In the last two weeks voter registration and early voting has shown that voters are geared up and ready to take part in what has been called a "historical event" on November 4.
We recently wrote about the Department of Veterans Affairs decision to open its facilities to voter registration drives after months of urging by voting rights groups and elected officials. This week, however, "VA voter suppression continues," as AlterNet's Steven Rosenfeld wrote Tuesday, with voter registration efforts being blocked in California and the VA general counsel criticizing the pending Veterans Voting Support Act (S. 3308), which would bolster federal protection of voter registration opportunities for all wounded veterans. With just three weeks left to register voters in most states, advocates say now is the time to support voter registration efforts in VA facilities and, most importantly, it needs to be explicitly protected from now on through federal law.
We spend a lot of time in these news updates showing how charges of voter fraud are used to discredit voter participation efforts and prime the pump for voter suppression efforts, such as the passage of voter ID bills, pushing for proof of citizenship, engaging in draconian voter purge efforts, and imposing sever restrictions on voter registration drives. We have also spent a lot of time carefully delineating the politics behind these efforts, starting with our March 2007 report The Politics Of Voter Fraud and continuing on in these diaries to name but two venues.
A couple weeks ago, Secretary of State Debra Bowen visited San Diego to participate in a panel discussion on election integrity. She talked about the double bubble trouble we had with Dean Logan. She talked about catching Dirty Tricksters red handed. But mostly she talked about how vital a role the activists of the grassroots are to keeping her informed when they see something that just doesn't seem right.
This double bubble thing sure has some legs. The discussion continues tomorrow in downtown LA with all the major electoral players in the house. Secretary of State Bowen will be there. Registrar Dean Logan and recently departed Registrar Conny McCormack. The Courage Campaign's lawyer. And a gaggle of LA electeds for good measure (and to give the forum a purpose).
The final results are in for Los Angeles County, with nearly 80% of the double bubble ballots ultimately being counted towards the final total. As the Whittier Daily News reports:
The count, completed Sunday, had no effect on the outcome of the primary.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton received 51 percent of the 47,153 votes that were counted. Barack Obama gained 42percent of those same ballots.
Just over 12,000 votes could not be interpreted, said Dean Logan, the acting registrar-recorder/county clerk.
Of course, as the article goes on to say, Logan began the process not expecting any of the ballots to be counted:
Logan initially believed none of the "double bubble" votes could be counted in cases where non-partisan voters had failed to fill in a bubble specifying in which party's presidential race they were casting a "crossover" ballot.
BradBlog, as is the norm over there, provides an excellent evaluation of where things currently stand with the DTS 'double bubble' ballots. It's long, in-depth, and awesome. In part:
For the moment then, some 50,000 voters in Los Angeles County have had their votes for Presidential candidate currently miscounted. An intended vote for Hillary Clinton, for example, has not been registered as a vote for her. She has lost that vote for the moment, and the voter has been disenfranchised. Needlessly.
Moreover, current acting Registrar Dean Logan is claiming that, due to the fact that the same sets of bubbles were used for both Dem and AI candidates, it's "impossible" to determine with absolute certainty the intent of the voter. But he is wrong. In almost every single case.
The current miscount/error rate for those 50,000 ballots is now at 100%. Thus, any ballot counted at this point will only lower the current miscount/error rate.
Since almost every single one of those ballots can be counted accurately, as per the voter intent, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's an absolute absurdity and outrage that Logan is claiming that none of them can be, as he argued in an absurd report [PDF] delivered to the County's Board of Supervisor's on Monday.
He closes with an elegant summation:
The excuses must stop. Dean Logan must get to work and start counting. NOW.
Brad Blog was all over it yesterday as Susan Davis (CA-53) sought to add an amendment to Rush Holt's Election Reform Bill that would ban all DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines. The bill finished the day still in committee, so feel free to make some calls today urging support of the amendment. Target members of the Rules Committee to make sure it gets attached, and (to echo the call from BradBlog) let your own representative know they should insist on a DRE ban before voting for the bill. BradBlog also notes that the amendment has been endorsed by MoveOn, Verified Voting and VoteTrustUSA.
Davis' office told BradBlog that the amendment was relying on Leadership and the Rules Committee allowing it. I think you've all met Nancy Pelosi already, you know where to find her. Louise Slaughter chairs the committee, and California members are Democrats Doris Matsui and Dennis Cardoza, and Republican David Dreier who serves as the ranking minority member of the committee. Leverage galore Californians.
I want to add to the analysis of the proposed California Republican power grab initiative. Should it pass, we could lose about 19 of California's 55 electoral college votes to the Rep candidate.
If the initiative qualifies for the June 2008 California primary election, we will of course fight it tooth and nail. But all is not lost if it passes. We can still win in 2008 in a landslide. We don't have to have Rep Presidents forever. However, we must nominate a candidate that can win in solid Red states - and the best candidate for that task is Bill Richardson.
States had several years after the Help America Vote Act passed to purchase new technology for voting. It was at that time good government organizations started raising the warning flag about the security of many of the voting machines that companies like Diebold were marketing to county registrars. Nobody really knew how secure they were, but the mere fact that they were operating on a Microsoft Operating System raised a lot of red flags. Registrars were cautioned at the time to slow down and really examine what they were purchasing. After all, the machines were not cheap. Quite frankly, I believe it was a major flaw in the bill that it did not require the states to be in charge of the purchasing rather than the local registrars. The patchwork system is coming back to bite us in the rear.
By and large they did not heed that call. Now, several years down the road somebody actually did a real security test on the machines and low and behold they are not secure at all. Secretary of State Debra Bowen did what she pledged to do in the campaign and the results of the top to bottom study left her with little chance but to decertify many of our voting machines, at least temporarily.
That is all a long way of saying that I am not exactly sympathetic to the whining coming out of the registrars about the costs of Bowen's move. She moved with all deliberate speed and the complaints that this is a last minute move ring hollow. The registrars should have known this was coming and planned for this occurrence when Bowen took office. We are still six months out from the election and machines still have the opportunity to be re-certified.
