District of Columbia

Articles about voting issues in The District of Columbia.

D.C. elections officials condemn O’Keefe voting ploy | The Washington Post

Apr 122012

Elections officials in the District are condemning conservative activist James O’Keefe as a “prankster” for his latest hidden-camera ploy, in which he sent an associate inside a D.C. polling place to demonstrate the need for “voter ID” laws by showing he could vote as the U.S. attorney general. In a statement, the Board of Elections and Ethics said the O’Keefe associate was “misrepresenting his identity” by walking into Spring Valley’s Precinct 9 on Tuesday and asking a poll worker if Eric Holder appeared on the rolls. But a representative of O’Keefe’s Project Veritas said no laws were broken in the incident. The attorney general is indeed registered to vote in the precinct, and the poll worker invited the man to sign the poll book and proceed to vote. At that point, the man inquired about providing ID and was told it was not necessary before he left. The board said that the Holder incident is one of “multiple incidents” that took place last Tuesday that it continues to investigate. O’Keefe teased other hidden-camera episodes in the Holder video. Read More »

James O’Keefe tries to defend voter ID laws by filming D.C. election workers | The Washington Post

Apr 112012

Conservative activist James O’Keefe’s latest project aims to lampoon the mostly Democratic opposition to “voter ID” laws, and does so by focusing hidden cameras on last week’s D.C. primary elections. In the first of several promised clips, an O’Keefe associate tries to see if he can vote as Eric H. Holder, attorney general of the United States and longtime Spring Valley resident. Why Holder? Under his leadership, the Justice Department has objected to laws requiring voters to present identification in states subject to preclearance under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. People like O’Keefe think voter ID laws are a common sense way to prevent voter fraud; people like Holder say they address a problem that doesn’t exist, and the laws would give officials new pretext to keep legitimate voters from casting ballots. Read More »

Hackers Elect Futurama’s Bender to the Washington DC School Board | PCWorld

Mar 052012

Electronic voting has earned a pretty bad reputation for being insecure and completely unreliable. Well, get ready to add another entry to e-voting’s list of woes. One Bender Bending Rodríguez was elected to the 2010 school board in Washington DC. A team of hackers from the University of Michigan got Bender elected as a write-in candidate who stole every vote from the real candidates. Bender, of course, is a cartoon character from the TV series Futurama. This was not some nefarious attack from a group of rogue hackers: The DC school board actually dared hackers to crack its new Web-based absentee voting system four days ahead of the real election. University of Michigan professor Alexander Halderman, along with two graduate students, did the deed within a few hours. Read More »

House Backs D.C. Special Elections Bill | Roll Call

Mar 022012

The House backed legislation this evening that would shorten the window between a vacancy in a local office and when a special election may be held to fill it. The bill passed on a voice vote. “Today [is a] small change to everyone except to the people of the District of Columbia, who consistently have to live under a rule that costs the voters and the residents of the District of Columbia … enormous additional dollars,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which oversees D.C. affairs. This is the second time Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has pursued such legislation, which would apply to unexpected D.C. Council, mayoral and attorney general vacancies. Read More »

D.C. Voting Rights: Should Local Corruption Be Used To Justify City's Disenfranchisement? | Huffington Post

Jan 092012

It’s a common argument used in the case against greater voting rights or statehood for the District of Columbia: Why should the residents of the nation’s capital be given full and equal voting representation in Congress when its local officials have been shown to be corrupt? The situation involving D.C. Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), who resigned last week before pleading guilty to federal charges that he stole more than $350,000 from the city and filed false tax returns, certainly doesn’t help the D.C. voting rights cause.

The most recent corruption spectacle is particularly ill-timed. A delegation of D.C. officials will soon be heading to New Hampshire to press the cause of the “Last Colony” before state legislators in Concord, who could pass a resolution calling for greater voting rights for the residents of the nation’s capital.

As the Examiner reported this weekend, Councilmember David Catania (I-At-Large) is particularly angry with the current state of affairs in the D.C. government, which, beyond the Thomas drama, involves ongoing federal inquires into allegations of campaign corruption by Mayor Vincent Gray (D) and D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown (D). Read More »

Occupy DC Hunger Strike: Adrian Parsons Plans To Starve For D.C. Voting Rights | HuffungtonPost

Dec 082011

Adrian Parsons, still wearing the blue bracelet from his arrest Sunday for defending Occupy DC’s barn from Park Police, is sitting at Saxby’s coffee shop just north of McPherson Square on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. He’s eating an almond cheese danish. For now, Parsons, who has been living in Occupy DC’s downtown D.C. encampment for more than two months, is eating as many cheese danish as he wants — and pasta and anything else he’s in the mood for. But on Thursday at noon — “That’s a tentative time,” he says — the tall and already quite skinny performance artist begins a hunger strike for D.C. voting rights that could go on for a long time. ”I’m eating a lot of ice cream,” he says.

Parsons and three others — the hunger strike is not an Occupy DC action, but the would-be strikers are all occupiers — will be asking for three things as a condition of ending their strike: D.C. budget autonomy, legislative autonomy and voting rights. Currently, the city’s budget must be approved by Congress and the president, and its legislation must be reviewed by Congress. The District has no representation in the Senate and only nonvoting representation in the House. Read More »

Rabbi files lawsuit against D.C. elections board | JTA

May 312011

An Orthodox rabbi in Washington and two of his congregants have filed a class-action suit against the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics.

The complaint, filed May 27, claims that the board placed an unconstitutional burden on observant Jews by scheduling a special election on the last day of Passover this year. Read More »

Cheh battling to open all precincts for special election | Freeman Klopott | DC | Washington Examiner

Jan 192011

Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh wants to keep all 143 of the District’s voting precincts open for the special election to elect an at-large council member scheduled for April, and she’s asked the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics to dig deep on cost-saving opportunities.

Like the rest of city government, the elections board is under pressure to find way to cut costs as the District scrambles to reduce spending in the face of declining revenue. Earlier this month, the board of elections raised the possibility of opening just 16 voting centers as a way of saving about $200,000 for the special election to fill the seat vacated by Kwame Brown when he was sworn in as council chairman. Residents could cast ballots at any of the 16 centers regardless of where they live, and some studies have shown that voter participation goes up as a result.

via Cheh battling to open all precincts for special election | Freeman Klopott | DC | Washington Examiner.

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