Honest Voting

It’s not only voting activists who’ve noticed the potential bottleneck at the polls this year.  The New York Times‘ editorial board writer Adam Cohen wrote today that in Ohio “tens of thousands of votes were suppressed by something so mundane that no one thought to focus on it: long lines.”

Cohen points out that most of the decisions about polling stations and voting equipment are made by local officials, not state or national leaders. The result is that efforts to coordinate numbers of machines and ballots may sometimes be hamstrung by disjointed planning or even various kinds of bias.  (College towns may do their best to minimize votes from the college population, for example.)

Cohen, who was in Ohio for the 2004 election, says he watched tens of thousands of people give up on voting when faced with hours-long lines to reach the voting booth.  Therefore he’s cheered to learn that Ohio’s secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner (mentioned previously on this blog) — is “hyperfocused on long lines” for the coming election.  He reports that she has been pushing reluctant local election officials to have at least one voting machine for every 175 voters, and she is also directing counties that use electronic voting machines to have backup paper ballots on hand equal to 25 percent of the 2004 turnout — ballots that can also be used if lines get out of control.  Missouri’s secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, has been doing much the same; in addition she is providing funds for the hiring and training of poll workers, which will be needed in November in record numbers.

But most other states aren’t considering these issues. Let me second Cohen here: “An election in which people have to wait 10 hours to vote, or in which black voters wait in the rain for hours, while white voters zip through polling places, is unworthy of the world’s leading democracy.”

Here’s something unusual for this blog: specific suggestions for maximizing the possibility that all the votes in your precinct will be counted. Problems at your polling place might arise because of administrative or technical reasons rather than partisanship.

Steven Rosenfeld writes for AlterNet that you as an individual can take action in several areas:

• Foil voting roll purges. Check with your local election office to confirm you’re registered at your current address, especially if you haven’t voted in several years. Update your registration if necessary. Make sure you do this before your state’s registration deadline (in 27 states that’s sometime in the first week in October, but your state may differ.
• Update your registration early, or register early if you’re not currently registered. Examine your registration form carefully before you turn it in. The Democratic Party will be conducting a major voter registration drive after its national convention. Local election officials have complained all year that they’ve been overloaded with last-minute registrations; some officials will take a more hard-ass view than others. Make sure there’s time to correct any errors. Call your election office to be sure your form has been processed.
• Be prepared for partisan voter challenges. If you registered after Aug. 1 and if you get a postcard from a political party not of their choosing, you could be on a “caging” or voter challenge list. This is especially true for college students, minority voters, and even people who live on a military base. If you’re in a known battleground state, check with the political campaign you support to find out whether voter caging is likely in your area. Bring additional ID to the polls with you. This tactic is designed to cause voting delays, so be prepared for that.
• If you’re a student new to voting, find out what the local rules are for student voting. Post office boxes won’t suffice for a voting address in many instances. State residency and identification requirements often prove to be stumbling blocks. Find out how you need to vote, and consider getting an absentee ballot.
• Make sure your precincts have enough election machines and paper ballots.
  

  Local election integrity groups or election activists should ask election officials how they are deploying the machines and ask officials what the basis is for that decision. Election officials tend to use historic turnout patterns over several voting cycles, which, as was the case this spring, underestimated the number of primary and caucus voters. Local officials should be encouraged to use the voter turnout numbers from 2008’s primaries and caucuses and updated voter registration statistics, rather than voter turnout figures from 2004.

• Prevent shortages of poll workers. Because voter turnout is expected to be high, the need for poll workers has increased too. Local election integrity activists or local media should ask election officials where there are likely to be shortages of poll workers, and help recruit key staffers there. Don’t forget high-school and college students, who may be able to get school credit for their service. I worked in my state’s primary this year, and one of the best workers in my precinct was the calm, collected high-school student.
• Report problems with early voting to voter registration organizations. Early voting and absentee voting are popular enough now that they’re also early indications of voting problems. If absentee ballots aren’t sent out in time, people overseas or in the military may not get their ballot in time for it to be counted.

Did you know you can make big bucks by disbelieving in vote-fraud? Just call 1-800-FAKEVOTE. Fake votes now, ask me how.

It makes me want to bang my head against the wall when I watch the entirely predictable, widely announced, even, Republican wave of claims that voter fraud is rampant across America. I’m reminded of the way they told me to write essays, way back in junior high school: first, tell us how you’re going to lie to us, then lie to us, and finally remind us of how you lied.

This article in the Wall Street Journal, written by Corey Dade and John D. McKinnon, says that the rising numbers of new registrants are giving Republicans the cold whibbies, especially in Virginia and Pennsylvania. To protect against successful Democratic registration drives voter fraud, Republicans are beginning to comb thousands of new registrations in those states for ineligible applicants.

I’m very glad to read, further down the page, that the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party planned ahead and already have people talking directly to local election officials to combat vote suppression.

My favorite quote appears near the end. Foley & Lardner lawyer Cleta Mitchell told the WSJ that she deplored efforts by Democrats and others to spike their anti-fraud campaign:

“What we’re not for is registering fake people at fake addresses, and creating barriers to trying to identify voter fraud where it exists, which is everywhere. It’s a growing problem, because of the professional vote-fraud denier industry.”

According to the Republican Party’s own voter fraud page, which doesn’t seem to have changed materially since I wrote about it on June 19th, they couldn’t find fraud in 30 U.S. states or territories, and of the news listings on that page, many of the articles are ongoing coverage of single cases. Just how big is that industry again? I don’t even think it can afford its own trade magazine.

Taking a closer look at the story in Alabama — the New York Times says most of what I’d say here:

The accusations have larger national implications at a moment when many Republican officials around the country have cited rampant voter fraud as a justification for stricter identification requirements at the polls, a move that Democrats have said is really designed to dampen the turnout among Democratic voters. Specific examples of fraud, though, are quite unusual.

The Times’ article, by Adam Nossiter, notes without comment that the party affiliation of most of the voting-fraud accusers is Republican. Nossiter contacted a group called the Democracy Defense League, which bills itself as a nonpartisan, biracial group focused on stamping out voter fraud. The group, founded in 2005, may or may not be a genuine grassroots group. Its members have been interviewed in the Selma Times Journal on the subject — unfortunately, the newspaper’s articles age off the website, or I’d link directly.

No doubts about Stop Voter Fraud Now, though — that’s some shiny green astroturf there.

Still thinking about Alabama’s situation; more to come.

This isn’t the only state to start making claims of voter fraud all of a sudden. You’d almost think this was coordinated.

Other states where accusations of voter fraud have suddenly hit the news: Nevada, Alabama, and Texas. (I’m only counting stories from recognized news organizations, by the way.)

For the record, let me restate what I’ve mentioned on this blog before: the voter fraud allegations I’ve seen so far have totaled small handfuls of voters per state. It’s nothing like the large-scale vote suppression and caging tactics seen in paces like Ohio. There’s no question which is a bigger threat to voting integrity.

The law of unintended consequences (at least I hope they were unintended): Voting officials in Ohio, a voter-ID state, are concerned about the effect of the national wave of foreclosures upon the voting rolls. Voters who recently lost their homes may, understandably, not be making voter registration their first priority.

Ohio’s foreclosed voters may matter more than others, since Ohio is as a crucial state for the November 2008 elections as it was in 2004. As the CBS News article notes:

“In 2004, the Ohio Republican Party challenged more than 31,000 newly registered voters statewide after letters it mailed out came back as undeliverable. The challenges failed, but Brunner said a new state law requiring counties to mail their own notices to all registered voters could lead to another round of pre-election challenges.”

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?

Back to more serious matters.

The first person to mention caging lists in my hearing was Greg Palast. But other authors have been pointing out the extensive use of caging lists in politics, most often and most documentably by the Republican Party.  Here’s the Wikipedia description of what “caging” means:

With one type of caging, a political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable - because, for example, the voter refuses to sign for it, the voter isn’t present for delivery, or the voter is homeless - the party uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent.

(To be continued shortly.)

From the Houston Chronicle, the Las Cruces Sun-News …and the Republican National Committee webpage:

A suspended Sunland Park municipal judge accused of voter fraud pleaded not guilty.

Horacio Favela, 48, was arraigned Monday on six charges including false voting, falsifying election documents and falsely swearing in a municipal election.

State District Judge Stephen Bridgforth allowed Favela to remain free on his own recognizance. New Mexico law prohibits convicted felons from holding elected office, but Favela hasn’t been convicted.

Favela is accused of voting twice by absentee ballot in the 2004 general election — once in Texas and once in New Mexico. He also is accused of living in El Paso, Texas, not Sunland Park, making him ineligible to run or hold the judgeship that he won in the March municipal election.

Favela was sworn in as a judge; however, the New Mexico Supreme Court suspended him without pay on March 27 pending the outcome of the case.

Google brought me to the GOP page on New Mexico voting fraud, which shows two stories about Favela as I write this, one dated 5/30/08, the other dated 2/29/o8. Going beyond New Mexico, I took a closer look at the GOP’s listing of voter fraud stories around the nation. This state-by-state roster, which goes back to 2006, offers each update on an ongoing story as a new listing, so each new development in a case ratchets up the total number of stories; it also includes stories about voter ID, e.g., the voter ID law in Indiana, not just as a national story but as a state story.

Totting it all up: That’s 112 entries total, going back to 2006, over 50 states, counting duplicates and national stories. More on this in the next post.

Over in the Democratic Party’s pages, they’re talking about a different set of voter frauds, especially the way Rush Limbaugh encouraged Republican voters in Texas and Ohio to cross party lines in the primaries and vote for Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, that appears to be a minor felony in Ohio; in Texas apparently some people forgot they could only vote once, which is also a criminal offense. And then they’re remembering the Rovian strategy of replacing non-compliant federal prosecutors in states where Republicans faced tight election contests.

Interesting to see how the approaches differ.

Voting Is Power, a massive voter registration drive that the Democratic party is running in Louisiana, has run into some potential problems because of complaints in certain parishes about poorly filled out or duplicate forms. When you look at registrars’ stories about the problems, though, the stories don’t add up. Any reader who’s done a compare-and-contrast exercise will notice that something’s off one way or the other. This writer, however, will come right out and say that it looks as though someone has done their best to foul up the registration drive from at least one end, and maybe both.

The registration drive, while its short-term goal was to register voters in time for a July 19th election, is ultimately aimed at beefing Democratic voter numbers for the November presidential vote. By Louisiana law the voter registrations have to be completely vetted by June 19th.

Shaila Dewan reported in Monday’s New York Times that the drive has raised complaints from some registrars about large numbers of duplicate, invalid or incomplete applications, and has led to an investigation by the Louisiana secretary of state, Jay Dardenne, a Republican.

The registrar in Jefferson, Dennis A. DiMarco, said that about 35 percent of the 4,000 cards his office had sorted were invalid because they had no address, the applicant was already registered or was a felon, or the signature did not match one on file at the Department of Motor Vehicles.* Another group of cards, he said, was missing information that the office hoped could be obtained by mail. DiMarco said he suspected that Voting Is Power canvassers were paid by the form. However, Brian Welsh, a spokesman for Louisiana Victory, the umbrella group coordinating local and national Democratic voter drives, said in a June 7th New Orleans Times-Picayune article that no, the canvassers are paid by the hour no matter how many forms they hand in.

Election officials have expressed concern that large numbers of people who believe they are registered will show up at the polls in November, only to find that they cannot vote because their application had been improperly submitted.

In Louisiana, the biggest complaints about the drive have come from Republican registrars in Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport; East Baton Rouge Parish, which includes Baton Rouge; and Jefferson Parish, just outside New Orleans.

However, in Orleans Parish the registrar, Sandra Wilson, said she had received more than 19,000 Voting Is Power applications and had problems with only about 400 of them. There are 4,000 to 5,000 that have not yet been sorted. If the card is missing information but has a phone number, she said, “We immediately call that person and get what we need.”

Compare and contrast information from the two stories. DiMarco was already complaining about problematic registrations by June 7th; Wilson was overwhelmed but happy to get the registrations. A week later, DiMarco’s complaints have sparked an investigation from the secretary of state, a fellow Republican; also, DiMarco says that they’ll “try” to send mail to voters with incomplete forms. Wilson, however, noticed a far lower percentage of incomplete or false registrations, and says her office will simply telephone people to fill in the information gaps.

Either someone deliberately flooded DiMarco’s office with fake registrations, or they’re paying unusually close attention, shall we say, to the registrations coming into his office.

Meanwhile, eager to help, Secretary of State spokesman Jacques Berry cautioned people to register directly with government officials, not workers who approach them on the street. In other words, don’t do anything to help the Democratic voter registration drive. Oddly enough, this story has already started to show up in conservative PR outlets like WorldNetDaily. What a coincidence!

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*Uh, wait — who’s doing the signature matching? And let me get this straight, they *match signatures to your driver’s license*? Goodness, that doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all. My own signature varies depending on the type of writing instrument and the writing angle.

For what it’s worth, signature matching depresses voter turnout (check near the end of the linked article) — that is, it doesn’t catch fraudulent voting, it means people are less likely to register in the first place, especially among less educated or lower-income voters..