The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly July 30 – August 5 2012

Top Pennsylvania Election Official Admits She Doesn’t Know Voter ID Requirements

As we approach the November elections, The US Election Assistance Commission remains without a single commissioner. The New York Times considers the role of hyper-partisanship in delaying improvements to voting systems. Constitution Daily considers whether the conflict of Voter ID laws could lead to a constitutional Crisis. The Nation takes a Cartesian look at Voter ID. The Department of Justice has taken steps to block the resumption of Florida’s voter purge. An effort to extend early voting opportunities for all voters has been used as partisan attack in Ohio. After a week of testimony, Pennsylvania expected a decision on the fate of its new Voter ID law in mid August and Romanian President Traian Basescu has survived an impeachment referendum because turnout did not reach the required 50% threshold.

National: Federal Voting Commissioners AWOL As Election Approaches | Huffington Post
National: Partisan Rifts Hinder Efforts to Improve U.S. Voting System | NYTimes.com
Blogs: Is the fight over voter ID laws a prelude to a constitutional crisis? | Constitution Daily
Editorials: I Have Photo ID, Therefore I Am | The Nation
Florida: DoJ says Florida’s voter purge violates federal law | MiamiHerald.com
Blogs: Obama, Democrats suing to block military voting in Ohio? Update: No | Hot Air
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania voter ID law case draws to a close | CBS
Romania: President Basescu Survives Impeachment Referendum Due to Low Turnout | Turkish Weekly

Aug 02, 2012
National: Federal Voting Commissioners AWOL As Election Approaches | Huffington Post

As local officials gear up for a national election where razor-thin margins could tip the balance of power, the federal agency established after the Florida ballot disaster of 2000 to ensure that every vote gets counted is leaderless and adrift. There are supposed to be four commissioners on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), but right now there are none. The last executive director resigned in November, and the commissioners must vote to appoint a new one. President Barack Obama nominated two new Democratic commissioners last year, but congressional Republicans are trying to defund the agency entirely — which means for now no Republican nominations and no confirmation of the Democrats’ candidates. ”If it is still as toothless by November 6 as it is today, I would have every expectation that things will fall through the cracks,” said Estelle H. Rogers, legislative director at Project VOTE, a nonpartisan group that supports voting accessibility. Rogers said the EAC has provided important assistance to local officials with respect to registration forms, poll worker training and issue alerts. ”It is kind of disgraceful that we’re headed into a major election and the only federal agency that’s devoted to election administration has zero commissioners,” said Lawrence Norden, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

The commission’s staff continues to serve as a clearinghouse for information to the public and election officials, and tests and certifies voting machines, but is limited in what it can do going forward. Without commissioners, the EAC can’t adopt new policies, issue formal advisory opinions or update regulations. Norden said he worries that there are no federal standards for the next generation of voting machines. “We’re still working off a standard that was developed in 2005,” he said.

Norden also criticized Republican attempts to get rid of the agency, saying that with more than 5,000 election jurisdictions, it’s important to have a federal clearinghouse for voting system problems. Opponents of the EAC act as if the Florida ballot-counting problems were ancient history, said Norden. “But it’s like yesterday that we decided we needed this agency because of all these problems. It’s amazing to me.”

Full Article: Federal Voting Commissioners AWOL As Election Approaches.

Twelve years after a too-close-to-call presidential contest imploded in a hail of Florida punch card ballots and a bitter 5-to-4 Supreme Court ruling for George W. Bush, the country’s voting systems remain as deeply flawed as ever with any prospect of fixing them mired in increasing levels of partisanship. The most recent high-profile fights have been about voter identification requirements and whether they are aimed at stopping fraud or keeping minority group members and the poor from voting. But there are worse problems with voter registration, ballot design, absentee voting and electoral administration. In Ohio, the recommendations of a bipartisan commission on ways to reduce the large number of provisional ballots and long lines at polling stations in 2008 have come to naught after a Republican takeover of both houses of the legislature in 2010. In New York, a redesign of ballots that had been widely considered hard to read and understand was passed by the State Assembly this year. But a partisan dispute in the Senate on other related steps led to paralysis. And states have consistently failed to fix a wide range of electoral flaws identified by a bipartisan commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III in 2005. In Florida, for example, the commission found 140,000 voters who had also registered in four other states — some 46,000 of them in New York City alone. When 1,700 of them registered for absentee ballots in the other state, no one investigated. Some 60,000 voters were also simultaneously registered in North and South Carolina.

The panel suggested changes including impartial election administration, better voter list maintenance, uniform photo ID requirements and paper trails for electronic voting machines. But Republicans in some states liked the ideas that fit their notion of what was wrong — potential for fraud. And Democrats preferred others — increasing voter participation. Little was done. “This has all become incredibly politicized in recent years,” noted Daniel Tokaji, an election law professor at Ohio State University. “If you go back in our history, you can find voter registration rules used to exclude blacks or immigrants from voting. But since 2000 it seems to have gotten worse. Both parties have realized that election administration rules can make the difference between victory and defeat in a close election. And unlike virtually every other country in the world, our systems are administered by partisan officials elected as candidates of their parties.”

Robert A. Pastor, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University, who was executive director of the Carter-Baker commission, said the voter identification fights of recent months pale when compared with some of these other issues, especially voter registration. Only half of eligible voters in the country are registered and few of them lack photo IDs, he said. “The proponents of voter ID are adamant that it is essential to stop electoral fraud even though there is hardly any evidence of voter impersonation, and the opponents are sure that it will lead to voter suppression even though they haven’t been able — until Pennsylvania — to point to a single instance where a voter could not vote because of a lack of ID,” he said. “I did a survey of Indiana, Maryland, and Mississippi and found only about 1.2 percent of registered voters did not have photo IDs. The problem remains registration — not IDs — in reducing voting participation. To quote Jorge Luis Borges on the Falklands war, ‘It’s a fight between two bald men over a comb.’ ”

Full Article: Voter ID Issue Is One of Many for U.S. Voting Systems – NYTimes.com….

Lyle Denniston looks at the Voter ID issue possibly affecting the legitimacy of the next president, if opponents of such measures can prove voter suppression existed during the election. The statements at issue: “This November, restrictive voter ID states will provide 127 electoral votes – nearly half of the 270 needed to win the presidency. Therefore, the ability of eligible citizens without photo ID to obtain one could have a major influence on the outcome of the 2012 election.” – Brennan Center for Justice, at New York University School of Law, in a new report, “The Challenge of Obtaining Voter Identification,” July 17

“[Mitt Romey] as president…might find himself as frustrated as Obama. Democrats are planning to challenge his legitimacy, on grounds of Republican-imposed voter ID laws with disparate racial impact.” – Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial writer, in an op-ed column on July 30, “A blocking election: The motivation for voters has become stopping the other guy”

“What should Democrats do if Romney comes to power on the strength of racially suppressed votes?…Mass demonstrations would be in order. So would a congressional refusal to confirm any of Romney’s appointments. A presidency premised on a racist restriction of the franchise creates a political and constitutional crisis…” – Harold Meyerson, Washington Post columnist, in op-ed comments on July 25, “The illegitimate aims of voter suppression”

We checked the Constitution, and …

America’s founding document, and some of its amendments, spell out a process for choosing presidents, but it doesn’t have anything to say about the constitutional legitimacy of the candidates who wind up as the winners — that is, if they can avoid impeachment. The country’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of Executive Branch power, even after a bitter campaign, may have made it seem that the system has worked pretty well. But it is hardly surprising, given the extreme partisan polarization of today’s national politics, that a president’s election has the real potential for stirring up claims of constitutional illegitimacy. How often has President Barack Obama’s place of birth been brought up as if it were a genuine issue over his right to be in the White House, despite the fact that his election victory was decisive? How often has the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore been used to besmirch the Presidency of George W. Bush?

Full Article: Constitution Check: Is the fight over voter ID laws a prelude to a constitutional crisis? | Constitution Daily.

When Laila Stones sent a letter to the Commonwealth of Virginia requesting a copy of her birth certificate, the response was jarring: “They say I don’t exist,” she recounts under oath. Stones needs her birth certificate so that she can obtain a photo identification card and thereby vote in November. She’s a witness against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where she now lives, in a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups to block the state’s voter ID law. Stones is one of at least ten witnesses called to testify about the burdens she’s suffered to obtain the ID now mandated for voting. Her testimony is mostly about why she doesn’t have the resources to comply. But how can this be? How hard is it to get a driver’s license? You need one for everything these days: to cash a check, to board a plane, to open a bank account, to buy allergy medicine, to buy liquor. How can one function in society without a picture of themselves on a government-issued piece of plastic? As I’ve covered the voting rights battles of 2012, these are questions I’ve heard repeatedly not just from Republicans and conservatives, but also from some Democrats, liberals and progressives. How can one exist without this card?

Stones has lived in Philadelphia for fifty-three years, but was born in a small town in Virginia. I’m sitting in the Commonwealth courtroom listening as she explains from the witness stand how Virginia denied her a birth certificate. A lawyer from the petitioners’ side pulls a letter from Virginia’s vital records office that explains the denial. She’s an African-American woman who’s wearing her hair in cornrows, with a white sleeveless shirt that’s maybe a notch above a tanktop and blue shorts. She’s what the body-mass-index campaigners would call “obese.” Her English is not the Queen’s, and it sounds like she might be chewing gum on the stand. These are not important characteristics to me, but I’d be dishonest if I said I didn’t notice them. I ask myself, what is in me that makes me want to notice her difference from the rest of the room?

And if I notice it, then God, those white lawyers representing the state in their crisp, FBI-dark suits, they must notice, too. Watching the state lawyers scribble on paper as she testifies, I wonder if they’re noting perceived inconsistencies in her statements, or simply that she’s wearing cornrows. Like I just did.

Full Article: I Have Photo ID, Therefore I Am | The Nation.

The U.S. government wants to block Florida from resuming its purge of suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls, saying it would violate federal law. The Justice Department filed papers in U.S. District Court in Tampa accusing the state of ignoring a requirement that it first obtain approval for such action because five Florida counties are subject to federal pre-clearance of changes in voting procedures: Hillsborough, Collier, Hardee, Hendry and Monroe. The removal of noncitizens in a presidential election year has mushroomed into a major controversy, with Democrats and left-leaning voter advocacy groups accusing Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican Party of using the purge to suppress voter turnout in a state widely seen as a must-win for both presidential candidates.

At issue is whether Florida’s on-again, off-again purge of noncitizens is subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The feds say it is. The state says it isn’t. The federal claim was filed Friday in a case brought by the ACLU of Florida and Lawyers Committee for Justice Under Law, seeking to halt any more purging of voter rolls. The case is before U.S. District Judge James Whittemore.

Full Article: TALLAHASSEE: Feds: Florida’s voter purge violates federal law – Florida – MiamiHerald.com….

Well … maybe, but that depends on what remedy the lawsuit demands. The DNC, Ohio Democrats, and the campaign for Barack Obama’s re-election have indeed filed a lawsuit in Ohio over an exception for early voting for members of the military and civilians overseas, claiming it sets up an unconstitutionally “disparate” treatment from other voters. But does that mean eliminating the exception altogether, or extending it to everyone? … Breitbart’s Mike Flynn and these military groups assume that the lawsuits intend to restrict access to the military to the Friday deadline, the same as everyone else in Ohio. … But is the remedy sought by Democrats to force members of the military to adhere to the Friday deadline, or to eliminate the deadline altogether? Neither the KTVU nor theBloomberg reports make it clear what remedy the plaintiffs seek — and that’s really the crux of the issue here.

Prior to changes in the law passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature and by Governor John Kasich, everyone could submit an early ballot in person or by mail all the way through Monday, but access over the weekend for in-person voting was inconsistent in Ohio’s 88 counties. The counties would have to pay overtime over these weekends to keep offices open, which is probably why some didn’t do so. The new law restricted early voting to the Friday before the election, but left an exception for military members to cast votes in person through Monday.

The question then becomes this: why not let everyone cast votes on Monday, too? What state interest is being served by having all the facilities for early voting open on Monday but only limiting access to them for those in the armed service? It’s certainly nice to give troops a perk, but if the polling booths are open, why restrict it at all? It’s a fair question, especially if the remedy sought is to extend that Monday deadline for everyone.

Full Article: Obama, Democrats suing to block military voting in Ohio? Update: No « Hot Air.

Closing arguments got underway Thursday in a lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania’s new photo voter identification law. The outcome could determine if voters are required to present a photo ID at the voting booth on Election Day in November. After Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed the measure into law in March, voter advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP, quickly challenged it. They said the law will deter elderly and minority voters, who are less likely to have photo identification, from voting. These groups tend to vote Democratic. Proponents say the law will prevent voter fraud. The week-long case included testimony from Lorraine Minnite, a Rutgers University expert on voter fraud, who said such fraud was “exceedingly rare. I’m just not persuaded in the absence of evidence it exists,” she said.

Before the trial began, the Pennsylvania Secretary of State said that more than 758,000 people, or 9 percent of Pennsylvania voters, lack a driver’s license or state-issued ID. Matt Barreto, a political scientist from the University of Washington, testified that his analysis reveals that 1.3 million eligible Pennsylvania voters lack such ID. Secretary of State Carol Aichele admitted during her testimony that she didn’t really know exactly how the law worked or how many voters would be impacted.

Kurt Myers, deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Transportation Department, said the agency has not increased staff or supplies to accommodate additional people seeking an ID. He also said many people are unable to complete the process because the lack the proper documents, according to a synopsis of his testimony provided to CBS News by the Advancement Project, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Full Article: Pennsylvania voter ID law case draws to a close – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.

Romanian President Traian Basescu appears to have survived a referendum on his impeachment. As polls closed, preliminary figures indicated turnout was less than the 50% required to make the result invalid. Basescu, who has been suspended by parliament, had asked his supporters to boycott the vote.The center-left government had accused the center-right president of exceeding his authority and of meddling in government affairs. Polling stations closed at 23:00 local time (20:00GMT). First results are expected on Monday. Three hours before the polls were due to close, the election bureau said turnout so far had been 37.7%, the BBC reported. Initial polls put the turnout at about 44%. As voting ended, Basescu said that Romanians had “rejected a coup” by staying away from polling stations.

The row between Basescu and Prime Minister Victor Ponta has caused alarm among Romania’s EU partners. The row has paralysed political decision-making in Romania at a time when it is finalising agreements on an IMF-backed aid package. Basescu’s popularity has slumped since he backed tough austerity measures demanded by Romania’s international lenders.

Basescu had initially urged Romanians to vote “no” to what he called “a coup”, but later asked his supporters to boycott the vote altogether, a stance also adopted by the opposition Liberal Democrats. According to the latest polls, about 65% of the electorate wants to remove Basescu. Some 18 million Romanians were eligible to vote. However, analysts predicted the government would struggle to achieve the required turnout. The referendum is the latest twist in an ongoing power struggle between Mr Basescu and Mr Ponta, who has been the driving force behind efforts to unseat the President.

Full Article: Romanian President Basescu Survives Impeachment Referendum, 30 July 2012 Monday 9:25.

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The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly July 30 – August 5 2012

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