Honest Voting

Dorothy Fadiman’s new documentary, Stealing America: Vote By Vote, is another in a line of documentaries about the problems with America’s election process. Fadiman, an Emmy-award winning filmmaker, decided to make the movie after she worked as a volunteer at the polls in 2004, when she heard repeated complaints from voters that their votes for Kerry were switched to votes for Bush.

Michael Ordoña, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, asked a couple of electronic voting machine manufacturers what they thought about the issues raised by this and similar movies.

Chris Riggall, a spokesperson for Premier Election Solutions (the rebranded Diebold) said this: “Sometimes the criticisms [of machines’ security vulnerabilities] are not factual because they are based on incorrect assumptions (such as networking or the presence of wireless ports on machines). On other occasions, the studies have recommended valuable improvements. … There’s no question that the emphasis on system security by voters, election officials and the industry is much greater now than it was, say, five years ago.”

Peter Lichtenheld of Hart InterCivic said, “I think the key issue right now is voter confidence.” Lichtenheld blamed controversial elections in 2000 and 2004 and the perceived misconduct of certain officials such as Katherine Harris in Florida, not faulty electronic voting systems, for generating distrust. (I have to admire Lichtenheld’s ability to glide over the role that electronic voting systems played in those controversial elections.) Lichtenheld reportedly pointed out that his company’s systems were the only ones for which California Secretary of State Debra Bowen did not require changes for use in 2007.

Oh, other people will fill that gap, Mr. Lichtenheld.

From the video “Caging List Blues” by the Singing News Network:

“Caging” is not merely a “direct-mail term” for separating addresses that “may be good versus addresses that may be bad,” as Monica Goodling tried to narrowly define. Caging has been used to target specific groups of people in various states like Arkansas to bump U.S. citizens from the voting rolls so they will have to vote by provisional ballot until their registration can be proven. Some states are better at properly counting provisional ballots than others.

The caging list in the picture above comes from one of 500 emails sent by Tim Griffin to GeorgeWBush.org in August 2004. Unfortunately for Griffin, he really wanted to send those emails to GeorgeWBush.com. The owner of GeorgeWBush.org sent those emails on to BBC reporter Greg Palast, who publicized the story that Griffin was involved with “caging” operations. These caging lists revealed that military personnel were among the voters targeted for possible removal from voting rolls.

More on Griffin: In December 2006, as a reward for his faithful service, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, working with Karl Rove, removed U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins of Arkansas and replaced him with Griffin. This was technically an interim appointment, but Gonzales chose not to seek Senate confirmation for this and other U.S. attorney appointments, under a new provision in the March 2006 revision of the PATRIOT Act. Gonzales’ action angered Arkansas’ senators so much that they pushed for Gonzales’ resignation. In February 2007, after testimony in the resulting Congressional investigation that Cummins had been dismissed in order to put Griffin in the attorney job, Griffin announced he would not seek a permanent appointment to the post. On May 30, 2007, after Palast sent copies of Griffin’s 500 emails to the House Judiciary Committee, Griffin resigned as U.S. attorney.

So kids, don’t cage votes!

That’s one way in which caging lists can be used. But let’s not forget about a type of caging list that’s right out in the open. Take a look back at my post about vote suppression in Louisiana. Notice where Dennis A. DiMarco, the registrar of Jefferson Parish, says they’re going to send mail to registrants whose registrations have been called into question by the Democratic Party’s voter registration drive? Whereas in another parish the registrar says they’ll just telephone the voters to clear up any registration form errors? Which parish do you think will clear up registration issues more quickly, with fewer provisional ballots at polling time?

While I was transferring episodes of Simply Quilts off the DVR the other day, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a tie-in to voting and elections.

A quilter named Lauren Austen, who was director of the University of Syracuse Community Folk Art Gallery at the time this episode of Simply Quilts was filmed, makes quilts that tell stories — she also collaborates with a storyteller/oral historian named Vanessa Johnson. (She currently is Community Artist in Residence at Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.)

In this episode of Simply Quilts, Austen explained the story behind her quilt “Lucy Goes to Vote.”

Austen says, “I made it to commemorate when South Africa changed and black people got the right to vote there. And it made me remember stories of my family talking about in the South, when black people got the right to vote.”

She describes the quilt: “Lucy is walking to vote in the hot sun, and she’s taking her baby with her, because it is important that he see his mama and her people making history.” The text on a strip of cloth goes further: “Walking to the poll place, she could hear the anthem being sung softly by those already waiting in the hot sun. They hurried to catch up. It was a good day.”

You can see the quilt on Austen’s web page in the Art Quilts section.

Just a reminder that access to free elections is a personal, emotional experience as well as an abstract civil right.