The Voting News Weekly: TVN Weekly October 17-23 2011

The Colorado County Clerks Association objected to a court ruled that voted ballots are public documents. The League of Women Voters filed a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s voter ID law. Slate Magazine suggested that proponents of such laws should consider the legacy of laws restricting access to the polls. Charlie White’s request for a special prosecutor to investigate former US Senator Evan Bayh for voter fraud was denied. Tunisians went to the polls this week in the first elections resulting from the “Arab Spring.” Budget woes in California have threatened funding for vote-by-mail. The Federal Voting Assistance Program released a report on military voting in the 2010 election – the first since the passage of the Military Voting Empowerment Act of 2009. The Brennan Center wrote about efforts to restrict voting in Maine. Liberia’s presidential election heads for a run-off after no candidate received the required 50% of the vote.

Editorials: Colorado county clerks crying wolf | Vincent Carroll/The Denver Post
Wisconsin: League of Women Voters files suit against Wisconsin voter ID law | madison.com
Editorials: Voter ID proponents should have to answer for the ugly history of Jim Crow | Slate Magazine
Indiana: Charlie White’s request to investigate Bayh voter fraud claims denied | fox59.com
Tunisia: Tunisians prepare to head to the polls | AlArabiya
California: State Won’t Fund Vote-by-Mail | Central Coast News
National: Military voting jumped last year, report says | The Washington Post
Maine: Ballot Box Bullies | Brennan Center for Justice
Liberia: Opposition denounces poll as ‘fraudulent’ | BBC News

Oct 22, 201
Editorials: Colorado county clerks crying wolf | Vincent Carroll/The Denver Post

Get ready for a battle royal over the integrity of elections in Colorado — and just in time for this state’s apparently pivotal role in the 2012 presidential race. If the clash shapes up as expected, lawmakers will have to choose sides between a would-be election priesthood exempt from public oversight — I’m referring to the county clerks — and advocates for a fully open and accountable government. The clerks, you see, are in a panic about a recent appeals court ruling that says voted ballots are public documents under the Colorado Open Records Act, so long as “the identity of the voter cannot be discerned from the face of that ballot.”

The court’s definition should include the vast majority of ballots, assuming election officials and voters follow the law. But if you listen to the clerks, you’d think the opposite. Embracing Chicken Little as their role model, the clerks’ association issued a statement after the ruling, claiming it “has removed the curtain from our voting booths. Most Coloradans believe their votes should be a secret from their friends, coworkers and even spouses, but today’s ruling means Coloradans’ personal choices can be seen by anyone who asks.” The clerks’ statement is either contemptible fear-mongering or an admission that they supervise a system that comprehensively thumbs its nose at the state constitution’s mandate of anonymous ballots.

Contrary to what the clerks imply, the guarantee of anonymous ballots wasn’t designed to protect voters only from nosy friends, coworkers and spouses. It is supposed to protect us from nosy election officials, too. Either ballots are anonymous or they’re not. If even one person can look at my ballot and deduce my identity using other public information, it’s one too many.

As if eager to incriminate themselves further, however, the association president, Larimer County Clerk Scott Doyle, soon launched another revealing line of attack. He warned several lawmakers that their own votes could be exposed since only “a minimal amount of data mining (utilizing election information that is already considered public record and the voted ballots) would be required to discern how individual voters voted.”

Doyle’s point: The public must be barred from viewing voted ballots because clerks organize and report them in such a way as to allow sophisticated sleuths to link them to actual names.

This stunning claim (or admission) prompted Al Kolwicz of the Colorado Voter Group, which favors public access to ballot records, to file a complaint with the secretary of state. “It is as if Doyle believes that the constitutional requirement for anonymous ballots does not apply to the government … ‚” Kolwicz wrote. “Knowledge of a voter’s choices is just as dangerous in the hands of government as it is in the hands of the public. The system is flawed and must be repaired.”

Full Article: Carroll: County clerks crying wolf — The Denver Post.
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Oct 22, 2011
Wisconsin: League of Women Voters files suit against Wisconsin voter ID law | madison.com

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Network filed suit Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court, challenging the state’s new voter ID law, which is considered by many to be one of the most restrictive in the country. The league argues that the new law violates the state constitution by creating a new group of disenfranchised voters.

“Some people say that you have to show ID to use the library, cash checks, and so on,” says Melanie Ramey, the league’s president in a prepared statement. “That is very different than a right that is guaranteed by the constitution of the state or federal government. Those transactions are generally based on personal business decisions of companies or other entities. They are not rights of citizenship.”

The law was supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed into law May 25 by Gov. Scott Walker. It only allows people to vote after showing Wisconsin driver’s licenses, state-issued ID cards, certain very limited student IDs, military IDs, passports, naturalization certificates or IDs issued by a tribe based in Wisconsin.

The state will issue free IDs to those who ask for one at a state Department of Voter Vehicle’s office. Those who don’t know to ask for a free card pay a $28 fee.

Full Article: Capitol Report: League of Women Voters files suit against voter ID law.

An elderly black woman in Tennessee can’t vote because she can’t produce her marriage certificate. Threatening letters blanket black neighborhoods warning that creditors and police officers will check would-be voters at the polls, or that elections are taking place on the wrong day. Thirty-eight states have instituted new rules prohibiting same-day registration and early voting on Sundays. All of this is happening as part of an effort to eradicate a problem that is statistically rarer than heavy-metal bands with exploding drummers: vote fraud.

Many commentators have remarked on the unavoidable historical memories these images provoke: They are so clearly reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. So why shouldn’t the proponents of draconian new voting laws have to answer for their ugly history?

Proponents of reforming the voting process seem blind to the fact that all of these seemingly neutral reforms hit poor and minority voters out of all proportion. (The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that while about 12 percent of Americans don’t have a government-issued photo ID, the figure for African-Americans is closer to 25 percent, and in some Southern states perhaps higher.) The reason minorities are so much harder hit by these seemingly benign laws has its roots in the tragic legacy of race in this country. They still work because that old black man, born into Jim Crow in 1940, may have had no birth certificate because he was not born in a hospital because of poverty or discrimination. Names may have been misspelled on African-American birth certificates because illiterate midwives sometimes gave erroneous names.

It’s true that the most egregious methods of minority vote suppression from the 19th century—the poll tax, the literacy test, the white primary—have disappeared. And we know (and can take some solace in the knowledge) that the worst of these indignities have not been recycled in the 21st century, in part because of the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But a look at the history of voting rights in this country shows that the current state efforts to suppress minority voting—from erecting barriers to registration and early voting to voter ID laws—look an awful lot like methods pioneered by the white supremacists from another era that achieved the similar results.

One device that was particularly effective was to require voters to register periodically and to make the registration process more elaborate than might seem necessary. (These rules were then often relaxed for white voters.) Residency requirements, both within and outside the South, had the same, intended, effect of simply keeping people off the rolls. Under one law passed in Indiana in 1917, for example, the applicant had to specify the material his house was made of, his nearest neighbor’s full name, and other proofs of residency. And of course then, as now, misinformation about registration and voting requirements, directed to some constituents and not to others, was a popular device for selective disfranchisement.

Full Article: Voter ID Laws: Their proponents should have to answer for the ugly history of Jim Crow. — Slate Magazine.

The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office released a statement Thursday stating they have declined Indiana Secretary of State Charles White’s request to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of voter fraud by former Senator Evan Bayh and his wife, Susan.

White is accused of voting in the wrong precinct during the May 2010 primary among several other charges. He is accused using his ex-wife’s address to vote. White maintains he was the victim of an innocent mistake. White was indicted on seven felony charges in March, including voter fraud, theft and perjury.

The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office said they reviewed documents delivered to them by White, who accused the Bayh’s of committing voter fraud by voter fraud in May 2011, because they had property in both Washington, D.C. and Marion County.

The following is a statement from the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office regarding White’s allegations against the Bayh’s:

We have reviewed the materials delivered to this office by Charles White. In those documents, he requested that the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office seek the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate his allegations of voter fraud by Evan and Susan Bayh. We decline to grant Mr. White’s request to appoint a special prosecutor. If Mr. White disagrees with this determination, Indiana law affords him the opportunity to personally petition the court to appoint a special prosecutor.

As to Mr. White’s allegations of improper voter registration, Mr. White does not include allegations that would lead one to conclude that Evan and Susan Bayh intend to abandon their Marion County residency. In essence, Mr. White alleges that Mr. and Mrs. Bayh have committed voter fraud by voting in the May, 2011, Indiana primary because they maintain residences in both Washington, D.C., and Marion County, Indiana. The mere fact that a person maintains a residence in a state other than Indiana – even if the out-of-state property is more valuable than the Indiana property – is insufficient to conclude that the person has committed fraud by voting in Indiana. In fact, the documents attached to Mr. White’s complaint, namely the Indiana voter registration records and property tax statements, lend support to the notion that the Bayhs do not intend to abandon Marion County as their residence.

Full Article: Charlie White’s request to investigate Bayh voter fraud claims denied — fox59.com….

Campaigning closes in Tunisia Friday, two days before its first democratic elections, with a formerly banned Islamist party poised to dominate an assembly that will pave the way for a new government.

Nine months after the ouster of strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in a popular revolt that sparked region-wide pro-democracy uprisings, more than seven million potential voters will have a final chance to hear the main parties’ election promises at closing rallies planned countrywide. Campaigning closes at midnight.

On Sunday, three days after the Arab Spring claimed its latest victim with the killing of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Tunisians will seek to turn the page on decades of post-colonial autocratic rule by electing 217 members of a constituent assembly from more than 10,000 candidates.

Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi urged Tunisians on Thursday to go vote “without fear”, and sought to give assurances that the poll will be fair.

The Islamist Ennahda, predicted by pollsters to win up to 30 percent of the votes, had warned Wednesday of a risk of voter fraud and vowed new uprisings if this was the case.

The election system has been designed to include as many parties as possible in the assembly that will re-write the constitution.

The body will have to address such crucial issues as the form of the new government and the guaranteeing of basic rights, including gender equality many fear Ennahda would seek to diminish.

It will also have the loaded task of appointing a president who will assign a caretaker government to run the country for the duration of the drafting process, expected to take a year.

The stakes are high. The success or failure of the election will send a strong signal to the people of the Arab world who drew courage from Tunisia’s ouster of a dictator to launch their own revolutions which have since toppled the rulers of Egypt and Libya and still threaten others.

Full Article: Tunisians prepare to head to the polls.

The state’s budget problems have reached your mailbox and it could hamper your right to vote by mail in years to come. Central Coast counties are making sure you still get your ballot, but it will cost you. “It’s very frustrating because voters are caught up in the budget process,” said Monterey County head of elections Linda Tulet. She said that’s because this past June the state eliminated the funding counties receive for the permanent vote by mail option. To understand why you should care, I need to take you back several years. State law used to allow only certain people to permanently vote by mail. For example: people with a disability or active military.

But in 2002, California changed the law to allow anyone to sign-up for a permanent vote by mail ballot and the state footed the bill for the cost to vote by mail. Now, because of budget cuts each county must decide whether to foot the bill for you to get your mail-in ballot come June 2012. “Now 63% of our voters are signed up to receive a ballot in the mail,” said Tulet.

Monterey County has the highest vote by mail percentage on the Central Coast at 63%, 50% of San Benito County voters and 40% of voters in Santa Cruz County are signed up for permanent vote by mail. Santa Cruz County said in last year’s election mail-in ballots exceeded people voting at the polls.

“If you mail a ballot to people, they have a higher chance of returning it than if they have to decide to go vote on election day…This will effect that turn out absolutely,” said Tulet. Now, Tullet stands near the empty boxes where the elections department organizes the mail in ballots, saying, that knowing 101,000 people will be expecting their ballot in the mail, she would feel like she was violating voter rights if the county didn’t offer it.

Full Article: Campaign 2012: State Won’t Fund Vote-by-Mail — Central Coast News KION/KCBA.

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Oct 19, 2011

National: Military voting jumped last year, report says | The Washington Post

Buoyed by a new law requiring states to make absentee ballots more accessible to military troops serving overseas, troops voted at a higher rate than the general population in last year’s midterm elections, according to a new report. Overall, 46 percent of the military voted in the 2010 midterm elections, a 21 percent jump from the 2006 midterms and slightly higher than the 45.5 percent of the general population that cast ballots last year, according to a report released Tuesday by the Federal Voting Assistance Program. FVAP is a Pentagon office responsible for overseeing the distribution of absentee ballots to troops and their spouses.

Voter registration last year among troops also was higher than the general public; 65 percent of Americans registered to vote in 2010, but 77 percent of troops registered. Despite the increases, FVAP said more than 112,000 military voters never received ballots they requested in 2010, a 12 percent increase from 2008.

The report’s authors credited Congress for a 2009 law that forced states to mail absentee ballots 45 days before Election Day to Americans who want to vote while abroad.

Full Article: Military voting jumped last year, report says — The Federal Eye — The Washington Post.

Sometimes political operatives go too far. Opponents of Maine’s long-standing and popular same-day voter registration system killed it in the legislature this year – but they still have to face an unhappy public at the polls. Sadly, their main campaign tactic appears to be producing lists that smear the good names of Maine residents, and the integrity of the state’s elections, with unfounded insinuations of election crimes.

First there was the list of 206: 206 students living at the University of Maine, who had come to identify Maine as their new home, but paid out-of-state tuition under the University’s strict rules. Suddenly a politician holds a press conference, and their hometowns, initials, and birth dates appear on a blacklist of students that “may have committed voter fraud.” The secretary of state then folded this list into a serious criminal investigation, which proceeded in spite of the easily-discovered fact that the sole criterion used to compile it – that the 206 paid out-of-state tuition – has nothing to do with their eligibility to vote in Maine.

The secretary recently confirmed that his investigation of the list revealed no evidence of fraud, but inexplicably, even as he affirmed that students have every legal right to vote where they live, he questioned their patriotism for doing so. The ACLU of Maine and allied organizations wrote Maine Secretary of State Charles Summers today, demanding he send a new letter clarifying these voters’ rights and correcting the record.

Then came the list of 19: 19 young adults who availed themselves of Maine’s longstanding tradition of election day registration in 2004. But these voters registered from a nontraditional residence – the Holiday Inn. Rather than simply ask “why?” partisans started pounding tables in September, using this “uncovered” evidence as proof that Mainers should vote to uphold the repeal of same-day registration.

It took a simple phone call to discover that during the 2004 school year, the entire Holiday Inn was, in fact, a St. Joseph’s College dorm housing transfer students whose campus had been ravaged by Hurricane Ivan. Long after the hotel confirmed this fact to the media, the press release “revealing” these students remains on a state political party’s website, ignoring the far less scandalous truth. The only thing these 19 Mainers appear to be guilty of is having had the gall to be displaced by a natural disaster during an election year.

Full Article: Ballot Box Bullies | Brennan Center for Justice.

The parties, which include candidates in second and third place so far, said the National Election Commission has manipulated vote-counting in favour of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Partial results show Mrs Sirleaf leading, but short of the majority needed to avoid a run-off vote. And the election commission later rejected the opposition charges. It has until 26 October to announce the final results.

Under the rules, if no candidate scores an overall majority, a run-off between the two front-runners will be held early next month. The opposition say they will not accept the result if counting goes on.

An opposition statement said: “We wish to notify the Liberian people of the massive fraud being carried out by the National Elections Commission in the handling and reporting of the presidential election results in favour of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the Unity Party.”

“We direct all our party agents assigned at (the electoral commission) in all capacities to withdraw effective immediately,” the statement read. “If the process continues we will not accept the results.”

Hours later, the National Election Commission chairman James Fromayah said: “It doesn’t pose any credibility problems. All the parties participated in the elections. The counting was done and both the local population and the international observers that came acclaimed the process to be free, fair and transparent.”

Full Article: BBC News — Liberia opposition denounce poll as ‘fraudulent’.

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The Voting News Weekly: TVN Weekly October 17-23 2011

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