In the days and weeks leading up to Election Day 2012, it became painfully clear that voting problems have reached scandalous levels in many parts of the country. The fear was, once the election was over, attention would shift, policymakers would move on to other issues, and memories of voters waiting seven hours to cast a ballot would fade.
Fortunately, it looks like some members of Congress are keeping the issue alive.
Yesterday, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) unveiled a bill they're calling the "Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act." Under their proposal, states that "aggressively" pursue election reforms would be rewarded with federal grants.
And what kind of reforms are proponents looking for? It's not a short list, but the Warner/Coons bill calls for flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration; expanding early voting; "no-excuse" absentee voting; and "formal training of election officials, including state and county administrators and volunteers."
As best as I can tell, because the FAST Act is roughly modeled after the Race to the Top education initiative -- it's a competitive grant program, not a set of federal mandates.
In the House, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) unveiled a related proposal, the "Streamlining and Improving Methods at Polling Locations and Early (SIMPLE) Voting Act," which is even more ambitious. Most notably, it would require 15 days of early voting in all states for federal elections -- and because Congress has authority over regulating federal elections, the assumption is states would simply apply identical standards for all down-ballot races.
The introduction of these bills now appears intended to lay the groundwork for future efforts. This Congress will wrap up next month, and given its to-do list, and the fact that every new Congress starts over with a blank slate, we'll almost certainly have to wait until the new year before voting reforms are considered. That said, it's encouraging to see some worthwhile proposals on the table.
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Umm, good luck with this.
Right.
In other news, President Lincoln proposed a bill which would award grants to states that banned slavery in their jurisdiction.
This is stupid. Congress has final say about everything about how a congressperson is elected: Article 1, section 4 of the US constitution:
Good luck getting re-elected if you stand in the way of needed reform. After all we showed you that we will go through your hoops to oust your butts.
While I support both of these bills on the federal level, I think that WE the PEOPLE must become more active on local levels to reverse these bogus Voter ID laws that have been put in place to disenfranchise US. Write, call, email, fax, twitter your local legislative critters to introduce new legislation or start petitions to put these new voter ID laws on the ballot for repeal!
Yes, President Obama won re-election in spite of rethugniCon efforts at disenfranchising the citizens, but WE the PEOPLE must now use that anger to become active and work for our own benefit and that of our democracy!
We need a major grassroots effort to use this issue to get people out to vote in midterm elections. "If you don't want to have to fight for your vote in four years, come out and vote in two years!"
JohnMesserly has it right. Congress needs to take on its Constitutional mandate with regard to elections. Set uniform standards and conduct and fund those elections. The states could set the rules for their state elections but that wouldn't happen. It didn't happen when 18 year olds were given the right to vote in federal elections, but the states could keep the voting age at 21. The states didn't do that. While we are at it, why not have the Congressional districts in all states drawn by a federal commission with the mandate to promote equal voting rights and to outlaw gerrymandering.
@Redshift, let's not talk about needing one, let's create one! Let's get started now, me and you and any others that are here and want to do it. We don't need to wait. That is the problem. We have all the tools.
Hit my email at scottwriterjohnson at hotmail.com and we can get started.
Agreed, the approach definitely should be a mandate, not grant incentives.
Otherwise, the proposals in the bill are a good start, though I find it disappointing and frustrating in the extreme that they don't seem to include (at least not that I could spot on my quick scan through about 10 pages of legislatese) any proposals aimed at ensuring the integrity of electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail for verification of the accuracy of a vote count. Or, for that matter, the entire issue of permitting the most important element of our democratic society to be processed by privately owned and operated systems at all.
As I think we've shown a few times now, it's possible to overwhelm a likely attempt at vote-rigging with higher-than-anticipated turnout but I think it's deeply foolish to count on that happening in every election cycle going forward.
The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.
- Arnold H. Glasow
;-)
Some brilliant person with a doctorate in poli sci had Rick Hasen, author of "Voting Wars" on television a few nights ago.
Legislators need to start with his argument of their rightful jurisdiction under article 1, section 4, rather than this lame incentive programs. Although it only covers congressional seats, local authorities could theoretically attempt to establish a parallel set of machines and procedures for other races, but practically speaking, no locality would do it. People would be up in arms if they could vote for congressional candidates 3 weeks earlier, but no one else. People would be up in arms if local districts insisted on wasting taxpayer dollars on a duplicate set of machines. And so on....
To repost a former list, I think we need:
@John Messerly
You forgot one item; we need national legislation on voter ID's.
You mean barring the requirement? I don't see that you have leverage through section 4 on that. Sure, Congress could bar requirement of ID as a voter suppression tactic on the vote for congressional representative, but local redneck district could say it is required for any of the non congressional votes to count.
On the other hand if you are saying the Feds provide it free to everyone, they could require by law that it be accepted as identification for all business and government transactions. Off topic, but there is a substantial argument that these would be economically valuable because they would enable an explosion of electronic services since businesses could reliably know that you are who you say you are. There is also great use of them as part of a scheme to recover privacy- which seems counter intuitive, but the elaboration is out of the scope of this thread.
Reliable authentication is expensive, and no one will standardize on anything without NIST and the geniuses at NSA producing one. It would be more sophisticated than a conventional smart card, using multiple factor authentication.
Anyway, you can used these things for lots of cool stuff, but in the context of this discussion, the local voting authority would be required to accept your national ID.
Just another democratic scam to let people vote 3 and 4 times, really same day registration to vote with no picture ID Im betting. If you cant afford a $15 dollar ID then you dont deserve to vote, you are of no use to the human race please feel free to drop off the edge of the earth because we really dont need you
The least 1 can do to vote in this great land is prove who you are, its not voter suppression its keeping people from voting more than once, regardless of party. We all know it is happening so please pull your heads out of your azzes and become part of the real world. And if you cant afford a $15 dollar picture ID then really you need to go, obviously you cannot contribute anything to our country anyway, please feel free to drop of the earth as soon as possible
Hopefully it will include ample punishment for efforts to make voting more difficult. I am looking at you Mr. Husted and you Gov. Scott. I imagine Arizona needs a good look as well.
Agreed, but the issues Husted (and likely others, as well) should face go well beyond merely making it more difficult to cast a vote. It's been clear for a few election cycles now that there have been efforts to subvert the accuracy of vote counts, as well. I certainly found this alarming:
Husted installs "experimental" software patch at last minute
The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.
- Arnold H. Glasow
;-)
As the first step to stop voter supression, I must agree with this bill. With the Republicans feeble attempts to hinder our rights to vote, we must(as a nation) protect this right at all cost.
I am so glad to see one of our Senators from VA (Sen. Warner) & Sen. Coons being willing to take a chance with this act being put forward. Actual consistency in voting needs to be put into place, and only the Federal Government can do it so there is a framework for the states to follow.
It would also hopefully stop the insanity that we see in states like Arizona and Florida from continuing. Here's hoping it moves forward.
I love how they name each bill. Who could be against voting being FAST and SIMPLE. I'd add a few more words for which I have no acronym. The voting process should also be FAIR, ACCOUNTABLE, and communicate strong INTEGRITY to the voting public.
Yes, and if you really think that way, then it needs to be applied to states like Ohio, Florida and Arizona, where members of those states legislatures did everything they could to disenfranchise as many people as they could. Based solely on their race or perceived political leanings.
You would support that, right?
How about fair, neutral and unbiased. Then the GOP can brag they all support FNU.
Or call it fair, unbiased, and neutral and call it FUN. Then republicans can have a rallying cry that they put the FUN back in voting. Chuckle.
We can at least hope that voting will soon be both FAST and SIMPLE.
Somehow I don't see Republicans supporting this bill as it will interfere with their attempts at voter suppression. Maybe if it was renamed to the Molasses-slow, Need-an-ID, Purge-foreign-sounding-names and Cut-voter-hours Bill they would be on board.
Of course. However, that's part of the charm: they're stuck going on record opposing it. Or at least they would be if it were introduced in the Senate; in the House, it'll simply never see light of day. No committee hearings, no floor discussion. Dead before arrival.
Go with Oregon and Washington!!!! We've proven that mail in voting works!!! Sure, there was a bit of a problem this last election, but we caught it and arrested the person responsible. The mail in voting eliminates many of the issues faced by several states. Let's do it!!!
I like the activity of gathering my daughter and grandson and going to the voting place on election day to cast my vote. Its become a bit of a tradition so I don't really want to just mail my vote in, but that's just me personally. If others would prefer to mail it in, they should have that option as long as I can keep my option too
Then do it like Colorado does where you have both mail in or in person voting. When you register you can select to receive all your ballots by mail and from that point on you will be a mail in voter.
Of course just make sure you don't vote in a secretary of state like CO did who then decided to make a new rule that if you don't vote in one election you're taken off the roll without being notified (and that includes locals). But the basic concept behind it I think is solid. Let those who want to vote in person vote in person and those who want to vote by mail vote by mail. Pretty damn simple.
Veronica, the tradition is actually better with vote by mail, because you can sit down with your children and go through the ballot together, if you wish. It really can become a family affair.
Also, you don't actually have to mail the ballot back. There are several places you can go to drop the ballot into a voting box. It feels more like voting that way.
And really, it is the last point that is key. The point of voting by mail isn't that you mail in your vote, it is that they mail you your ballot. Imagine Florida with that, even if people still had to go to the polls. They would have the already completed ballot in hand and just drop it into the box. Done. The lines would move infinitely faster.
I guess the qualm I have with mail-in voting is that in-person voting better ensures the ability to cast a secret ballot. I can't help but picture some households where, for example, a wife might have been thinking of voting Democratic in response to the Rape-Public-CON "War on Women", but had a Rape-Public-CON husband watching her fill out the ballot before mailing it in... but maybe I'm overthinking this.
The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.
- Arnold H. Glasow
;-)
I applaud the issue being kept alive. However, the only way to ensure voting rights is to pass Federal legislation that applies to national elections. We need sweeping reform. The incentive thing doesn't work out so well in a climate where the goal is scorched earth.
If the Republican platform is pivoting and decides that being pro-immigration is the easiest wedge issue (and it does have economi support from intelligent business people), then I could see them rationally embracing early voting. The party is simply not sustainable alienating huge swathes of minority voters. And the policy of finding sneaky ways to disenfranchise them is not a long term solution. Plus, gerrymandering isn't going to be a political weapon for a few more cycles.
The Race to the Top model is all wrong. It rewards individual state innovation, when what is needed for federal elections is predictability, consistency and uniformity. There is no need to overthink this. The contours of an effective bill are pretty straightforward:
1) A single well-publicized set of requirements, including the nature of needed ID, to register to vote, and ideally same day registration with a national database to allow real-time verification that no fraud can occur.
2) A single, consistent, tested ballot format using proven technologies and which is required to maintain or generate an auditable paper trail for each voter (I happen to be partial to scantron technology because almost anyone who has been in school in the last 50 years is familiar with it, it is well tested, and runs very fast with little history of major problems.)
3) Election day should be a mandatory federal and state holiday, with polls open no less than 12 consecutive hours. A minimum number of early voting hours should be prescribed, and there should be a formula based on population and square miles for the minimum number of polling locations and voting machines that ensures reasonable wait times. (This may require federal grants to the state and local governments.)
4) There should be onerous and well-publicized criminal penalties for both intentional efforts at voter fraud and for intentional efforts at voter intimidation, suppression, confusion, or invalidation -- including efforts by public officials.
5) Consistent, early, widely available promotion and education on the requirements for registration and voting, hours and location and other mechanics of actually casting a vote, and availability of training, assistance or further information.
This should be an uncontroversial list (yes, I know better.) And it would solve most of the problems. Of course, it is only one piece of a much larger set of reforms needed to our politics. . .
I agree with every suggestion, but I would add a press blackout on election results until all the polls have closed.
Election results on the Atlantic Coast should not become known until the Pacific polls have closed. This would remove the bias of people who insist on throwing their vote to the "winner" instead of voting their conscience.
This sounds like a pretty good set of proposals. I would suggest that, instead of making Election Day a Federal Holiday (though I'm OK with that idea), maybe simply change Election Day to a weekend instead of a Tuesday. Probably fewer objections from the business/commercial sector that way.
And, in addition to zeitgeist's suggestion re the voting machine technology, I would feel generally more secure about our balloting if the ownership of the voting technologies were taken out of private hands. It's distressing to me that these private companies' top management/owners are publicly partisan - currently, they all seem to be Rape-Public-CONs, but I'd feel no better about it if they were Democrats.
The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.
- Arnold H. Glasow
;-)
I would go with making Election Day a holiday because there are people who work on weekends. Of course, extending early voting during the week could take care of them.
Will this bill also fix some of the massive problems with the Helping America Vote Act -- such as requiring electronic voting machines to have a paper confirmation of the vote? Will it require that polling places have a certain number of machines per capita of the people registered to vote in that precinct? Will it disallow purges or changes to voting laws within one year prior to an election? Will it disallow "software upgrades" once the machines have been certified? Will it set punishment, training or other standards for "observers" (like True the Vote operatives) who try to suppress the vote? Will it require persons voting on a provisional ballot to being given written instructions on what they must do to ensure their vote is counted?
You see, it's not just about how long someone stands in a line at a polling place. Comprehensive reform needs to be taken on. Partisan public officials have figured out that it benefits them to keep chaos in the election process. The chaos needs to be stopped -- and that goes well beyond how long a line is on election day.
My own quick take on the text of the proposed bill (which you can link to from Sen. Warner's web site, the first link in the article above) is that it does NOT address any of these issues which, I agree, must be addressed to restore public confidence in the integrity of our elections.
The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.
- Arnold H. Glasow
;-)
Well, with the existing Voting Rights Act at risk of being gutted by the Supreme Court, because talking about racism and discrimination in the South is SO 1900s, perhaps it's time for a new comprehensive Voting Rights Act that covers all of these provisions, not simply by 'competitive grants' (what a stupid invitation to showboat money wasting!), but by establishing the kind of regulation that the Constitution specifically empowers the Congress to undertake.
I dont like this either. Just baiting with more federal grants like we have the money to spend. This should just be controlled by the federal level straight up. It's a federal election.
What really needs to happen is that there should be one set of regulations for the entire country. States and counties should not be regulating voting. As we have seen by this past election, even citizens living next to each other fell under different juridictions; one neighbor could vote early and one neighbor could not. We need the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principle on something so important as voting . . . We should be making it so easy to vote, so all voices are heard, not just the voices that the political team in charge at teh election board wants to hear from.
Yes I agree. But each state has the right to make up its own voting rules. Since people keep voing for Repubican Governors, voting rights in 'that' state will always be an issue, because Republicans will always tow the GOP party line and screw the people's voices and rights.
Let's not leave out Open Source voting machines, so we can SEE what's happening inside the computers. Allowing proprietary "no peek" software into our election systems should be a criminal act.
I LOVE this freeflow discussion. But take it one more step and let your congressional leadership know! Don't just stop here...go the next step(s) and make it work :0)
In addition let's have Sunday voting!!!
Republicans are NOT team players! Anything that makes for a better American Republicans will be against. Fox News called this bill "dumb". Go figure?
Election day = National Holiday
Ha. Now Fox is saying this bill will lead to greater number of potentially fraudulent voter registration forms.
The beat goes on.
As I read the passionate responses to this issue I am heartened. Continued discussion will bring a set of solutions that we can all live with. It's called Democracy In Action and it requires that we step up to our responsibilities as citizens just as Congress must step up to its responsibilities as Public Servants. I BELIEVE!
I think the arguments against all mail-in voting are awfully weak compared to the many very real benefits that such a system provides. Read this excellent article by a former Oregon election official. The idea that the manifold advantages to all mail-in voting would be outweighed by hypothetical tyrannical husbands forcing their wives to vote their way (and other such strained hypotheticals) is far outweighed by the positives: no lines, no cost of maintaining polling places, no machines to possibly hack (this is huge in itself). The idea that we can have better machines or more hours or whatever is just putting lipstick on a pig. Throw out the pig! Mail-in voting is the rational option, and it improves participation to boot.
I have been hoping for some good election reform stuff and would take it a bit further...... How about a standard ballot format and numbered paper stock, standardized vote casting methods, requiring a paper trail if machines are used. Some states have good records for elections and those states and counties that do not need to get [or be given] some ideas on how this is done. It's not brain surgery, neh.
Been hoping to see some ideas for improving the U.S voting systems come out of all this. State to state regulations and methods vary with also varying degrees of success. I would like to see a standardized ballot format with standardized paper for all elections in the U.S. Also standardized hours and days.
Some states and counties keep taking the cake, they need to get [[[[or be given]]]] some heeeelpP
Machines and mail ballots can be wonderful. I do remember someone quoting someone who said that any method was only as honest as the person using it. Machines must have a paper trail and the results should tally with the paper trail. I quietly died when I saw the photo of the "toilet paper" trail results being examined [ was it Florida 2000?]
I've seen lots of good ideas in other posts and am just really happy to see someone in Washington actually trying to do something to MOVE FORWARD.