¨ Institute no-excuse absentee voting — all at the State’s expense.
¨ Provide early voting — all at the State’s expense.
¨ Establish a poll worker training program and implement it — all at the State’s expense.
¨ Establish an audit procedure that meets the bill’s requirements and carry it out after each federal election — all at the State’s expense.
¨ NOT certify an election until the EAC has approved the State’s election audit report.
¨ Certify to the EAC its compliance with various mandates of the bill.
Under S. 1487, States will become administrative assistants to the EAC in the conduct of elections.
2. S. 1487 provides a legal excuse for expanding the disenfranchisement of “distinct communities” such as racial minorities.
Historically, racial minorities have been prevented from voting by violence, poll taxes, highly subjective literacy tests, police dogs, and so on. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was landmark legislation to remove such obstacles and clear the path for all voters to have a voice in elections.
A shameful provision in S. 1487 functions as a Voting Rights Act in reverse. “They” (historically disenfranchised communities) would get to vote, but the bill allows for the future massive loss of “their” voices through machine malfunction or other means, while limiting the vote loss that would be acceptable in jurisdictions where “they” aren’t as predominant.
The bill would give the Election Assistance Commission the authority and discretion to review the historical disenfranchisement of “distinct communities” (such as racial minorities) in some jurisdictions and expand that disenfranchisement to all jurisdictions where those communities have a “substantial presence.”
A Brief Background on Undervoting. To understand how the bill provides a legal excuse for expanding the disenfranchisement of racial minorities and other “distinct communities,” some background information is necessary. An “undervote” for a particular contest occurs when a vote for that contest is not counted on a ballot. In a secret ballot system, such as we have in the U.S., it is impossible for anyone other than the voter to know whether an undervote is the voter’s choice or caused by a mis-tabulation of some kind.
Election administrators and others who study election returns agree that many voters intentionally undervote in down-ticket contests, such as “Judge” or “Proposition 2.” However, these experts also agree that the percentage of intentional undervotes in federal contests is very low, so researchers routinely study Presidential undervote rates to compare the accuracy of the tabulation process in various jurisdictions.
A Presidential undervote rate of 0.5% (1 undervote out of every 200 ballots) is generally thought to indicate that virtually all votes were tabulated. A rate of 2% (1 out of 50) or more is generally thought to suggest a possible breakdown in the tabulation process, such as an equipment malfunction or even deliberate disenfranchisement.
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