147 Comments on “Talking About “Voter Fraud””

1. Speaking as a poll worker who wants everyone who is eligible to exercise their franchise, thank you for these comments.

2. True enough, but what about the people who are registered as absentee voters who won’t even be told that their vote won’t be counted? Or the people who are told “you’re not allowed to vote anymore” in various states either for no real reason at all or because they just happen to have a name that is similar to a criminal’s or something? Mind you, this sort of disenfranchisement likes to happen maybe a couple months before the actual election, and sometimes people don’t even know. Or perhaps the aggressive voter challenges?

   I’m not saying that there’s this grand conspiracy or anything, but both parties have and do do these sorts of things and I think there needs to be some accountability for it.

   But maybe that has absolutely nothing to do with this post at all and I’m just misunderstanding the “decertify” part…

3. Minnesota and other states solved this eons ago with same day voter registration. I guess North Dakota abolished voter registration altogether. You still need to show up with the right documents to register. Very few (none?) reports of fraud are heard of out here. Registration these days is a ploy to ensure well maintained lists of regular voters are available to both parties with the goal of spamming the #*@(!) out of you before the election.

   Regardless, our Secretary of State has been registering new voters at an amazing pace. 84% of voters are registered, 12,000 more voters than last election. 80% turnout is the goal. SOS staff has been at theme parks, sporting events, etc, to ensure that everyone who wants to vote is registered before showing up to the polls.

   http://www.sos.state.mn.us/home/index.asp?page=10&recordid=283&returnurl=index.asp%3Fpage%3D10

   The complaints I’ve seen are third parties attempting decertification based on vague profiling of every voter attempting to obtain a ballot. This has been seen in some states [I don’t expect it in Minnesota] and while the provisional ballot system is there, its not been proven effective in all cases. The problem of voter identification and certification is a tough problem, as we can’t require identification unless identification is freely available. (in most states it is not)

   The irony about claiming the laws are the laws are citizens may be trying to vote to move to policies that eliminate registration bureaucracy, but get kept from the poll because of it. If those enfranchised are going to point to the bureaucracy as why its not working, then isn’t it the responsibility of those people to vote for fixing the bureaucracy rather than point at it?

   And for petes sake, if your area is still planning on using a touchscreen voting system (without paper log) go get a paper ballot somehow (ie: absentee if possible, but it may be too late).

4. Heh, funny, #2 has the same initials I do, nearly went ‘what the heck, I didn’t write that’.

5. I see the process of voter registration and vote casting as being roughly comparable to umpiring. (For context, I umped Little League for a couple of summers in high school.) There are certain rules that the players and teams have to follow to get on the field – dress codes, number of players in the lineup, number of players on the team, etc. If you fail to uphold them, you may be required to forfeit the game.

   Further, once the game starts, the umpire’s job is to apply the rules of the game consistently and impartially, and to exercise his judgment as accurately as possible. If a player violates the rules, he may be asked (or required) to leave the field. In some cases, the umpire has to make a judgment call, and inevitably such calls will make one team or the other unhappy. This, the potential for well-intentioned, but mistaken, judgment is part of the game. Part of the ~unwritten/unspoken contract that the teams make with the umpire is that they trust him to judge fairly, and they choose to accept that judgment.

   Similarly, I think, with vote counting. Even setting aside genuinel election fraud, it’s pretty much inevitable that mistakes will be made. Even for those voters who follow all the rules to ‘get on the playing field’, it’s possible for the arbiters of the process to get hung up with or make mistakes in judging how to proceed in considering their votes (hanging chads, etc.). To be sure, it’s impossible to eliminate all bias from the individuals involved, but a well-designed counting system should be able to average out any systematic biases in the counting process. Presuming this is achievable, intentional discrepancies would be dramatically reduced relative to incidental ones – the ones we have to accept (or else go crazy trying to eradicate) as part of the messy process of counting tens of millions of votes.

6. Voter registration is, often, arbitrary and arduous. It is frustrating that, with politics in America as they are, ensuring that you are eligible to vote is a time-consuming process, one that might have to be undertaken repeatedly leading up to an election. Frustration should be directed at the entity responsible: state and local government. It is easy to blame parties (and they are, indirectly, responsible), or the federal government. People want, by nature, a single source for blame. Reality demonstrates, however, that in nearly all circumstances blame of varying nature is owed to varying entities. One can no more rationally blame, totally, the federal government, or a political party, for the challenges of voting than one can blame, totally, (or give credit, totally, to) a President for the condition of the economy. If you don’t like how elections work, stop crying out against the federal government. Fix your state. Better yet, fix the solid grasp the two predominant parties have on your state’s election mechanisms. Believe you me, the two predominant parties [i]like[/i] how things work in the fifty states. That’s why they made it how it is.

7. Here’s a pretty good piece by Josh Marshal on the ACORN stories that’re getting a lot of play as some Republicans prepare for their turn as sore losers.

   The gist of it is that the pretty much all of the fraud that’s been reported is small-scale, and is registration fraud, not vote fraud.

   So if someone getting paid by the number of people the register (a stupid policy of ACORN’s!) decides to pad their numbers by registering Mickey Mouse, or by (re-)registering John Scalzi half a dozen times, it doesn’t mean that Mickey gets to cast a vote on the 4th, or that Scalzi can show up and vote 6 or 7 times.

   I truly hope that whoever the victor is, he will win by a large enough margin that accusations of fraud will be irrelevant. I don’t expect that to stop them, but it would ameliorate the serious damage they could do to our country.

8. In 2004 the gubernatorial race in Washington was decided by a couple hundred votes out of 3.5M. Of course, during the recounts issues were found – the husband whose wife had died right before the election and who sent in her ballot because she felt strongly about the race, etc. Individually, none of these issues would affect most races, but in a race that was eventually won by 126 votes, they did. And of course the losing side was up in arms about the irregularities. What they fail to account for is that no human activity is perfect. 99.9% accuracy is amazingly good… but not enough in some cases. This is called life.

   Most states have ways to check online if you’re registered. If you’re not 100% sure, go check. If you’re not registered, register if you still can. If you are, vote. It takes incredibly little time and you’re simply a hypocrite if you’ll take the time to post online and complain, but won’t take the time to actually vote.

9. Matthew @6

   Voter registration is, often, arbitrary and arduous. It is frustrating that, with politics in America as they are, ensuring that you are eligible to vote is a time-consuming process, one that might have to be undertaken repeatedly leading up to an election.

   On the other hand, Mickey Mouse does not get a vote. Nor do dead people.

10. I find it hard to believe that registering to vote is arbitrary, arduous or time consuming. Where is this true and what are the requirements that make it so hard?

11. But, frank, the Mickey Mouse thing is NOT voter fraud. It’s a frivolous registration, but it can’t possibly be voter fraud unless the mouse tries to actually vote.

12. The internet is another major benefit to voting by mail. Out at school in Indiana, I didn’t get all the local news about who was running for school board and why, and what “question x” was about, so I’d sit down with my ballot and Google any question I didn’t understand. (In my area, they don’t include nifty little descriptions like “deprives same-sex couples of the right to marry.” It would just say “Proposition 8: vote yes or no”).

    I try to do the same thing with those sample ballots the newspaper sends out ahead of time, but they always seem to be mission things–especially little things that vary by precinct–so I end up in a voting booth staring at a question I know nothing about. Annoying.

13. Actually, speaking as an absentee (very, foreign country) voter, it is extremely easy to register, to ensure that you are still registered, to get the name and number of your local voting official to ask about your registration/ballot and basically to exercise the franchise. At least for anyone who can use a computer, which includes my 80 year old parents. I have been voting since before computers and I have always known where to go to register, so it’s hard to feel that others can’t get this info and it’s easier now than it has ever been before.
    https://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/
    The information is good even for voters who aren’t overseas.

14. I saw a report on CNN earlier today about 5,000 voter registrations turned in – all of the first 2100 were frauds.

    I suspect that there will be attempts to vote early and vote often in this election.

    JJS wrote a great piece. It should be go viral for its importance, but it doesn’t have a cat with bacon on it. Too bad.

15. I still can’t understand why you don’t switch to a more sane system, like those used in most democratic countries, where there’s no need to “register to vote.”

    Here in Italy, for example, when you turn 18 the town administration sends you a voter card with the indication of the poll place you must use; the poll officials assigned to each place have a list of “their” voters; on elections day you can vote if both the voter card and the list agree that yes, you’re in the right place. Stop.

    When you move (definitively) to a different town you register with your new town administration (that’s needed also for local taxes and, with a bit of luck, local benefits, for example free parking near your house, free access to the civic museums or cheaper mass transits tickets) you receive a new voter card and your name is removed from the old list and added to the new one.

16. Or if some one claiming to be Mickey shows up and tries to vote…

    Great posts and comments on this subject.

    I recently moved back to Seattle and registered to vote when I transferred my drivers license. So did my wife and daughters, we thought.
    When we got our mail-in ballot packets for the state primary, my wife didn’t get one. So we checked online, found out that her registration had fallen through the cracks, and went to correct it. She still got to vote in the primary and is all set for November 4th.

    None of this was painful, arduous or arbitrary unless you feel that making sure the I’s are dotted and the T’s crossed is to much trouble.

    I’ve never been rejected to vote but then I’m kind of retentive about my responsibilities here.

    Jeff S

17. So if someone getting paid by the number of people the register (a stupid policy of ACORN’s!) decides to pad their numbers by registering Mickey Mouse, or by (re-)registering John Scalzi half a dozen times, it doesn’t mean that Mickey gets to cast a vote on the 4th, or that Scalzi can show up and vote 6 or 7 times.

    Unless the same name is re-registered multiple times in different precincts, which would facilitate voter fraud.

    I haven’t followed the ACORN stories closely enough to know if that’s happening with any regularity or not, but I tend to doubt it.

    The larger problem with registration fraud is that it tends to gum up the registration process (making it harder to process legitimate registrations) and increase costs.

18. My take: voter fraud at the individual voter level is low, but fraud at the higher levels that work to prevent people from voting or from having their votes counted is wide-spread.

    What are we to make when certain populations experience problems with voting year after year (30 years for Waller County, TX http://crooksandliars.com/2008/02/19/thousands-of-students-march-7-miles-to-vote/) , either because not enough machines are allocated for their area, broken machines, voter intimindation, legitimate voter applications denied (like the current issue with college students), or because they have a higher than average number of legetimate voters turned away from the polls? It’s hard to not think that some discrimination is happening by local government officials, and that sufficient local discrimination can have an effect on the outcomes.

    And with stories from the 2004 election, like the Reuplican consultiing firm Sproul & Associates destroying voter registrations for Democratic voters, or the story of Ohio’s “missing votes”, I’m finding it hard to trust officials with my vote. I’m voting absentee in a township that’s 90% republican, all the township board knows that I’m liberal. I have to wonder if my ballet will end up in trashcan when I turn it in, and as far as I know, there’s no way for me to tell if my vote made it into the count.

    (Now, this would be nice: If we all had a confirmation number for our ballet and could go to a website or make a phone call and punch in the confirmation number to see if the vote was counted.)

19. Oregon went to all vote-by-mail in 1998, which has had a minor* effect on increasing voter registration, a noticeable increase in voter participation even in secondary elections, and a profound decrease in fraud and contested ballots.
    There are safeguards against fraud: the signature on the ballot must match that on the registration card (verified by trained humans with redundant checks on rejected ballots), the ballots cannot be forwarded to a new address, replacement ballots are readily available.

    A “battleground” state, there was no controversy in our last two elections over the validity of any results, except for the hypocritical demand of the RNC that our secretary of state “recuse himself” for political party affiliation when he called for the recount as required by law. Note, political posturing does not count as ‘controversy’ when objections and questions about validity are addressed and shown to be groundless. It does create ‘controversy’ when the objections and questions are shown to have a valid basis and that elections were tainted by fraud.

    * http://www.sos.state.or.us/executive/votebymail/pdf_files/CarterBaker.pdf

20. I do want to stress that one should not accept information from anyone but the local board of elections as to where to vote. I have gotten emails on the night before an election from a major party I will not name (but I am planning on voting out of office) advising me that my polling place had been changed. The twits were trying to send me to another town to vote. They claimed that it was an error but if so it demonstrated that they could not read maps. if not an error, it was an effort to supress the vote. Either way they were strong indicators that they could not be trusted.

21. Two years ago, my husband had to get a court order in order to be able to vote.

    Why? Because the geniuses at the DMV hadn’t done his voter registration correctly and he didn’t appear on the master list for our district (I say this with some bitterness because these were also the people who refused to give him a driver license because they kept changing their minds about what constituted sufficient proof of residency to the point where we had to get our state rep involved). Luckily, the people working at our polling place were completely awesome and did everything in their power to ensure that he was able to vote. And we’re all good to go this year, I’ve already checked.

    I have to admit, I love voting. I vote as often as I (legally) can. In Delaware, as you go into the voting booth, a poll worker announces to everyone that you are now voting. Which is really strange but also pretty awesome, too.

22. Voter registration is, often, arbitrary and arduous

    Not in Canada. I see there’s some primitive movements towards US-style vote denial but so far it’s low key.

23. I’ll be out of the country, so I voted already by absentee ballot. They won’t count it unless there’s a close call in any of the races, but if there is (fat chance, NY State is solid blue) my vote will help decide the say the state goes.

24. Annalee @12

    Where I live, the county puts up a sample ballot ahead of time on their web site. I try to remember to go over it a few days in advance of the election (or even mark it up & take it with me when I vote) – like you, I hate getting blindsided in the voting booth with things I didn’t know I’d have to vote on.

25. Entirely anecdotally, I will note that the only time our household has had recurrent problems getting (and, heck, staying) registered to vote was when we lived in a majority black and latino neighborhood.

    I think my husband had to re-register three times, and still had trouble getting a ballot — even when he showed up with the postcard the county elections office sent back, showing that he was a registered voter and on the rolls. And this after he’d voted from that address in a previous election!

    From talking to the neighbors back then, we weren’t the only people who had this problem. I have no idea if it was just incompetence or if there was something more active going on, but it sure seemed like people in our then-neighborhood were being discouraged from voting — by the difficulty of having to register repeatedly, if nothing else.

    I have never had an experience like this living in a majority-white neighborhood. It’s certainly made me more likely to believe people’s stories of being disenfranchised.

26. JD at #10, et al., let’s not forget that a generation ago, if you were black in the South attempting to register to vote could get you killed.

    America has come a long way since then, but that legacy is not completely past. Most of the last generation that enforced that social order has passed from the scene, but their heirs — the people who worked with them over long careers and never called them out, the proteges who benefited handsomely from the old ways — are very much around.

    Registration procedures vary from easy to aggravating to arduous because the people in power in a particular place want them that way. JJS may be right about what the laws are, but he does not say what the laws should be, and that’s too bad.

    The record of the last eight years suggests to me that there are coordinated efforts to keep registration down, that choices are made on how to allocate voting machines and other resources so as to help voting in some places and hinder it in others, and that there is a partisan edge to the patterns.

    Voting is so precious that some Americans thought it was worth killing for; if we are blind to our history, we will not be able to see out present clearly.

27. #19: In Delaware, as you go into the voting booth, a poll worker announces to everyone that you are now voting. Which is really strange but also pretty awesome, too.

    Wow, how cool is that?

28. I admit, I’m a bit worried about whether or not I am registered to vote. Both my boyfriend and I sent in registration forms a week or so after getting to the Seattle area, but it was just a day or two before the mail-in deadline. I’ve been checking the voter registration records online every day, but we haven’t shown up yet. :(

    I think I have five days to appear in person at the office in Renton, if my mail-in reg didn’t take. *nervous*

29. JJS,

    I have election day off. Do you [poll workers] have a preference for what time I show up? Wait until 9am so the voting-before-work folk get their shot?

30. Pio@27, I can’t speak for JJS, but in my precinct, mid morning and mid afternoon are the slowest times for voting. Early morning and lunchtime are busier, and after work is just criminally insane.

31. I have been following allegations of voter fraud the last 8 years, and haven’t seen any credible evidence yet. This ACORN registration fraud is simply a case of people motivated to meet quotas to be paid their salaries.

    Scalzi summed this whole topic up perfectly in the previous thread. People who try to draw attention to voter fraud do it hoping there IS fraud in order to delegitimize the victory of their opponent. If they were really concerned about voter fraud, then they would be hoping there WASN’T fraud.

32. A couple of points.

    One, if a political party doesn’t want allegations of voter fraud, they should stop opposing common-sense reforms designed to inhibit fraud, like requiring photo ID. When someone is doing everything he or she can to stop these reforms, like, say, is happening in Ohio right now, of course people are going to think of fraud if the election is close, regardless of the outcome.

    The second is that our system of elections is very ill-suited to extremely close elections with large numbers of voters. Electronic voting machines have a non-zero error rate. Hand recounts have a non-zero error rate. Any election that ends up with a margin inside this error rate very well could flip on each and every recount. Florida in 2000 and the Washington Governor’s race are both examples of this. So no matter the eventual outcome, we simply cannot be “sure” that the actual winner prevailed.

    But you know what? It shouldn’t matter, because by its very nature you’re going to end up with someone elected who was acceptable to a large percentage of the population.

33. No offense, but you guys have a really poor election system.

    In Australia, I can walk into any polling booth anywhere in
    the country during a Federal election and vote absentee. They
    all have ballot papers available for every electorate in the
    country. As far as I recall, the first half dozen times I voted,
    Federal and State, I was away from my own electorate.
    Even if you have moved house and not told them, you still get
    to vote for your old electorate and they give you the paperwork
    to fill out for change of address for next time.

34. …
    Okay, we’re having an election today up here in canada.

    Yeah I know. you’re all surprised and had no idea that we were getting ready to hold a federal election today.

    GUESS WHAT?

    I’M NOT ENUMERATED!

    That’s right! The cards showed up from elections canada, but my name was not on them.

    GUESS WHAT?

    IT’S NO BIG DEAL!

    My polling station is open until 7 pm or something like that. This is what I’m going to do:

    1. walk into polling station at 6. (I’d go earlier, but it’s 3.0.2 patch day and I need to clear up bag space by learning all my pets and mounts and honor tokens, re-doing my talent trees, and running around smiting stuff and giggling because ret paladins are OP. no really, Ret Paladins are fine; learn to play.)
    2. say “hi, I’m not enumerated. the cards from elections canada came but my name isn’t on them, probably because I slacked off on taxes this year.”
    3. present local picture ID and a utility bill with my name and address on them.
    4. Get a ballot. And a PENCIL. because we don’t use voting machines in canada.
    5. Vote.
    6. be gone by 6:45, easy. had a lovely chat with a fellow knitter, because of course I’m bringing my knitting; I have to wait in line.

    you know, I hear a lot of stuff about how my country is Socialist and therefore evil, but I seem to have an easier time exercising my democratic rights thatn *any* of you.

35. I am a legal alien so I can’t vote, but I do take elections in my country of residence very seriously. I listen to the candidates and the pundits, discuss the issues with friends. I visit the polling station with coffee and snacks, chat about turnout, and such. But mainly I am filled with wonder that a country of over three hundred million people has a functioning democracy.
    The process is not perfect, but wow, it’s not at all bad.

36. Canada votes? huh, learn something new everyday!

37. PS: I am a Brit, so I totally get the taxation without representation thing now…

38. Deathbird @ 31:

    The problem is that we don’t have just Federal elections. I’m voting next month on everything from President down to the county council representative and a local school bond issue. There’s no way I could vote on all of that from the other side of the country.

39. Changed my registration when my drivers license expired, registered as a permanent absentee.

    Have my ballot in hand already, and will fill it out at leisure over the next few weeks (giving all measures a careful look before deciding).

    I do believe same day registration is an invitation to fraud, and that valid picture ID should be required at polling places.

40. Jon @ 36

    The bigger problem is that voter registration in the US isn’t controlled by independent and neutral commissions.

    Compulsory enrolment helps to make enrolment a politically neutral issue though.

41. Jon @36 is right. Local issues/candidates are a larger part of our ballot than the national election. Unless you all suddenly decide you DO like Diebold…

42. Same for me as for Chelsea (comment 32). We just moved, but for voting in today’s federal election (which is held separately from provincial or civic elections), I’ll walk in with picture ID and after a minute or so I’ll be given a piece of paper, vote behind a little cardboard screen, then I’ll place my ballot in the receptacle and go home.

    Registration always struck me as a method to disenfranchise people.

    D

43. PatrickM, We don’t spend 2 years campaigning for our elections every time. Parties can change leaders whenever they want and do so on their own time and dollar. Takes average 3 months from official announcement to election day.
    Cpolk, Elections Canada is a wonderful thing.
    Over 18 and a citizen with valid id and proof of address for the electoral district (and often they will send you to the correct one if you got it wrong), why yes you can vote just fill out this. We always have the right to vote no and if or buts.

44. arcadiagt5 @ 38:

    I don’t think that Deathbird’s scenario (being able to vote in any election from anywhere in the country) would be any more feasible with a national voter registration system, at least not the way elections are held in the US. Just in the county I live in, there are two US representative districts, 9 state representative districts, and 6 county council districts up for election, plus two different school boards and one city have bond issues up for vote. None of the borders for these offices & districts line up with one another – there are easily a couple dozen different ballot configurations or more. And that’s just one of 114 counties (plus one independent city) in my state, which is one of 50 states. You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of different ballots.

    Perhaps in Australia national elections are kept completely separate from state & local elections, but that isn’t done here. The logistics involved make it impossible to cast any ballot from anywhere, unless we switch to an all-electronic voting system with touch-screen machines all connected to a central database that could create your ballot on the fly based on your registered address. But who would trust such a system?

45. Maybe each state’s registrar should have an easy-to-use website that spells it out for voters. You simply enter your name, address and social, and up pops:

    “You HAVE registered to vote.
    You HAVE NOT voted.

    Click here to request a mail-in ballot.
    Click here to find your nearest polling place.”

    Now wouldn’t that be nice?

46. “In Australia, I can walk into any polling booth anywhere in
    the country during a Federal election and vote absentee. They all have ballot papers available for every electorate in the country. ”

    Yeah because that would work so well in a country with 50 states, 3077 counties over 250 cities with more than 100,000 people (and thousands more under that number).

    I’m glad it works for you, but there’s no way that system would work in the US. As for all of the ‘just walk in with some ID’ – sure you can… now what’s to stop me from doing that at the polling place near work and again at the one near my home? You’ll need some system that captures that. Even though few people will do it, it could easily affect local races.

    @cpolk. ret pallies are OP. And the realms are down.

47. John @ 38 :There’s no way I could vote on all of that from the other side of the country.

    That might have been true in the bad old days, but surely Teh Internets are of some practical use here? You can check candidates, policies., voting records and the like online – hell, my husband does it for Wisconsin and he is in Australia.

48. 30, Janiece,
    Thanks, that’s helpful!

49. Rodney G. Graves

    I do believe same day registration is an invitation to fraud, and that valid picture ID should be required at polling places.

    1. “valid” is overrated. An expired ID still proves which name goes with which face.

    2. Unless picture ID’s are free, you have re-implemented the poll tax, which violates the Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. (Also, the Equal Protection clause of the 14th. See:Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 1966.)

50. OK I’m sorry guys, I was wrong.

    I was done in 16 minutes, not 45. Go green party, GO!

    Rick: what’s to stop you?

    you vote at the polling station near your home. your proof of residential address is what matters.

    I have one polling station that serves my address. One. If I go to the wrong one, they will tell me where the right one is. they will even give me a photocopy of a google map with the route from here to there memorized.

    also: we’re the most kiteable class there is. blow your insignia of the horde and make a gap, already. if you let us get close to you with wings up and don’t break the hammer you may as well /hug.

51. Here in Indiana, they just instituted a voter ID law. As it was being enacted, the editor of the Indiana Business Journal described it as “A solution in desperate search of a problem.”

    At our primary, the most noteworthy voters turned away for lack of valid ids were . . . wait for it . . . nuns. Other than voting, they have no reason to need a driver’s license or state id.

52. A couple of bits, plucked from various comments…

    So if someone getting paid by the number of people the register (a stupid policy of ACORN’s!)

    ACORN reports that they do not do this. Did they ever? I don’t know. But they state that it’s against current policy.

    One, if a political party doesn’t want allegations of voter fraud, they should stop opposing common-sense reforms designed to inhibit fraud, like requiring photo ID.

    While requiring photo ID inhibits fraud, it disenfranchises people who do not have photo ID. This can include the poor, the elderly, and the homeless.

    I sympathize with the desire to have positive ID for voters, but on the flip side, people have a right to vote, not a privilege that can be revoked if they are unable or unwilling to obtain a photo ID (or keep it up to date).

    As awful as it is to allow someone to cast a fraudulent vote, it’s even worse to take the right to vote from someone who has it.

53. Jon @ 44

    I think that you are confusing registration with voting.

    Granted that the practice of combining multiple levels of government into the same ballot paper complicates the voting process (and this may actually be prohibited in Australia), nevertheless it should be possible to separately manage the registration/enrolment process.

    I guess that this is part of the point I was trying to make: so long as you have partisan involvement in the registration/enrolment process it WILL be confused with the voting process.

    There will be an assumption, or a perception perhaps, that voters registered a certain way will also vote that way. This will provide a partisan motivation to deny registration where possible.

    Leaving aside the discussion on compulsory voting (which I don’t want to get into so please don’t go there :) ), compulsory enrolment managed by an independent body removes this issue.

54. deathbird @ 31 almost had it right. You can stroll up to any polling booth in your state and get ballots for your electorate. If you are interstate you have to go to specially designated polling booths. We can also do pre-poll, absentee or postal voting.
    All elections in Australia are run under the aegis of the Australian Electoral Commission. They handle voter registration as well – the electoral roll. If you get dropped off the electoral roll, say you’ve changed address but haven’t notified the AEC and they’ve done an address check, you can still vote but you will have to provide new address details and ID when you vote. The only way you are not permitted to vote is if you have never enrolled and miss the deadline to enrol before the election. This mainly affects 18 year olds who have never enrolled. You can enrol at 17 so you are ready to go when you turn 18.
    Federal, state and local elections are all separate. Why confuse things? The US system seems overly complicated and almost seems set up to deny people or scare them from voting. Even prisoners serving sentences of less than 3 years get the vote in Oz. Once you’ve done your sentence you get the right back to vote. This thing you guys have of trawling electoral rolls to remove people, to take away their right to vote is… is just wrong.
    The people who think your system is too complicated to allow absentee voting at any polling station are probably right as far as the system currently stands. It sounds like it could be streamlined though.
    I am certain I’ve seen pre-printed blank ballots too where the electoral officer will write in the candidates from your electorate for you and then you go and number the boxes as normal. Your ballot is then placed in an envelope and sent to the returning officer in your electorate. Essentially it becomes a postal vote. How frackin’ hard is that? Think outside of the (ballot) box people.

55. arcadiagt5 @ 53:

    I don’t think I’m confusing anything. From Deathbirds post @ 33, which is what I was responding to:

    “In Australia, I can walk into any polling booth anywhere in the country during a Federal election and vote absentee. They all have ballot papers available for every electorate in the country.”

    He’s not talking about registration, he’s talking about voting.

    Shane’s post @ 54 make it clear – federal, state & local elections in Australia are all separate, which is why Deathbird could do what he did in a federal election.

    I agree that *if* the US had mandatory voter registration and *if* the US had federal voter registration (instead of local) and *if* the US had separate federal elections, then it would make no sense not to be able to vote from anywhere in those elections. Since the US currently has none of those things, it’s wildly impractical.

    As to having absentee ballots, different areas of the country use different voting mechanisms. I don’t think anyone uses punch cards anymore, but there are still various mechanical voting machines, paper ballots, and touch screen systems. The lack of a single nationwide standard makes it impractical to vote absentee from anywhere without prior arrangement with your local election office.

    The reasons for all of this local control of elections can be traced all the way back to the origin of the US as a collection of individual states. It would be interesting to see whether people would buy into federalizing things like Australia; I suspect local politicians would have a collective fit, but I’m not sure how the general public would react.

56. I make it a point of voting before going to work. Not only is there no wait at the polling place, the people who are still campaigning for their candidates aren’t standing there trying to get you to vote for their person. I know two people who work in various capacities on election day at their local polling place. The stories they tell about it are fascinating. I’ve learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of the process from listening to them.

57. Jon @ # 55, the AEC is an independent statutory body and is usually headed by a judge or retired judge. Originally it was part of a government department but it has been independent since ’84. Something like it would solve heaps of perceived problems with US elections when it comes to state fiddling – Florida in 2000 is a good example.

    An interesting side note is the AEC now conducts elections for Unions.

58. shane @ 57:

    It’s an interesting idea, but I wonder if it would really fix anything. I don’t think there’s anything in the US that is currently free from accusations of political bias – witness the abuse & suspicion directed at the Supreme Court wrt Florida in 2000. An election commission headed by a political appointee would be held in similar regard in those circumstances. (If the head of the AEC is not a political appointee, how is the job filled?)

59. Whoops, I see: “Originally it was part of a government department but it has been independent since ‘84.” So not headed by an appointee then. Yeah, that does have some possibilities.

60. Skip @ 32:

    I agree with you that the US electoral system is not a very accurate measurement system. Slipping into my old statistical / six sigma hat, it seems clear that the system has poor resolution and repeatability (what’s known as gage R&R in the jargon). It means that, if you took the opinions of the populace one day and the repeated it again a day or two later, you might get a significantly different result, and neither would very accurately reflect the true opinion of the total population.

    I’ll bet that, as a nation, the electoral system has a margin of error of 3-5%. This is pretty high, and highlights the fact that many recent elections have been decided by margins much slimmer than that. Still, I don’t know what we could really do to improve it. A statistician might tell you that you’d get a more accurate result if you limited your measurement to a large sample of the population, or if you leveled the voting time frame – all mail-in nationwide, or all in-person voting, or a uniform window of one day in which to vote, etc. But would anyone really accept this kind of change, even if it could be proved that it would result in a more accurate election? No, of course not.

61. Jon, yep that is the weak link in the system. The chief electoral officer is a political appointee. It is supposed to be a consultative process and each of the states has slightly different processes as far as bipartisanship goes but I don’t think the job is as incendiary as say a High Court Judge appointment could be. We have a history of appointees for statutory authorities in this country, even those with the appearance of partisanship, doing the job they’re supposed to. To the chagrin of the government of the day sometimes.

    The AEC, at the top, has three commissioners. The chairperson, the electoral commissioner, and a non-judicial part timer so there is a bit of oversight at the top.

62. Jon @ 55

    The first point I was trying to make is that registration/enrolment and voting are, or should be, entirely separate processes.

    Certainly the logistics of combined elections and having a ballot paper for every electorate available at every polling place would be insane. And, as Shane @ 54 pointed out, not even the AEC does that in Australia.

    But this has nothing to do with whether or not the enrolment process is independently and consistently managed.

    The second point that I was trying to make was that having partisan involvement in enrolment ties the two processes together: if you can keep the other side from enrolling at all you can control the result.

63. @shane, #54: Here in San Francisco, I’ve got 12 state propositions, and 21 local ones, plus a variety of federal, state, and local officials to vote for. Having ballots available for all of that everywhere is ridiculously impractical. Remember, the US is 15x the population of Australia, and is a collection of states as much as it is a single entity.

    Sure, we could streamline voting, but why? We’d have to institute a bunch of nationwide standards to make that work. Instead, each state does its own thing, and we get to compare the efficacy of a variety of approaches. As they say, the states are the “laboratories of democracy,” and I’m very fond of that.

64. Shane, @54: “The US system seems overly complicated and almost seems set up to deny people or scare them from voting.”

    You’ve been reading our history, haven’t you?

65. ACORN pays by the hour not by the signature and has done it that way for quite a while.
    Sproul is a self-declared republican firm that is a good example of how not to do this.
    Caging is an illegal tactic used almost exclusively by republican groups because, to them, it works.
    Voter registration fraud does nothing other than make registration officials work harder.
    Voter fraud is, and has been, effectively nonexistent. (ignoring stunts like Coulter’s in ’06 which did get busted)
    One party tries to help get as many as possible to vote. One party tries, and says flat-out that it helps them, to make sure that as few as possible get to vote.
    Guess which one I prefer.
    JJS – Oversupplying republican districts with voting machines and undersupplying democratic leaning districts with voting machines (let alone *working* machines) as_a_pattern is not ‘just the way it happened’. It is a tactic and one of a variety of tactics that together make up a strategy of vote suppression. That strategy plus things like, oh I dunno, having half again as many votes cast for one party as there are registered voters to cast votes? I for one say that all those taken into account state an assumtion of election fraud is not unthinkable. People went to jail covering up what really happened. Do you really think that they would have done that if there was nothing to hide?

    This response to your last paragraph may have read it wrong. I see it as a veiled reference to my response to your post in an earlier thread.

    FWIW, I do agree with you that there are occasions where the voter brought it on their own head. I also know that there are occasions where the registration office and/or local rules generate the problem. If they “decertify” you because you missed a local mid-term election after being registered and voting in the same place for 8 years, the problem did not stem from the voter.

66. Folks, there is a concerted and apparently well-organized effort to destroy the integrity of the electoral system in the U.S. It’s only now being picked up by the mainstream media, and in the case of John’s state of Ohio, it’s almost too late to do anything about it. Today, October 15, is the last day to challenge the legitimacy of registrants.

    With the thousands and thousands of bogus applications solicited and turned in by ACORN and other such groups, this is nothing less than an attack on the honest United States voter.

    http://www.palestra.net/

    See videos “Vote from Home Votes” and “Palestra.net Investigates Ohio Early Voting”….

    This is disgusting and enrages me beyond belief. Anyone involved in this should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Of course, finding them thru multiple jurisdictions is well nigh impossible with elected officials dragging their feet and doing their best to impede investigations.

    This is part and parcel of the Democratic Party’s win at any cost attitude.

    And if anyone denies this, please, show me a parallel effort by the Republicans.

    I’m not a Republican. I’m a libertarian. And I am thoroughly disgusted with this Stalinistic effort to corrupt the political process.

    I don’t throw “Stalinist” around lightly. Stalin shocked Russia by taking over through the secretariat of the Communist Party. He pointed out that it wasn’t the votes that counted, it was who COUNTED the votes that counted.

    I realize most visitors to this web site are Democrats. But wake up and smell the coffee. — and the stench of what’s going on. This is so far beyond the pale that I don’t have a vocabulary adequate to express my anger. And I write for a living.

67. One, if a political party doesn’t want allegations of voter fraud, they should stop opposing common-sense reforms designed to inhibit fraud, like requiring photo ID.

    If a political party doesn’t want allegations of vote suppression, they should stop supporting onerous regulations designed to suppress legitimate votes, like requiring photo ID. And vote caging. And automatically disenfranchising people who get their homes foreclosed.

    And mass firings of US attorneys, mostly appointed by their own party’s President, who, after being sent on a massive fishing expedition on the basis of theories and allegations in every way identical to the ones we’re hearing today, don’t find enough instances of 2004 voter fraud to prosecute because they don’t exist.

    And we go back and forth and back and forth.

68. 66: Folks, there is a concerted and apparently well-organized effort to destroy the integrity of the electoral system in the US…
    This is part and parcel of the Democratic Party’s win at any cost attitude. And if anyone denies this, please, show me a parallel effort by the Republicans.

    Nothing simpler, Dave.

    “During New Hampshire’s 2002 election for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Robert C. Smith, the NHGOP hired GOP Marketplace, based in Northern Virginia, to jam another phone bank being used by the state Democratic Party and the firefighters’ union for efforts to turn out voters on behalf of then-governor Jeanne Shaheen on Election Day…”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_New_Hampshire_Senate_election_phone_jamming_scandal

    Or:
    “During the United States Senate election in Virginia, 2006, Secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections Jean Jensen concluded that the incidents of voter suppression appeared widespread and deliberate. Documented incidents of voter suppression include:Democratic voters receiving calls incorrectly informing them voting will lead to arrest. Widespread calls fraudulently claiming to be “Webb Volunteers,” falsely telling voters their voting location had changed.
    Fliers paid for by the Republican Party , stating “SKIP THIS ELECTION” caused was allegedly an attempt to suppress African-American turnout.”
    http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/07/deceptivecalls.va/

    But wait! There’s more!
    “On October 5, 2008 the Republican Lt. Governor of Montana, John Bohlinger, accused the Montana Republican Party of vote caging to purge 6,000 voters from three counties which trend Democratic. These purges included decorated war veterans and active duty soldiers.”
    http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2008/10/05/opinion/hjjbijjejjigfj.txt

    And more!
    “The Missouri General Assembly—with the White House’s help—narrowly passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification cards, which Carnahan estimated would disenfranchise 200,000 voters. The state Supreme Court voided the law as unconstitutional before the election.”
    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/reports/usattorneys/story/16224.html

    Any comments on that? I can provide about fifteen or twenty more links on Republican voter suppression efforts over the last, oh, half century or so, if those above don’t seem convincing enough…

69. @67 Matt McIrvin

    “If a political party doesn’t want allegations of vote suppression, they should stop supporting onerous regulations designed to suppress legitimate votes, like requiring photo ID.”

    Like what you need to cash a check at a grocery store? Onerous indeed.

70. Announcing each voter is a French tradition; you collect a stack of ballot slips, one for each name, and place the ballot paper and the slip for your preferred candidate in a sealed envelope, which you then drop in the ballot box, at which point the returning officer yells “Firstname Lastname a vote!”

71. 68: yes, like that. The requirement for photo ID is onerous, and it will have the effect of suppressing a large number of (mostly poorer, minority) votes. 21 million American adults do not have the sort of ID that these laws require. They don’t have driving licences or passports.

    The League of Women Voters reckons that “some 25% of African-Americans, 18% of Americans over 65, 10% of the 40 million Americans with disabilities, 15% of low-income voters and untold numbers of voting-aged college students who reside in states other than where they may have valid drivers’ licenses would have difficulty voting under such laws”.

    The induction is fairly simple. There’s one party that profits from making it more difficult for poor and minority voters to vote. And that’s the party that supports things like ID laws that have the effect of making it more difficult for them to vote.

    Now, maybe that’s just an innocent coincidence.

72. Here’s some pretty damn clear evidence of voter fraud:

    Voter fraud alert: Houseful of out-of-state Obama activists registered as Ohio voters, received absentee ballots
    By Michelle Malkin • October 15, 2008 04:09 AM

73. @70 ajay

    The state of Georgia issues free photo voter ID cards. And I find the numbers very spurious. It’s not that difficult to get documentation to vote. In fact, you need that kind of documentation to open a bank account.

    I grew up near Chicago, so don’t tell me about how there really isn’t much voter fraud. Clark Street Cemetary has a pretty solid turnout every year in Cook County.

74. Dave @ 68:

    Apparently you don’t realize that there’s a whole world of folks out there — below your radar — that don’t cash checks at the grocery store because they don’t have checking accounts, savings accounts, or any sort of holdings at any sort of financial institution. When they go to the grocery store they use cash, counted out very carefully… and sometimes food-stamps, counted out reluctantly.

    Try stepping out of your world for a moment and see this through the eyes of folks less fortunate than you…

    Rodney @ 71:

    From where I sit Malkin’s hate site doesn’t qualify as evidence of anything but asstardery. Actual evidence of *real* voter fraud (you know… where somebody actually tried to vote more than once, on purpose) led to a scant handful of convictions for all of the 2006 election cycle, even with all of the hand-wringing (and attorney firings) Karl Rove’s influence could muster.

75. Dave, you can’t just discount facts because they don’t sound right to you! That’s not how reality works!

    Not every state issues free ID. Not every state has the same criteria for what ID is acceptable. 21 million people don’t have the sort of ID that some states require for voting.

    I grew up near Chicago, so don’t tell me about how there really isn’t much voter fraud. Clark Street Cemetary has a pretty solid turnout every year in Cook County.

    Evidence. Produce the evidence. Surely you must be able to find some reports of massive amounts of beyond-the-grave voting in Cook County from, say, 2006.

76. Rodney:

    Using Michelle Malkin a source of anything truth-related is fraught with danger. Also, as a practical matter, cutting and pasting as much of her post as you did is a violation of her copyright. I’ve trimmed it back to the link.

77. Rodney @70: So a group of Obama volunteers, who certainly at least appear to be living in Ohio at the moment are…voting in Ohio? The horror!

    I mean, from your own link, it says that Ohio requires thirty days residence to register to vote there, and that these people ‘descended upon’ Ohio in August – which is more than thirty days ago. And attending school abroad is certainly not an impediment to voting, nor is it considered a change in residence – I did it myself, and voted absentee quite legally for four years.

    But don’t worry, I’m sure if the OH results come down to five votes, these miscreants will be thoroughly investigated for the crime of moving to Ohio and registering to vote there.

78. @76 Lisa

    There’s also a requirement that they plan on returning to Ohio, which it seems none of them do. One of the people listed on the “Team” page is from Cincinnati, so he has a claim to be an Ohio resident. But the others were just there to drum up votes. That DOESN’T satisfy the residency requirement. In fact, for the two who have turned in early ballots, it constitutes fraud.

    ACORN types. Fraud. Whoda thunk it?

    Actually, the most frightening thing about all this comes from the Votefromhome08.com strategy page:

    “2) VFH is a straightforward concept. If executed well in one state, it could be replicated in other states with similar voting laws.”

    Yeah. Sounds real good.

79. @73 decadmus

    Do me a favor, and take a look at post #66 and check out the reports that I linked to. No one here seems to want to touch this stuff.

    These multiple bogus applications do great damage to the electoral process. When they pile this stuff on at the last minute, it has the local boards working overtime to get rid of the obvious fraud, which leaves room for others to slip in. And when the polls close, that leaves plenty of room for electoral fraud involving polling places with weak bipartisan oversight.

    Ever hear of Landslide Lyndon?

80. Dave @ 78:

    You lost me at, “This is part and parcel of the Democratic Party’s win at any cost attitude.”

    It’s entirely legitimate for Democrats to get out the vote, same as it is for Republicans.

    And it’s entirely legitimate for organizations like ACORN to actively seek out voter registration. By law they are required to turn in *every* voter form they get from their contractors. They are *not* required by law to flag obviously fraudulent forms, but they do.

    And where there are instances of actual voter fraud
    — and there have been a very, very few — then they should be prosecuted. Period.

    However…

    It’s another kettle of fish altogether for Republicans and their operatives to cast wide nets and purge tens of thousands of voters from the roles, whether it’s the typical non-response-to-registered-mail caging that’s taking place all over the country, the particularly nasty attempts to disenfranchise folks who’ve been foreclosed from their homes in Michigan, or the current effort in Ohio to have more than 600,000 recently-registered voters struck from the lists.

    It’s a slimy basket of frogs when Republicans and their operatives jam voter assistance phone lines, hire off-duty cops to stand around polls and look threatening, and poster entire neighborhoods with misinformation about polling places, and the 17 forms if positive ID you need to have to vote without being arrested.

    And it’s a frickin’ pit of vipers when Republicans and their well-placed operatives do great harm to the integrity of our voting process by pushing electronic voting schemes that are, at best, plagued with glitches and bugs, and at worst, perhaps the single greatest collective threat to disenfranchise voters ever foisted on our citizens.

81. Lisa @ 77,

    Thirty Days prior to election day and intent to make the state a permanent residence. Follow the rest of the story where they’re all currently back in school (at Oxford, which when I last checked, is NOT in Ohio) and who appear to have New York drivers licenses.

82. There’s an Oxford, Ohio, Rodney. Which, conveniently enough, has a university in it.

83. Voting is a right.

    And voters have a responsibility to make sure they are registered to vote.

    And the state has the responsibility to make sure that only valid voters vote, and only vote once.

    Every form of voting, and counting the vote, is plagued with glitches, and bugs. Can you say “hanging chads?”

    Personal experience, we moved last year, same state, different county. During closing our realtor gave us the forms for voter registration, and filing tax credits. Filled it out, sent it to the county clerk, and that was that. Then were asked if we needed to register to vote when we registered our address change with the BMV.

84. Dave? I found you the parallel efforts by the GOP, Dave! Right up there at comment 68! Any thoughts on that?

85. Sorry, John about the double post. Just remembered I was going to say this but forgot to type it. Was trying hard not to play the blame game towards one side or the other. Which tends to sound too much like, my farts don’t stink.

    Thanks to all the election workers out there, and on here. You do a valuable service to your communities.

86. John,

    So you’re claiming that that’s where all the Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars study?

    Who knew!

87. Well, Rodney, some did, at least:

    Miami is among a select group of universities in the nation that have produced a Rhodes Scholar, a Truman Scholar, and a Goldwater Scholar in the same academic year. Other schools in this select group are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Stanford, Syracuse, and the University of Washington.

88. Decademus:

    Apparently your post 68 got hung up in moderation, and just got added… right when I have to head in to work.

    I will get back to you when I can, which unfortunately will be around midnight….

    But I will agree with you on one thing: electronic voting is crap. It’s too easy to fiddle with, and there’s no paper trail. I see both parties pushing this one. And it stinks.

    We need simple paper ballots, with smaller precincts to speed counting. And it’s not gonna happen, for two reasons. One starts with D, the other with R.

    And John, per @82. Play nice. You know and I know these guys aren’t going to Miami of Ohio.

89. John,

    Mea culpae.

    Whereas students who become Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars do indeed study in Ohio, I was unaware that as Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars their studies were ongoing in Oxford, OH.

    The things one learns conversing with John Scalzi!

90. Rodney @86… Geez, dude. Even us bumpkins in Texas have heard of Miami Univ. and its quite decent reputation.

    Oh, and laying off the Malkin habit would be good for you (said in the same tone of voice as one would suggest, “laying off the meth habit would be good for you.”) :/

91. See, Rodney. I do try to keep you informed.

    If these ballots show up to be counted, toss them out. Easily done. But you’ll need more than that to show evidence of systematic voter fraud.

92. Rodney: So I suppose they should be registered to vote in the state of…er, England? The fact that they’ve gone back to school doesn’t invalidate their right to vote in their last state of residence, whether or not you believe they intend to return to OH or not. I don’t believe a driver’s license establishes intent or lack thereof (my brother still carries his driver’s license from two states ago; yes, he ought to change it, but since he doesn’t drive he’s had no reason to) – and a donation to Howard Dean from five years ago certainly doesn’t establish where someone lives or intends to return to today.

    However, as I said earlier, if the election in Ohio is so breathtakingly close as to make this a matter for real concern, I’m sure that the grateful public will shower Ms. Malkin with thanks for uncovering this nest of voters.

93. John,

    How about prosecuting the Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars casting those ballots? Or would you claim that those Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars don’t know that they’re violating the law?

    As regards systematic voter fraud, I don’t believe I have used that phrase here…

94. Lisa,

    The article also lists the state they claimed as their homes of record on their campaign contribution disclosures. Wouldn’t you agree that they should be voting in the state they are claiming as their home of record?

95. David H.

    Having lived in Texas (and even owned property there, once upon a time), the only folks I would count as bumpkins tended to be found in and around Austin, but I digress…

    Yep, heard of Miami of Ohio. Didn’t know it was in a town named Oxford, so I learned something new today.

    And dude, laying off the smack might be good for you…

96. Rodney G. Graves:

    “Or would you claim that those Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars don’t know that they’re violating the law?”

    Are they violating the law? As far as I’m aware, the most you can say is they registered erroneously. I’m also not aware that they actually voted with the absentee ballots they allegedly received. And, as it happens, I’m happy to entertain the notion that these folks did not know the precise details of their own voter eligibility, because when I was in college, I wasn’t entirely sure of all the eligibility requirements of voting in state where I was, either, and I went to the University of Chicago and scored 1430 on my SATs, so I was pretty smart at the time (I ended up voting absentee from California, mostly because it was easier).

    All of which is to say, unless you have concrete evidence these folks knowingly violated the law and voted with the intention of fraud, I really could not give a shit.

97. An interesting bit of trivia turned up today that’s germane:

    About a quarter of Jon McCain’s newly-minted “Clean Election and Voter Fraud Committee” is chaired by folks with an appetite for voter suppression tactics and unfounded voter fraud claims. *

    In addition to [Tom] Davis, who has a history of openly discussing subtle voter suppression techniques, the committee includes

    * Cameron Quinn, who was a director of the Republican voter suppression front group, the American Center for Voting Rights.
    * California Secretary of State Bill Jones, who has long fought for ways to make it more difficult for people to vote.
    * Susan Molinari who cried wolf about voter fraud in 2004 and 2006, only to find her allegations proven false.
    * Larry D. Thompson ho hired Bradley Schlozman to work in the Justice Department where he approved Tom Delay’s redistricting plan, GA’s modern “Jim Crow Law” and pursued politicized indictments against ACORN in MO.

    * The link goes to a subsite of Firedoglake which is very much a progressive partisan site, but offers outbound links to MSM sites that support the claims made.

98. So we’ve established that there are idiots from both major parties casting fraudulent, or potentially fraudulent votes. Great. Moving on….

    I’m more interested in hearing about systematic attempts at fraud and disenfranchisement, and possible solutions.

99. First, if you have the time and the patience, PLEASE volunteer to be a poll worker (not just a partisan poll observer, we don’t need those, or at the need is of a different kind.) While there are some locations that have too many volunteers and this generates headlines, it’s really bad news because those headlines depress the number of volunteers in all of the other communities.

    There are any number of possible problems with registrations, and no good way to solve them all.

    Yes, sometimes we didn’t count absentee ballots for particular races, I admit, because the number of absentee ballots was less than the mandatory recount difference between the leaders of that race (If they had all voted for Y, X would still have a large enough lead that there would be no recount unless Y asked for it.)

100. Sen. McCain to ACORN in 2006: you are “what makes America special”.

     How things have changed.

101. By the numbers:

     666,0001

     200,0002

     13

     1Number of new or changed voter registrations in Ohio since January 1, 2008.

     2Number of new or changed voter registrations in Ohio since January 1, 2008 which do not match Ohio State Drivers License database or Social Security Administration database (or both) and are thus subject to review (now that the 6th Circuit en banc has told the Ohio Secretary of State that she must indeed uphold the law).

     3Number of persons contributing to or commenting on this blog who “give a shit” and find 2 disturbing.

     Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer

102. 4 Rate of errors in the Ohio drivers license database or Social Security Administration database is _____

     Or are you asserting that they have no errors at all?

103. I just don’t get it. I really don’t.

     I had a problem a few years ago. I was newly back in ProvinceA from 7 years in ProvinceB, and the location information hadn’t got to the Government yet. So I went to the same polling location as my roommate, showed them my driver’s license (a bill would do, or anything else that gave a location of reference), filled out a form that stated that my vote would be held until the information I had attested to under penalty of perjury had been checked out (in particular, that I didn’t vote at my previous residence riding, and that I was a Canadian Citizen), and only then counted, and walked into the booth.

     I had a problem a couple of years later. They sent voting cards to me and my roommate, and we looked at the polling information on mine, and went there. Turns out *the card was wrong*, but my roommate’s was right (just a glitch). They told us where the other place was, how to get there, we went there, they found our names, and we voted.

     I had a problem last year in the bye-election. I had just moved, and again it didn’t get on the rolls. Again, 10 minutes with the form and away I went.

     This year, we had a requirement for positive identification; a big long list of acceptable location information, and/or photo information, and away we went.

     Registration? What is this “I’m a citizen but I have to prove that I exist to vote” thing you keep talking about?

     Re: identification to cash a cheque: um, have you seen payday loan offices everywhere? They offer cheque cashing services for a large fee – in fact, it’s their second-best earner (after high-interest, short-term loans without collateral). Why would they do that? Because there are enough people with cheques without enough wherewithal or stability to get a bank account that need to have them cashed that it’s worth offering the service (okay, granted, there’s also a large market in “cash it here, walk out with green; cash it at the bank and they’ll hold it for 5 days, and I can’t afford/don’t want to wait)

     Disenfranchising your citizens because they can’t afford to have a permanent residence that is registerable, or can’t open a bank account, is not just “their own lookout”, it’s sick. “Qu’ils mangent la brioche”, indeed. Especially since it’s strongly to the benefit of one party to encourage this, as their policies tend not to minimize the number of those citizens. Can’t figure out which congressional district they live in? Figure something out. You’ve worked something out for the Snowbirds/Weekend at the Hamptons people, haven’t you?

104. @97 deCadmus

     Most of the complaints come from efforts to use picture ID to confirm identity. Sorry to those who disagree, I don’t find that requirement onerous at all. It’s been upheld here in Georgia, and I’m not aware of any problems caused by the rule.

     As for the Washington governor’s race in 2004, the number of felons who voted was quadruple the winning margin. It was one of the more corrupt elections in recent years, which is saying something.

     As for post 68 (and sorry about the delay — work is annoying ), I want anyone who plays fast and loose with voter supression to be dealt with as the law allows. Dick Tuck didn’t invent things like this, and they continue on after his departure, and they’re crap. No problem with that. Go get ’em with my enthusiastic approval.

     But systematic abuse of voter registration carries perhaps and even greater danger. Actions like those performed by ACORN poison the well to a degree not seen outside banana-republic-like countries. They carry the danger of completely delegitimising any election before it even takes place.

     These too need to be dealt with legally. Let’s agree on both, and take care of anyone who plays around with one of the pilllars of our freedom.

105. Dave in Georgia, glad you’re for dealing with voter suppression as the law allows, but in this case, that would include Karl Rove, who orchestrated the U.S. Attorney firings, and, quite possibly, those above him. The U.S. Attorney firings were *also* designed to de-legitimize this election–and the 2006 election– before it takes place, and I’d really like to hear more Republicans criticize the Bush administration for this.

     http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19mon4.html

106. Most of the complaints come from efforts to use picture ID to confirm identity. Sorry to those who disagree, I don’t find that requirement onerous at all. It’s been upheld here in Georgia, and I’m not aware of any problems caused by the rule.

     “I don’t personally find that onerous” is not the same as “that isn’t onerous”, Dave.

     If the law was changed so that only white men could vote, I personally wouldn’t find that onerous at all. If there was a “literacy test” at the polling booth that involved integrating a couple of functions, naming the last three prime ministers of Poland, reciting the whole of the Prologue to “Henry V”, and then paying a $100 fee, I could probably manage that as well*. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be an onerous requirement.

     And, Rodney: registering non-existent people to vote is not the same as vote fraud. The worst it does is pad out the electoral roll with non-existent people. Who, because they don’t exist, can’t vote.

     *Because I am a Heinleinian Competent Man and can care for a pig, butcher an invasion, con a baby, and all that other nonsense.

107. Sorry for not reading all the comments, but assuming no one pointed out the obvious, voting is not a real priority for the American system of government.

     I attempted to get my overseas ballot this year, same as every two years, and was told that I don’t exist.

     Why? The Virginia county I am registered in went to a new system in 2007, and all the old records were basically not included, at least according to the registrar, particularly in the case of voters such as myself.

     I have no idea whether, after spending easily 10 dollars on postage and phone calls, not to mention a couple of hours of my time, I will even be able to vote. Thus proving yet again to my ever more cynical wife, what sort of democratic society American really is. Last week’s Die Zeit article about ’24’ and how Americans actually believe it helped – she had ignored what I had been saying about its portrayal of torture and its effect on American society, but when she read it in black and white in German, she was horrified to realize that many Americans are no longer even capable of distinguishing reality from fantasy, much less decency and barbarity.

     Of course, for anyone really following along, you realize that often enough, overseas ballots are counted after the winner is declared – an interesting sidelight of the problems of 2000.

     The only reason I vote is to be able to say to the people I live among that I take my responsiblity as a citizen of a democracy as seriously as they do. To my best friends, however, I let them know what a farce the entire process is in my eyes, and that in a way, by participating, I have given up a bit of my self-respect for public approval.

     But at least I have never voted for a Republican OR a Democrat for any public office – a point of pride which is not understood in Germany, since they have more than two parties anyways.

108. ajay @106

     Here’s an article in the Columbus Dispatch that points out the problem with your argument.

     http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/15/fraud_followup.html?type=rss&cat=&sid=101

     The first and sixth grafs in the piece make the point.

     “Amid new allegations of voter fraud, the Ohio Secretary of State conceded today that the eligibility of nearly one third of newly registered voters is in question.”

     “Elections officials across the state said they fear chaos if they must verify the validity of thousands of newly registered voters in the busy days leading up to the election.”

     ACORN could very easily stop this kind of crap by enforcing some basic rules, but they won’t do it.

     So, cui bono? Who benefits?

     The answer is, those who wish to delegitimize the electoral process in America. I’ll say what I’ve said elsewhere — Saul Alinsky would approve.

     This type of action attacks the very fundamentals of the American system. Remember, if they are on the voting list, they DO exist as far as the right to vote is concerned. All it takes is a couple of compliant and complaisant poll workers. What’s the alternative to voter ID? Let’s hear what you propose that would be more effective to halt vote fraud.

     When 200,000 of 660,000 applications have discrepancies, there’s a problem. And how many of those already voted?

109. Rodney blathered, “…the only folks I would count as bumpkins tended to be found in and around Austin, but I digress…”

     I’m sure it comes as no surprise, seeing as how I’m a member of the Reality-Based Intellectualist group, that I’m both from Austin, and find it to be one of the only politically tolerable places in the state…

     As Molly Ivins famously said, “I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.”

110. There are problems with registering non-existent people. Joe Cheat can show up and claim to be Bill Non Existent, with fake ID to show that he is. Will we detect the fake ID? Maybe, maybe not. If there’s a real Bill Non Existent, then there’s going to be a name collision, with all of the hassle that that involves, and if the fake Bill shows up first with real Bill’s address, the real Bill might end up not being allowed to vote.

     Give me a minute more and I can think of more. Knowingly falsely registering ought to be a crime.

111. ajay,

     Bogus voter registrations are the necessary precondition for vote fraud which is effectively impossible to overturn.

     Ballots are secret/anonymous. Once a ballot is accepted from a registered voter there is no way to pull it back out from the pool of valid ballots. Once a bogus registration is established in a district (in a state where no photo ID is required) anyone who knows the name, district, (and maybe the address of the registrant as entered, like say the organization which did the registration) can then cast a bogus ballot which cannot be culled.

     Provisional ballots at least have the potential to be be removed from the pool (since they are sealed and not counted until validated) of valid ballots if determined to be invalid.

112. Good article in the Times on the problems with using the Social Security databases to verify voters:

     http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/us/16vote.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

113. David H,

     I’m shocked to hear you are from the Austin area, and further shocked to hear you have such a low opinion of your fellow Texans.

114. David,

     I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear the New York Times thinks that verifying the voter roles is too hard.

115. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear the New York Times thinks that verifying the voter roles is too hard.

     So, aside from the Casablanca reference, no actual response, then?

116. David writes:

     So, aside from the Casablanca reference, no actual response, then?

     Well, let’s see.

     They have two databases they can verify against: the Ohio Drivers License DB, and the SSA DB. What say registrations which fail either of those and which the local registrars cannot verify before election day cause those unverified registrants to vote via provisional ballots which won’t be counted until verified.

     Oh, and water is wet.

117. Heh.

     A third of new voters must be verified, Brunner says
     13 new voters in Columbus subject of fraud probe; state Republicans seek info on thousands
     By Catherine Candisky
     THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

     Is The Columbus Dispatch also “a source of [information which should not be treated as] anything truth-related.” ?

118. Jesus Christ, Rodney, could you try not posting copyright-violating lengths of story for once? It’s why they invented excerpting in the first place.

     Seriously, that’s twice in two days I’ve had to go and snip down something you’ve posted. Don’t make me do it a third time.

     To your point, however, if someone’s voted fraudulently and has been shown to have done so in court, then let ’em be punished for it.

119. the Ohio Drivers License DB, and the SSA DB

     How about somebody demonstrates that both of these databases don’t have errors first? I can’t believe I’m arguing with a conservative who wants to use the Social Security database to check up on other Americans. It’s like Bizarro-world.

120. David,

     Perfection is not an achievable standard in either direction.

     The databases are specified in the law, and failure to match is an indication that further validation is required.

     And no, I’m not especially happy with the SSA DB being used for this purpose.

     I am, however, in no way surprised that you see no need to validate the identities of those registering to vote.

121. John,

     Sorry.

     What is your standard of acceptable fair use in terms of percentage of the article cited.

122. Three paragraphs is my general rule of thumb.

123. May I be so bold as to suggest you add that to your site FAQ?

124. Chiming in a little late on this: having worked retail politics in California a few years back and having relied on paid signature gatherers, etc., what you quickly learn is that people who are paid piece work (say, $1/signature) to do a crappy job like gather signatures are usually not the folks who hold down steady jobs and are (often) perfectly happy to pad those signature forms with the occasional Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mantle, or Mickey Spillane.

     I’ve never worked paid voter registration, but I assume it’s the same mix of dedicated volunteers leavened with members of the liquid underclass. Most of those Mickey Mouse voters, even if registered, probably won’t actually vote.

     That said, I still believe in a firm voter-ID requirement and frown on same-day registration.

125. TPE @124,

     Hear him, hear him!

126. Heh heh,

     A third of new voters must be verified, Brunner says
     13 new voters in Columbus subject of fraud probe; state Republicans seek info on thousands
     By Catherine Candisky
     THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

     …

     []O’Brien told The Dispatch that he is investigating allegations that 13 out-of-state residents recently registered to vote, all claiming to live at 2885 Brownlee Rd.

     The individuals apparently were in Columbus working for Vote From Home, a group working to increase young-voter turnout in Ohio and using the house as their base of operation, O’Brien said.

     …

     Two of the individuals voted in person at Veteran’s Memorial while a third returned a completed absentee ballot by mail, said Matt Damshroder, deputy director of the Franklin County Board of Elections.

     The questin remains: is The Columbus Dispatch also “a source of [information which should not be treated as] anything truth-related.” ?

127. I am, however, in no way surprised that you see no need to validate the identities of those registering to vote.

     Gee, Rodney, do you want to respond to an argument I actually made or have those been too tough?

     What I _would_ like is for Americans not to be disenfranchised because somebody doing data entry in the Social Security administration mistyped their name.

     Somebody like Joe the Plumber!

128. David

     In what way is a provisional ballot a disenfranchisement?

129. Because what tends to happen is that when the poll workers make a mistake, they have the person vote provisionally (rather than trying to figure out the mistake), a vote that thus later gets thrown out.

     Thus, from the Times article linked:

     “In the primary in Chicago, one in 90 ballots was provisionally cast. The majority of the 93 percent that were thrown out were disqualified because of technical errors caused by election workers; these included more than 1,200 ballots filed in the wrong precinct. Some 2,400 were discounted because affidavits were incompletely or incorrectly filled out. Only 416 provisional votes were ultimately counted.”

130. David

     Let’s run with your numbers.

     One in Ninety ballots (1.1%) were provisional (5,914).

     Of the provisional ballots, 93% were disqualified (5,498).

     Of those, “1,200 ballots [(21.8% of those rejected) were] filed in the wrong precinct.” I don’t see how that was an error on the part of the election worker. Those 1,200 were the result of the voter going to the wrong polling place.

     “Some 2,400 [43.7%] were discounted because affidavits were incompletely or incorrectly filled out.” Those affidavits are filled out by the Voter. Filling them out incorrectly or leaving required information out may be a mistake (and it may not), but that too is not a mistake on the part of the election workers.

     So that’s 65.5% of the Provisional Ballots which were rejected, and they were rejected for defects not by the election workers, but by the voters.

     That leaves 34.5% of the Provisional Ballots which were rejected not accounted for by the article.

131. What part of the “The majority of the 93 percent that were thrown out were disqualified because of technical errors caused by election workers” is unclear?

     Of those, “1,200 ballots [(21.8% of those rejected) were] filed in the wrong precinct.” I don’t see how that was an error on the part of the election worker. Those 1,200 were the result of the voter going to the wrong polling place.

     And you would know this how?

     illing them out incorrectly or leaving required information out may be a mistake (and it may not), but that too is not a mistake on the part of the election workers.

     And you would know this how? The voter was acting under the instructions of the election worker, so it’s equally plausible that the election worker told the voter the wrong thing.

     What there surely is, is confusion. And your immediate reaction is to simply throw out everything, effectively disenfranchising American citizens because of mistakes not within their control or which are relatively minor (you’re taking away a citizen’s vote because they went to the wrong place? Really?)

     I’m sure you think of yourself as a patriotic person, but this strikes me as profoundly unpatriotic.

132. David opines:

     What part of the “The majority of the 93 percent that were thrown out were disqualified because of technical errors caused by election workers” is unclear?

     That’s the NYT’s analysis. To the extent they provide numbers and FACTS, neither support their analysis.

     I had stated:

     Of those, “1,200 ballots [(21.8% of those rejected) were] filed in the wrong precinct.” I don’t see how that was an error on the part of the election worker. Those 1,200 were the result of the voter going to the wrong polling place.

     To which David replied:

     And you would know this how?

     Because I read down to the part where the article said:

     He has lived in the same apartment since the 1980’s, but the city had recently redrawn precinct lines, he discovered when he called election officials to see what had happened to his ballot. His new polling place was just 10 feet from where he filed his doomed ballot, at another table in the high school gymnasium that served several voting districts that day.

     The same level of vigilance before election day would have delivered the hapless voter in the NYT’s annecdote to the correct poling place that whole ten feet from where he went. That same level of vigilance would have seen that voter equipped with the information he needed (his precinct information) to find the right sign at the right table in that gym.

     Having voted in local polling places a few dozen times over the last 28 years, I know to check to see where the proper polling place is well in advance of election day.

     I further stated:

     filling them [affidavits] out incorrectly or leaving required information out may be a mistake (and it may not), but that too is not a mistake on the part of the election workers.

     To which David screeches in reply:

     And you would know this how? The voter was acting under the instructions of the election worker, so it’s equally plausible that the election worker told the voter the wrong thing.

     It’s an Affidavit. “A formal sworn statement of fact, signed by the declarant (who is called the affiant or deponent) and witnessed (as to the veracity of the affiant’s signature) by a taker of oaths.” The factual accuracy of an Affidavit is the sole responsibility of the affiant. Been there, done that, read the fine print. You should try that some time.

     David continues:

     What there surely is, is confusion. And your immediate reaction is to simply throw out everything, effectively disenfranchising American citizens because of mistakes not within their control or which are relatively minor (you’re taking away a citizen’s vote because they went to the wrong place? Really?)

     Really. I plan ahead. I take responsibility for my own actions. I see no reason not to expect the same of those who wish to determine the future of our polity.

     I’m sure you think of yourself as a patriotic person, but this strikes me as profoundly unpatriotic.

     I’m entirely unconcerned by your opinion.

133. Really. I plan ahead. I take responsibility for my own actions. I see no reason not to expect the same of those who wish to determine the future of our polity.

     “I’m sorry, Mr. Graves, you can’t come to this emergency room, as it doesn’t serve your area.”

     “But I’m bleeding to death.”

     “If you had checked ahead of time, you would have known.”

     “But this is the hospital I always go to!”

     “That was changed recently.”

     “But I’m bleeding to death.”

     “Not our problem.”

     He has lived in the same apartment since the 1980’s, but the city had recently redrawn precinct lines, he discovered when he called election officials to see what had happened to his ballot. His new polling place was just 10 feet from where he filed his doomed ballot, at another table in the high school gymnasium that served several voting districts that day.

     And for that you want to take away his vote? The city redrew the lines around him and the apartment he’d lived in for decades, and this is somehow an error of such gigantic proportion that he should be deprived of a foundational right? Wow. That’s really appalling.

     So, if I’m clear on your position, the smallest of errors–misspelled name, wrong polling place, incomplete form–is enough to deprive an American citizen of his or her right to vote? Does this apply to free speech as well? How about the right to bear arms? (“You can’t buy that gun, you misspelled ‘Remington’ on your order form”)

     I’m entirely unconcerned by your opinion.

     That’s good, as my opinion of you is not expressable in words that John Scalzi would find appropriate.

134. David

     Sucks to be you.

     Having found your factual basis rests on the shifting sands of the NYT’s analysis unsupported by facts, you now shift to apples and oranges comparisons.

     Emergency Room visits are, as the very name suggests, Emergencies. Emergencies are, by their very nature, unforeseen occurrences. Elections, in contrast, are regularly scheduled things which roll around on a regular and predictable basis.

     The city redrew the lines around him and the apartment he’d lived in for decades, and this is somehow an error of such gigantic proportion that he should be deprived of a foundational right? Wow. That’s really appalling.

     Re-redistricting does indeed happen. That’s why one needs to check well in advance (six to eight weeks is sufficient) of an election to see if such changes have been made and plan accordingly.

     Is failing to look both ways before crossing a street an egregious fault on the part of a pedestrian? No. Can failing to do so be lethal? Yes. Actions (and failing to act in a timely and responsible manner is indeed an act) have consequences.

     So let’s walk the chain of actions and consequences here:

     Register to Vote in a timely manner. If you do this, and there is a problem, you have time to correct the problem.

     Fail to Register to Vote in timely manner and have the registration rejected. That’s one failure, but you can recover from that. You now have the opportunity to go to the correct polling place to cast a provisional ballot. So if you go to the wrong polling station at this point, you’ve failed twice.

     Cast a provisional ballot at the correct polling place. Still a chance to fail here as well. The voter either correctly completes the affidavit, or they fail to. Again, we’re back to having failed twice.

     And David, I suspect your real problem is that the New York Times hasn’t told you what your opinion is yet in a fashion you can publish here, based on your inability to get past the analysis in the article you linked to the facts which ran counter to that analysis.

135. Having found your factual basis rests on the shifting sands of the NYT’s analysis unsupported by facts, you now shift to apples and oranges comparisons.

     Actually, having found that the NY Times article substantiates exactly what I was saying and that you were reduced to invoking someone who had had his district lines rewritten around him, I moved on to the larger issue, which is that your position is to deprive people of a foundational constitutional right over trivial issues.

     In other words, you believe that an American citizen should have perhaps the single most important right and responsibility that they have taken away from them because of minor errors, either their own or someone else’s.

     Voting–in your perception–thus becomes a moral privilege to be earned by perfection, and anyone who falls short of that must have the government take away their right to vote. Such a remarkable paradox in the heart of a small-government conservative: government must not interfere in people’s lives, finances, gun ownership, etc., except that it _must_ lay down the heavy hand on their most important right: to vote.

     You would lock the window of the house while it burns down around you. I’ll reiterate my earlier point: I cannot imagine a more unpatriotic stance than to justify the deprivation of American citizens of their right to vote because they did not find their way through the apparatus of voting well enough for you.

     You really are the person in the emergency room who demands the insurance card of the critically injured patient before they can get treatment.

136. David/silby/whateveryouchoosetocallyourself,

     You really are the person who doesn’t know what he thinks until the New York Times feeds it too you pre-chewed.

137. Behave, the both of you.

138. John,

     But, but, but…

     He STARTED it!

     /progressive mode.

139. (J. Scalzi, your wordpress installation picks up my wordpress log-in. Interesting.)

     No, Rodney, this has gotten kind of entertaining. Let’s see how far it goes. Here’s a hypothetical situation. Man moves into a town with lots of time before the election, sends off his registration form, checks to see where he should vote. Conservative Republican. Maybe even a plumber. Joe Wsassskjk. Fine upstanding Polish name.

     He shows up to vote and there’s no record of a Joe Wsassskjk, only a Joe Wsasskjk. He’s pretty sure he filled out the registration card correctly, but not 100% sure; it was months ago. Could be his fault, could be some typist somewhere leaving out an ‘s’.

     So, should he get to vote or should he lose that right over a single letter? (recognizing that a provisional ballot, with our 93% rejection rate, is pretty much doomed anyway).

140. David/silby/whateveryouchoosetocallyourself,

     I don’t hold Chicago to be an exemplar of much of anything positive, and certainly not a positive example of election practices.

141. You haven’t answered my question: should Joe get to vote? If he does a provisional ballot, should it be counted?

142. Crap. The above was me. Stupid wordpress.

143. It’s a poor workman who blames his tools.

144. It’s a poor workman who blames his tools.

     You still haven’t answered my question. Should Joe get to vote? If he does get a provisional ballot, should it be counted?

145. Really think we have to look at all options in this day and age. It is also important to consider what the current economic conditions will allow – I still think we may have reached the bottom of the cycle, but will take a lot longer to improve. 100% africa

146. Wow great post. Howewer i don’t think that you have absolute right in this. Can you more sppecific in a new post about this.

147. my mom has a coffe franchise near seattle and she earns a lot from it;:`