Elections and Democracy

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Seven Ways your vote might not count this November

Voter Purges
According to the federal law that governs how people may be removed from voter lists, the last day that most registered voters can be purged is 90 days before an election, which would have been Aug. 5 for the presidential election. However, some states are not following the process in the National Voter Registration Act, according to voting rights attorneys. Moreover, because purges are often conducted secretly, people who do not call local election offices to confirm their registration status may discover later this fall that they cannot vote.
Solution: Voters, particularly those who have not voted in recent years, should call their local election office to confirm they are registered at their current address. If they are not properly registered, they should update their voter registration. This must be done before registration closes, which is the first week in October in 27 states. Advocacy groups can facilitate this by accessing a voter registration list and reviewing it with community activists. (Editor's note: Web sites and experts to help voters are listed below.)
Unprocessed Voter Registrations
After the Democratic Convention, the Obama campaign will launch a national voter registration drive to bring millions of new voters to the polls in November, according to top campaign officials. This could be the largest voter drive in decades. In previous years, local election officials have complained about receiving too many registration forms at the last minute to verify before Election Day. In two Ohio cities in 2004, Cleveland and Toledo, boxes of registrations went unprocessed by Election Day.
Solution: New voters should register sooner rather than later, and then verify that their voter registration forms have been processed by calling local election offices. Remember, it is local election officials, not political parties or third-party groups, who are legally responsible for validating and processing voter registrations.
Obstacles to Student Voting
Historically, students have been criticized for not voting, but what is often overlooked are the obstacles created by local officials or state legislators that discourage student voting. The most frequent barriers involve state residency and ID requirements. In some places, registrars tell students that a campus post office box is not a proper address and refuse to register students for that reason.
Solution: Students who experience problems with voter registration should contact organizations working on voter registration, or the presidential campaigns, or election protection lawyers who have the legal expertise to help with registration and could go to court to enforce student voting rights.MORE

State Voting Machine Problems Won't Be Fixed Before November

After the 2000 election, the nation that first sent a man to the moon set for itself what seemed an attainable technological goal: ensure that states had efficient and reliable voting machines. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which allocated nearly $3 billion to the states for election administration. But eight years later, with an election fast approaching, the system is still characterized by the same panicked improvisation.
At least $1.2 billion went towards new voting machines between 2003 and 2007, McClatchy reports. But many states (Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Tennessee and New Mexico) that bought touch-screen machines have decided to replace them due to concerns about their reliability. In a number of places, that process won't be completed until long after the 2008 election.
Ohio's secretary of state recently sued to recover the $83 million in state funds spent on touch-screen machines, yet the machines will nevertheless be used in November. The machines will still be widely used in dozens of other states, but the trend, McClatchy reports, is apparent:

Election Data Services, a consulting firm that specializes in elections, estimated that half the electorate used touch-screen voting in 2006. This year, less than a third will be using the touch screens.

Are Feds Trying to Aid Republican Candidate's Election?

I usually shy away from conspiracy theories.

When the Democrats and their attorneys began claiming last year that the Bush administration was using its prosecutorial might to target opposition candidates and their major financial supporters, I greeted the allegation with a skeptical eye.

I'm not so sure anymore.

This past week's developments in the four-year-old investigation into the failed Mississippi Beef Processors plant seem timed to help derail Democrat Ronnie Musgrove's bid to snatch one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats from Republican hands.

Three Georgia businessmen, one by one over the course of four days, entered guilty pleas to federal charges arising out of the Yalobusha County beef plant's quick and costly demise.

The three, all executives with The Facility Group of Smyrna, Ga., were largely left off the hook on the more serious charges that they had swindled the state out of at least $2 million and had left the plant's vendors and contractors holding the bag.

Instead, they were allowed in a plea bargain to confess to trying to buy influence with Musgrove by steering $25,000 to the then-governor's unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2003.

The orchestrated guilty pleas -- and the prosecutors' suggestion that more indictments could be forthcoming -- are a boon to the campaign of Republican Roger Wicker, who was appointed to the vacant Senate seat in December but is considered vulnerable. They leave a cloud over Musgrove in voters minds and provide more fodder for negative campaign ads from the GOP camp, even though Musgrove has not been charged with any wrongdoing and there's nothing in the court records to document he did anything illegal.

Musgrove may have put himself at risk of guilt by association by accepting campaign donations from some scoundrels. That's a fact. But whose campaign finance reports, including Wicker's or Gov. Haley Barbour's, could stand up to the close scrutiny that the federal prosecutors decided to give this one? MORE