Voter suppression now becomes the overriding issue in the 2008 election, as those opposed to an Obama presidency have been planning and scheming to keep votes from being counted. There are many states that require picture identification, signatures matching those from ten or even twenty years ago, middle initials on driver's licenses or social security records to match those on voter registration documentation... and the list goes on.
In my state of Washington, 3.5 million people are registered to vote and Sam Reed, our Secretary of State, has predicted we will have a record-breaking 83% voter turn-out. As the majority of the new voters registered in my state are now registered as Democrats, preventing voter suppression will certainly assure an Obama victory here.
Senator Obama's campaign's efforts to get people engaged and a huge grassroots effort to register voters - along with the high level of interest in our state governor's race and local initiatives - have gotten the general population motivated. Our economic meltdown has certainly motivated many others, which should also help the democratic contingent.
Because there are so many new voters, however, there will be many provisional ballots issued if people wait until election day to vote. Early voting can help eliminate the abuses that are easily performed when a provisional ballot is thrown out. Unfortunately, the people who make these decisions are a rather powerful group under virtually no oversight because of timing issues and the requirements that the Secretary of State certify the vote.
If someone charged with this responsibility decides against a ballot, the vote does not get counted. There is no appeal procedure. Therefore, any way to avoid voting on a provisional ballot - which seems to be more of a 'give them a ballot, shut them up. We can always throw it out later' strategy - is just plain smart.
Delivering your ballot to your local election office and asking someone to sign for its receipt, even if you are allowed to vote by mail, can assure the elections office has received your ballot. Voting on paper - and not by paperless or receiptless machine voting - is the best protection most of us have against voter suppression and election fraud.
Inner city and minority area voters particularly should be on high alert. There were millions of African American voters whose ballots were thrown out and not counted in the 2004 election, following a decades long trend of heavy suppression of the African American vote. This is not my opinion, by the way, but a well-known fact and verifiable in your particular state.
We know that faulty machines, rejected by the affluent areas in Ohio, were sent to African American neighborhood polling locations in Ohio and other places. We also know that the African American vote in Florida, had it been legitimately counted, would have given the presidency to Al Gore and John Kerry.
All the shenanigans at the polls that created 6 and 8 hour long waiting times and discouraged many people from voting across the country can be expected to be 'new and improved'. Any tactic that successfully keeps young voters, new voters or African Americans from having their ballots counted will be employed with vigor by the republicans in an effort to keep Obama out of the White House.
Other methods of voter suppression were seemingly transparent, but letters telling voters their election was a day later for certain neighborhoods? This worked in some places, as if it had been done before it certainly was not well publicized. Voters who were used to using the back of the bus are naturally inclined to think there are 'different' rules for them. Of course this is disgraceful, but it works for the scum bags, so we can expect to see more of it.
Voters names were and are being purged through all kinds of unsavory methods, so voting early will help foil these attempts at purging democrats and young peoples' names from the lists. The republican machine has also been active in the battle ground states attempting to pre-purge voters by challenging their home addresses. This is particularly despicable in cases where the voters are in the middle of or have been foreclosed on - which does not mean they give up their right to vote - as the republican machine has been challenging voter registrations of anyone who is losing their home.
For U.S. residents, there are twelve days left till the election, so don't waste time. Get your ballot to your elections office!
For those of you Ex-Patriots out there who are planning on voting, there have been many abuses with regard to your rights too. There are many different state rules for American registered voters currently living abroad. Some states require your ballot be notarized, others witnessed by two Americans, others notarized only by the U.S. Embassy in the country where you are living and others have rules on black or blue ink or number two pencils.
It is imperative that if you are voting abroad you know your own state's rules. Sadly, many state websites are not up-to-date and so it is important to double check all your information. Americans living abroad who have registered to vote but still have not received a ballot can vote using the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB), a back-up ballot only available to Americans living outside the United States. It is available at www.votefromabroad.org.
Please vote early! This election is too important to lose.
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Comments: 39
I read today about a man who did six months in jail because of voter fraud and ACORN, that felt pushed to register people and they went and got names any way they could,
Look at Florida they got a submission at the voter registration from ACORN in the name of Mickey Mouse,
I'm not sure there is any way to combat this and it shows how people are willing ot cheat and win any way they can.
Mooch
Elizabeth: Check this one out. From Truthout.org
Good article, E, write on!
Wilka
The employees of Acorn - and this has happened to several other voter registration companies - were defrauding Acorn, as they were making up names or using telephone books. The registration employees were breaking the law, NOT ACORN. Acorn, like all registration companies, is required by law to turn in any and ALL voter registrations sheets, although they are also required to mark those registrations they believe are fake which Acorn did.
Acorn did comply with these requirements and to my knowledge, they did nothing wrong and are not being prosecuted in any way except by the misleading statements made by McCain/Palin and the republicans with an interest in seeing voter suppression of democrats.
While Ms. Lewis sounded a bit defensive, I could understand the difficulties when it was explained that all voter registrations, once collected must be turned in, can't be discarded and all they can do is separate the ones they believe are not legitamate, flag them and add a cover letter stating their concerns. She pointed out that of the 5 or 6 cases of Registration Fraud (not Voter Fraud) which had been prosecuted in 2004, had been reported by Acorn and they had cooperated fully in the investigation and testified against the accused.
Of the other three guests, one was obviously a Republican apologist who had wild accusations and was big into blame without verification. Diane called him on it several times asking for more than anticdotal stories without proof of specific incidents. He brought up the Mickey Mouse thing and the other two men both pointed out that any polling officer who could not recognize Mickey Mouse as voter fraud and give out a provisional ballot would well below the usual quality of polling officers.
Yes, large numbers of flagged registrations, or ones the County Registrar suspects might be fraudulent, slow down the system and are undesireable. But most of the infamous ones, like the one showed in Ohio with the same obvious writing and fake signatures on a page of three registrations are registration fraud which will not result in a matching voter fraud incident. We need to remember that difference when we are worrying about this issue.
The parties are helping older voters get to a DMV for ID which is free for the use in voting no hardship.
In an interview from October, 2006, that has only now seen the light of day, Stephen Spoonamore, one of the world's leading experts in cyber crime and a self-described "life-long Republican" destroys Diebold's already non-existent credibility. Spoonamore’s interview can be seen in eight short segments on youtube.com.
"Spoon," as his friends call him, cuts through the lies and dissembling of Diebold and explains in language that anyone can understand how our elections have been stolen and how they are going to be stolen again. Even though this interview is almost two years old, the issues are still, unfortunately, germane to our elections.
Spoon explains that Diebold "refuse[s] to show the architecture [of their voting machines] or allow it to be exposed to any kind of significant expert." He says, "The people who … they claim have certified their machines have no knowledge of architecture whatsoever."
He continues, "The fundamental structures that Diebold has used to set up their voting machines are inherently flawed. They are what I would consider IT junk."
He explains how a Diebold ATM is set up with checks, double checks, triple checks, and even quadruple checks to ensure that the machine works the way it is supposed to. And, adds Spoon, "Those people [the people who check a bank's ATM] are not from Diebold. One of them is from the installation group and one of them is from the bank. Otherwise, the [ATM] machine is not certified for use."
When the interviewer says, "So what you're saying is there's more security regarding the dispensing of a $20 bill and the fact that if you don't get that $20 bill, there is more of an audit system set up [as compared to any audit system for the counting of our votes]," Spoon replies, "Of course."
Regarding the 2000 elections, he says, "There is a very strong argument to be made that the 2000 election was electronically stolen, the hanging chads were just a distraction."
Spoon talks about the Department of Homeland Security's warning via the US-CERT Center (the United States' Cyber Emergency Response Team) "warning that the way Diebold systems are architected in the way the tabulators communicate to the central state tabulation center is subject to foreign national hacking [as well as hacking from within the U.S.]. They put out a warning about it. To the best of my knowledge, this is still the case." He explains how this can happen.
In talking about memory cards, which hold the electronic votes and are fed into tabulation machines and which have extensive security flaws, Spoon explains a serious issue regarding negative vote numbers.
Spoonamore: There has been repeated issues [sic] where people have said they've seen votes backing up in tabulators as cards are put in [meaning votes are being subtracted instead of added]. Okay, well that would indicate that something in that program is not adding cards forward, it may be adding cards backward.
There is no reason in the world a negative number should ever be able to exist on a voting card. And yet, in all the voting card code that I've looked at, Diebold has a negative field that allows a negative number to be entered in a vote total. Why? Why would you want -- to steal votes. That way you can start with a card that has negative a hundred votes for somebody, then it takes them a hundred votes before they're even back to zero.
Interviewer: And yet Diebold does not allow, for proprietary reasons, anyone to review the vote tabulation software?
Spoonamore: They let us work on their cash machines, but no, they won't let anybody see their software.
Interviewer: Any thoughts as to why?
Spoonamore: Because they're stealing elections.
Kathryn, I am delighted your daughter is voting and please congratulate her for taking her citizenry seriously.
Patti, Sandy F. commented about I.D.s, but it becomes even more critical when dealing with the more vulnerable populations - people who cannot afford a $30 I.D. or don't have the transportation available to get one - or those who are somewhat intimidated by that process. One out of ten African Americans do not have a driver's license, and many, many New Yorkers do not either. In urban areas it is much more common for people not to drive.
To most of us it doesn't seem like a hardship to get an I.D., but only 17% of Americans even have a passport. My mother never had a picture I.D. in her life. Although she was a college graduate she didn't work or drive and she didn't think she needed one. Requiring I.D. is in essence a 'poll tax', which was patently forbidden by our forefathers in this country.
It's not unreasonable to have the person casting the vote show a picture ID. A picture ID is almost a requirement to live in the US now, and in most states they are either free or low cost. Less than 2 packs of cigarettes or a 6 pack of beer.
You're assertions of what "everybody" knows are false, because not everybody knows, nor believes, those assertions. If in Florida the Democrats didn't try to supress the absentee votes from service men and women overseas Bush would have had an even larger victory than he did. Everybody also knows that.
Early voting should be banned, except for absentee ballots for those who, legitimately, cannot make it to the polling place on election day. It has the potential to sway the election one way or the other before election day and opens up even more opportunity for people to vote more than once. If people "can't be bothered" to wait a few minutes or so to cast a vote then they shouldn't be voting. If the wait is unduely long then the community should invest in more methods of voting. Not just allow people to vote when it's convenient for them.
Yeah, is some cases the Republicans have gone too far, but let the finger also point right back at the Democrats who have tried to register the same person several times, have registered dead people and other ways to try to defraud the election also.
Voter suppresion is more of an issue that the Republicans have gotten quite good at over the last eight years Slyphian. Ask all of those people in Florida, Ohio and a few other states who got steered away from the pollsin 2000 and 2004.
If someone is so easily mislead to stay away from the polls because of a mailing, well, they deserve what they get.
I will point out, however, that over 200,000 provisional ballots in Ohio were not counted in 2004. Half, three-quarters, even 95% I would have difficulty swallowing, but 100%? That is just down-right wrong. Particularly as Bush 'won' that state by 118,000 votes.
On your second comment about the 'easily misled', I have to comment further as well. If people who are misled deserve what they get... then I guess there are a lot of takers lately. Let's start with every person in this country who just lost money in the stock market, the bond market, the mortgage industry, or accepted as 'true' a medical misdiagnosis. Until recently, most of us trusted our presidents, our bankers, our stockbrokers and our friends.
How many provisional ballots were cast in Ohio in 2004? And why were 200,000 not counted? I would have an equally hard time believing that 100% of provisional ballots cast were valid.
Voting in America is NOT hard (other than trying to wade through all the rhetoric). A person goes to their local Secretary of State, County or township or city clerks office, or other government agency and registers. There are time limits so their identity can be confirmed and they are able to vote. Yes there should be some avenue for last minute circumstances.
This is a chicken and egg situation. Did voter fraud or voter suppression come first? Since for decades I've been hearing evidence of voter fraud (one of Chicagos {a heavily Democratic area) election mottos is "Vote early and vote often", I'm thinking that voter fraud came first and the suppression is an attempt to counter that. I've seen news reports of convicted felons, dead people, and toddlers all "voting" and people who have voted many times under other names.
I'm also thinking that a heavily liberal mass media is blowing this all out of proportion.
There is a huge difference between believing an anonymous letter in the mail when the news, TV, radio and newspapers are saying something different (such as voting day) and the examples you give.
Yes, there are fools putting their money into the stock market, but not everyone is a fool. There are fools who got mortgages they shouldn't have (and lenders who gave out those mortgages). And fools who go to quack doctors. Those people deserve to get taken. But sometimes, even with due diligence, things happen to non-fools. Maybe because of the fools, maybe because of fate/karma/dumb luck/whatever. That doesn't mean that everyone who has had something bad happen to them is a fool or easily mislead.