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The Voting News Weekly: September 5-11 2011

Friday, 16 September 2011, 3:41 pm
Column: Voting News

The Voting News Weekly: September 5-11 2011

Election stimulates interest of young Emiratis in politics | gulfnews

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The Senate Judiciary committee, chaired by Senator Durbin, held a hearing on new voting laws in states across the country. The chairman of the Maine Republican Party accused more students of voter fraud. A memo from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation informed employees not to mention that voter ID cards are free - unless they are specifically asked and a state employee was fired for alerting his friends of this policy using a government email address. Reports from British Colombia and India cast doubts on the security of online voting proposals. The Atlantic analysed Arizona's challenge to the Voting Rights Act. The Muncie Star Press raised concerns over Indiana's plan to remove the names of unopposed candidates from ballots and The Denver Post noted that democracy didn't come to a halt when citizen volunteers were allowed to inspect ballots from Saguache County.
Sep 09, 2011 09:14 am

National: Sen. Durbin raises alarm on state laws affecting voter turnout | The Hill’s Ballot Box

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is concerned voter turnout is at risk of being suppressed across the country — and thinks a spate of new state laws are to blame. Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, called a hearing Thursday to examine laws that limit early voting, require photo identification and regulate who can volunteer for voter registration.

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The senator pointed to Texas and Florida as states that have moved to restrict voter registration drives in the name of curbing fraud, but said such fraud is almost nonexistent and is used as an excuse to disenfranchise voters.

“Protecting the right of every citizen to vote and ensuring elections are fair and transparent are … American values,” said Durbin, who will send a letter to governors in Florida, Wisconsin and Tennessee about voter-related concerns in those states.

Not everyone shares Durbin’s concerns, particularly about strict voter identification laws. Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) testified that requiring photo ID shows voters that the government cares who they are and values the time they sacrifice to fulfill their civil duty.

“We want to instill confidence in the process, to drive up turnout,” Rokita said, noting that Indiana has seen voter turnout jump by 2 percent since implementing a photo ID law.

Up to 12 percent of eligible voters don’t have valid government ID, and the number is higher for seniors, African-Americans, students, people with disabilities and those with low incomes, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Source: Sen. Durbin raises alarm on state laws affecting voter turnout — The Hill’s Ballot Box.

Sep 09, 2011 09:09 am

Maine: GOP chair: College students sully elections — UM student appearing on list of 206: ‘I’m not welcome here’ | The Maine Campus

Despite being labeled a witch-hunt by some and provoking claims that students’ voting rights are under attack, more than 200 college students are being investigated by the Maine Department of the Secretary of State following allegations of voter fraud. The active investigation, which involves the Office of the Maine Attorney General, stems from allegations made in July by Charlie Webster, chairman of the Maine Republican Party, that 206 out-of-state students violated Maine election laws and committed “deliberate voter fraud” by registering to vote in two places.

Over the summer, Webster requested the names of out-of-state students at the University of Maine, the University of Maine at Farmington, the University of Maine at Machias and the University of Southern Maine’s campus in Gorham. He then compiled a list that was released publicly with the first initial, hometown and birth date of those he claims were registered to vote both in their hometowns and in the towns that house their schools. Webster contends that this is a clear violation of Maine election law.

The Maine Campus identified seven of the 206 students on the list who attend UMaine. Two were willing to discuss the issue at length. The others feared they would be further implicated in the controversy.

Webster said out-of-state students do not understand that, for most, registering to vote requires establishing residency, which he claims entails registering a vehicle, obtaining a state-issued identification card and paying taxes in the community where they will vote.

“The only exemption to the law is students. They’re not required to do any of this, and it’s unfortunate because this isn’t how our election system is supposed to work,” Webster said. “Nobody is saying these kids don’t have a right to vote. The problem is, most of them won’t stay here, but they disenfranchise the rights of working class people who live in these towns.”

“Every vote counts, and out-of-state college students should be required to vote absentee, which is the way it’s supposed to work,” he said.

In July, the list was sent to the Department of the Secretary of State, which oversees the Bureau of Elections, with a request from Webster that a preliminary review be conducted.

Reached by phone on Tuesday, Caitlin Chamberlain, a spokeswoman with the Department of the Secretary of State, said she expects more details to emerge in the coming months.

Webster said the issue in question is not so much voter fraud as it is enforcing stricter election laws to protect the system from “scamming” and overcrowded polls in larger cities across the state, which he believes deter many from voting.

Full Article: Maine GOP chair: College students sully elections – The Maine Campus.

Sep 08, 2011 09:12 am

Wisconsin: Top DOT official tells staff not to mention free voter ID cards to the public — unless they ask | madison.com

An internal memo from a top Department of Transportation official instructs workers at Division of Motor Vehicles service centers not to tell members of the public that they can obtain voter identification cards free of charge — unless they know to ask for it.

The memo, recently obtained by The Capital Times, was written by Steve Krieser and sent to all state Department of Transportation and Department of Motor Vehicles employees on July 1, the same day employees were to begin issuing photo IDs in accordance with a controversial new Voter Photo ID law adopted earlier in the year.

As laid out in the memo, failure to check a box when applying for photo ID with the Division of Motor Vehicles will result in the payment of $28. Interviews conducted about the memo suggest the state is more interested in continuing to charge the fee, which is required for a photo ID used for non-voting purposes, than it is in removing all barriers and providing easy access to a free, photo ID.

“While you should certainly help customers who come in asking for a free ID to check the appropriate box, you should refrain from offering the free version to customers who do not ask for it,” Krieser writes to employees.

Krieser, who was recently promoted to executive assistant to the DOT secretary, instructs staff that customers should “self certify” their eligibility for the free ID. They can do that, he writes, if they meet the documentation requirements; if they are at least 17 years old; if they have checked the correct certification box on the new forms; and, most significantly, if they are “asking for a product that is available for free issuance.”

The law, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker on May 25, requires Wisconsin residents to present identification before they can vote. Republicans said it was necessary to combat voter fraud.

Acceptable forms of identification under the law include Wisconsin driver’s licenses, certain student identification cards, passports, and voter identification cards for the thousands of residents who may not have any of those documents.

Democrats fought hard against the law, and the internal memo will likely provide further ammunition to charges that it is a modern-day version of the poll taxes once used to disenfranchise voters in the South, most of them African-American. Typically under those laws, citizens were required to pay to vote unless they had a father or grandfather who had voted prior to the abolition of slavery. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1966 that such laws were unconstitutional.

“It was clear to me from the beginning that people would be disenfranchised because of this law,” says state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D– Madison, after reading a copy of the memo. “Now we have the proof that people are not going to be getting these IDs unless the say the ‘magic words.’”

Similarly, Scot Ross of One Wisconsin Now describes the memo as “the smoking gun” proving the legislation was always about denying people the right to vote. The director of the progressive advocacy group has for months disputed the GOP contention that the bill was needed to thwart massive voting fraud, citing the fact that fewer than two dozen people were charged with casting improper votes in the 2008 state elections.

Full Article: Top DOT official tells staff not to mention free voter ID cards to the public — unless they ask.

Sep 07, 2011 09:52 am

Canada: Online banking not a model for Internet voting, says Elections B.C. | FierceGovernmentIT

Although a comparison is often made between them, online banking and Internet voting are very dissimilar, says a discussion paper from Elections B.C., the organization responsible for conducting elections in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

The paper, dated Aug. 31, notes that online banking was never introduced with the expectation that it would be fraud-proof. Rather, the business case for it rests on the assumption that fraud is offset by reduced operating costs and convenience benefits to clients. “The reality is that online banking fraud is increasing at a rapid pace and banks expend substantial resources on insurance,” the paper says.

Unlike fraud in the voting system, fraud in online banking does not directly affect the rest of society, the paper adds. In addition, should a bank’s website go down, whether because of a denial-of-service attack, network outage or other cause, clients can complete their transactions later–whereas voting must be concluded by a certain date, with no extensions.

Banking transactions are identifiable from end-to-end, but voting is distinct in its requirement for an initial authentication of the voter but complete anonymity in the voter’s choices. The requirement for secrecy, in turn, makes it hard to protect online voting against fraud or to detect fraud, because there can be no other record of voter choice besides the electronic transaction itself–were voters to receive a printed receipt of their vote choices, that would open the door to coercion and vote buying and selling.

Voting outside the controlled environment of a polling place also creates risk that voters could be coerced or engage in vote selling, the paper says. This is already an accepted risk of mail-in voting, but British Columbia law “limits postal voting to citizens in defined circumstances and only 0.2 percent of voters used this option in the 2009 General Election,” the paper says.

Whether or not Internet voting would increase public participation is uncertain, the paper says. A 2010 study of Internet voting in Estonian parliamentary elections–Estonia being the only country in the world to roll out Internet voting for all voters in national elections–found that for the most part, online votes substituted for votes that otherwise would have been cast at polling stations. A 2007 study by the U.K. Electoral Commission of Internet voting pilots in England and Wales came to a similar conclusion.

Full Article: Online banking not a model for Internet voting, says Elections B.C. — FierceGovernmentIT.

Sep 07, 2011 09:51 am

India: Online voting not feasible: Chief Election Commissioner | Times of India

Making voting hi-tech will make the entire democratic process of voting an unsafe venture, feels S Y Quraishi, Chief Election Commissioner of India. He said on Tuesday that India was not yet ready for bringing in technology into the voting system. The CEC spoke to TOI on the utility of the voter ID cards and put the onus on the citizen to step out and vote. Excerpts:

Is e-voting feasible for India? Technology is not an issue for implementing e-voting. But it is not feasible in India at this point of time. How do we know who is voting on whose behalf? It is not possible to provide security for every voter with a gunman behind him/her. Online voting is not good, though it looks simpler.

Filing Form 6 for inclusion of name in the voters’ list is still a cumbersome process. Why is the Hyderabad model of having drop boxes for these forms not replicated? The Hyderabad model has worked well. We will replicate it in Karnataka. Under this, there will be drop boxes in malls, airport, bus stand and other public places so that the citizens can fill the form and drop it into the box.

The voter ID card is of no use. Lakhs of eligible voters with this card still cannot vote. Why? A responsible voter will have to keep in touch with the booth-level officers five to six months before the elections. It is your duty to vote. It is not a thing of pride to comment on the politicians and say “I won’t vote for you and you are all useless.” To vote is the symbol of empowerment. It is easy to blame the system. Gated communities do not allow our officials inside their premises.

Why is voting still so complex? Where do we stand in the global electoral scenario? It is said that ours is the largest voters’ list. There are 75 crore voters in India. This figure is more than that of all 50 countries of Europe put together, 20 countries of South America and more than all the Commonwealth nations. In fact, when US secretary of secretary Hillary Clinton visited Tamil Nadu recently, she had said that the Election Commission of India was a benchmark for global electoral process. Eleven chief election commissioners from different nations have approached me to learn from us.

Full Article: Online voting not feasible in India: CEC — The Times of India.

Sep 07, 2011 09:11 am

Arizona: State’s Case Against the Voting Rights Act | The Atlantic

In the past few years, the right to vote–basic to any real democratic self-government–has become controversial again. Since the Republican sweep of state legislatures in 2010, seven states have enacted fashionable new “voter ID” laws. No one even pretends these laws won’t make it harder for older, poorer, less white (and, coincidentally, more Democratic) voters to cast a ballot. (The Supreme Court regrettably gave the go-ahead to these laws in the 2007 case of Crawford v. Marion County Board of Elections.)

It is almost surreal that in this moment that Arizona, which is becoming to Latinos what Mississippi once was to African Americans, is now seeking a judicial decree that voting rights are no longer a matter for Congressional concern.

Arizona’s new Republican Attorney General, Tom Horne, filed a suit last month asking a federal court to declare that § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unconstitutional. Arizona–in some ways the Mississippi of the 21st Century–is a weird plaintiff, and its claims are even weirder; but weirder claims have succeeded in the past. The Supreme Court signaled in 2009 that it was a bit weary of all this right-to-vote business. If “state’s-rights” advocates succeed in weakening the Act, and gutting Congress’s enforcement power under the Fifteenth Amendment, it will be a matter of serious concern.

Few pieces of legislation in American history have been so successful as the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It revolutionized Southern politics, opening the voting rolls to all, enabling the election of minority candidates and further creating an incentive for coalition politics that the old white South could never have produced.

The Act uses two major tools. Section Two forbids any state from imposing a “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure” that will in effect “deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Obviously, Section Two outlaws white primaries and discriminatory literacy tests of the old-South kind; but it covers much more than the right to cast a ballot–it forbids states from changing election procedures, registration schedules, districts, or anything else if the effect will to block or dilute the voting power of minorities. Section Two can be enforced by a lawsuit by the federal government or by private parties.

Section Two isn’t at issue in the Arizona case; what the state is challenging is Section Five, the “pre-clearance” section. Preclearance is designed to pick out those states and counties where discrimination has been most rampant and make lawsuits unnecessary. The original Act specified special procedures for states that, in 1964, had racially disparate procedures in effect, if those racist procedures had been successful in keeping voter registration or participation at less than 50 percent of the eligible voters in the 1964 elections. Those states were required to obtain “preclearance” from the U.S. Department of Justice–a procedure that was to take 60 days–of any changes in election laws. States that didn’t want to seek preclearance could go to court seeking a judgment that those changes don’t violate the act.

The VRA as passed was a temporary measure, set to expire in 1970. But as I said above, the Act was a thumping success. Congress has re-examined the question and re-authorized the Act repeatedly–in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006–tweaking the test for which jurisdictions require preclearance. The most recent reauthorization, in 2006, passed a Republican-majority House by 390–33 and a Republican-led Senate by 98–0. The considered, bipartisan judgment of our nation’s political leadership is that blocking racial bars to voting is good policy.

Under the amended VRA, Arizona is a “covered jurisdiction,” required to obtain pre-clearance, because until 1975 it provided election materials only in English, despite a substantial Latino population. The state has a long history of hostility to voting by Latinos and by Native Americans, and for much of the 20th Century it used discriminatory literacy tests–and informal harassment at the polls–to keep the their vote down. (One participant in such “voter challenges” was none other than the young William H. Rehnquist.)

Full Article: Arizona’s Case Against the Voting Rights Act — Garrett Epps — National — The Atlantic.

Sep 07, 2011 09:06 am

Editorials: Unopposed candidate names should appear on Indiana ballots | The Star Press

Hoosier voters could always count on receiving a complete ballot when they stepped inside the voting booth. Not any more.

In a misguided example of trying to streamline the voting process and save a few dollars, a new state law that went into effect on July 1 prohibits listing the names of unopposed candidates on the ballot. This bill will do nothing except create confusion, while any monetary savings would be negligible.

State Rep. Kathy Richardson, R-Noblesville, the bill’s sponsor, told The Star Press the intent was to eliminate the need for various ballot styles when there was no need for an election. Fewer ballot styles can save errors by making sure the right precinct and voters have the right ballot.

Election officials do not have the option of providing a full ballot. Richardson says the law gives no discretionary authority to county clerks. She said the bill’s meaning, which has been ambiguous in some discussions, is clear: Unopposed candidates will not appear on the ballot.

Full Article: OUR VIEW: Unopposed candidate names should appear on ballots | The Star Press | thestarpress.com….

Sep 05, 2011 11:09 am

Editorials: The sky didn’t fall after all | The Denver Post

There, that wasn’t so terrible, was it? Democracy didn’t sputter out when citizen volunteers were allowed to inspect — and yes, handle — ballots cast by residents of Saguache County in a recent recount of last fall’s contested results.

Unwashed barbarians did not desecrate the sanctuary of our election priesthood, as Colorado’s county clerks all but predicted earlier this year when they were denouncing the proposal. “We believe ballots are sacred,” the president of the Colorado County Clerks Association declared in commentary published in The Post, adding that “the integrity of our elections is worth fighting for.”

Yes, the integrity of our elections is worth fighting for. And that’s why the precedent in Saguache County is so important.

The breakthrough began when a judge ruled last month that “voted ballots are election records” under the Colorado Open Records Act — a fact that should have been obvious to county clerks but wasn’t. Judge Martin Gonzales added that the law “does not prohibit disclosure of ballots if the identity of the person who cast the ballot cannot be discerned.”

And yet howcouldit be discerned? Ballots contain no voter information, and the law actually bars voters from marking them in any way that could reveal who they are.

So it follows that voted ballots must be available to you and me just like other public records.

Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who won the legal fight to recount the ballots with citizen assistance, selected volunteers to tabulate the results under his staff’s direction. He later celebrated the process, understandably, as providing “unprecedented access to the ballots.”

True, some volunteers have complained that the probe wasn’t nearly comprehensive enough — that it didn’t count the mail ballots by precinct, for example. And while the critics may be right, they can console themselves with the knowledge that this was only one of many battles in the campaign to ensure that elections are transparent and verifiable, as well as run by officials accountable to the public.

Too many clerks seem to believe that they should be both the first and last line of defense of election integrity. No one must look over their shoulder or second-guess procedures — or at least no one outside the official club. Hence the clerks’ repeated attempts to keep voted ballots under wraps and their strained explanations for why voter identity could be breached if they do not.

At a hearing last April in another open elections case, the state court of appeals heard perhaps the silliest argument yet for concealing voted ballots. According to a lawyer for Aspen, which is fighting an attempt by former mayoral candidate Marilyn Marks to see digital copies of ballots from the 2009 election, an election judge might accidentally leave a chocolate smudge on a voter’s ballot and later recognize that ballot if it became a public document.

Full Article: Carroll: The sky didnt fall after all — The Denver Post

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