Beyond Diebold: 10 Ways to Steal This Election
From caging to robo-calls, a MoJo field guide to vote-blocking tactics.
Tactics to deny Americans the right to vote are as old as, well, the right to vote. Democrats have been at fault in the past—take the literacy tests Southern states used to deprive blacks of their suffrage from the Civil War up through 1965. Today's shenanigans—which still target minorities and vulnerable first-time voters—are more often designed to stifle Democratic turnout, perhaps never more than in 2008. "This is obviously an important election, and the turnout may break records," says Rice University sociologist Chandler Davidson, who has studied vote suppression, "so there is every reason to expect these tactics will be employed."
Card the Centenarian
Arizona's Proposition 200, passed in 2004, makes would-be voters prove their citizenship with a passport, birth certificate, or other federal ID, but poor and elderly citizens often lack such proof. One 97-year-old woman who cast her first vote for fdr in 1932 had to wage a nine-month campaign to regain her voting rights after relocating from Kentucky. Lawyer Linda Brown of the Arizona Advocacy Network, part of a coalition suing to disable Prop. 200, says activists are dubbing Arizona "the state of Darwinist democracy. If you've got the stamina and an insatiable desire, you just may be able to register and vote before you die."
Similar battles are playing out in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Utah, and Indiana, which saw its ID law upheld by the US Supreme Court in April, despite evidence that up to 43,000 citizens lacked the necessary ID—including a dozen retired nuns turned away from the polls during primary season.
sleaze meter: 8 out of 10 Fighting fraud is just a pretext for "a purely partisan effort, " says Neil Bradley of the aclu's Voting Rights Project.
Leave a comment about voting conditions in Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, and Utah.
Playing With Matches
Four states—Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, and South Dakota—only let residents register if their Social Security or driver's license numbers can be matched with entries in a state database. If you register as "Bill" but the database says "William," or if a data-entry clerk sticks a typo in your name or birth date, tough luck.
sleaze meter: 3 Incompetence may be bipartisan, but critics argue that there will be more typos in the names of Hispanics, immigrants, and black women.
Leave a comment about voting conditions in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, and South Dakota.
Prior Restraint
Felon disenfranchisement is the mother of all anti-suffrage tactics. When George W. Bush took Floridaby a few hundred votes in 2000, more than 600,000 state residents had been barred from voting because of prior offenses. Florida has since made it easier for some ex-felons to regain their rights, and several other states have tinkered with their laws. Even so, more than 5 million Americans will be unable to vote this fall because of felony records.
sleaze meter: 9 Because of disproportionate drug law enforcement, as many as 1 in 8 black men nationwide is excluded from the political process.
Leave a comment about voting conditions in Florida.
Papeles, Por Favor
Starting in 2004, Sheriff Terry Johnson of North Carolina's Alamance County used county election rolls to investigate the citizenship of 125 voters with Hispanic-sounding names.
sleaze meter: 9 Even the current Justice Department told him to back off.
Leave a comment about voting conditions in North Carolina.
Mom, I Wanna Come Home
In Statesboro, Georgia, citizens challenged the voting status of 900 Georgia Southern University students, claiming they weren't legal residents of the college town.
sleaze meter: 7 Using similar logic, local officials grilled 18 students from Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina, a historically black college, after they'd voted in a special election in the fall of 2007.
Leave a comment about voting conditions in Georgia and North Carolina.
Armed and Dangerous
Kentucky Republicans have been challenging the voting status of black residents in a variety of ways for decades. In 2004, following a contentious gubernatorial election, a voter-advocacy group reported that party members had "planned and organized what they hoped would be a well-publicized effort to place white Republicans primarily at black Democratic polling places, ostensibly to protect against vote fraud."
sleaze meter: 11 "The appearance of people ostentatiously videotaping voters in line, or wearing official-looking uniforms, sometimes including sidearms, is another widely used tactic," notes sociologist Chandler Davidson.
Leave a comment about voting conditions in Kentucky.
Counting Crows
In 2007, a group called the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (cera) unsuccessfully sued the state of Montana, arguing that polling places should be removed from the Crow Indian Reservation to prevent fraud. Native Americans in other states have also reported intimidation; allegations include gop poll workers copying down license plate numbers and following voters home.
sleaze meter: 9 From a cera dispatch: "When a separate government controls one minority, and its individual minority (Native American) voters can be coerced into bloc voting, that minority becomes a renegade 'swing' vote."
Leave a comment about voting conditions in Montana.
When a Robo Calls
Malicious robo-calls during the 2006 congressional elections sent would-be voters to the wrong locations or harassed them at all hours. In California's 50th District, residents got late-night calls that seemed to be from Democrat Francine Busby; when people hung up, the computer redialed up to 14 times. (Busby lost.) Expect more of the same in November: "The price point has decreased so that anyone can set up these calls from their basement," says robo-call watchdog Shaun Dakin.
sleaze meter: 10 Does the expression "ratfucking" ring a bell?
Leave a comment about voting conditions in California.
Political Hacks
High-tech voting continues to wreak havoc across the country. Monitors expect huge lines this November in Ohio's poorer precincts, some of which have bounced from one flawed technology to another; voters in Cuyahoga County will be on their fourth system since 2004, notes Dan Tokaji, an associate law professor at the Ohio State University. In 2006, touch-screen machines in Sarasota, Florida, came up 18,000 votes short during a congressional race that was decided by fewer than 400 votes. In 2007, University of California researchers successfully hacked into three state-sanctioned e-voting systems, compelling election officials to abandon the pricey machines. And during this year's gop primary, e-voting machines failed in 80 percent of the precincts in South Carolina's Horry County.
sleaze meter: 4 Voting experts largely agree that poor neighborhoods fare worse in the face of such meltdowns.
Leave a comment about voting conditions in California, Florida, Ohio, and South Carolina.
Weapons of Mass Mailing
The Jim Crow-era trick known as "caging" has been revived by 21st-century gop operatives. Mass mailings go out to low-income areas, and if a letter is returned as undeliverable, the party uses it to challenge that voter's eligibility. Besides intimidating voters, the challenges create mayhem at polling stations. Caging has been reported in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, among others.
sleaze meter: 9 Measures to outlaw the practice have never made it out of committee in Congress.
Leave a comment about voting conditions in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
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When I went to vote, (early), they found my birth date had been mistyped in 1994, and had failed to be checked every year since then. Thank god they were able to correct it, or I would have been disenfranchised.
When will the United Nation's start sending election observers over to make sure this "exercise in democracy" is legit?
There was a time that I thought of the United States as a democracy. I thought in a democracy, every vote counts. The election of 2000 and again in 2004 has taught me none of that is true. The election of 2008 will obviously be a repeat performance. The suggestion to have International oversight of US elections is a good one. Had it been done in the past, we never would have had to endure 8 years of Bush/Cheney.
Can someone explin to me what is wrong with keeping FELONS from voteing..?
I thought when you commited a Felony, you gave up yoru rights to vote.? I knwo that a few states have different rules, but for the most part, if you commit the crime, you have to accept that you have NO part in picking the President..:-)
Bill
Bill, I don't know if I can explain this to you. For me, it's a morality thing. I disagree with you that people who are convicted of a crime shouldn't be allowed to vote. Voting is the most basic principle of a democracy, and we need to protect and encourage voting, not suppress it. Also, minorities are incarcerated at disproportionate levels, so there's also a racial component to this.
You should check out the brennan center for justice for more information - www.brennancenter.org
Bill, voting is one of the responsibilities as well as rights of citizenship. Do you want felons to become part of society again, or do you want to keep punishing them forever? Though you share the misapprehension of almost all Americans, in fact the laws have always varied widely state to state.
We must make election reform a priority in this next session of Congress. The efforts to abolish paperless voting were stopped, but we have to try again. We also need election day registration nationally, because if voters are willing to take the time to re-register, it thwarts the attempts at caging legitimate voters and using exact match laws to wrongly purge the rolls, not to mention making provisional ballots unnecessary.
If you accept the argument that felons shouldn't vote, define "felon." In the Jim Crow South, blacks and poor whites were routinely imprisoned -- and barred from voting -- for "felonies" like not having a job, writing a bad check, and "moral turpitude." Even today, simple marijuana possession is a felony in some states. One could argue for denying the vote to, say, murderers and rapists. But who would seriously advocate disenfranchisement as a punishment for smoking a J?
Just an observation/question from away: why on earth do Americans have to identify their party affiliation when they vote? And why isn't registration simply part of any interaction a citizen has with her/his government (for example applying for or renewing a driver's license)? Or just going down to a government office or website and registering? There could be any number of ways to do this. I know Americans don't appreciate suggestions from abroad, but really, your system seems to be broken and extremely disrespectful of people's rights -- especially such hard-won rights. I wish you good luck in this election -- to you and to all of us around the world.
Steven, your first mistake is that the United States is NOT a democracy. did you learn otherwise? It is a representative republic. Remember the Pledge.."and to the Republic for which it stands..."
For the rest of you...the UN, PLEASE! As if they are so far above politics. Get real. All this whining and no mention of ACORN? Amazing!
Yeah Jimmy, where would we have gotten the idea this was a democracy? Oh right, the founding fathers called it that.
Why are voting machines necessary? Marker pens and voting forms are cheaper, easier to use and leave a clear audit trail. Americans might also like to try having a non-partisan electoral commission to supervise voting.
Stealing the election is McCain's only chance...
Things are getting so bad for John McCain that today he AGREED with Murtha that W. Pennsylvania is full of Racist Rednecks. The video is hilarious:
http:/swingvoters.wordpress.com
I have "muckraker" status and have been a subscriber for years going back to my pre-computer days. I go back so far I remember when David Horowitz wrote "Empire and Revolution" and was an editor of Ramparts magazine. Anyone remember?
Sybil
I will personally stand at the door of my voting station to watch for anything illegal. I will also call the county sheriff and turn in any persons who intimidate or threaten voters. Thank God in Texas we don't have to declare a party affiliation, we can vote against anyone we please.
Jimmy - GOP's (ACORN) fraud was mentioned:
"Fighting fraud is just a pretext for 'a purely partisan effort,' says Neil Bradley of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project."
This country is sad and pathetic. It's no wonder we're screwed as a species.
Complaints about our corrupted election process (Bush never actually won a pres. election: See--The US Commission on Civil Rights Report on the Irregularities of the 2000 Florida Presidential Election, and The Rolling Stone article: Was the 2004 Election Stolen?) can be addressed to the United Nations: 1503@ohchr.org
Shouldn't welfare recipients be banned from voting? After all, they only vote for the biggest handout and couldn't care less about the country.
This when mail in ballots come in handy. People need to use them if available; and if not - need to see how to change the system. There are positives and negatives to mail in ballots; but no one has to see what choices you make and they all have the same color.
As a person of color, I can definitely relate.
Dale, Do you mean to say that party affiliation in some states must be declared in a NATIONAL ELECTION...I DON'T THINK SO/HOPE NOT! In Massachusetts, one does that in a PRIMARY contest when one is selecting the party's candidate, but NEVER in a national election!
Half of all incarcerated people in the US were found guilty of drug charges. Since the prohibition of drugs, has throwing people in jail reduced drug usage ? Absolutly not. It would be more effective and just to treat the drug problem as a public health issue instead of a criminal issue. I think the victims of this travesty should have their voices heard, even from jail. Let them vote against the injustice that enriches the "criminal justice" industry and leaves millions of ruined lives in its path.
A FELON : TO WHOM HAS TAKEN A LIFE OR ANY OTHER FELONY ACT - THAT PERSON DOES NOT HAVE THAT RIGHT TO VOTE.
AND SHOULD REMAIN THAT WAY.
Good article:
readers can keep up to date on latest vote suppression here:
http://brennan.3cdn.net/a9dfd09c356bb55d6b_fnm6bnf57.pdf
Or go the Brennan Center's page:
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/voter_suppression_incident...
Other resources: http://www.bradblog.com
http://www.866ourvote.org/
http://www.projectvote.org
Treating as a public health issue? For all people to whom works and pays taxes, social security and other pay-roll deductions.... Adding those to whom you've spoke about would cause more problems for U.S. workers with this additional burden.
One needs to think about just "How much in tax dollars goes to each prisoner that has been jailed" for food, clothing and other essentials?
Because you not have commited the crime and been unjustly accused. You still live in America and should have a say in how things are done. Once you have done your time, you have done your time. It is unconstitutional to make someone continue to pay for a past offense once they have done their time. Also it is unchristian. Forgiveness is divine, unfortunately there are a bunch of people who say they are christians but don't bother to behave like one.
THE RIGHTS OF FELONS TO VOTE SHOULD STAND AS IT SHOULD BE .... NO RIGHTS TO PARTICIPATE IN ANY VOTING ON ANY LEVEL. THIS IS LAW AND SHOULD REMAIN AS LAW.
VOTING IS A PRIVILEGE - AND A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT FOR THOSE TO WHOM ARE CITIZENS OF THE U.S.
THOSE TO WHOM COMMIT A FELON [AND MOST ARE NOT UN-JUSTLY RULED ON] LOOSES THERE RIGHT TO VOTE ON ANY LEVEL. UNTIL THEY'VE SOUGHT REINSTATEMENT OF THERE RIGHTS TO PARTICIPATE IN VOTING THEY WILL NOT AND SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO VOTE.
OldGaDawg - If you're convicted of a felony, you are still a citizen, which means that you still have a constitutional right to vote. Your understanding of this law is incorrect.
There's another way to block an election of a President: Prove that the candidate was not born in the USA. Google Philip Berg who has a Federal Court case in PA demanding Obana present a legal birth certificate. There is no proof Obama was born in Hawaii.
Sagewalker - Read this http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth...
The right to vote is a basic right. Efforts to prevent qualified citizens from voting are unconscionable. These efforts seem to all be run by Republican party operatives.
We need uniform national standards to reduce the potential for mischief-making which occurs when local office holders feel they are not accountable to anyone.
Dear Dale,
While I agree that our system is completely nonsensical and f*d up, I am recently resenting all of the foreign comment on internet sites that are full of condescension or pity for the state of this country. Did you create your country's voting system? Well, neither did I. We are entrenched - and while we can work to change it, I resent being identified with a system I don't believe in, and being pitied for it.
McCain wasn't born in the United States.
Voter registration for an American covers all elections, so if you wish to vote in your party's primaries, you have to register as an adherent of that party. If you had registered as an independent, you couldn't have voted for Obama or Clinton in the primaries.
As for why registration isn't easier...beats me. In part it's the notion that each state should be able to set its own requirements and timetables for registration.
All the hallmarks of a third world are now in place in the USA. Stolen elections, voter suppresion, wholesale arrests for exercising "constitutional rights, vicious personal attacks in campaigns instead of discussion of issues and now finnally an economy in the toilet! The Republican's gift to America after 8 years=Banana republic. Give them another 4 years and we'll all be swimming to Haiti!!
When you can't win honestly, cheat! Who is undermining the fabric of democracy? In my state of Maryland, I have never even been asked to show identification. Just my name, and if my name is there, I get to vote.
Jimmy, haven't you heard that it was ACORN that turned in the voter registration forms that they found to be suspect? ACORN has registered millions of voters in this country and part of their responsibility is to turn over questionable registration forms. And by the way, you shouldn't be so concerned with so called 'voter fraud.' You should be very concerned about voter suppression and the purging of voters who have registered. Perhaps you should make sure you are still registered to vote. I did, and I had been purged.
Although, I personally am so far to the left, that even the even the democrats appear to me to be "right-wing," I certainly hope that they win this election. If they don't, I fear that this country, indeed the entire planet is in serious trouble. The war that the conservatives have rekindled against the Muslim nations is already likely to last for years, if not centuries. Hopefully, Obama can do something to ease the tension.
This war is really a continuation of the holy wars that began so many thousands of years ago. And unfortunately, it appears that religion has shown itself to be the biggest catalyst of hatred that the human race will ever see.
I invite you to my website: www.FreetheGods.com. There you will find a political discussion forum where political ranting is highly encouraged, especially opposing viewpoints!
Eric Ferguson,
When I go to the supermarket to spend $1.00,I get a printed receipt with the time,register number,the employee's name,the item's kind,the price,how did I pay for it,cash(in details) or credit(in detail)all this for one single $.
But after the 2000 election,we still don't have a voting machine with a paper trail to prove to me as a voter that my vote DID NOT go as intended !
The people alone can solve this problem by demanding a paper trail voting machine,otherwise,NO VOTING...PERIOD.
If the founding father know what's going on today,they'll special note
saying;....< NO SARAH PALIN PLEASE >...
Conrad says;
Stealing the election is McCain's only chance......the other chance is for Dick Cheney to resign for medical reason
and the president will replace him with
McCain based on the idea that the American people don't like to change horses during national or international critical crisis...Let's not forget,CARL ROVE is around with his dirty tricks.
If the founding fathers knew the future
they would leave a NOTE saying;
,,,,,,,,,< NO Sarah Palin please >.....
It's not simply a case of "if you can't win fair, cheat."
Bush never actually won a presidential election: See--The US Commission on Civil Rights Report on the Irregularities of the 2000 Florida Presidential Election, and The Rolling Stone article: Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
McCainObamaCo = interested in fair elections? Not too likely--since these ol' boys be in charge now...
I think McCain is going to be wrongly elected and the Race Riots Will Begin...
Who knows...
That's like with the Protests Against The World Bank--didn't they succeed in one instance, this certain Summit Meeting was called-off...
...Such lets us see that for some certain reason the "Man" wants Joe and Jane Q. Public to be seeing riots.
It's certainly easy to speculate that this is merely the Man heavily into fear mongering...
It really does work too, doesn't it...
Consider how the Mother Jones article: The Truth About Drug Companies spells out how their profits are more than the rest of the entire Fortune Five Hundred combined--and how "every bag" of Crank is profited upon by the Cold Medicine Makers...
All felons are no the same, just as all felonies are not the same. Some felons are also Vets, who have defended The Constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic". Have you?
I agree...why aren't there established websites for each state where each voter can log onto and make sure their vote was counted after they have checked in and voted? And why is it that each state is allowed to independently decide how people can vote, when they can vote, registration deadlines, etc.? The inconsistencies in voting procedures in each state set the system up for failure and fraud. It seems like there should be a set of procedures to ensure consistency, accuracy, and even, integrity. But that would make too much sense!!!
And I will be visiting different voting locations throughout the day in my community on November 4th looking for problems, long lines, and inconsistencies. I will be equipped with my cell phone, a pen and notebook, all local news organizations phone numbers, and the county voter registration hotline number to report any problems. I'll be damned if I am going to sit back and let anyone think they are going to stand in the way of allowing registered voters to vote in my community. I have organized a group of twenty of us who will be going to different locations at different times throughout the day.
With the thousands who lose their right to vote each US election (and in 2000 Florida denied it to 10's of thousands of Democrats) I wonder where is the surge of anger to change one of the oldest legal ways to defraud voters? That is the antiquated Electoral College. As we've seen in 2000 a candidate can win the popular vote and still lose to this out-moded system. The Electoral College gives more weight to votes from states with small populations like Wyoming, where more populous states like California or Washington lose. Just divide the number of electoral votes allowed each state into the total population and see how voters in small states have a lot more say in who is elected, and these states are largely conservative non-progressive ones. It is not fair and flies in the face of the much vaunted "one person, one vote" the country supposedly goes by.
And when are the citizens of Washington DC going to get full citizenship and full representation? That is another backward anti-democratic idea. You can understand why Repubs don't want to get rid of the Electoral College, which favors GOP small states, and give full citizenship and voting rights to largely black and Democratic DC, but why doesn't a majority Democratic Congress vote to change these discriminatory rules? (Hilary wanted to change this.) Write your Congressional Reps and Sens and tell them to change this!
If felons can not vote, then why are they taxed? If they own property, a house, car etc. and they pay taxes then they should be allowed to vote.
No taxation without out representation.
I fully appreciate that in my town we have paper ballots. If we had voting machines I would not vote and protest against the vote. I've written my federal, state and local officials stating my opposition to voting machines.
David Scott. Me too. I describe my stance by showing my right hand as the right, my left as the left (for perspective) and I'm standing way over there on the left horizon looking back flipping off the right. I'm a lefty liberal and damn proud. We're in good company too.
Felons should be able to excersize their right to vote after they served their sentence. They were sentenced in court and paid their price to society. And that should be it. But we all know that's not reality. Yeah, so many supposed Christians don't believe in forgiveness and redemption. Redemption is one of the most beautiful things in existance.
I for one greatly fear waking up Wednesday morning, the 5th, to find McCain/Palin elected to the highest offices. 4 more years of the Bush administration or worse. And a kick in genitals to the equal rights movement. Not that Obama should be elected because he's black (sort of), but it will be a great day for America and the world when a person of color becomes the US president. I was hoping for a non-white pope but doesn't look like that's going to happen.
Sorry, one other thing. Paper receipts from voting machines is pretty much useless. It sounds good but if you can manipulate the machine to record a McCain/Palin vote when you press someone else 'button' you can make it print out whomever you voted on the receipt and still register the vote for the currup.. McCain/Palin.
Without each person being able to confirm their vote after the tally for count verfication, no voting system is failsafe. Regardless of the system used to vote none of us have any idea if our vote has been nullified or cast aside after we voted. My town uses reader cards. You pen/pencil in your choices. A machine is supposed to read it. I have no verification if it read right or at all.
I agree with the common voice here. Election reform should be a priority. Each election should be monitored by UN officials and each vote should be verified by officals. Each voter should be able to verify their vote and call 'shenanigans' if it wasn't counted or counted right.
