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Friday, November 07, 2008

Law - "Push to Expand Voter Rolls and Early Balloting in U.S. " [Updated]

This lengthy story by Ian Urbina was on the front-page of my NY Times this morning, but appears as an inside-the-paper story on the website. Some quotes:

“The single most important thing that Congress can do right now is create universal voter registration, which would mean that all eligible voters are automatically registered,” said Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees voting. “We also saw incredible success with early voting, and requiring states to adopt it would help as well.” * * *

Congress is already discussing the adoption of early voting nationwide. It now exists in 32 states in various forms.

A bill to do so was drafted last year by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and its co-sponsors included Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. The bill was tabled after receiving little support from Congressional Republicans but is likely to have a better chance next year when Democrats hold expanded majorities on Capitol Hill and Mr. Obama is president.

Early voting proved extraordinarily successful in providing people with more options to cast their ballot and in easing the strain of turnout on Election Day. It gave voters the chance to clarify their eligibility before Election Day, and it gave election officials more time to test and understand new machines and rules.

“But the bigger reason that Republicans have resisted expanding the franchise,” Dr. Minnite said, “is that the new people who are likely to come into the electorate are more often of lower income and are people of color, who tend to vote Democratic.” * * *

R. Doug Lewis, director of the National Association of Election Officials, a nonpartisan group that represents local and state election officials, said his members saw this as a “state’s rights issue” and were not thrilled about any possible federal takeover of registration or new laws that required early voting. But Mr. Lewis said they would support legislation that gave states incentives to help achieve these goals.

Most state election officials see the merit in early voting, Mr. Lewis said, and have become frustrated by dealing with voter registrations being submitted by third-party organizations, often in duplicate or with errors. He said state officials believed that they could do a better job than Washington in deciding how to keep the lists accurate and whether to expand them.

But how states maintain and verify their lists has become a serious problem and led to many lawsuits around the country. Before the election, Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan were found to have wrongly removed thousands of voters from their rolls.

Legislation to expand registration, most likely to be introduced in the coming months, may be tougher to pass.

“A system of automatic registration, in which the government bears more of the responsibility for assembling accurate and secure lists of eligible voters, is a necessary reform,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is working on legislation intended to overhaul how eligible voters register, said Thursday. “All eligible Americans should be able to cast their ballot without barriers, and the registration problems we saw on Tuesday and during the weeks that preceded Election Day make clear that the system needs improvement.” * * *

Lorraine C. Minnite, a political science professor and voting rights expert at Barnard College, said Republicans had generally resisted such efforts in part out of concern about ineligible voters like noncitizens being permitted to vote.

My thoughts. I early voted Tuesday and intend to do so from now on. But one thing gives me pause. It was my vote, and the votes of other "early voters" in the state's two largest counties, that appeared to be up-for-grabs during all the party-based legal challenges that went on before election day. The talk of not counting early votes, for one reason or another, made me nervous. The time period before election day created by allowing early voting should not be permitted to become a time period for legal bickering.

The poorly drafted statute law, which as the court opinions show, needs an overhaul, also makes me nervous.

And stories in the paper, such as this one in the Indianapolis Star today headed "About 2,100 absentee ballots went astray," that begins:

About 2,100 votes cast by absentee ballot never made it to their intended precincts to be counted on Election Day, but the Marion County clerk's office said they will be part of the final tally.

Nearly 500 of the votes were received in the mail too late Tuesday to make it to the polls, while the clerk's office put about 1,600 in the wrong pile and delivered them to the wrong precincts.

and this one headed "350 Hamilton Co. ballots tossed after error," which reports:
As many as 350 people who voted Tuesday at Carmel's University High School had their ballots tossed because of a clerical mistake.

The paper ballots, used to speed up voting because of heavy turnout in the Clay Center precinct, were discarded Tuesday evening because poll workers didn't initial them as required by state law, said Hamilton County Election Board President Tory Callaghan Castor.

only confirm my concerns.

[Updated Nov. 18th] And this one from today's Star:

Marion County GOP Chairman Tom John on Monday said the discovery of 446 uncounted absentee ballots in the county clerk's office provides more evidence that the election was poorly run.

Democratic Clerk Beth White, whom John has criticized often, oversees elections in Marion County.

Angie Nussmeyer, the spokeswoman for the clerk's office, said the ballots had been "overlooked" because they were pushed out of sight on the top shelf in a storage closet where absentee ballots are secured before Election Day. They were found during a final sweep Monday.

Nussmeyer said the discovered ballots from precincts in Washington, Warren and Perry townships will be counted. They did not change the outcome of any elections. Though the county certified election results Monday morning, she said, state law allows counties a week to amend the final count and include the ballots.

But John said the 446 ballots represent a pattern of mistakes by the clerk's office that does not happen in other major cities.

"These are people's votes we're talking about," John said in a news release. "The fact that Beth White had no idea that these ballots were missing shows the lack of training and accountability in how votes are handled by her office."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 7, 2008 12:58 PM
Posted to General Law Related