During the Republican Convention, I had the opportunity to hear some conservatives make their comments on this. I must admit, it is always interesting to hear the other side. I wrote up comments about it at Greater Democracy.

I am very concerned about this as an issue. Granted, the Republicans put on a show of wanting to make sure there is no voter fraud and the only people who get to vote are those entitled to vote. However, the underlying dynamic is about Democrats trying to maximize voter turnout and Republicans trying to minimize voter turnout. I think that is perhaps the most telling part.

This action is rife with big problems. 3,600 folks challenging voters in the urban parts of Ohio when the DOJ is sending out only 1700 civil rights monitors to cover the election across the entire country is a crime.

These folks have a list of 35,000 people that they say have questionable mailing addresses. So if each challenger has a list of ten names that he challenges, and each challenge takes 5 minutes, we are talking about roughly 50 minutes at each polling place where the election workers are not processing people. In my polling place where the folks are very elderly, they manage to process about a person/minute. If an hour wasted means 50 people in each polling place don't get a chance to vote, that's 180,000 votes that don't get counted, or 3% of the number of registered voters in Ohio where the race is too close to call.

When did winning the election become more important than imposing the will of the people? This kind of chicanery sickens me.

My comment probably says more about my age than anything else.

Where I live, not so many years ago, we were virtually a one party state. It was not uncommon at all for the dead to vote in some elections and some more than once. And a few pets and cows and horses voted, too. Of course the living voted numerous times - both those purchased and volunteer. "Stuffing the ballot box" isn't' only a quaint saying.

That was just what those from the same party did to each other. They did much worse to the minority party.

There are many rather famous and well documented cases of voter fraud in US national elections. Some are more famous than others of course. Most are probably unknown.

The sense I have is that elections today are much more honest than when I was a younger man. But as far as I can tell human nature is pretty much unchanged. So, I would be pretty surprised if there were not a few dead people and pets planning to vote in this upcoming election.

Pierre,

A campaign to disqualify Democratic voters does not surprise me at all. Add to this that about 10,000 lawyers will be available to initiate recounts. These tactics are just an extension of what was done less systematically in the 2000 election.

In Detroit, I know that some voters in black precincts were told that could not vote if they had not voted in the previous election. Fortunately, this did not change the outcome for the state.

However in Florida, tactics such as the butterfly ballot, adding social security numbers to otherwise unqualified absentee ballots and simply turning some black voters away saying they weren’t registered did not only influence who won the state but the presidency as well. A recount of Florida’s ballots established that Gore actually received more votes in spite of these tactics.

This situation is a sign of two things. First, it demonstrates how polarized our political scene is when winning is more important than how you win. Second, it’s a sign that the hard core Republicans see this as a life and death struggle requiring them to go to such extremes. In the campaign, they say that electing Kerry would put America at risk. The trouble is they believe it, and they don’t feel they trust the people to make the right decision.

This is scary to me that any person or group will go to these extremes to be elected. It also makes me wonder if there will be a last minute surprise designed to make the public rally behind the Presidednt.

Bernie

I think it is really bad, but I can also see how it was "allowed". I find it amazing that the American public allowed the vote rigging in the last election so this really does not suprise me at all, if challenges are permitted then they should be done by the government not by political parties.

We would not allow it in the UK.

If I was an American I would go try to "occupy" the challengers for as long as I could and then some. Allowing everyone else gets on with the democratic process.

P.S. It almost seems like we need the UN to oversee the election.

Isn't it sad that the supposed "seat of democracy" is displaying such incredibly flawed and undemocratic aspects within its process? Of course the history of registering voters is essentially one of trying to prevent "undesirables" from voting. While there have been times and places when voter fraud was a real issue in this country every study that has been done has concluded that it is a very small and essentially insignificant factor while "voter disenfranchisement" is a national scandal.

Certainly the most blatant examples took place in the south where every effort was made to create inane requirements that poor blacks could not meet. One serious problem is that the both the process and "criteria" being used for so-called challenges are completely up to the local jurisdiction. If this isn't a recipe for targeted voter disenfranchisement I cannot imagine what is.

While the political odds of getting the Electoral College system changed ( a system that structurally throws considerably greater weight to small states) are probably so minimal as to not be worth discussing, I think there is a strong argument to begin a nation-wide dialogue on a complete overhaul of the voting process once this election is completed. It is a very awkward position for the US to be demanding "fair" elections all around the world when our own process is so completely flawed.

I have to chime in with my Dad's remark above.

In our culture, we have an overwhelming tendancy to entertain an extremely unhealthy belief that the ends justify the means.

I think most of these people think they are doing these things to "save our great nation" from immorality and weak leadership. Of course, they don't mind that they may have to be a bit "immoral" in the process, and the they're flushing much of what's great about our nation down the toilet in the (political) process.

I think a fool-proof voting system is a tough bind. The only way I see to do it is to have COMPLETE TRANSPARENCY so that every vote can be tracked back to the person who cast it and be confirmed by them. You have to trade privacy for transparency, and many people are rightly concerned about doing that as long as the oppression of particular political viewpoints continues.

Well the 58,000 missing ballot papers in florida should swing it for bush anyway...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/afp/us_vote_florida_ballots

What do you think about the 120K duplicate registrations in Ohio. Apparently a few dead people here and there.

I forget who is getting blamed for that, since pre-war missing explosives overshadowed things.

After frantic legal filings, the decision (registration req'd) to allow Rebublican challengers in the polls has been upheld. The Ohio State Supreme Court overturned a number of lower court rulings in the last 24 hours that barred said Republicans from sitting in the polling places and challenging voters willy nilly. The US Supreme Court this morning refused to overturn the State court ruling, saying essentially, they didn't have enough time to make a reasoned decision.

The Republicans are so thrilled with the tactic that they are sending another 10,000 folks to West Philly to challenge voters in that heavily African American enclave.

Here's another link to a story about the decision by the US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. No registration required.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20041102/pl_nm/election_monitors_ohio_dc

My, bad...it was a list of 10,000 voters in W. Philly that were to be challenged, not 10,000 challengers.

Not that it's any better.

If your vote matters so little to you that you can be easily intimitaded or forget to vote, does your vote really have any value at all?

We operate in a capital market where people pay for something for how much its worth to them. If one is so easily persuaded to not vote, then they probably were not willing to pay for it. Pay as in "time, frustration, research of the candidates." Those people probably do not feel strongly about voting at all, why because it means nothing to them. Sure the media all around them campaigns heavily to get them to vote so maybe they feel a little obligated and a little better when they have voted, but look at who's behind those campaigns. Get out to vote ads on MTV, targeting 18 year olds who would have no idea who's really the better candidate besides who's going to give them more college money (is probably the only issue they'd care about), guess who they vote for? Democrates, and guess who rich people usually vote for. None of these issues actually efficiently promote the public policy or efficient spending of government money (tax payer money).

So should you get behind a wheel of a car when you don't know how to drive? Should you vote, when you don't have all the information to make a sound judgement for the long term well-being of society? How easy is it for one issue to make you stick with one candidate because none of the other issues really matter? Now how much is the average voter going work on researching each issue and candidate so that they can make a sound judgement? Not only do they have to understand the political and economic systems of the world, they have to dig through all the trash politicians create to mislead voters into thinking a certain way? Who's going to go through that? Very few, the very few that do, probably has the most credible vote, but theirs weighs the same amount as the average joe deciding one day he had nothing to do, so he should go vote. Who would you rather trust with the decision?

So what do we really need in order to point US in the right direction focused on long term goals? Well-informed voters voting. I know I wouldn't trust a guy without a license behind the wheel.

How do we achieve that? Create a movement that makes voting religious. How difficult is that? Very.

However, one simple solution that I have thought of (which must have already been thought of by someone before me) to help this problem is, allow voters to split their votes between candidates. Therefore those who are indifferent can vote 50/50 and those who strongly approve of one candidate over another can choose 100/0. Split votes.

Its not costly to use, given the move to the digital age, and its gives voters a chance to put more of a value on each candidate. People will say, so a 50/50 vote doesn't even count as a vote. Maybe, maybe not, but at least that's how the voter voted, and that's how the voter felt about both candidates.

You could make it a legal obligation to vote and fine everybody who fails to vote.

Spoilt papers would have a new meaning in this context.

Hmmn.. If you have a computerised voting booth, is there an option to deliberately spoil your paper/slip/ballot?

Bruce Denney said:

You could make it a legal obligation to vote and fine everybody who fails to vote.

This is what they do in Australia. It's something to think about for sure. You'd have to dismantle the voter registration system in the U.S. to do that here. As long as the voter rolls get used for purposes other than voting (e.g., jury duty candidates) there is going to be a lot of resistance to getting everyone on the voter rolls.

Alan Dechert said:

You'd have to dismantle the voter registration system in the U.S. to do that here. As long as the voter rolls get used for purposes other than voting (e.g., jury duty candidates) there is going to be a lot of resistance to getting everyone on the voter rolls.

Why? What is the problem with voter roles being used for jury service?

A requirement of citizenship could be that you register as a citizen and you take part as an active citizen, this means voting and doing your civic duty in jury service filing tax returns, doing national service or whatever else the government dictates is your civic duty.

Bruce Denney said:

Alan Dechert said:

You'd have to dismantle the voter registration system in the U.S. to do that here. As long as the voter rolls get used for purposes other than voting (e.g., jury duty candidates) there is going to be a lot of resistance to getting everyone on the voter rolls.

Why? What is the problem with voter roles being used for jury service?

I'm pointing out that logistically, such a move (making voting mandatory) would be very difficult. A significant percentage of people don't register to vote because they feel they can't afford to serve on jury duty and they think this (not registering to vote) is a way to avoid that. Voter files are sometimes used for other purposes such as marketing even though they are not supposed to be used that way.

If you add another reason for people not to be on the list (you'll be fined if you don't vote) then you'll have another reason people don't want to be on a list of eligible voters. So, to enforce a law that says eligible voters have to vote, you'd have to create some other system (probably using state ID database).

Apart from the voter registration system issue, I think mandatory voting would be unpopular here in the U.S. That's just my guess. I would be interested to see a poll on this issue. I'm definitely unwilling to take it up as a cause and I haven't heard of anyone else in the U.S. trying to do that.

I wonder how many countries have mandatory voting ...

I can't vouch for this web site but it mentions 3 European countries and 4 countries in Latin America. http://www.aceproject.org/main/english/es/esc07a.htm

Here's another web site with some intelligent commentary on that: http://www.idea.int/vt/analysis/Compulsory_Voting.cfm

"The leading argument against compulsory voting is that it is not consistent with the freedom associated with democracy. Voting is not an intrinsic obligation and the enforcement of the law would be an infringement of the citizens' freedom associated with democratic elections. It may discourage the political education of the electorate because people forced to participate will react against the perceived source of oppression."

Another page that lists pros and cons: http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa060100a.htm

This kind of voter challenge has been a major strategy for the Republican party... We posted some information about this on the morning of December 8, 2000 after it was apparent that the conservative "Voting Integrity Project" was involved in discouraging minority voting in Florida. It is still online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/floridaleft/message/6670

We alerted the Congressional Black Caucus and other about this organization, and it got so much bad publicity (see salon.com article listed in my post), that the Voting Integrity Project disbanded. But the effort continued, under more covert auspices, apparently.

Poll watching actually is a legitimate activity, you need people inside the polling booths to ensure the integrity of the process... But you are right -- an organized campaign to challenge specific voters based on their identity should not be legal. It is a loophole in the current system.

-rich cowan

Organizers' Collaborative

It has been a while, this post. And it puzzles me (not being from the USA) that you have it so backward in the States. Democracy makes you have a right to vote. Democracy also makes your government have to make you aware that there will be a vote a.k. INVITE you to vote. To be able to invite each person over 18, you need to have them registered in one place or another. That means your government needs to know where you live, so they can mail you the invitation at your last known home address. And then, mandatory or not, you can make up your mind to vote, where you want to do this (work somewhere else on that day). The people at the box will know you are coming, because you vote in your allocated box office, and there your name is on the list.

It seems to me that America is still using the Town Crier system. Refusing people to register to vote is not Democracy in action, so why has nobody challenged that way of doing things?