An account of a press event today in DC held by representatives of the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School. We were brought up to date on the most glaring issues confronting voters as we approach Election Day, were provided with some optimistic aspects of what promises to be a tidal wave of disaster and corruption and advised of ways to combat it.

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Weighing Possible Outcomes This November 4

NYU Law’s Brennan Center for Justice sent representatives today to the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to inform the press of their findings about the pre-election conditions that may make or break the people’s choice for president.

     To a packed room, Executive Director Michael Waldman, a former speechwriter during the Clinton years, addressed us, supplemented by Wendy Weiser, who directs the Brennan Center's work on voting rights and elections; Larry Norden, project director for the Voting Technology Assessment Project; and Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections in the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s Voting Rights Project. These experts fielded the many audience questions for which a good amount of time was set aside after Waldman’s brief presentation, which included PowerPoint slides that will be available at the Web site brennancenter.org. (Information there is updated several times a day.)

     Walden first presented the three major barriers to an accurate vote count: 1) no match-no vote; 2) voter purges, and 3) partisan voter challenges.

     As many know, mostly “insiders,” the first mentioned barrier could eliminate and  disenfranchise countless registered voters. Born of the Help America Vote Act that was passed in 2002, heavily influenced by superheroes such as Bob Ney and Jack Abramoff, HAVA mandates state-level voter rolls. Activated differently by each county, according to who is manning the polls, a mere typo can prevent a vote. No match-no vote, meant to purge various categories of voter from the rolls, mandates that the exact voter name must be listed on separate databases, including Social Security lists and registration lists.

     I have illustrated this before. I may be Joan Public on one list and Joan Q. Public on another and if so, there goes my vote.

     If I have a hard-to-spell ethnic name, from González to Wurtzelbacher, chances are good that misspellings will occur, even if I have gained instant fame as Joe the Plumber.

     In Ohio, that bugaboo of 2004, 260,000 more voters have registered than in 2004. Of these 100,000 were eliminated by various interpretations, many of them questionable, of HAVA. Litigation has traveled from the Federal Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court and then back to Ohio. In litigation also was the misspelling of a name on the same sheet of paper as Myhal and Mihal, which eliminated another voter who took the case to court.

     Florida is accorded the highest prize for mismatching, with Latino names, among the minorities, most likely to be misspelled (and consider all the Cuban-American Republicans in Miami this may affect!).

     No match-no vote could impact hundreds of thousands of votes.

     Thirteen million voters have been taken off the rolls in the last few years. Voter purging was conceived, supposedly, to eliminate dead voters from the lists and, indeed, dead people have been known to vote in presidential elections before.

     But the process lacks transparency and occurs behind closed doors. The lists are riddled with errors and open to documented partisan abuse. In Mississippi voters were purged in the primaries; in Georgia 700 “felons” were kept from voting though they’d never served time in prison. In Louisiana, displacement caused by Katrina occasioned much confusion and opportunities for abuse, in that people forced out of the state faced many barriers, including sheer distance. But here there was a partial solution. Displaced Katrina voters were allowed to return and vote in their former precincts.  In Colorado the Secretary of State admitted that 2,454 voters were illegally purged.

     In a notorious and well-publicized case, Kevin Fury, about to go overseas to serve his country in the military, was told he couldn’t vote for this reason.

     Home foreclosures in Michigan and Indiana, leaving the victims without official addresses, have also eliminated qualified voters from the polls. In Michigan Senator Barack Obama was able to litigate to prevent challenges to foreclosure victims.

     Moreover, the deadline for purging lists honestly or otherwise, officially ninety days prior to Election Day, has passed, but the practice persists.

     The third major barrier to fair elections, especially at the presidential level, is partisan voter challenges on Election Day. A voter may stand in line in the rain for two hours and then be told that he or she is not on the registration list. Actual situations have occurred in which, in a room serving four precincts, the eliminated voter might be in the wrong precinct line; the correct line may be a few feet away, but no one informs him or her about this oversight.

     The solution in such cases?  Provisional ballots, which Waldman called “a partial and inadequate solution.”

     A provisional ballot allows a challenged voter to fill out a special category of paper ballot which may or may not be counted. Officials are supposed to verify the voter’s integrity in such instances—that Joe the Plumber is indeed Joe and no one else and that he is entitled to vote, and his voted should therefore be counted. Shamefully often, these votes are simply thrown out or otherwise declared invalid. Provisional voting holds up long lines with the required red tape.

     In the case of long lines, emergency paper ballots should be provided. Sometimes in their absence voters are given provisional ballots from an ample supply of those and told that the vote will be counted as a regular ballot. But what if it isn’t? What if a staff member finds a pile of provisional votes and mistakenly or otherwise discards them, unaware or feigning unawareness that they are actual votes?

     What can we do to combat these three major barriers and the other ploys or mishaps that threaten democracy to the extent that the people’s choice is forced to concede, as has occurred in 2000 and 2004?

     What can we do? In the expected case of more voters showing up than a precinct can accommodate, emergency paper ballots should be on hand. Where this is disputed, and in the event of other barriers to voting, victims can call 1-866-ourvote to locate the nearest trained volunteer who either helps out or refers the frustrated voter to volunteer attorneys who will do what they can.  In 2006, 25 thousand calls were fielded. There are now 750 call centers nationwide. How to publicize this resource? One hundred fifty election protection partners have collaborated to get the news out at the state, local, and national level. Media outlets will also be provided this information and, it is hoped, disperse it effectively.

      Another option to combat a challenge situation is to contact the local judge of elections or fill out a provisional ballot and hope for the best.

     :Local voters must be aware of the challenged events. Each precinct should have an adequate supply of emergency paper ballots. Because so many voting facilities will not be able to accommodate the record (in recent years) turnouts expected, there should be droves of emergency ballots. I certainly expect a tidal wave in this area. I expect a close election because of unethical tampering, masking a record-breaking Democratic sweep, that will be disputed as long as McCain can protract the process—far longer than did the statesmanly Al Gore.

     The long-term solution, according to a task force led by former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, to this worst of all systems among the “developed “world’s democracies, is universal voter registration. This decision would immediately add 50 million voters to the lists. Fewer last-minute challenges would occur or be possible.

     The good news, delivered actually before the bad news, is that the most recent state primaries occurred without major incidents; the states have made progress in knowing how to use electronic voting machines; and the vote count surged in the last primaries—in twelve states the rolls added more than 12 million new voters.

     List data were used among Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina in an attempt to match same names across state lines and then eliminate such suspect voters. Bob Smith in one state will be eliminated because there is a Bob Smith registered in the neighboring state.

     The information that follows was gleaned from the many audience questions answered.

     Paperless voting persists in 24 states, though paper voting may coexist in some counties. The problem with paperless voting is that recounts and audits are impossible. The machines will return paper lists that match the initial results exactly. If a paperless machine breaks down, as has occurred countless times for a range of reasons, voters are forced to wait for a technician sent by the vendor to arrive. Said technician, distributed one to a county, may take a while to show up. In some isolated cases emergency paper ballots are provided.

     Regarding the so-called epochal scandal caused by voter fraud abetted by ACORN, the event was called microscopic compared to the millions of other mishaps that have become so blatant in the last two presidential elections in particular. The Brennan Center found that an American is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud.

     Recall that in 2006, when ACORN scoured the country for voter fraud and found a pitiful dearth, several U.S. attorneys were fired for trumped-up reasons that occasioned a widely publicized scandal forcing Attorney General Anthony González to resign.

     Last week the Brennan Center published the report Is America Ready? which includes a statistical map indicating readiness state by state.

     New registrants, absentee or otherwise, will be required to prove their identities by means of a federal form of identification—a driver’s license of federal i.d., or a utility bill.

     After Election Day, or Days, or months, the focus must turn to a more modern system, which Senator Hillary Clinton and the late Member of Congress Stephanie Tubbs-Jones worked on.. Newly elected secretaries of state must focus on improving the system. Moving to universal registration will solve many problems. (North Dakota allows walk-in voting; not registration is required.) A student may be automatically registered when he or she reaches age 18, or even before than, in high school. In other democracies the burden of registration is on the government rather than the citizens.

     Pre-election litigation has spiked and will continue until Election Day.

     Provisional ballots, if they exist at all, must be more than “placebo voting.”

     More names exist on different lists than the total number of registered voters.

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Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.