Voting concerns for the upcoming election

[Frelga]

Those are excellent questions, Frelga. But given the number of different jurisdictions and procedures involved, I doubt it would be possible to get clear answers.

I agree, Prim, the answers may be impossible to get, but without them, it is also impossible to judge ACORN.

[Cerin]

The article also makes it clear that election officials in at least some states have found many more potentially fraudulent registratiosn than the ones that ACORN flagged.

Voronwë, I was looking for this in the article and didn't find it. I was wondering if you could quote the part of the article that you interpreted in this way.


This article demonstrates how effective the Republican disinformation campaign has been, in confusing the issues of voter registration fraud and voter fraud, in confusing ACORN fraudulent registrations with legitimate registrations messed up by the effort to switch to computerized records (all of which they refer to as 'fraudulent'), and in spreading the false idea that voter registration fraud implies a corresponding amount of voter fraud.

The article has these two paragraphs following closely upon one another and shows how completely this voter has been misled:

Election officials and experts say there is little chance that significant numbers of supporters of either party would actually try to vote through a fraudulent registration.

“I’d have to see how bad it is and what happens,” said Dorrie Cohen, an 82-year-old Democrat in Boynton Beach, Fla. “If it’s very organized fraud, I think that I would question the election. If it’s just a few people trying something, I don’t think I would. However, there’s so much on the newspapers and the TV about it, I imagine it will be organized.”

She as equated voter registration with voter fraud, she has accepted the idea that all the talk about ACORN must mean there is an organized effort at voter fraud (as opposed to negligent employees padding their voter lists), she has accepted the unsubstantiated and contested claim that voter registration fraud leads to a comparable amount of voter fraud, and she is all set to question the legitimacy of the election. In short, another Republican campaign of lies and innuendo is a smashing success.

And this is just as troubling:

The Republican drive to publicize Acorn’s problems has had another less visible impact on the race, shifting the focus of election lawyers in the homestretch to the Nov. 4 election. Much of the Democratic team of lawyers and operatives who had intended to work on monitoring voter rights at the polls has instead played defense the last two weeks, responding to accusations of fraud.

So they've managed, with the help of the Justice Department, to divert everyone's attention to ACORN rather than to the widespread efforts to suppress the legitimate vote.

[halplm]

Ah, and it seems the democrats, with the help of the mainstream media, has managed to divert attention from issues and the fact that Obama's plan will plunge us further into this recession everyone wants to blame Bush for with widespread fear of voter suppression.

[JewelSong]

Never mind.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Enough, you two. Any more sarcastic comments will be removed.

[Cerin]

Ah, and it seems the democrats, with the help of the mainstream media, has managed to divert attention from issues and the fact that Obama's plan will plunge us further into this recession everyone wants to blame Bush for with widespread fear of voter suppression.

halplm, I don't see any evidence that attention has been diverted from issues to the fear of voter suppression. In fact, I wish attention would be brought to the attempts at voter suppression, so that every American would check their registration ahead of time and be prepared on election day for those challenges that Republican poll watchers are planning to bring; but I fear that many, many voters will show up at their polling places unaware that they've been purged or that there are discrepancies that are illegitimately calling their eligibility into question.


edit to add quote

[halplm]

again, I ask what sarcasm?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The article also makes it clear that election officials in at least some states have found many more potentially fraudulent registratiosn than the ones that ACORN flagged.

Voronwë, I was looking for this in the article and didn't find it. I was wondering if you could quote the part of the article that you interpreted in this way.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get back to that article to quote it (I've been trying all day, but it just gives me a "page not found" message). There was, in particular, a quote from an official in Las Vegas who indicated that they had found numerous fraudulent (not just duplicate) registrations that had not been flagged by ACORN. Or so I recall without being able to recheck the story.

[Frelga]

Do you mean this part?

In Las Vegas, where state officials raided Acorn offices this month to seize records, the county registrar of voters, Harvard L. Lomax, said his workers had found hundreds of potentially fraudulent registrations beyond those identified by Acorn.

“What this has done is undermined confidence in the system, because voters don’t understand that we have checks and bounds,” Mr. Lomax said. “I’m confident in the integrity of elections here.”

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, that sounds like it.

[Cerin]

Thanks, Voronwë and Frelga. I misread your original comment, V. I thought you were saying that the article had said there were other fraudulent registrations not associated with ACORN, but I see that they (and you) were simply saying that ACORN had not correctly flagged all of the questionable registrations that they had done.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, as I pointed out in a different part of my earlier post, a different part of the article did discuss a situation in which there was potentially fraudulent registrations not associated with Acorn (and, in fact, associated with a Republican operative).

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Next question from a dumb outsider.
I've heard that a new House has the chance or responsibility to review electoral districts. A couple of months back electoralvote,com put up several maps of cities and the districts looked like a game of checkers (UK draughts). The boundaries were strung out all over the place. The implication was that the boundaries were drawn in order to get a certain result. I am sure that both parties have done it equally.
There ought to be guiding principles behind electoral boundaries beyond political advantage. Is there a powerful enough movement to bring them into line with standard practice in other democracies? I would guess that it ought to be an early priority for a new administration even if there may be localised disadvantages for individual Democrats. Coherent districts make voting easier.

[Primula Baggins]

I don't see this being addressed anytime soon, Tosh. It is totally entrenched in both parties and is one of the prizes of having a majority. The same is true for state legislatures, and that isn't going away, either.

I am not arguing for the idea, but I will point out that some voters like it just fine, too. If districts were drawn with complete impartiality to voter demographics, the composition of the legislature would reflect the composition of the statewide majority much more often.

Of course, sometimes boundaries are redrawn to produce exactly that effect. It depends on who's in charge and is part of what tends to make one-party domination last a long time.

[Mrs.Underhill]

From CNN: 20000 people purged from the rolls in Georgia a month from election, and this student tells her story:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/26/ ... index.html

College senior Kyla Berry was looking forward to voting in her first presidential election, even carrying her voter registration card in her wallet. But about two weeks ago, Berry got disturbing news from local election officials.

"This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote," a letter from the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said.

But Berry is a U.S. citizen, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a passport and a birth certificate to prove it. The letter, which was dated October 2, gave her a week from the time it was dated to prove her citizenship. There was a problem, though -- the letter was postmarked October 9.

Is there any way for her to legally dispute those actions, or the only thing she can do now is to cast a provisional ballot?
Also, everyone is saying that provisional ballots are mostly thrown out into the garbage. Why? Isn't there a bypartisan commitee to monitor the elections, and the verification/counting of provisional ballots?
Is there a way to request UN or whatever monitors for the processing of those ballots?

I think this is beyound the pale, and I'm amazed there's no legal recourse for those whose right of vote has been thrown out like that.

[Cerin]

Is there any way for her to legally dispute those actions, or the only thing she can do now is to cast a provisional ballot?
Also, everyone is saying that provisional ballots are mostly thrown out into the garbage. Why? Isn't there a bypartisan commitee to monitor the elections, and the verification/counting of provisional ballots?
Is there a way to request UN or whatever monitors for the processing of those ballots?

I think this is beyound the pale, and I'm amazed there's no legal recourse for those whose right of vote has been thrown out like that.

I seem to remember hearing that a lawsuit had been brought in Georgia related to those letters that were sent out. I don't know how the results would affect those individual voters.

Regarding the provisional ballots, I believe election procedures vary widely from state to state and depend in some crucial aspects on the directives of partisan Secs. of State (as we saw in Florida in 2000).

In order to count provisional ballots, one would have to resolve whatever conflict resulted in the need for a provisional ballot in the first place, and that would take time and hold up results indefinitely. If an apparent outcome favors the party in charge of the state, then they aren't going to be eager to count those votes. They are going to push the idea that the number of provisional ballots is insufficient to impact the result, and then they will be left uncounted and/or discarded. This is what happened in Ohio in 2004, but later investigations showed that those votes would have changed the outcome of the state and the national election.

There's just way too much partisan influence in our elections process. It's a disgrace. We deserve to be monitored by the UN.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

20,000? In just one state? But hey they are cracking down on fraud so all's well. This is what the ACORN publicity is designed to drown out.
You have my sympathy.

[Mrs.Underhill]

If an apparent outcome favors the party in charge of the state, then they aren't going to be eager to count those votes.

OK, that's the thing which I don't understand.
WHY is the party in charge is the one counting the votes? Shouldn't there be a non-partisan or at least a bi-partisan entity counting the votes?
How come this practice is even being considered?

I get the reasoning that if the number of provisional ballots is less than the gap between candidates, it makes no sense to count them. But every time it is not the case they should be considered, no? At least if the persons who cast them are willing to follow-up/dispute etc.

This is just so depressing to realize that if the person gets struck out incorrectly and is forced to cast a provisional ballot, there's no way for that person to guarantee that they can prove their case, even when their vote matters. If there was a policy guaranteeing that a valid vote gets counted in a provisiaonal ballot, in case when it might matter - that would solve the problems with voter purges, and the related fears.
If you are a legal voter your vote should count, one way or the other. It's that simple. And the fact that it is not true in US is depressing.

ETA: Tosh, is 50000 purged and not 20000. I misquoted.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is what happened in Ohio in 2004, but later investigations showed that those votes would have changed the outcome of the state and the national election.

I've never seen a reputable, non-partisan source that claims this. Do you have one?

For that matter, my understanding is that one the votes were actually counted in Florida in 2000, it showed that Gore still would have fell short if the recount had been allowed to go forward. That was the tragedy of the overtly partisan SCOTUS decision: it was unnecessary from their own partisan point of view.

[Cerin]

OK, that's the thing which I don't understand.

WHY is the party in charge is the one counting the votes? Shouldn't there be a non-partisan or at least a bi-partisan entity counting the votes?

I know, it's just crazy the way we do things here. Maybe if the Democrats gain a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, something will finally be done to reform our election process. But then again, maybe not.

I've never seen a reputable, non-partisan source that claims this. Do you have one?

Given the way you define non-partisan (i.e., giving equal weight to the myth of voter fraud and the documented examples of massive and systematic disenfranchisement), I'd hazard not.

For that matter, my understanding is that one the votes were actually counted in Florida in 2000, it showed that Gore still would have fell short if the recount had been allowed to go forward.

It all depends on who you listen to. My understanding is that once the votes were counted, Gore was the winner. And that doesn't even factor in all of those people whose votes for Gore were thrown out because of the confusing butterly ballot, which induced them to mistakenly vote for two candidates.