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BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: GUEST,number 6 Date: 28 Oct 08 - 10:09 AM Barry Finn ... well stated !!! biLL |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Amos Date: 28 Oct 08 - 09:47 AM Hey, it's a BIG country. You don't buy a big country like ours for pocket change, buddy! A |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 28 Oct 08 - 02:42 AM I heard that the campaign costs for just both parties (not counting independents) have |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Barry Finn Date: 28 Oct 08 - 02:22 AM OK, voting starts on Friday & ends on Tuesday, after 2 years of this F#@king campain we all need a long holiday. That's another law that ougta be put on the books. No Campaining until the election is 2 weeks, wait make that 2 days away (they can run on our Holiday time), the country can't afford this much less have the canidates drawing valuable work time away from the machine that runs the country by stumpin all over the place. No wonder the nation's going to hell in a handbasket! Barry |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:43 AM Changing the election date in the US would require a Constitutional Amendment -- nigh unto impossible to achieve. But switching to vote by mail or adding early voting can be done by simple vote of state legislatures, and switching to paper ballots or adding more voting machines usually can be done just by the office of state Secretaries Of State. As long as polling ENDS on the first Tuesday in November in the US, no Constitutional Amendment is required. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Barry Finn Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:16 AM The election should be a 3 day holiday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday, that covers the problem for most people. The poor not only have problems with a work schedule but with child care & transportation & early November is not a great time to be out in the weather waiting for hours underdressed & for the unhealthy. There oughta be a law,,,,,,,,, Barry |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:07 AM That would help here in the US, Fooles, but unfortunately it wouldn't help a lot of the working class folks all that much. Lots of people work on Saturdays -- especially in service industries and many factories and retail stores -- and way too many of us have to work 2 and 3 jobs these days to make ends meet. (Thank, Reaganomics!) Even making election day a national holiday wouldn't solve the problem, as lots of people work on official holidays. I really do think vote-by-mail and/or early voting on many days at polling sites is the only way not to disenfranchise people. Genie |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 28 Oct 08 - 12:08 AM Funnily enough, in Aus we always hold our elections on a Saturday. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 11:06 PM The figures I've heard and read are that maybe 10% (20% at most) of the registration forms ACORN has turned in over the last year were invalid, for various reasons, mostly clerical errors (names misspelled, addresses written illegibly or inaccurately), addresses having been changed within the state, or the lack of an "exact match" between identification documents (as required by HAVA). Many of the registration applications initially rejected are subsequently accepted when such discrepancies and errors are cleared up. The number of patently fraudulent applications -- people long dead, businesses, cartoon characters, multiples of the same name and address, etc. -- is a very, very small percentage of the applications turned in. Certainly not worth disenfranchising a lot of legal voters over. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: beardedbruce Date: 27 Oct 08 - 11:02 PM "The practice of making people vote on machines (electronic or otherwise) that are subject to frequent breakdown or malfunction, or having so few of them that people have to wait hours in line to vote (on a workday, no less) -- that's really ridiculously unfair and undemocratic." Add in "and that are not independently verifiable" and I will agree 100%. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 10:51 PM Riginslinger, you're right, Oregon's system does yield much higher voter participation than just about anywhere else, and there has been little reason to suspect any higher incidence of fraud than under the old system where you'd go to the polls on election day and fill in your ballot in the booth. Sure, ballots can be stolen and people could pay others to fill in their ballots in particular ways, but that can happen anywhere with absentee ballots, and it's hard to commit widespread, systematic fraud that way. And the criminal penalties for something like stealing or destroying someone else's ballot or paying/coercing someone to vote a given way are so severe that it's hardly worth risking it to steal a vote or two. The practice of making people vote on machines (electronic or otherwise) that are subject to frequent breakdown or malfunction, or having so few of them that people have to wait hours in line to vote (on a workday, no less) -- that's really ridiculously unfair and undemocratic. ------------------------------------------------------- |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 10:42 PM [[Riginslinger - PM Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:49 PM "'unverifiable vote counting by machines (which Democrats seldom control).'" The control them in Ohio!]] Nope. They neither program the machines nor control the source code. That's "proprietary" to the companies that make the machines. If electronic voting machines were to have any credibility, the source code would have to be open to scrutiny by election officials and workers -- of all parties -- and results would be verified by a completely transparent, scientific recounting of samples of votes. But in case of really close elections, nothing short of counting of actual paper ballots would truly yield believable results. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Riginslinger Date: 27 Oct 08 - 10:07 PM Three cheers for Maine. I don't know why other states think they need those things. If you can't prove you've conducted a free and fair election, what do you have. I'm in Oregon, and it's all done by mail here. I don't know if I trust it or not. It seems to me like the whole voting process is too far removed from the voter. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: kendall Date: 27 Oct 08 - 10:02 PM Maine does not allow voting machines. One of the many reasons I love this state. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Riginslinger Date: 27 Oct 08 - 10:00 PM I don't think they were dreamed up. I was an election official from one of the counties that cited it. He should have had access to reasonably reliable information. When you have an organization like ACORN, the best way to deal with it is with a whole bunch of squirrels. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 27 Oct 08 - 08:39 PM The figure I've seen is, 40% of the registrations have been discarded by ACORN itself, and another 30% have been questioned by the election authorities. That sounds as if it means that 40% of registrations were viewed as suspicious by Acorn, and were duly supplied to the registration authorities marked as such (in line with the law). And that subsequently one in four of these were allowed to stand as valid registrations by the registration authorities, after they'd looked into it. Maybe that's how things happened, and those figures were correct. Or maybe, of course, those figures were just dreamed up by someone. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Amos Date: 27 Oct 08 - 08:18 PM How to rig an Election (by a reformed Republican operative). A |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Riginslinger Date: 27 Oct 08 - 07:45 PM "On top of which, most of their registrations aren't legitimate." That's a flat-out fabrication too, reflecting only what Rig would love to see." The figure I've seen is, 40% of the registrations have been discarded by ACORN itself, and another 30% have been questioned by the election authorities. Of course, Obama's news media reports all 100% of them as newly registered voters. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Bobert Date: 27 Oct 08 - 07:39 PM And, ya know what??? It is very doubtfull that Mickey Mouse will show up at any preceinct on election day wanting to vote... Mickey Moyuse just makes for more compelling mythology for the McCainites to regurgitate... What a joke... Let me ask the question again... Is disenfranchising upwards of a half a million voters ****worth**** stopping 40 people from fraudulantly voting??? B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 27 Oct 08 - 07:27 PM Rig, true to form, said: Not so, if they indicate that they have any inclination of voting for McCain, the registration form probably goes in the round file. (Presumably by ACORN, given that the statement is by Rig.) This is a complete figment of Rig's fertile and devious imagination. There have been NO allegations of ACORN's suppressing applications, let alone proof. Indeed, ACORN is being accused of fraud on registrations which they were REQUIRED to submit, which they did submit but with a "possible problem" flag, which is completely correct. On top of which, most of their registrations aren't legitimate. That's a flat-out fabrication too, reflecting only what Rig would love to see. Given the large numbers collected, the "problem" registration forms are an tiny, tiny fraction of "their registration". Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Riginslinger Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:56 PM No, last time they had a Republican Secretary of State, now they have a Democrat. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Bill D Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:55 PM Is that why the Republicans have been winning Ohio the last few elections? |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Riginslinger Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:49 PM "'unverifiable vote counting by machines (which Democrats seldom control).'" The control them in Ohio! |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:31 PM Oh, and the group that controls the DATA from the machines is whoever programs the machines (both at the local precinct level and at the central tabulator). That's almost always the voting machine company. Except when the machines are hacked, and that's anybody's game. For all we know, in some areas we have hacker vs. hacker vs. hacker -- kind of like Mad Magazine's "Spy vs. Spy" -- going on, with Republicans hacking, Democrats counter-hacking, and anarchists getting in on the sport just because. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Bobert Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:29 PM The fact is that in 2006 it was determined that less than 50 people comitted voter fraud... (Read the Palist.Kennnedy Report for details) yet we have Republican lawyers all over this land trying to have yet more potential Democratic voters purged... My question is simple... Is it worth taking a half a million people's right to vote to keep less than 50 of them from comitting voter fraud??? That is the real question here... (But, Bobert... Those people still get to fill out a provisional vote even if they had been purged incorrectly... Doesn't that mean anything???) Well, not really... 1 out of every three provisonal votes never got counted in 2006... But, hey, the Repubs have had the power to purge voters and it's been purge, purge, purge since 2000... In 2000 Katerine Harris and Jeb Bush purged 57,000 mostly Democratic voters from the roles... The numbers in Ohio from the 2004 are even greater... Really makes the US look like 3rd World dictatorship when it can't even hold a somewhat fair election... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:27 PM Oh, I agree, Bruce, way too many Democrats have supported the use of these ridiculous "proprietary source code" electronic machines. The foundation of our democracy, our "commons," has been turned over to private industry. Totally absurd! Even the Help America Vote Act was, IMO, a case of going after the fly on grandma's head with a sledgehammer. And the Democrats have seen at least 3 elections greatly tampered with in recent years, but the leadership of the party has refused to really confront the problems and shine a spotlight on them. If this election is also stolen -- and I think there's a very good chance it will be -- a lot of the blame will be on the leadership of the Democratic party for burying their heads in the sand for the last 8 years. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: beardedbruce Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:21 PM "unverifiable vote counting by machines (which Democrats seldom control). " As I have stated, in MD it is the Democrats who control the election boards, the local political offices, and have voted against having a verifiable paper trail or audit capability on the electronic machines. The group controlling the DATA from the machines controls the results being reported. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:19 PM McGrath, you're quite right. It hasn't always been Republicans who have tried to keep poor people and black people from voting. But those groups have been systematically disenfranchised from way back, via poll taxes, literacy tests, and other barriers to voting that disproportionately pose hardships for those with less money, less education, less access to transportation, and less leisure time. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:16 PM Bruce : "But I have noted that ONLY the action of Republicans ever causes any concern- Is it true that Democrats are ALWAYS perfect, and NEVER resort to using the rules to benefit themselves????" That's not really so. In past elections Democrats in some states, cities and counties have been accused (and sometimes clearly rightly so) of ballot box stuffing and other sorts of election fraud. The widespread election fraud concerns over the past 6 to 8 years, though, are of the sort that Republicans are much more likely to be involved in. Low voter turnout usually favors the conservatives (as Paul Weyrich even admitted when addressing a conservative church group a few years ago), so Democrats (liberals, progressives) have little motive to undertake across-the-board voter suppression tactics such as registration roll purges or deliberately doing things to make voting take a lot of time and effort. Plus lower-income voters tend to vote Democratic, so making voting lines long tends to disproportionately suppress Democratic votes. The use of unverifiable electronic voting machines with proprietary source codes is also more likely to lead to pro-Republican election fraud, simply because the big corporations that own the voting machines and source code are usually owned and run by Republicans or by others who favor big business. I have yet to hear of a voting machine company that's owned by pro-Democratic or progressive-leaning people. Now, IF and when any party controls things like access to voting machines or the voter registration rolls or the vote counting in a given precinct, county, state, etc., corruption may well occur. But when the vote count is transparent, there are usually checks and balances against fraud. Today's election fraud seems primarily to take the form of voter suppression (which works against Democrats) and unverifiable vote counting by machines (which Democrats seldom control). |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:00 PM But I have noted that ONLY the action of Republicans ever causes any concern- Don't McCain's accusations ained at ACORN, and the echoing of that by a range of people, incuding some posting on the Mudcat disprove that? Plenty of concern expressed. It's just that a lot of it just doesn't seem to stand up to scrutiny. .......................................... But after all, it wasn't so much Republicans as Democrats who were for generations most active in stopping black people from voting throughout the South. It's just that those kinds of Democrats moved over to the Republican camp a generation or so ago, and they seem to have brought their old ways with them. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 05:59 PM Ringslinger, this charge of yours is blatantly false: "Not so, if they indicate that they have any inclination of voting for McCain, the registration form probably goes in the round file. On top of which, most of their registrations aren't legitimate." In 2004 a Republican-backed voter registration was convicted of systematically destroying the registration applications of people who signed up as Democrats. This is one reason why ACORN makes a point of turning in ALL the applications they receive -- even the ones from Mickey Mouse or Joe's Plumbing; many states require that and where they don't, the organization would be subject to charges such as yours if they didn't. ACORN has not, to my knowledge, even been charged with having destroyed or discarded voter registration applications. As to "most of their registrations" not being legitimate, that's false. Out of well over a million applications (about 1.7 million, I believe) they've turned in, somewhere between 5 and 10 percent have been found invalid -- and most of those for things like clerical errors or missing information. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Bill D Date: 27 Oct 08 - 05:46 PM {ummm...you 'might' want to ask yourself why most of these kind of rules-bending/breaking exercises seem be more common among Republican operatives} then again, you might not. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Bill D Date: 27 Oct 08 - 05:43 PM Why, sure! ☺ |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: beardedbruce Date: 27 Oct 08 - 05:33 PM "I certainly would, if the Democratic party had been very active in calling for voter roll purges, especially in potential swing states." If so, I can respect that. But I have noted that ONLY the action of Republicans ever causes any concern- Is it true that Democrats are ALWAYS perfect, and NEVER resort to using the rules to benefit themselves???? |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Riginslinger Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:50 PM Not so, if they indicate that they have any inclination of voting for McCain, the registration form probably goes in the round file. On top of which, most of their registrations aren't legitimate. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:49 PM Bruce: " If it affected Republicans disproportionatly, would you allow me to claim it was intentional on the part of Democrats??????" I certainly would, if the Democratic party had been very active in calling for voter roll purges, especially in potential swing states. And I'd fault any group or party that focused so much on keeping "illegal" voters from "committing voter fraud" that they were willing to disenfranchise many, many more rightful voters in the process. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:46 PM And ACORN was designed to overwhelm anything the Republican dirty tricks people could do from the inside. And ACORN would appear to be on course to succeed in doing this, by assisting in the registration of large numbers of legitimate voters who would otherwise not have been registered. Who will of course be quite free to vote for McCain, if they wish, insofar as they can actually succeed in casting a vote. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:44 PM Bruce, it's not so much that the Republicans are to blame for all the overzealous and illegal voter roll purges as that they are going out of their way to divert attention from the very serious problem of legitimate voter disenfranchisement by distorting and sounding exaggerated alarm bells over some small-scale attempts at voter registration fraud. Even though voter registration fraud is far, far less likely to have much, if any, impact on the election results. Still, the Republican party HAS been pursuing voter roll purges much more aggressively in many heavily Democratic leaning areas than in most Republican areas. And even if they were overzealously pushing for voter roll purges across the board, as the article points out, new registrations this year have been very disproportionately Democratic-leaning voters. So if the attempt is just to purge the rolls of voters registered in the last year -- or in any way to suppress the vote across the board -- it will have a disproportionately negative effect on Democratic votes. But the bigger issue is this: Is it reasonable or fair to disenfranchise dozens or hundreds of legitimate voters for every non-eligible voter you prevent from voting? It seems Federal law says it's not. Purging voter rolls within 90 days of a Federal election is illegal unless the person has died, moved out of state, or can be demonstrated to be ineligible for some other reason. (The burden of proof is on the state. You can't purge T. Boone Pickens from the voter rolls in Texas 2 months before a Federal election because you notice that Social Security has him listed as Thomas B. Pickens. Further from the time of a national election, you can challenge his registration and give him a chance to show that his driver's license and Soc. Security card are for the same person. But not this close to an election. Government inefficiency or bureaucratic ignorance are not an excuse. Anyway, these problems are very likely to suppress the Democratic vote much more than the Republican vote, regardless of where and why the problems originated. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: beardedbruce Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:41 PM "The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run." Can anybody here even read???? First link in thread- next line is: "Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party's supporters disproportionately. " If it afected Republicans disproportionatly, would you allow me to claim it was intentional on the part of Democrats?????? |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Riginslinger Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:34 PM And ACORN was designed to overwhelm anything the Republican dirty tricks people could do from the inside. It doesn't look like the honest voter has much of a chance. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Amos Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:29 PM Seems unlikely the Democratic Party would engineer vote-flipping to their opponents, disenfranchisement of their likely supporters, or invalidation of their ballots... Hmmmm? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Stringsinger Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:25 PM What has been found in the election of 2008 as well as the previous ones is that when the errors occur such as machines flipping votes or the long lines for a single machine which makes the people who are line (generally in the poorer neighborhoods) give up, the results always favor the Republicans. So yes, the Republican operatives are responsible as well as the dirty tricks employed by those in the current administration. |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: beardedbruce Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:17 PM "The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run." So, of course the Republicans are to blame.... |
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Subject: Voter roll purges, unverifiable electronic results From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:17 PM http://www.gregpalast.com/spoiling-america/ Spoiling America Excerpted from Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Steal Back Your Vote" investigative comic. You can download all 24 pages at www.StealBackYourVote.org. Odd thing about the 207 voters of precinct 999 in Dona Ana County, New Mexico. Not a single one could choose between George Bush and John Kerry in 2004. Or at least that's what their ballots said. The Secretary of State at the time told me, "Some of those people just can't make up their minds." Dirt-poor Dona Ana is 63% Hispanic and the precinct is made up entirely of overseas voters, mostly the Chicano soldiers in Iraq or on duty. The machines say that Hispanic soldiers don't care who becomes their commander-in-chief. Or maybe, the machines failed to register their votes. Few Americans realize that in 2004, 1,389,231 ballots were never counted because they were "spoiled." How do ballots spoil? They get left out of the 'fridge? No, they're supposedly unreadable, blank, or just somehow lost in the machines. Here's an unfun fact: not everyone's vote spoils the same. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that the chances of an African-American voter losing their vote is 900% higher than a white voter. Hispanic votes vanished at a rate 500% higher than Anglo votes. Something's rotten. ************************ Go to www.StealBackYourVote.org to download the guide for free or pick up print copies of the investigative comic book by Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Every donation you make for copies of the comic allows us to send more out to low income groups in states like Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado. Get the guide now - all copies will be sent out via priority mail. If your group would like to distribute the Steal Back Your Vote guide please contact keri (at) gregpalast.com for special rates. After you've picked up the comic book get the t-shirt. Wear it into the polling place and tell them that they can't steal your vote! Support the fund by picking up the Steal Back Your Vote t-shirt by the cool people over at Clothing for the American Mind. A portion of every purchase goes to support the Palast Investigative Fund. ******************* 6 Nuns On The Run http://www.gregpalast.com/acorn-palast-on-cnn-headline-news/ ACORN - Palast on CNN Headline News A Warning from Robert F. Kennedy Jr Rolling Stone - Block the Vote October 20, 2008 By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST "I don't think the Democrats get it. All these new rules and games … could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states." Rolling Stone Magazine is making this important investigative story available on the net in its entirety, free of charge. Read this excerpt, then read it all on-line at RollingStone.com. Or download it all, with the Kennedy-Palast voter guide, Steal Back Your Vote, at StealBackYourVote.org. "The new registrations thrown out, the existing registrations scrubbed, the spoiled ballots, the provisional ballots that were never counted — and what you have is millions of voters, more than enough to swing the presidential election, quietly being detached from the electorate by subterfuge. "Jim Crow was laid to rest, but his cousins were not," says Donna Brazile. "We got rid of poll taxes and literacy tests but now have a second generation of schemes to deny our citizens their franchise." Come November, the most crucial demographic may prove to be Americans who have been denied the right to vote. If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat John McCain at the polls — they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering. - From the current Rolling Stone These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas. Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast "provisional" ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide. This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states." Download the rest – and get the Kennedy-Palast comic book/voter guide – at StealBackYourVote.org. Or, read it on-line, and watch the video, at www.RollingStone.com. ShareThis |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:03 PM Warning: Do not vote a "straight ticket" on your voting machine |
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Subject: RE: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:02 PM New York Times October 27, 2008 EDITORIAL This Year's Butterfly Ballot In Florida's "butterfly ballot" debacle of 2000, voters in Palm Beach County were so confused by the odd layout that many appear to have voted for the wrong candidate by mistake. At the time, there was a lot of talk about improving ballot design. Eight years later there are still far too many badly done ballots. North Carolina may have the country's worst. It is already causing confusion with early voters. And if the presidential race is close, it could change the outcome. Like a number of states, North Carolina allows its voters to choose a straight-party ticket. To do that, voters can mark one box and cast votes for all of the nominees of their preferred party. But North Carolina's ballot has an unexpected twist. Even if a voter checks the straight-party box, he or she must vote separately for a presidential candidate. North Carolina's ballot explains the need to check two boxes, and election officials make an effort to inform voters of the drill. But the ballot is still far too confusing. This peculiar form of straight-ticket voting was adopted in the 1960s, to help the state's Democrats keep getting elected, even as a growing number of voters began to choose Republicans for president. Not surprisingly, North Carolina has an unusually high rate of undervotes, ballots that do not record a vote for president. In the last two presidential elections, the rate has been about double the national average. Poor ballot design is a burden on all voters. Less-educated voters and the newly enrolled are even more likely to be confused and to end up not casting a vote for president. This year, North Carolina's flawed ballot could again result in tens of thousands of votes being lost. That is particularly worrisome since polls indicate a very close presidential race in the state. And as we saw in 2000, a presidential election can be decided by a mere 537 votes. It is too late to change the ballot for this year's election, so election officials must do everything they can to explain to voters how the state's straight-ticket voting works. When the election is over, North Carolina needs to include the presidential race in its straight-ticket voting, or require voters to choose candidates one by one. |
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Subject: BS: illegal voter roll purges, vote spoilage From: Genie Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:00 PM The real threat to democracy is not the possibility of some individuals trying to vote illegally. That's neither new, widespread nor particularly the province of any one party or ideology, nor is it likely to have much effect on things like the Presidental race. The real, very serious threat is the massive disenfranchisement of legitimate voters, sometimes via bureaucratic incompetence and inefficiency (perhaps coupled with election workers' ignorance of the law), sometimes via deliberate sabotage of election law. Millions of legal voters will find themselves prevented from voting in the US election this year because of illegal voter roll purges, intimidation by mail or phone or at the polls, inadequate equipment and workers at the polls, unnecessary (sometimes idiotic) bureaucratic red tape, laws passed with good intent but poor forethought, and other obstacles put in the way of the exercise of the franchise by citizens. Here are a couple of important recent articles about such problems -- problems that may well seriously distort the outcome of this year's American elections. ========== States' Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal October 9, 2008 States' Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal By IAN URBINA Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times. The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run. Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party's supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers. Some states allow such voters to cast provisional ballots. But they are often not counted because they require added verification. Although much attention this year has been focused on the millions of new voters being added to the rolls by the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, there has been far less notice given to the number of voters being dropped from those same rolls. States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows. The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote. Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters. In addition to the six swing states, three more states appear to be violating federal law. Alabama and Georgia seem to be improperly using Social Security information to screen registration applications from new voters. And Louisiana appears to have removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline for taking such action. Under federal law, election officials are supposed to use the Social Security database to check a registration application only as a last resort, if no record of the applicant is found on state databases, like those for driver's licenses or identification cards. The requirement exists because using the federal database is less reliable than the state lists, and is more likely to incorrectly flag applications as invalid. Many state officials seem to be using the Social Security lists first. In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 nonmatches, federal records show. Election officials in Georgia ran more than 1.9 million checks on voter files or voter registration applications and found more than 260,000 nonmatches. Officials of the Social Security Administration, presented with those numbers, said they were far too high to be cases where names were not in state databases. They said the data seem to represent a violation of federal law and the contract the states signed with the agency to use the database. Last week, after the inquiry by The Times, Michael J. Astrue, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, alerted the Justice Department to the problem and sent letters to election officials in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. The letters ask the officials to ensure that they are complying with federal law. "It is absolutely essential that people entitled to register to vote are allowed to do so," Mr. Astrue said in a press release. In three states — Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan — the number of people purged from the election rolls since Aug. 1 far exceeds the number who may have died or relocated during that period. States may be improperly removing voters who have moved within the state, election experts said, or who are considered inactive because they have failed to vote in two consecutive federal elections. For example, major voter registration drives have been held this year in Colorado, which has also had a significant population increase since the last presidential election, but the state has recorded a net loss of nearly 100,000 voters from its rolls since 2004. Asked about the appearance of voter law violations, Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees elections, said they could present "extremely serious problems." "The law is pretty clear about how states can use Social Security information to screen registrations and when states can purge their rolls," Ms. Rodriguez said. Nevada officials said the large number of Social Security checks had resulted from county clerks entering Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers in the wrong fields before records were sent to the state. They could not estimate how many records might have been affected by the problem, but they said it was corrected several weeks ago. Other states described similar problems in entering data. Under the Help America Vote Act, all states were required to build statewide electronic voter registration lists to standardize and centralize voter records that had been kept on the local level. To prevent ineligible voters from casting a ballot, states were also required to clear the electronic lists of duplicates, people who had died or moved out of state, or who had become ineligible for other reasons.
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