Conservative Groups Hunts for Incidents of Voter Fraud

True The Vote, a national group focused on voter fraud affiliated with the Tea Party Movement and the Koch Brothers.

Frederick Douglass

David Stone, a voter registration activist in my novel The Voting Machine, hangs a portrait of Frederick Douglass in his home.

The picture references Douglass' famous quote "If there is no struggle there is no progress".

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle."

As a fugitive slave in pre-Civil War America, Douglass had first-hand experience with voter suppression.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/voter-suppression-then-and-now/

 

By the mid-1840s, he had emerged as one of the greatest orators and writers in American history. But legally, Douglass began his public life by committing what today we would consider voter fraud, using an assumed name.

As an escaped slave in Massachussets, he registered under the assumed identity of "Douglass" since he was still the legal property of a slave owner in Maryland. He took the name Douglass from the poem the "Lady of the Lake".

Douglass knew on a personal and strategic level, voting was at the heart of any struggle for political and social change. In the next twenty years, he live through a series of election that ultimately ushered in the Party of Lincoln. What he could not have foreseen, was that this same political party, which still cites Douglass as one of its founding members, would one day be the driving force in the creation of strict voter-ID laws and shorten early voting hours in urban districts.

Kos weighs in on Voter ID laws

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga has been one of my favorite bloggers for years now. For anyone who is passionate about progressive politics it's hard to exaggerate the importance of his Daily Kos platform.

In this excellent post, he points out the reality in the court of public opinion. Despite the fact there is no meaningful occurrence of voter fraud, despite the statistical evidence showing the chance of voter fraud is one in 15 million, most people support a photo ID required and show at least as much concern about voter fraud as voter suppression.

This Washington Post survey shows the 3 out of 4 American adults believe voters should be required to issue an official, government-issued identification.

Markos argues this is logical:

Voter ID laws poll strongly, and why not—we need ID to handle many routine day-to-day transactions. It's logical people would assume the same would be required for something as important as voting.Of course, there's no real evidence of voter fraud beyond James O'Keefe's shenanigans. But Republicans win this argument hands down in the court of public opinion. It's not even close. Indeed, rather than be skeptical of Republicans pushing these restrictive laws, it is the Democrats arguing against them that end up looking suspicious. Asking for ID is just not seen as a big deal for the vast majority of people.

The solution, he contends isn't fighting Voter ID laws but instead making them better and more reasonable:

The best, easiest, and cheapest solution is what California (mostly), Oregon and Washington already do—vote by mail. Ballots are mailed out to the homes of registered voters several weeks before election day, voters fill them out, and either mail them back in or drop them off at select drop boxes if you don't trust the USPS. Oregon has had this system since 2000 with zero problems.

While Ohio's Republican leadership has done much to try and restrict early voting, it is also aggressively promoting its vote-by-mail option. Thirty percent of Ohio voters voted by mail in 2008, and all Ohio voters will receive an absentee ballot application in the mail this year. As voters in the state become more used to voting by mail, it should mitigate all the other problems the state has historically suffered. Sure, black churches may like marching as a congregation to a polling place the Sunday before the election, but there's nothing stopping them from having parishioners show up with their absentee ballots that same Sunday and keeping voting a community event.

But if you're not going to do vote-by-mail, Virginia shows how a voter ID law can beinoffensive.

• If you show up without proper ID, you can vote provisionally, and you then have three days to come up with proper ID. And you don't have to show up in person to prove your identification. You can email, snail mail or fax the proof.
• You don't need a photo ID. Acceptable forms of ID are: driver's license, school ID, employee badge, utility bills, paychecks with an address, bank statements or a special voter ID card. Pretty much anything with your face and name, or name and address.
• A voter ID card will get mailed to every registered voter in the state. If you register, you get your card in the mail.

I just can't think of a case where a legitimate voter would be denied the ability to vote with these requirements, and the three-day grace period ensures that even those who forget their ID still get to vote.

This is nothing like Pennsylvania's ridiculously restrictive voter ID law, or Florida's attempts to purge its voter rolls of legitimate people.

The requirement for an ID may be unnecessary, but asking for ID seems commonsensical to most people. Fighting requirements for ID breed unnecessary suspicion. So let's focus on allowing people no-excuse vote-by-mail, or on voter ID laws like Virginia, which present little barriers to anyone trying to vote.

What I'd really like to see at some point is some institutional linkage of voter registration to the public education process. Make it a formal part of the public high school curriculum to sign people up to vote and get them a government issued ID that becomes active when they turn 18.

The Voting Machine - Book Cover

The book cover for The Voting Machine is ready. Thanks to my amazing designer Chris Clarke who also did the cover art for Employee of the Year.

Currently, the book is undergoing changes based on the final copy revisions submitted Wednesday. After that it will become available on Amazon.com in the second half of September and on the Kindle in early October. I will also make it available via Smashwords for readers on the Nook and other devices.

Ron Paul delegates on GOP nomination process: "They're cheating"

This from the floor of the Republican Convention in Tampa:

"This is just evidence of the manipulation of the Republican Party. They're not even allowing us to bring signs in, but they brought in their own [pro-Romney] signs. We couldn't nominate Ron Paul. The 'no' for not passing the rules was louder than the 'aye' and they ruled in favor of the rules. They're cheating. The Republican National Committee is not transparent and does not have integrity. They stole votes. They stole delegates. They refused to send buses for our delegates. It's a totalitarian process. This is not democracy. It's a really sad day for us. I've worked for Republican candidates since I was 16. We believed the Republican Party had more integrity. Boy, did they prove us wrong."

To quote my friend, the great author Daniel Keyes Moran: 

"... almost a perfect moment, isn't it? It's hard to be too angry at Republicans trying to disenfranchise Democrats, when they're so willing to do it to each other."

The Voting Wars

Richard Hasen, a professor at University of California at Irvine, has just published a new book chronicling a struggle that has continued to intensive ever since Bush vs. Gore: the legal wars around the right to vote and the parallel propaganda campaign to create an fake epidemic of voter fraud.

Hasen takes us through critical milestones in the past twelve years in this post on Talking Points Memo.

Federal court: Florida early voting curb is violation of 1965 Voting Rights Act

http://fcir.org/2012/08/21/scott-attempts-to-reduce-early-voting-in-all-counties/

A federal court has ruled that Republican Governor Rick Scott's new restrictions on early voting in five counties covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

The court claimed efforts to restrict early voting in these counties -- which target minority groups more likely to cast a ballot before election day -- are unfair and illegal. According to the judges, the Republican law runs afoul of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Scott's response: Let's limit early voting across the whole state.