NOVEMBER 4, 2008 COMING UP!
Voting in Chicago at the last Presidential Election...Florida and the "hanging chads" in 2000.

Election matters and voter fraud around the U.S.A. (and progress to "clean" elections)
Supreme Court Upholds Voter ID Law in Indiana
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 28, 2008
Filed at 11:00 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.

In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud.

It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush. But the voter ID ruling lacked the conservative-liberal split that marked the 2000 case.

The law ''is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,''' Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy. Stevens was a dissenter in Bush v. Gore in 2000.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also agreed with the outcome, but wrote separately.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented, just as they did in 2000.

More than 20 states require some form of identification at the polls. Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, but struck down Missouri's. Monday's decision comes a week before Indiana's presidential primary.

The decision also could spur efforts to pass similar laws in other states.

Ken Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, said he hadn't reviewed the decision, but he was ''extremely disappointed'' by it. Falk has said voter ID laws inhibit voting, and a person's right to vote ''is the most important right.'' The ACLU brought the case on behalf of Indiana voters.

The case concerned a state law, passed in 2005, that was backed by Republicans as a way to deter voter fraud. Democrats and civil rights groups opposed the law as unconstitutional and called it a thinly veiled effort to discourage elderly, poor and minority voters -- those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats.

There is little history in Indiana of either in-person voter fraud -- of the sort the law was designed to thwart -- or voters being inconvenienced by the law's requirements. For the overwhelming majority of voters, an Indiana driver license serves as the identification.

''We cannot conclude that the statute imposes 'excessively burdensome requirements' on any class of voters,'' Stevens said.

Stevens' opinion suggests that the outcome could be different in a state where voters could provide evidence that their rights had been impaired.

But in dissent, Souter said Indiana's voter ID law ''threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state's citizens.''

Scalia, favoring a broader ruling in defense of voter ID laws, said, ''The universally applicable requirements of Indiana's voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The burden of acquiring, possessing and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not 'even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.'''

Stevens said the partisan divide in Indiana, as well as elsewhere, was noteworthy. But he said that preventing fraud and inspiring voter confidence were legitimate goals of the law, regardless of who backed or opposed it.

Indiana provides IDs free of charge to the poor and allows voters who lack photo ID to cast a provisional ballot and then show up within 10 days at their county courthouse to produce identification or otherwise attest to their identity.

Stevens said these provisions also help reduce the burden on people who lack driver licenses.
Broken Polls
NYTIMES Editorial
Published: December 24, 2007

Election officials hate to admit how vulnerable their voting systems are to errors and vote theft. The Ohio and Colorado secretaries of state, however, have recently spoken openly about the weaknesses of the voting machines used in their states — and are pushing to get them fixed. Election officials in other states, whose voting machines have similar vulnerabilities, should follow Ohio’s and Colorado’s lead.

Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s new secretary of state, has been working to promote fair and honest elections, with particular attention to voting machines. She commissioned an expert study of the five kinds of voting systems used in Ohio. Her report, released on Dec. 14, revealed serious security flaws that could put the state’s elections in jeopardy.

Some are simple. For example, the locks used to secure machines and ballots can easily be picked. This is a problem critics of electronic voting have been pointing out for several years, but it has not been addressed. Other flaws are more technical, like the fact that the computer servers that tally the ballots are poorly guarded. An infiltrator could slip malicious computer software onto them, which could change the results of an election.

Ms. Brunner has made some good recommendations for how to proceed. Most important, she called for Cuyahoga County, the state’s most populous, to switch from touch-screen to optical scan machines, which read ballots that voters mark by hand, like a standardized test. Optical scans are far more trustworthy and cost-effective than touch screens — and they provide a record of each vote. On Friday, the county voted to make the switch.

In Colorado, Secretary of State Mike Coffman has decertified electronic voting machines and tabulating machines. Acting in response to a court ruling, Mr. Coffman confirmed critics’ charges that the machines are unreliable and too vulnerable to tampering. One model, he found, could be disabled if a voter passed a magnet over it. In another model, he found a 1 percent error rate in counting ballots, which is clearly unacceptable.

In both states, the burden is now on legislators and governors. There are battles looming over what steps are necessary to make voting secure, and how much should be spent on them. This may mean short-term uncertainty, but it is better than letting the problems fester, perhaps throwing doubt on next year’s elections.

Other states have election systems that are far worse than those of Ohio and Colorado. A significant number of states still use touch-screen voting machines that do not produce paper trails, paper records that can be audited to double-check the results recorded on the computers. These systems are simply too unreliable to trust, given what is now known about electronic voting.

Election officials across the country should be asking the sort of tough questions Ms. Brunner and Mr. Coffman have. In 2000, the nation only confronted the flaws in its voting technology after a presidential election was irreparably harmed. With just under a year to go before the next presidential election, the time to fix these problems is now.
Midwestern Election Systems Exposed
NYTIMES
By Ariel Alexovich
December 4, 2007,  4:02 pm

The critical swing state of Ohio didn’t benefit from the home field advantage in a new study that looked at the election processes in five upper Midwest states – Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Three election law professors at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law determined that the Buckeye State’s highly centralized election system bore the most significant problems out of the five. The trio presented their findings – and their nonpartisan book “From Registrations to Recounts: The Election Ecosystems of Five Midwestern States” – during a forum held today at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

Click here for the full report, which is part of the A.E.I.-Brookings Institution Election Reform Project.

Tight races in 2000, 2004 and 2006 brought the until-then mundane process of holding elections to the national spotlight – especially the Bush vs. Gore debacle, which led to Congress’s passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. The act created the Election Assistance Commission, set minimum election administration standards and called for the elimination of punch-card voting (chads, ugh).
The Ohio State professors spent one year investigating election reform from the federal down to the municipal level. They chose these five states because they’ve historically played a critical role in national elections and their election systems vary widely, thus creating a good microcosm for the country, said co-author Steven F. Huefner.

Illinois ranked second-worst in the study because of its history of voting fraud (think dead people voting in Chicago) and its weak, inconsistent central election authority.

Michigan has an outdated, decade-old voter database, and Detroit badly mishandled absentee ballots in a 2005 municipal election. But the state earned praise for its uniform system of optical-scan electronic voting.

Like Illinois, Wisconsin has a decentralized election authority, but its nonpartisan municipal leaders handle Election Day professionally, the report says.

Minnesota, the big winner, has the country’s highest percentage of voter participation. Such high civic involvement has translated into pride in the integrity of its elections. Minnesota and Wisconsin also both use the Election Day Registration (E.D.R.) format, allowing first-time voters to enter the database when they enter the precinct to cast their ballot.
Mr. Foley calls E.D.R. a “cost cutter” that helps “avoid Election Day calamities because of its simplicity.”

That’s not the case in Ohio. Its problems stem from having a powerful, not to mention partisan, elected secretary of state at the helm of the electoral process. As we’ve seen in the past, the secretary of state largely determines whether to call for provisional ballots, for example, if voters are still lined up waiting to vote after the election cutoff time. (Remember, in 2004 some Ohioans stood in line for hours to cast ballots…) The secretary also determines whether or not to count such provisional ballots – although that’s also subject to a state Supreme Court factor, where the likewise elected, partisan court gets a say in determining how elections are tallied.

Election power in Ohio is centralized in some respects and entirely disorganized in others. Co-author Edward B. Foley notes that 10 percent of provisional ballots from Toledo-area residents were rejected because of voter registration problems. In the Columbus region, 3 percent were thrown out.
Additionally, no provisional ballots were discarded in Columbus just because the voter failed to provide the proper identification – an “unbelievably complicated law,” Mr. Foley admitted. In Toledo, that figure was 7 percent.

“Inconsistency equals inequalities,” Mr. Foley said.

All of these inconsistencies are a result of “too much change too fast,” said Conny McCormack, the Los Angeles County election coordinator. “What everyone wants is perfection in elections, but no one can deliver.”

The panelists emphasized that they aren’t seeking more Congressional oversight of elections. They do, however, offer nine ways states can improve their election systems:
1. Statewide equality should generally trump local autonomy.
2. A strong state elections authority is critical.
3. States should work to improve both access and accuracy by relaxing barriers to registration adn complying with existing federal laws on registration.
4. States should provide clear guidance on provisional ballots
5. States should consider in-person early voting instead of expanded absentee voting.
6. Election integrity efforts should focus on “insider” fraud.
7. State and local officials must keep up poll worker recruitment and training.
8. States should reexamine their post-election procedures, to ensure fair and prompt resolution of disputes.
9. Congress should revisit the statute governing presidential election disputes.

“The prospect of a change in the next six months is small, but not inconceivable,” Mr. Huefner said.
Added Mr. Foley: “If there is a will, there’s a way with informal mechanisms.”
Thousands have already voted
Whidbey News-Times
By Nathan Whalen
Aug 15 2007

The Island County Auditor’s Office has received approximately 5,000 ballots back from voters for the Aug. 21 primary election.

Elections workers are busy sorting through the ballots for the all-mail election to make sure each one is undamaged and correctly filled out. Deputy Auditor Michele Reagan said staff members physically inspect each ballot. Any damaged or questionable ballots are saved to be reviewed by the canvassing board.

In all, the auditor’s office mailed out approximately 17,500 ballots last week to voters in Oak Harbor and Coupeville, the only places in the county where a primary is needed.

Oak Harbor voters will pare the number of mayoral, city council and school board candidates from three to two for each position. Coupeville voters will do the same for a city council position. The survivors will advance to the general election in November.

Reagan said it’s hard to say what kind of turnout will take place for the primary election. There is still a week to go for voters to mail in their ballots, although it might be a good sign that nearly one-third have already voted and returned their ballots.

Reagan said she expects staff to start scanning ballots into the computer on Friday, preparing them for the first count at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 21.

Statewide, Secretary of State Sam Reed predicts 34 percent of eligible voters will participate in the state’s first August primary election. It was moved up one month to give auditors more time to prepare for the general election.

Needs Of Voters Must Come First
Letter tot he Editor, Hartford Courant
December 31, 2005

Sandra Hutton Russo, president of the Connecticut Town Clerks Association [letter, Dec. 24, "No Need To Extend Deadline"], dismissed calls for the state to slow down and take a more careful look at all available voting machine technologies as the "misguided desires of a small group." In her attempts to discredit critics, she ignores the fact that other larger groups, along with The Courant's editorial board, have made similar calls for action to the secretary of the state. These groups include the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and the League of Women Voters.

Although being fair to bidders is a worthy objective, it is trumped by the needs of taxpayers and voters for fair, accurate, accessible, affordable and efficient elections. Bidders responding to the request for proposals were aware of its provisions for change by the secretary of the state. The RFP that was issued focused only on the Help America Vote Act's accessibility requirements. The RFP process is being bypassed entirely for the additional systems to replace the lever machines. Never were vendors asked to propose complete solutions for Connecticut's voting needs.

Despite the secretary's good-faith effort to provide people with disabilities the chance to vote without needing assistance, the technology emerging from the state bid process fails to achieve that goal. All three machines demonstrated serious accessibility deficiencies and arguably do not fully comply with HAVA's accessibility requirements.

The secretary should continue to follow the good-faith efforts of many of her counterparts around the country as they work to delay the process in order to develop and acquire more accessible, more reliable and more cost-effective technology options.

Luther Weeks
Glastonbury

The writer is a member of TrueVote Connecticut, a nonpartisan advocacy group.
2 charged in voter fraud;  Denver pair accused of falsely filling out forms to boost pay
By Gary Gerhardt, Rocky Mountain News
October 28, 2004

Denver prosecutors charged two people Wednesday with falsely filling out multiple voter forms to boost their pay in a paid registration drive.

Monique Mora, 20, and Pelonne Page, 21, both of Denver, were charged with six counts of procuring false registrations, a misdemeanor with a maximum punishment of up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine.
 
District Attorney Bill Ritter said the pair worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, which is one of a number of organizations that paid people to sign up voters this year.  Those registration drives helped drive the voter rolls up by more than 300,000 but have spawned a number of investigations into fraudulent and duplicate registrations and made some officials uneasy about the integrity of the election process.

Criminal cases are pending against four people for questionable registrations in the metro area, and there may be more before investigations are completed.

Jim Fleischmann, ACORN's regional director for election-related activities, said from his Montana office Wednesday that the group is proud of having signed 32,000 new voters in Colorado this year, but is sorry that two of its people tried to pad their pay through phony registrations.

"We pay by the hour, not the registration, and by duplicating about 30 cards, they could justify billing us for hours they didn't work," he said.   Fleischmann said the group has an internal audit and often catches cards with similar names except for middle initials and that they're registered to the same address or that the same name is spelled different ways.

"And when these duplicates come through the board of elections office and are processed, they are caught and we are advised by the local DA's offices."

Ritter said that is what happened in this case and ACORN was helpful in backtracking to find out who the people involved were.  "There was no indication that any of the people intended to vote more than once," Ritter said.  "So far this election, we have about 150 to 200 suspicious voter registration cards, but no other charges have yet been filed," he said.

"We don't feel there is any grand conspiracy out there to corrupt the outcome of the election, but these simply were people wanting to make money without doing the work."

Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant said his office is investigating about 10 suspicious voter registration cases and he doesn't know when they will be complete or whether there will be any arrests.  "We still have a voter fraud allegation pending from the August primary election," he said.

While most cases are misdemeanors, Grant warned they could easily become felonies if someone forges the name of another on a card or if a person attempts to overcharge his employer by $500 or more.

Watching the polls

• Handling complaints: Thomas O'Rourke, an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado, will be on duty while the polls are open Nov. 2 to handle complaints of election fraud and voting rights abuses in consultation with U.S. Justice Department headquarters in Washington.

• Law enforcement: The FBI also will have special agents available in Colorado to receive allegations of election fraud and other election abuses.

• How to contact: The FBI can be reached at 303-629-7171, or in Colorado Springs at 719-633-3852.

• To file a complaint: Complaints about ballot access problems or discrimination can be made directly to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, voting section, in Washington at 1-800-253-3931 or 202-307-2767.

Pending voter registration fraud cases:

• Monique Mora, 20, and Pelonne Page, 21, both of Denver, charged with six counts of procuring false registrations, a misdemeanor.

• John S. MaCarthy, 27, of Aurora, charged in August by the Colorado Attorney General's Office in Jefferson County District Court with four counts of forgery of a public record, a felony, and one count of procuring false voter registrations, a misdemeanor.

• Ajmal Shah, 29, of Denver, a citizen of Afghanistan who has lived in the United States since 1983 and registered to vote last year as a Republican, is not a U.S. citizen and is not entitled to vote, according to federal prosecutors. He is charged with making a false claim or statement in registering to vote, a felony.

gerhardtg@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5202