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The Voting News Weekly: October 3-9, 2011

Monday, 10 October 2011, 5:26 pm
Column: Voting News

The Voting News Weekly: October 3-9, 2011

96-year-old Chattanooga resident denied voting ID | timesfreepress.com

A District Court in Colorado ruled that Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson may send ballots to inactive voters. The Maine Secretary of State Charles Summers sent a letter to 200 students suggesting that they need to register their vehicles in the State in order to vote. Republican legislatures in Pennsylvania and Nebraska are considering opposite changes to how's electoral votes are allocated. The forensic exam of Vennango County Pennsylvania's ES&S iVotronic voting machines. Though she has voted in every election but one since Roosevelt was President, 96 year old Dorothy Cooper was denied a voter ID by the DMV in Tennessee. The Supreme Court has thrown out a ruling that could have halted the use of a certain electronic voting machine in Texas.

Colorado: Judge: Denver may send ballots to inactive voters | The Denver Post

Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson may send ballots to inactive voters, District Court Judge Brian Whitney ruled this afternoon. Secretary of State Scott Gessler asked Whitney last month to issue a preliminary injunction stopping Johnson’s office from sending mail ballots to voters classified as “inactive failed to vote.”

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Those voters — about 54,357 in Denver county, or about 12 percent of all registered voters — are voters who didn’t vote in the 2010 general election or any subsequent election. They also failed to respond to postcards from their clerk and recorder asking whether they want a ballot for the Nov. 1 election.

Gessler, a Republican, said he wanted to ensure the statewide uniformity of the election. Although the judge refused to issue a preliminary injunction, Gessler’s suit may continue. The Secretary of State’s attorney also said Gessler may issue a rule on the issue.

Gessler has said the case is not an attempt to keep voters in heavily Democratic Denver County from casting ballots, noting that those voters could vote at the clerk’s office or a vote center.

In his lawsuit Gessler pointed to state statute, which says clerks “shall mail to each active registered elector … a mail ballot packet.”

“The adjective ‘active’ is crucial,” Gessler’s lawsuit states. “If the General Assembly intended to allow election officials to send packets to all registered electors, it would not have used the word ‘active.’”

Gessler also said Johnson must obey a Sept. 16 order from his office not to mail to inactive voters because he is the state’s top election official, and there is a statewide measure on the ballot.

Full Article: Judge: Denver may send ballots to inactive voters — The Denver Post.

Maine: State tells students: Register your car in Maine or don’t vote here | Sun Journal

Secretary of State Charles Summers has sent a letter to about 200 of the Maine university students cleared in a recent voter fraud investigation, advising them to either get a Maine driver’s license and register their vehicles in Maine or relinquish their right to vote here.

The one-page letter cites Maine election law, which requires that voters be Maine residents, and state motor vehicle laws, which require that new residents who drive get a Maine driver’s licence and register their vehicles here. In the letter, Summers requests that students “take appropriate action to comply with our motor vehicle laws within the next 30 days.” If students decide they aren’t residents after all, he asks them to fill out the enclosed form to cancel their Maine voter registration.

Summers said he sent the letters because he’s responsible for both election and motor vehicle laws as secretary of state, and he felt he had to follow-up on the approximately 200 people who said they lived here but who were not listed in the state’s motor vehicle database. “I’m made aware that there are people who may not be in compliance like everybody else in the state of Maine — that’s why I sent it out,” he said. But others say the letter was an attempt to intimidate the students and manipulate them into giving up their right to vote here.

“My car registration ran out at the end of September. Now I renewed, but I’m a registered voter (and) I didn’t get a letter from Charlie Summers asking me if I was going to re-register or if I wanted to unenroll to vote,” said David Farmer, spokesman for Protect Maine Votes, which is fighting to reinstate same day voter registration in Maine. “He singled out these students and there’s only one reason to do that and that’s to scare them.”

“Imagine you’re an 18-year-old kid, a 19-year-old kid, and you get a letter from the secretary of state threatening you with a Class E crime. It’s easier to just say, ‘Yeah, you know, I don’t know if I want to get involved in this mess.’”

The letter does not explicitly say that failure to get a driver’s license or register a car can be considered a Class E crime, but it does cite the specific statutes, sections, and subsections in Maine law that do. Although Class E crimes are punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, the letter also does not say what the consequences might be for any of the 200 students who stay registered to vote and do not get a driver’s license or register a vehicle here.

Casey O’Malley’s parents found the letter threatening. Although O’Malley, a 21-year-old University of Maine at Farmington student originally from Rhode Island, doesn’t have a car here to register or drive, her parents insisted she fill out the form that came with the letter and cancel her voter registration in Maine.

“They instantly were worried about legal ramifications if I didn’t follow through on what the letter said, if I didn’t completely remove my voter registration from Farmington,” O’Malley said.

Full Article: State tells students: Register your car in Maine or don’t vote here | Sun Journal.

Editorials: Pennsylvania, Nebraska Republicans want opposite electoral vote changes | Detroit News Online

Republicans in Pennsylvania and Nebraska want to change the way their states award Electoral College votes, moves that could hinder President Barack Obama’s re-election chances. Lawmakers in the Democratic-leaning battleground of Pennsylvania are weighing whether to give the presidential nominees one electoral vote for each congressional district they win, rather than giving all its votes to the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote, like Obama did in 2008. In GOP-tilting Nebraska, lawmakers want to go to a winner-take-all system four years after Obama won the 2nd Congressional District and its single electoral college vote.

It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency out of 538 up for grabs. Every vote matters in a close election and every sign points to a competitive 2012 race as an incumbent Democratic president who most people still personally like tries to win a second term in tough economic times.

“Any electoral vote is important in these elections,” said Michael Mezey, a professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago. “When you start dealing with large states, it can make a difference. And also you’re not just dealing with Pennsylvania; other states may follow suit.”

The changes Republicans in Pennsylvania and Nebraska are trying to make likely would give the eventual GOP nominee an advantage by shifting the voting power from more liberal, predominantly Democratic cities in both states, to more conservative rural and suburban areas that tend to favor Republicans.

Not that GOP officials will acknowledge that their goal is to help a Republican win the White House. Rather, they talk about fairness.

“The people in many parts of the state, they haven’t been represented because of the huge turnout, and you know there’s going to be a huge Democratic turnout in Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, who supports the proposal, said recently.

Pennsylvania, a Rust Belt state with a Democratic tilt thanks to its big cities and entrenched labor unions, is one of 48 states that give all of its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote.

But Republicans who now control the capitol in that state — where registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 4 to 3 — are considering a proposal to scrap the state’s winner-take-all system of awarding its 20 electoral votes to one candidate. They would replace it with a system in which presidential candidates are awarded electoral votes based on how many of Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts they win. Two of the 20 electoral votes would go to the winner of the popular vote.

Full Article: The Detroit News Online.

Blogs: Pennsylvania County Begins Exam of Failed ES&S Touch-Screen Systems; Will Vote on Paper Instead in November | The Brad Blog

“What is a vote worth?” Venango County, PA Election Board Chairman Craig Adams asked last week. “If the vote is counted it is priceless. If it is not counted, I don’t care what it costs. Let’s get a right.”

“After months of legal wrangling,” Marybeth Kuznik of the non-partisan Election Integrity advocacy group VotePA told The BRAD BLOG last week, Venango County’s landmark independent forensic examination of the notoriously unreliable and 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, most often touch-screen) e-voting system finally got under way. Kuznik explained that the study comes in the wake of the county having experienced “numerous reports of vote-flipping, candidates missing from screens, write-ins missing, and high undervote rates in their May 17 Primary.”

As reflected in a video report from local NBC affiliate WICU-12, posted at the end of this article, the Venango County Election Board has decided to vote on paper ballots this November, as they’ve turned their iVotronics over to two Pittsburgh College computer science professors for the forensic audit. The experts are examining the systems for free. Adams’ “I don’t care what it costs” remark flows from the county’s decision to spend up to $20,000, primarily for a high-speed optical-scanner, to count the paper ballots in this fall’s election.

The Nebraska-based ES&S (Election Systems & Software), describes itself as the world’s largest voting machine company. It’s certainly the largest e-voting vendor in the USA.

Kuznik calls the independent audit a “a huge development because it is the first time a sitting election board in Pennsylvania has granted unfettered access to a paperless iVotronic voting system for the purpose of forensic testing after problems were reported in a live election.”

She adds that the study “will be ongoing for the next several weeks,” and lauds “the enthusiastic co-operation” of the Venango County election board for the “rare” instance of such a body “when it comes to investigating electronic voting troubles.”

“The Venango County Election Board members are true heroes,” Kuznik tells us, “as are the computer scientists who are donating their services to conduct the exam.”

Full Article: The BRAD BLOG : PA County Begins Exam of Failed ES&S Touch-Screen Systems; Will Vote on Paper Instead in Nov..

Tennessee: 96-year-old Chattanooga resident denied voting ID | timesfreepress.com

Dorothy Cooper is 96 but she can remember only one election when she’s been eligible to vote but hasn’t. The retired domestic worker was born in a small North Georgia town before women had the right to vote. She began casting ballots in her 20s after moving to Chattanooga for work. She missed voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 because a move to Nashville prevented her from registering in time.

So when she learned last month at a community meeting that under a new state law she’d need a photo ID to vote next year, she talked with a volunteer about how to get to a state Driver Service Center to get her free ID. But when she got there Monday with an envelope full of documents, a clerk denied her request.

That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander. “But I didn’t have my marriage certificate,” Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center. “I don’t know what difference it makes,” Cooper said.

Cooper visited the state driver service center with Charline Kilpatrick, who has been working with residents to get free photo IDs. After the clerk denied Cooper’s request, Kilpatrick called a state worker, explained what happened and asked if Cooper needed to return with a copy of the marriage certificate.

“The lady laughed,” Kilpatrick said. “She said she’s never heard of all that.”

Tennessee Department of Safety spokeswoman Dalya Qualls said in a Tuesday email that Cooper’s situation, though unique, could have been handled differently.

“It is department policy that in order to get a photo ID, a citizen must provide documentation that links their name to the documentation that links their name to the document they are using as primary proof of identity,” Qualls said. “In this case, since Ms. Cooper’s birth certificate (her primary proof of identity) and voter registration card were two different names, the examiner was unable to provide the free ID.”

Full Article: 96-year-old Chattanooga resident denied voting ID | timesfreepress.com….

Texas: Court throws out judgment against voting machines | Associated Press

The Supreme Court has thrown out a ruling that could have halted the use of a certain electronic voting machine in Texas. The high court without comment vacated a ruling against Dallas County, Texas. That county was sued by the Texas Democratic Party over the use of iVotronic machines.

Read the Court Orders (PDF)

They allow people to vote straight-party tickets, but if the voter subsequently touches any of the candidates in that party on the screen, their vote for that person is rescinded.

Officials say the Justice Department approved the machines, but federal courts in Texas say the straight-line voting change was not explicitly approved.

Before machines, Dallas County used paper ballots. If a voter selected a straight ticket, and that party’s candidate, their vote for that candidate would count.

Source: News from The Associated Press.

South Carolina: Audits spotlight 2010 election problems | TheState.com

Two audits of South Carolina’s November 2010 general election found scores of human errors that led to incorrect vote counts and other problems. None of these errors were large enough to have changed the outcome of a election or referendum, but they were significant enough to prompt the State Election Commission to make several procedural and policy changes. The problems also emboldened the chorus of critics questioning the accuracy, reliability and accountability of the state’s iVotronic voting machines.

And they could prompt the Legislature to lengthen the time period between Election Day and when counties meet to certify the results. That added time would give counties extra time to audit their data before formalizing their tallies. State Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, has chaired a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee looking at elections and has reviewed the audits’ results. “The problem is these problems were uncovered after the election was certified,” he said. “Once an election is certified, it can’t be undone.”

Barbara Zia, co-president of South Carolina’s League of Women Voters, said the scrutiny of the state’s election system was triggered in part by the June 2010 Senate Democratic primary in which an unknown candidate who didn’t campaign won handily with 60 percent of the vote. The league’s recent audit — which requested information from all 46 counties under the state’s Freedom of Information Act — was an outgrowth of that.

“We’re calling on the state and the state Legislature to ensure election integrity by enabling state and local election officials to conduct vote audit after each election to ensure the accuracy of the vote count,” she said.

Duncan Buell, a University of South Carolina computer science professor, helped spearhead the League’s audit. “By my count, there were eight counties for which there were significant problems in terms of being able to get an independent audit to determine if the numbers were correct.”

He noted Williamsburg, Orangeburg and Lancaster counties had no electronic date available, while Oconee and Horry counties were unable to produce usable audit files. In Richland County, more than 1,000 votes in two different precincts didn’t get counted. Colleton certified incorrect totals because of human error, and Charleston County was unable to account for 35,000 votes, or about 25 percent of the total, in the audit.

Taken together, Buell said, “we have a serious problem in having an election where we can go back and get results and be sure we have the right answers.
I think what we have a system that’s not acceptable because there are too many errors happening.”

Buell noted only 15 of 46 counties provided all five files requested. “That’
s not a very good record,” he said. “For some of those counties, there were a few that produced only tiny fractions of the right data. I think we deserve better than that.”

Full Article: Audits spotlight 2010 election problems — Elections — TheState.com….

Wisconsin: Government Accountability Board changes course on voter ID law

Officials with the Government Accountability Board have backed away from two controversial interpretations of election laws that some argued would have made it easier for college students to vote and political organizations to recall politicians.

The move, announced just prior to a meeting by the Legislature’s body that reviews agency rules, came in response to Republican concerns last week that the policies could lead to cases of voter fraud. The change by GAB officials led Democrats to immediately accuse the nonpartisan agency of succumbing to pressure by the majority party.

In implementing the state’s new voter ID law, which requires voters to present a photo ID when they cast a ballot, GAB ruled in September that universities could attach stickers to student IDs to bring them into compliance. The stickers would need to contain an issuance date, expiration date, a signature and some form of identifying logo. IDs issued by technical and trade schools would not be valid.

College students typically lean Democratic, so making it harder for them to vote is seen by Democrats as a way to shift the vote in favor of Republicans.

Full Article: Government Accountability Board changes course on voter ID law.

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