of friends and family in the area to help out with voter registration.

Vets who are undergoing long-term rehabilitation in VA facilities need a helping hand, not an unnecessary roadblock to participating in the most fundamental process of our democracy, casting a vote and making their voice heard in selecting our leaders.

A recent New York Times report noted that this ban on voter registration drives includes not only VA hospitals but also federally run nursing homes, shelters for the homeless and rehabilitation centers across the country.  Critics of this policy include both non-partisan voting rights groups and  the  officials whose duties include voter registration and election administration in the states.  Those expressing concern include include both local election officials and Secretaries of State across the country.  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/washington/13vote.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Mary G. Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters, said: “It just seems wrong to the league that the V.A. is erecting barriers to voter registration for our nation’s veterans. They appear to be using technicalities to block many veterans from registering to vote.”

Among the election officials being heard from is a supervisor of elections in  Florida whose county includes many military personnel.

“I’m very dismayed that they won’t even allow groups that have a long-established reputation of doing nonpartisan work,” said Pat Hollarn, a Republican and supervisor of elections for Okaloosa County, Fla., which has more than 50,000 veterans.

Ms. Hollarn said the new directive had meant that she had to cancel plans for a voter registration drive with the League of Women Voters this month at the veterans’ clinic just outside Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle.

Not only local election officials have expressed dismay at this changed VA policy.  Some Secretaries of State have taken action to remedy the situation.

In May, officials rejected a request by the California secretary of state, Debra Bowen, asking that federal veterans sites in her state become official voter-registration agencies. That would require them to distribute registration materials and help applicants fill out the cards and return them.

SOS Bowen is not satisfied with the response from the VA to her request.

In her request, Ms. Bowen cited a 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton requiring federal agencies to undertake the responsibility of registration when asked to do so by state election officials. A spokeswoman for Ms. Bowen said she was considering litigation.

The rationale from the VA for this decision is that providing access to voter registration to vets in California would be too costly and would distract from the core mission of providing health care.  On the other hand, the VA takes responsibility for providing food, laundry and mail services for vets in these facilities.  It is hard to see why providing voter registration forms to be filled out and then turning them in to the proper state agency would be an extraordinary burden.

Currently, the VA policy is that veterans  living in VA facilities must proactively request to be given a voter registration form.  It is not readily available.  This puts the onerous burden on the vets, not on the agency which takes care of their other needs.

The VA policy is drawing attention from Capitol Hill:

On May 6, two Democratic senators, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Dianne Feinstein of California, sent a letter to the secretary of veterans affairs, James B. Peake, criticizing the order as a step backward and seeking further justification for it.

So far they have not received a satisfactory response from the VA.

The  controversy about voter registration drives at VA facilities erupted  in April after the VA issued Directive 2008-023, “Voting Assistance for VA Patients,” allowing voter registration drives in VA hospitals, only to reverse itself on May 5 with Directive 2008-025.

A complete history of the VA policy switches regarding voter registration deives at VA facilities can be found at OMBWatch.org.  Particularly useful posts include this one from June 13. http://www.ombwatch.org/article/blogs/entry/5111/53   Here’s another one that provides some good background info.   http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/4253/1/490?TopicID=1

So far this issue has been under the radar for the MSM, except for a handful of voting rights activists and election officials.    It is important to bring this to the attention of the wider voting public and public officials.

Veterans participation the political process could be particularly important this year in a presidential election in which the handling of the Iraq war and treatment of veterans will be major campaign issues.

But vets can only make their voices heard at the ballot box if they are able to first register.  The VA should not be treating disabled vets like second-class citizens.  The VA should be making voter registration easier in their facilities, not harder.  It may take a public outcry to make this happen.

Much ado is made about the increased participation of the 18-25 demographic in this year’s election but their participation still lags behind that of other age groups.  Here are several ways to change election law to make their participation easier.

• Give the office of school guidance counselor in public secondary schools legal status as a designated voter registration agency.  That way the voter registration forms can be handed out to students while they are signing up for their class schedule.  Then the forms can be sent from the school guidance counselor to the election office.  (Louisiana just passed H. 990 to make this happen in that state)
• Allow 16 and 17-year-olds to pre-register so that they are automatically registered to vote when they reach their 18th birthday.  If high school juniors and seniors get their paperwork completed well in advance they will be ready and able vote when the next election rolls around. (Rhode Island just passed the “Youth Voting Bill,”  H 7106 and S 2081and sent it to the governor for signature)
• Allow 17-year-olds who will be 18 by the General Election to also vote in the Spring Primary Election.  This way their voice can be heard during a contested party primary when excitement is high and they are motivated to participate in support of their candidate.  Maryland already has made this a part of their election law, largely because of the efforts of a 17-year-old student who wanted to vote for Barack Obama.
• Allow all voters, including high school and college students, to register to vote up until the close of polls on Election Day.  Young people are often in transition during the run-up to election day — starting college, moving to a new city, starting a new job — and often do not pay attention to an upcoming election until the deadline for voter registration has passed.  A handful of states (Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire and Minnesota) already allow Election Day Registration — and report the highest voter turnout numbers in the country coupled with virtually no problems with voter fraud.
• Allow high school juniors and seniors to work at the polls.  If students can be appointed as official poll workers two problems can be solved at once — greater involvement by high schoolers in the electoral process — and trained replacements for the current crop of aging poll workers, whose median age is in the 70’s in most jurisdictions.  (in Rhode Island, H 7833, which allows high school juniors and seniors to be appointed as election officials, has been sent to the governor for signature)

Rock the Vote, Project Vote and similar voter registration outreach efforts have done outstanding work but are frequently hampered by state election laws.  If the five simple changes recommended above were to be enacted in all 50 states, their job would be much easier because they would be filling a much smaller gap and we would not have so much handwringing about the low rate of participation by the 18-25 year old demographic.

In his new book, Gaming the Vote, author William Poundstone applies an area of mathematics called game theory to various alternatives to the current winner-takes-all method of counting the vote. This provides a useful perspective that is far different from the rhetorical chest-pounding about “increased democracy”, or “more choices for the voter” that usually accompanies discussions of IRV, STV or other variants of ranked choice voting.

In a review of Gaming the Vote, Berylium Sphere writes on Technocrat http://technocrat.net/d/2008/6/28/44675

…the book talks about the nature, the history, and especially the malfunctions of alternatives such as instant runoff voting, approval voting, Condorcet voting and Borda voting. It covers the (often incandescent) theoretical debates about whether the problems of each are significant in real life, in enough detail to be accurate but while remaining clear to a non-specialist. He explains the theorem that all ranking-based voting systems have paradoxes (the Arrow Impossibility Theorem). Most of the alternatives, except for approval voting and the system Poundstone saves for the end as the best choice, involve letting the voter rank all the candidates in order of preference.

Instant Runoff Voting

Poundstone finds that Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) often leads to flawed outcomes. The reviewer summarizes the Poundstone’s critique of IRV as follows:

Instant runoff voting takes the rankings and checks whether any candidate has a majority of first-place rankings. If not, you repeatedly eliminate candidates based on their getting the fewest first-place rankings, and reallocate their supporters’ votes to the supporter’s second choices until a winner emerges. This way, there’s no disincentive to putting your first choice first, and maybe enough people will realize that so that vaccination will actually win.

Poundstone points out analysis by voting theorist Donald Saari that IRV could have led to a “bad” outcome in the Lousiana election that pitted a crook against a Klansman. Other problems show up in theory. Popular moderates can be eliminated early if they’re crowded out of first place by ideologues. An apparent paradox, which Poundstone explains, is that ranking a candidate higher in some configurations can cause that candidate to lose. There’s also a practical problem: the “instant” in the name isn’t quite accurate because you have to total up all the votes before you can begin the actual selection. The more serious effect is that you’re completely dependent on a central counting authority.

Condorcet and Borda

Then the reviewer takes a brief look at two lesser-known voting methods — Condorcet and Borda — and finds them with different but fatal flaws.

Condorcet voting takes the rankings and runs pairwise contests using them….The drawbacks, which Poundstone illustrates with a real-life Wikipedia vote, include the risk of getting into a rock-paper-scissors cycle with no clear winner.

Borda counting awards points to each candidate based on the candidate’s rank position, and adds those up across all ballots. It suffers from the problem that it encourages dishonest ballots.

Approval voting and range voting

The final two voting methods considered by Poundstone are approval voting and range voting, with Poundstone finally finding a method that he really likes — range voting.

Approval voting does away with rankings entirely, and is therefore exempt from the impossibility theorem. Each voter says “OK” or “not OK” of each candidate….This sounds simple and fair but is the subject of bitter academic controversy. The easiest problem to understand is that it doesn’t rank preferences: a candidate just barely tolerable enough to approve for most people can beat a candidate who is the enthusiastic favorite of many.

This would not be a desirable result. So what does Range Voting offer that these other methods do not?

So what are we supposed to do? Poundstone closes by advocating “range voting”, which captures the information other systems miss by having voters give each candidate a rating from 1 to N. Instead of clicking a checkbox or picking a ranking, you can say how much you approve or disapprove of each candidate. Researcher Warren Smith has run simulated elections pitting voting systems against each other on a scale of “Bayesian regret”, a measure of how unhappy the simulated voters are with the simulated results. Range voting consistently comes out best.

This is an interesting conclusion but has two real-world problems that may not have been addressed by the mathematically-focused Poundstone. Voters may not have sufficient information about all the candidates in a large field to pick a ranking. For instance, in a recent mayoral race in Portland, Oregon, there were 17 candidates, most of whom were completely unknown and several who were clearly on the lunatic fringe. Most voters would be inclined to express an opinion about the candidates that they had some knowledge of and would not want to be required to rank the rest of the field. With such an abundance of candidates the voters’ inclination is simply to pick the one they like best and move on to the next race on the ballot.

The other problem with range voting — and one that is shared with all these other alternative voting methods — lies in the computational complexity. The calculation method is not transparent to the average voter and they must be willing to trust experts that everything was done properly. So then we come to the “trust but verify” conundrum. Not only do voters have to trust the experts for the first count, they must trust another group of experts to verify that the first count was correct. This process of verification is usually done in the course of a post-election audit.

A post-election audit should be an essential part of the electoral process. But because of the additional computation that is an intrinsic part of all these alternative counting methods, it will be more difficult to design and perform a robust, statistically sound audit of these results. Furthermore, the lack of transparency of the original count will be compounded by the audit which may increase the opaqueness of the elections process.

In a democracy it is essential that voters understand how their vote was counted and must believe that the process is fair. If the process is too mathematically complex for the average voter to understand, then an underlying premise of democracy is lost.

Gaming the Vote, William Poundstone, Hill and Wang 2008. ISBN 978-0-8090-4983-9

]]> http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/new-book-applies-game-theory-to-vote-counting-methods/feed/ http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/sen-nelson-fl-introduces-one-person-one-vote-initiative/ http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/sen-nelson-fl-introduces-one-person-one-vote-initiative/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:30:16 +0000 bluebanshee http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/?p=69

Senator Bill Nelson’s attempt at comprehensive reform, S.J.Res. 39, was just introduced in the U.S. Senate. Because it is so late in the cycle the bill has little chance of passing before the new Congress is sworn in next January. The “One Person, One Vote Initiative” contains some intriguing elements, including a proposed Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.

Any constitutional amendment faces an uphill battle because of the need for passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress followed by adoption by three-fourths of the 50 states (Article V). Not likely to happen very quickly.

For those in need of a refresher about why the Electoral College was created by the Framers, it should be said that those who designed our Constitutional system never envisioned that the President would be elected by popular vote. They planned to have state legislatures select the members of the Electoral College who would in turn gather to vote for President and Vice-President.

This process may seem cumbersome and perhaps quaint in the age of cell phones, instant messaging and social networking sites. However, since Baker v Carr established the principle of “one man, one vote” in 1962 there has been a basic shift in the American political landscape that is marked an increasing expectation that the popular vote is important and should determine electoral outcomes. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college vote, due to the Scalia Five’s ruling in Bush v Gore. This outcome was widely seen as unfair, undemocratic and contrary to the will of the people. In 2004 when Bush appeared to win both the popular and electoral vote, despite serious questions about dirty tricks, voter suppression, voting machine errors — and there was not the same perception of unfairness. The American public more readily accepted the 2004 results than they did the 2000 outcome.

Now Senator Nelson proposes that the Electoral College be abolished altogether. This is a direct move that would abolish the traditional role of the states in the selection of the President and Vice-President. But it will take a while to accomplish because of the Constitutional amendment process. Or as MLDB diaries on Daily Kos. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/6/20562/91614/501/531392

Abolishing the electoral college cannot come fast enough IMO. There is no need to rehash to trauma the electoral college system has wrought on the nation due to the 2000 election. And with speculation that 2008 could be a repeat (with a vastly bigger popular vote margin in favor of Obama), it’s nice to see some moves being made toward making it happen.

There is another proposal out there called the National Popular Vote (NPV), which is kind of an end run around the Constitution. It calls for a compact between states to agree to cast their electoral votes for the announced popular vote winner. So far a number of state legislatures have passed this measure but not yet enough to activate its provisions. One problem with the NPV proposal is that it would not need to be universal for it to be triggered. Some states would have opted in to NPV and would be casting their electoral votes for the national popular vote winner while others would still be casting their electoral votes the traditional way based on the vote tally in their individual states. Another problem with the NPV proposal is the harsh reality that the requirements of the inter-state compact could lead to a situation where a state could be expected to cast its electoral votes for the candidate who lost in that state, possibly by a sizable margin. This would be counter to the “one man, one vote” principle and would be deeply anti-democratic in that it would not be reflective of the will of the voters in that state.

There are several other reforms packed into the Nelson bill that do not require a Constitutional amendment but still call for thoughtful consideration. These include Rotating Primaries, Nationwide Early Voting, No-Excuse Absentee Ballot, encouraging Vote By Mail and requiring a Voter Verified Paper Ballot.  I will recap MLDB’s analysis below.

Establish rotating primaries: The 2008 election has demonstrated our primary system is broken. This legislation will give both large and small states a fair say in selecting presidential nominees, and will do away with unrepresentative caucuses controlled by party bosses. It divides the nation into six regions and establishes six primary dates beginning in March and ending in June. On each of the six dates, states in each region of the country will be represented on a rotating basis.

Allow nationwide early voting: Restricting voting to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November unduly restricts many voters from getting to the polls. The bill will take what has been instituted successfully in Florida – early voting – and expand it to cover the entire nation, so that voters can go to a designated polling place before Election Day and cast their vote. [www.whytuesday.org ]

Allow absentee ballot on demand: Some states still require a voter attest to an inability to get to the polls on Election Day in order to obtain an absentee ballot. The legislation would remove this barrier to voting to impose a nationwide requirement that states issue qualified voters an absentee ballot on demand.

Encourage vote-by-mail: The bill would provide grants to jurisdictions that wish to institute pilot programs for full-fledged vote-by-mail elections, based on Oregon’s successful model. Any such pilot program would need to contain adequate safeguards to ensure full inclusion of all voters regardless of race, language, or disability, and guard against fraud.

Require vote verification: The legislation takes nationwide the voting technology reforms instituted last year in Florida. It would require there be a verifiable paper ballot to accompany every vote that is cast, which now is required in Florida and in several other states.

One vital reform missing from this list is a requirement for a post-election audit of the paper ballots.  Having paper ballots without instituting a robust statistically sound audit is akin to installing a burglar alarm and then failing to turn it on.  Rep. Rush Holt’s bill H.R. 811 contains requirements for post-election audits.  Too bad Senator Nelson did not include these provisions from H.R. 811 in his otherwise comprehensive bill.

For those who wish to read the text of the Nelson bill — S.J.Res. 39 –  here is the liink: http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.J.RES.39:

Because he refused to prosecute bogus “voter fraud” cases in New Mexico, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired by the Bush Administration. A dyed-in-wool Republican, Iglesias was disillusioned by the politization of the DOJ under John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales.

In a recent appearance on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart Iglesias won audience applause by referencing characters in Star Wars movies:

“I thought I was working with the Jedi Knights and I was working for the Sith Lords.”

The video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast June 16, 2008. Find it here: http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/06/17/fired-us-attorney-i-was-working-for-the-sith-lords/

Every election cycle in the U.S. there are votes that never get counted –but not because of computer glitches on paperless voting machines, as if often assumed. The computer glitches happen and no paper trail is there to give silent evidence of the missing votes. Much energy has been devoted to replacing paperless voting machines with systems that have a voter verified paper record without also considering the other source of missing votes.

What am I talking about? What other type of missing vote is there besides the ones lost inside the electronic world of computerized voting machines? The answer, of course is that the other type of votes that never get counted are the ones that never get cast. Tragically millions of votes are never cast in jurisdictions across America each election cycle for a wide variety of reasons –partisan dirty tricks, voter suppression, voter intimidation, purged voting rolls, misinformation campaigns targeted at certain groups of voters, or simply voting machine shortages in inner city precincts. It is these uncounted votes that never show up in the winning (or losing) margin but in close races can mean the difference between victory or defeat.

This election cycle the weapon of choice in preventing legitimate voters from ever getting a chance to cast a ballot seems to be requirements to show ID at the polls in order to vote. These voter ID laws have proliferated in the last eight years with the net effect of denying the right to vote to U.S. citizens who do not have access to the required ID. Some of the recent egregious examples of this kind of voter suppression are the elderly nuns in South Bend, IN who were unable to cast ballots in the recent Indiana primary and the 97-year-old Arizona woman who could not produce a birth certificate because she was born at home in Clinton, KY and never had one. There countless others, of course, whose stories of being denied the right to vote does not make the news. Bill Boyarsky on Truthdig.com points out that the primary season already shows evidence of an increase in this type of voter suppression activity. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080605_exposing_the_gops_voter_suppression_campaign/

Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington Bureau, told a House committee in February that “ … The NAACP, as well as representatives from almost every other civil and voting rights organization, all report an increase in the number of Americans—primarily racial and ethnic minority Americans—who say they have been denied their constitutional right to register and vote.”

Eighteen states require some form of ID in order to vote, with Indiana’s strictest-in-the-nation law being upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court recently. Their requirements vary wildly but have the net effect of preventing otherwise qualified legitimate citizens from exercising their right to vote. More details about these state voter ID laws can be found at electionline.org or projectvote.org.

In the opinion of Professor Richard L. Hasen of Los Angeles’ Loyola Law School, one of the nation’s foremost election law scholars, predicts that voter suppression will take place in countless polling places across the nation but will not be a mass campaign. He believes that the administration of laws like the ones requiring voter ID will provide cover for widespread voter suppression of minorities.

“The most successful way of keeping minority voting down is [using] the law,” Hasen said.

So what can be done to get ready for these tactics in the November General election?

To counter such moves, he said, candidates needing minority votes, such as Obama, must put field workers and election lawyers into the field to educate voters on the complexities of their local laws. They must make sure voters have the required ID. And they must be ready to go to court in an instant when someone spots a dirty trick. “These kind of things have to happen now,” he said.

This is particularly crucial in battleground Western states with large Hispanic populations. The combination of anti-immigrant sentiment and voter ID laws could lead to a decline in voting among these groups. Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwestern Voter Registration Education Project, says that anti-immigrant sentiment may hurt the turnout in states like Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico (a total of 19 electoral votes).

Professor Hasan offers the following advice to the Obama campaign: hustle election protection specialists to the battleground states. There’s not much glory in nosing around a Colorado or Arizona county courthouse—but that’s where this election may be decided.

The rest of us can do our part by participating in local election protection efforts — and staying alert to evidence of these kind of voter suppression efforts.

Every vote needs to be counted — and every legitimate voter needs to have his or her voice heard at the ballot box.

As previously noted on this blog, the Republican party has a long history of voter suppression, dating back at least as far as William Rehnquist’s activities in Arizona, long before he ascended to the U.S. Supreme Court. We have chronicled the effort by the Bush administration to foist Hans von Spakovsky on the Federal Election commission, an effort that, fortunately for American democracy, has come to an inglorious end with von Spakovsky’s withdrawal from consideration for the post.

One of the recent GOP tactics has been to push for legislation requiring voters to show ID in order to vote. To listen to many Republicans the greatest danger to the country is voter fraud, i.e., folks casting ballots they are not entitled to. Most often the boogie man is the specter of illegal aliens voting but no proof is ever offered.

As a result of this unfounded fear of voter fraud, several states have actually enacted voter ID laws and unfortunately for Hoosier voters, the U.S .Supreme court recently upheld the stringent Indiana law, despite there being no evidence of voter fraud occurring in the state and substantial proof that legitimate voters would be denied the right to be vote due to lack of ID.

In the recent Indiana primary, the predictions of legitimate voters being denied the right to vote were proved right. 10 elderly nuns living in a convent across the street from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend were denied a ballot. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/greg_gordon/story/36034.html

John Borkowski, a South Bend lawyer volunteering as an election watchdog for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said several of the retired nuns had been voting all of their lives but were told they lacked the required identification cards and could only file provisional ballots.

Since 2005, Indiana’s toughest-in-the-nation law requires every voter to produce a state or federal photo ID card. The Supreme Court, after weighing scores of legal briefs from conservatives who backed the statute and liberals who opposed it, upheld the law by a 6-3 vote, saying there was little evidence that it was unduly burdensome for voters.

Borkowski said Sister Julie McGuire, one of several nuns on poll duty, wasn’t pleased to turn away the nuns, some of whom were in their 80s and 90s and no longer had driver’s licenses.

Now we know that the law is indeed unduly burdensome on voters, at least if one is an elderly nun in a wheelchair with no drivers license. Now we have proof that the law disenfranchises legitimate voters. In frustration Borkowski says:

“Here’s the supreme irony,” Borkowski said. “This law was passed supposedly to prevent and deter voter fraud, even though there was no real record of serious voter fraud in Indiana. Here you have a bunch of nuns whose votes can’t be accepted by a bunch of nuns … who live with them in the polling place in their convent because they don’t have an ID.”

At least six other voters (including an 18-year-old co-ed from California) besides the nuns were relegated to filing provisional ballots (AKA placebo ballots) in that one polling place in South Bend.

“The nuns and this young woman are the face of the Supreme Court case,” said Jonah Goldman, who directs the Lawyers Committee’s Campaign for Fair Elections. He said his group, which has bird-dogged polling places in primaries across the country over the last three months, also has found widespread confusion in other states over voter identification requirements.

“We’ve seen people in every contest that we’ve covered being disenfranchised by a perceived, incorrect or illegal restrictive identification requirement,” partly because some poll workers have demanded more identification than was required by law, Goldman said.

So now that we know that voter ID laws produce disenfranchisement of legitimate voters. Does this mean that Republicans are planning to roll back voter ID laws? No, that’s not the plan. Now they squander taxpayer dollars looking for voter fraud — $1.4 million to be exact to produce evidence of possibly 8 cases of voter fraud in Texas. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/195725.php

Two years ago Texas’ Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott declared war on what he claimed was rampant vote fraud in Texas. He set up a special vote fraud unit and got a $1.4 million grant from the feds for the work.

Now, two years on, courtesy of the Dallas Morning News, we have a run-down of what Abbot came up with — 26 cases.

The details tell the story: All 26 cases involved Democrats, and almost all were either blacks or Hispanics.

Of the 26, 8 appear to have been genuine cases of fraud, two of which were cases of people actually casting fraudulent ballots, as opposed to bogus registrations.

So Democrats are targeted, mostly minorities or elderly, and isolated cases of voter fraud are found, not enough to change the results of an election, no widespread conspiracy, no hordes of illegals taking over the country by voting. But lots of taxpayer money gets spent in a fruitless endeavor. Josh Marshall at TPM concludes that this search for voter fraud is a witch hunt. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/195725.php

No one denies there are isolated cases of vote fraud. The question is how organized and widespread it is, whether it’s affecting the outcomes of any actual elections, and whether (depending on the answers to those questions) whether the extent of the problem justifies measures which also have the effect of making it either more difficult or more perilous for eligible voters to exercise their rights at the ballot box. The fact that these politicized and morally corrupt prosecutors offices can’t come up with more than a trivial number of actual cases makes the answer to the question pretty straightforward.

Marshall also reminds us of the larger context of the politicization of the DOJ and the firings of U.S. attorneys who refused to use their positions on behalf of the agenda of the Republican party rather than serving the greater public good and enforcing the rule of law.

Remember the larger context too. In the case of the US Attorney firings, most of the dismissals targeted prosecutors who refused to use the power of their office to advance the interests of the Republican party by engaging in these kinds of witch hunts.

Not surprisingly, Abbot is also pushing for a new law in Texas to require photo IDs to be allowed to vote — the latest gambit to try to shave a few percentage points off voter participation among the targeted groups.

Unless there is pushback, Texas may soon join Indiana in enacting a voter ID law.  And more legitimate voters like the elderly nuns in South Bend will be disenfranchised.  All part of the GOP war on Democrats voting.

]]> http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/the-gop-war-on-democrats-voting/feed/ http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/bev-harris-gets-it-wrong-part-2/ http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/bev-harris-gets-it-wrong-part-2/#comments Sun, 25 May 2008 05:47:09 +0000 bluebanshee http://votingmatters.wordpress.com/?p=64

Once again, an e-mail from Bev Harris of Black Box Voting landed in my mailbox filled with smears, insinuendos and half-truths (the most dangerous kind). Guess her coffers are empty and she needs to do a little fundraising.This time Bev takes aim at the recent primary in Oregon, singling out three counties for attack.

IMPOSSIBLE AND IMPROPER NUMBERS FROM OREGON’S MULTNOMAH, POLK, AND YAMHILL COUNTIES

- Results reported before they exist.

A rather wonderful voting rights citizen volunteer named John Howard went to the results reports posted by Multnomah County at this Web site Wednesday night and was surprised to see that results posted on Wed. May 21 at 4:28 pm time and date-stamped on 3:53 pm May 22, which happens to be Thursday!
http://www.mcelections.org/2008-05/results.shtml

Look at these pictures to see what I mean:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/OR/multnomah/May08-impossible1.jpg
http://www.bbvdocs.org/OR/multnomah/May08-impossible2.jpg

Check out the time the results were uploaded. Then look at the time and date stamp on the results: The report was “run” nearly 20 hours LATER than it was posted!

POSTING COUNTY-WIDE RESULTS BEFORE THE POLLS CLOSE:

Polk County and Yamhill County, Oregon posted results on the Internet BEFORE the polls closed, at 7:31 and 7:41 pm, respectively. The polls didn’t close until 8 pm.

Looks really bad for these three county election directors, if Bev is to be believed.

However, if Bev knew a but more about how VBM works in Oregon — if, for instance, she had read the Vote By Mail Procedures Manual — if, for example, she had actually observed election-day procedures — or if, she had asked election officials in these three counties what actually happened (as this writer did!) — if she had done any or all of these things, she would have found that there are simple common sense explanations (not Oopsies!) for what she is so excited about. But then she wouldn’t be able to send out alarmist e-mails to provide grist for her fundraising mill.

Multnomah County

Let’s examine Bev’s claim about Multnomah county that election results were posted on the website with the next day’s date. Turns out there was a problem with the system clock on the Windows computer that tabulates the votes and produces the reports. The machine was showing time as p.m. rather than a.m. when it was first booted up for the election. In the process of re-setting the system clock to a.m., the date was inadvertently rolled forward and not caught until after the election. Not a big deal. Not a situation that effects the integrity of the election results.  No cause for alarm. The reports were run at the correct time but the time-date stamp was wrong. Much ado about nothing.

Polk and Yamhill Counties

The situation for Polk and Yamhill counties is different. The reports that were posted on election night for the first release of results at 8 p.m. had date-time stamps of 7:31 and 7:41 p.m. Again, there is no cause for alarm here, just a misunderstanding of election procedures in Oregon. Under Oregon law no election results can be released until 8 p.m., which is the official close of polls and the deadline for ballots to be delivered to a ballot drop box.

Election officials start running ballots through the scanners the morning of election day right after the public Logic and Accuracy test is completed but no results can be released until polls close at 8 p.m. There is usually a gaggle of representatives from the media, political parties and campaigns gathered at the election office anxiously awaiting release of these first results.  So generally election officials will print out the first results report in advance of the 8 o’clock deadline so they have time to make enough photocopies for everyone asking for them.

This does not mean that the results were posted on the internet at the same time the reports were printed. Because the tabulator computer does not have an internet connection for security reasons the reports have to be taken to a separate computer with an internet connection so that they can be posted online. This process of posting the results online may actually happen a few minutes after 8 but the time-date stamp of the original report may still be visible.

So again the explanation is simple. It is not a cause for alarm or distrust of election officials.

Signature verification and the performance of the USPS

Bev also sent out another e-mail about Oregon’s VBM system this week. Bev says that in her opinion

“Oregon is just plain strange”

and makes it abundantly clear that being strange is not a good thing.

First she raises questions the robustness of Oregon’s signature verification process. In doing so she displays a basic lack of understanding of the signature verification process. Citing a report filed with the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) she suggests that Oregon’s high rate of acceptance of signatures on ballot envelopes indicates that just any scribble will do. On the contrary, questionable signatures that do not match the signature on the voter’s registration form are simply set aside for further investigation. The voter is contacted and has 10 days to resolve the issue. A ballot with a questionable signature is not counted until and unless the issue is resolved.

Bev also wonders about the performance of the U.S. Postal Service in delivering ballots to every voter. Granted that would be a problem if there were not a remedy available to every Oregon voter. Bev is clearly unaware of every Oregon voter’s right to secure a replacement ballot when the Post Office fails to deliver. A simple phone call or trip to the county election office is all it takes to get a replacement ballot.

While pretending to be an expert on elections and voting, Bev Harris displays an appalling lack of knowledge about legal requirements and election procedures in Oregon. If she is so wrong about Oregon, there is little reason to trust her judgment about the situation in other states, where she may be equally uninformed and apparently unwilling to learn. Jumping to conclusions based on incomplete or faulty information seems to be her favored method of investigating a situation.

It appears to this writer that all Bev Harris does is spread smears of election officials and mis-information about elections — wrapped up in a fundraising appeal where she pleads for donations to enable her to keep doing what she is doing. Based on the evidence presented above about her lack of expertise and also because of Bev’s thinly veiled bias against election officials, a donation to Black Box Voting would not be a worthwhile investment of money IMO.  If one is interested in election integrity there are other more reality-based (and effective) organizations to donate to — Project Vote, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Verified Voting and the Brennan Center for Law are just a few examples that come to mind.