Anderson@Large

Voters Get Ready

I voted yesterday. It took about a minute because I was simply dropping off my absentee ballot at the Kings County Board of Elections.

I had to make it through a gauntlet of voters to get to the counter. I was pleasantly surprised the line was out the door given New York is not an early voting state.

And unlike, say, Virginia and Colorado, where a single vote could make a difference, the Empire State is not in play. One study found that “voters in states such as New York, California, and Texas where the probability of a decisive vote is closer to 1 in a billion, any reasons for voting must go beyond the any instrumental rationality.”

The rationale for the long line is all too familiar: lack of confidence in election officials. Several voters told me they were requesting an absentee ballot in person because they didn’t trust the political hacks who run the city's elections would process their application in time.

Indeed, that was also my rationale for hand-delivering my application earlier this month.

The voters echoed Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s assessment that the Board of Elections is a “joke”:

This is a joke...this public is badly served by this agency as any city or state thing I've seen.

If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. So, don’t let the joke be on you.

Get ready this weekend. Buy some bottled water and snacks to bring to the polls, along with patience and determination on Election Day.

DIY Voter Protection 2.0

Election Day is seven days away, but the specter of another “Florida” looms. There are unreliable voting machines, inaccurate voter databases, rejected military ballots, confusing ballot design and unlawful voter purges.

Florida is in the running to be the next “Florida,” along with Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

And Ohio. President Bush has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the status of 200,000 newly registered voters whose names were flagged as mismatches in a state database. If challenged at the polls, they will be given a provisional ballot.

In the 2006 election, as many as 20 percent of provisional ballots were not counted in some states.

Americans should be outraged that $3 billion later, states still are not ready. The 2002 Help America Vote Act was intended to help voters and restore confidence in the electoral process. Instead, vendors have helped themselves to taxpayers’ money.

Clearly, electoral reform must be on the policy agenda for the new Congress. But first we have to get through next Tuesday.

Already, the phones are ringing off the hook at the voter assistance hotlines. As reports of voting irregularities continue to come in, folks are getting jittery.

But some are twittering to protect the vote.

Beka Economopoulos, one of the organizers of the Twitter Voter Report, wrote:

Volunteers across the country are moving quickly to build a decentralized election monitoring system that will allow voters to use text messages to report incidents of voter suppression, long lines, broken machines, and other disruptions on Election Day. The Twitter Vote Report site will aggregate the reporting data, represent it in real-time on a dynamic web map, and notify voters, election monitoring groups, and the media, facilitating rapid response by poll workers and activists.

I asked Volunteer Coordinator Matt Cooperrider how folks can get involved:

If they just come to the page, they can help. There are lots of aspects. So no matter their experience, they can get involved. No technical knowledge is required.

For more info, go here.

Ballot Box Blues

As I was checking out of the hotel on Friday, a USA Today headline caught my attention. Eight years after the Florida election debacle, election officials are still singing the blues:

Since 2000, states and localities have replaced punch-card ballots in fits and starts, in some cases reversing initial decisions to go to entirely paperless systems. As a result, a number of key areas — among them Cuyahoga County, Ohio — will be trying out new systems. In Colorado, a number of new voting machines failed a test run in December.

In addition to huge lines and new equipment, problems could arise with registration rolls. State officials are already struggling with a huge increase in forms to process. Come Election Day, many voters are likely to show up thinking that they are registered, only to find that they are not.

To minimize the number of voters who will be crying the blues on Election Day, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation Voices of the Electorate Democracy Reform Project will convene a symposium, “Election ’08: Still Not Ready,” on Tuesday, Sept. 23, from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Voting rights experts, voter empowerment groups and community-based activists will identify steps that election officials and voters must take to remove barriers to the ballot and ensure that every vote is counted as intended (disclosure: I am the project coordinator).

In 50 days, voters will go to the polls and make history. Either an African American will be the next occupant of the Oval Office or a woman will be elected vice president of the United States. But for some voters, history will repeat itself.

During the primary season, voters encountered malfunctioning voting machines, inaccurate voter databases, confusing ballot designs and instructions, untrained poll workers, burdensome voter ID requirements, uncounted ballots and ballot shortages from Palm Beach County to Los Angeles County.

In the Sept. 9, primary in the nation’s capitol, electronic voting machines counted thousands of write-in votes cast by phantom voters. While election officials said it was due to a “computer glitch,” the e-voting machines’ manufacturer, Sequoia Voting Systems, says they're not to blame.

In Florida’s Aug. 26, primary, more than 3,500 ballots were lost in Palm Beach County. The missing ballots have since been found. But get this: there now are 139 more ballots than were originally counted.

Voters must not wait until Election Day to protect their right to vote. This point was underscored by the Rev. Al Sharpton during the National Action Network’s weekly rally:

Waiting until something happens does not lead to progress…Otherwise you wait on Election Day for the same trick. You don’t sit up and wait for an accident to happen. You avoid it. Sitting around waiting for accidents that are avoidable is unconscionable.

The Voices of the Electorate symposium is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Please RSVP by Friday, Sept. 20 to events@ncbcp.org.

For free voter information, including registering to vote, verifying registration status, early voting or polling place location, call the national voter assistance hotline, 1-866-MYVOTE1.

Voices of the Electorate

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Our vote is our voice. Seven years after the Florida election debacle and more than five years since President Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act, Electionline.org reports:

But the public's lingering concerns over electronic voting, partisan disputes over voter ID and other issues continue to plague America's election system.

For more than 30 years, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation has fought to ensure our voices are heard in the democratic process. On Wednesday, it will hold its 6th annual Voices of the Electorate Democracy Symposium, "Engaging Minorities and New Americans in the Democracy Reform Movement and the 2008 Election Cycle."

The symposium will feature opening remarks by Melanie Campbell, the National Coalition's CEO and Executive Director. Rep. Artur Davis will update election reform and voting rights legislation in the 110th Congress.

I will moderate a roundtable discussion on the changing face of American democracy and strategies for increasing minorities' and new American citizens' civic engagement.

The symposium will be held tomorrow from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm at the U.S. Capitol in Room HC-7. The event is free and open to the public but reservations are required.

To reserve a seat, send an email to Kevin Parker or call 202/659-4929.

A live webcast of the symposium will be available here, starting at 10:00 am ET.

E-Voting Still Not Ready for Prime Time

A while back the Miami Herald published my op-ed piece on the perils of electronic voting machines in which I wrote:

The machinery of our democracy must not be entrusted to a handful of unaccountable vendors and a revolving door of election officials-cum-lobbyists peddling unproven and untested “solutions.”

Fast forward four years and the General Accountability Office is investigating the 18,000 undervotes in Florida’s 13th Congressional District. And while he’s past his prime, Dan Rather’s report shows e-voting still is not ready for prime time.

Meanwhile, the folks at Voter Action are taking action. They have issued a public call for a congressional investigation of voting machine companies:

Last night’s broadcast by Dan Rather Reports of “The Trouble with Touch Screens” raises serious questions as to whether US voting systems companies have engaged in commercial fraud by knowingly marketing defective products to jurisdictions throughout the country. It also serves as a wake-up call to the nation of the dangers associated with the outsourcing of key election functions to private vendors. Voter Action today calls on the United States Congress to launch a full investigation into the increasing influence and control that private companies wage in the way we conduct our elections and to determine whether certain US voting systems companies have committed crimes under federal and state anti-fraud statutes which should be referred to the appropriate authorities for prosecution.

For more info, click here.

To sign a petition in support of a congressional investigation, click here.

Counting on Democracy – The Movie

The battle in Florida’s 13th congressional district rages on.  Meanwhile, the 2008 presidential election is underway.

BTW, I agree with Karl Rove that the presidential wannabes may “develop a persona earlier and wear out their welcome earlier.”

In any case, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s decision to toss out the state’s paperless voting machines (and here) shows there’s some unfinished business from the 2000 presidential election, which exposed the underbelly of the nation’s electoral infrastructure.
          

George Santayana told us “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  The mainstream media's under-reporting of Florida’s past voting rights violations doomed us to the worst president in U.S. history.

I was determined to tell the story behind the story of the 2000 election debacle.  So, I wrote and produced “Counting on Democracy.”  The film, narrated by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, was aired on PBS stations nationwide.

Sadly, history is repeating itself.  It’s clear from the 18,000 lost votes in Sarasota County that Florida election officials “learn nothing from history.”

Earlier this week, Sen. Bill Nelson, who brought an end to the political career of former Secretary of State Katherine Harris, introduced legislation that would make paperless voting history:

If Congress doesn’t get this done, I’m afraid our democracy could die from lack of legitimacy.

To sign a petition urging Congress to ban paperless voting, click here.
            
To view a clip from “Counting on Democracy,” click here.
        
To schedule a screening and talk with the filmmaker, please click here.

Telling Our Story

Today at noon, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation will convene a post-election briefing at the National Press Club.

There will be two panel discussions, which I will moderate.  The first panel will focus on what happened on Election Day, what didn’t happen and why.

With nearly 35,000 calls to the two national election protection hotlines, what didn’t happen was that the election went “smoothly.”  At least not by the standards of folks who believe that every voter has the right to vote and to have his or her vote counted.

True believers like Melanie Campbell:

It’s been six years since the Florida election debacle and $3 billion spent to upgrade the basic machinery of our democracy. And sadly, election reform is still a work in progress.

Black voters were far more aware of their rights and what to do to make their votes count during this election cycle. Distrust of the electoral process shouldn’t be the primary concern on Election Day. Americans should be able to focus on electing the candidate of their choice and not have to worry about the voting process.

The second panel will look ahead to the 110th Congress and what black folks should expect – and demand – from a Democratic-controlled Congress. They will also look beyond the midterm elections and propose a framework for black civic participation and political empowerment in the 21st century.

The briefing, “Impact of the Black Vote on the Midterm Election Cycle,” will be held from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., in the Holeman Room of the National Press Club. To RSVP, call Nancy Harvin at (202) 659-4988 or click here.