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It’s Time for Citizens to Take Control of Our Democracy
North Carolina doesn’t want you to vote if you live in a college dormitory in that state. They don’t want you to vote if you don’t have a special state identification card. There is a provision in state law that polling places can serve a maximum of 1500 voters, but in Boone, where college students nearly caused the parish to go for Barak Obama, you must now travel out of your way to the one polling place left, which serves over 9,000 voters. With only 45 parking spaces the parking lot will need to fill and empty every 6 or 7 minutes to accommodate everyone. Of course, accommodating all the voters is the last thing this Republican controlled local voting board has in mind.
Throughout the South and in other conservative stronghold around the country the story is pretty much the same. Since the United States Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act an ideologically obstinate Republican Party, which is in demographic decline, is responding to growing pluralism and power sharing by rejecting democratic majority rule in favor of vote manipulation and dirty tricks. In one voting precinct in Texas, changes to the distribution of voting machines would have predominately African-American polling places handle ten times the number of voters as predominately White polling places. In every Republican controlled state the voting districts have been redrawn to make it nearly impossible for them to lose their incumbency. And all these changes are not random developments but elements of a nationwide plot to project conservative power and suppress opposing or alternative social views.
Admitting that there is a problem with our democratic process is difficult enough. Fixing it will be even harder. Elections are the province of state governments, each with unique constitutions, chapter laws and administrative policies. In a previous post [http://wp.me/p2WIGz-7B ] I reported on the results of a survey I conducted of the constitutional voting rights articulated in every state constitution. The results were disturbing. Most of the rights we think we have are not supported in the language of most state constitutions and no state constitution has adequately defined voting rights.
Voting is, of course, the cornerstone of democracy. It is the means by which political power is aggregated and distributed within a democratic society. Each vote is a transfer of power collected by the chosen candidate. The integrity of the voting process is therefore critical to a democratic society. It is too precious to entrust in partisan hands. The administration of the election process should be pre-partisan, outside of total government control. It should be directly under citizen control.
Our present system of election relies on election administrators appointed by the party in power. In most states that means the State Secretary of State. Keeping in mind that most states don’t have constitutionally secure voting rights, the legislatures have significant control over election procedures and the Secretary of States have great leeway over how these laws are implemented. Among the strange consequences this has cause is the turning over of elections to private voting companies. Most or our votes are cast and counted by private companies using electronic machines run on proprietary software. The voting companies are accountable to no one. We citizens didn’t ask for this and there was no discussion about this prior to hiring these private firms to collect and count our votes. Since these companies have taken over the election process we have had some of the most unusual and controversial elections in modern times. I have written extensively on this subject in the past (see below).
How should we protect our voting rights? By electing non-partisan, independent citizen boards to run our elections. All voting policies and procedures should be approved through public referendum developed by these citizen Boards of Election. Citizens on these boards should have no party affiliations and should not hold any public office. These citizen boards should be responsible for everything from drawing congressional districts, maintaining voter registrations preparing ballots, assigning polling places, etc. right down to training poll workers and monitoring elections. Any significant changes in voting policy should have to be put to a public vote. If private companies are to be hired to count our votes, it is the voters who should decide whether or not to use them. In my view, there should be nothing involving the franchise that isn’t itself subject to direct citizen approval.
The candidate who collects the most votes wins the consent to govern. In the bargain, the candidate in a representative democracy is expected to represent everyone, even those opposed to him or her. In exchange, all the people consent to be governed by majority rule even if there candidate didn’t win. Representatives should do what is right for the greatest good even if it isn’t what is popular at the moment or aligned with the interests of those who supported the candidate. Of course, this is the ideal, not the practice. But today, the basic bargain that makes a Republic work has broken down. Elected representatives are narrowly pursuing the interests of their political donors and party constituents almost exclusively. The Republican minority in the Senate no longer accepts majority rule, using filibusters to forcing super-majorities on nearly every vote. With this same disregard they are making it harder for citizens who don’t agree with them to vote in public elections. Governments and powerful interests have broken faith with democracy. It’s time for ordinary citizens to take back control over the democratic voting process.
MY BLOGLIOGROPHY ON VOTING ISSUES
The sorry state of voting rights in America, a 50 state comparison
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/03/sorry-states-of-voting-rights-in.html
How voter ID laws might block you from voting
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/seven-ways-voter-id-could-block-you.html
Republicans have a 5% election fraud handicap built into the voting system
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/08/republicans-have-5-election-fraud.html
Many state are unprepared for a fair and free election
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/many-states-unprepared-for-fair-and.html
Outsourcing or privatized voting process overseas
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/outsourcing-our-privatized-voting.html
Voting rights denied to a record number of “felons”
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/voting-rights-denied-for-record-numbers.html
Ireland Scraps Electronic Voting Machines for Good
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/06/ireland-scraps-electronic-voting.html
Secret flawed voting software discovered and exposed
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/06/ireland-scraps-electronic-voting.html
Does voter suppression have a new target in Florida (Latino’s)
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/05/does-voter-suppression-have-new-target.html
To know your Voting Rights you must know your state constitution
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/03/voting-know-your-rights-know-your-state.html
Can a convicted, or formerly convicted felon vote? Lots of confusion
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/04/can-convicted-felon-vote-major.html
Colorado sues for voting privacy, but do we have that right
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/02/colorado-group-sues-for-vote-privacy.html
A private company has the first peek at election results
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/02/company-wprivate-access-to-vote-totals.html
Voter suppression in America to get a hearing at the United Nations
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/03/voter-suppression-in-america-to-get.html
Caucus voting flubs highlight election system flaws
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/02/caucus-voting-flubs-highlight-our.html
South Carolina out sources vote count to Spain
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/01/south-carolina-outsources-vote-count-to.html
A voters “Bill of Rights”
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2011/10/voters-bill-of-rights.html
Virginia Gives Many Former Felons Permission to Vote
In Civil Rights Victory, Virginia Restores Voting Rights for Hundreds of Thousands Nonviolent Felons
|
Number of States WithThis Right
|
Percent of US Population With ThisRight
|
QUALIFICATIONS and EXCEPTIONS
|
|
49
|
99.6%
|
Must be A US Citizen
|
|
46
|
91.2%
|
Must be Registered to vote
|
|
20
|
27.6%
|
State’s Deployed Solders Can Vote
|
|
37
|
83.9%
|
Felony Exception
|
|
12
|
15.5%
|
Treason Exception
|
|
13
|
30.9%
|
Incarceration Exception
|
|
33
|
69.5%
|
Mental Capacity Exception
|
|
2
|
0.5%
|
Moral Conduct or other Exception
|
|
23
|
34.0%
|
Restoration from Exception
|
|
10
|
17.6%
|
No quartered solders
|
|
2
|
1.8%
|
Right to Appeal Voter Ineligibility
|
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/voting-rights-denied-for-record-numbers.html
Posted: 07/12/2012 3:01 pm Updated: 07/12/2012 3:08 pm
“A record number of Americans with criminal records cannot vote in what is expected to be a tight presidential election, a new study says.
More than 5.85 million adults who’ve been convicted of a felony aren’t welcome at polling places, according to data through 2010 compiled by The Sentencing Project. That’s 600,000 more than in 2004, the last time the nonprofit group crunched the numbers.
“The vast majority of these disenfranchised adults have been released from prison. Sentencing Project researchers found more than 4 million Americans who cannot cast a ballot because they’re on probation or parole, or live in a state that withholds the right to vote from all ex-felons.
RACIAL DISPARITY
- More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities.
- For Black males in their thirties, 1 in every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day.
drugs,” in which two-thirds of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color. – The Sentencing Project
OUR VOTING RIGHTS – A State by State Analysis
In an off handed comment made after the 2012 election, President Barack Obama said we need to fix our election process. This is a welcome suggestion. Our election process is badly broken and we need to take a good look at it. We should start by asking:
What voting rights do I have in my state?
This is not a commonly asked question, but it should be. Most of us believe voting rights are guaranteed under the federal constitution. This isn’t exactly true. The Constitution contains several amendments to prevented states from disenfranchising certain categories of voters. For example, states cannot use race, religion, gender or the age of anyone 18 or older as a means to disqualify a “citizen” from voting. The actual right of suffrage, however, isn’t a federal guarantee. This is up to the states. Fixing our voting system will be a state by state effort.
In all our public discussions about elections there is rarely mention of how voting rights differ in various states. When you look at state constitutional language on voting rights, however, you quickly learn that many of the rights we take as granted, such as a right to secret ballots, are nowhere to be found in most state constitutions. In fact, state constitutional voting rights differ widely from one state to the next.
The wide variation in voting rights are not immediately evident because state laws, administrative regulation and voting practices over time have created consensual frameworks for elections that appear similar from state to state. For example, the vote counting process is open for public view in most states, but only the constitutions of Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia guarantee public vote counting. California is the only state guaranteeing that votes will even be counted. After candidates concede defeat based on vote projections, the states are not constitutionally obligated to finish counting every ballot.
When elections run smoothly and no questions are raised, everyone consents to the will of the majority. This is true because in a representative democracy, elected officials are expected to represent everyone’s interests and not just the interests of those who voted for them. But when elections are very close and the process seems flawed, explicit constitutional language is essential to protect the democratic process and win over the consent of the minority. Elections have consequences. Flawed elections or overtly partisan representation can have dire consequences. Faith in our democracy begins with faith in our voting systems.
I am not a lawyer or constitution expert, but curiosity about state voting rights caused me to survey all fifty state constitutions and document the articulated rights in each. Some results of this exercise are presented in the tables below. Keep in mind that some constitutions have very archaic language or formats that make them difficult to interpret. The information below represents my best effort to classify and document basic voting rights as articulated in state constitutions. It is followed by a brief discussion for each of the categories presented below.
– Numerous opportunities for the electorate to receive objective information from a free press.
– Freedom to assemble for political rallies and campaigns.
– Rules that require party representatives to maintain a distance from polling places on election day
– An impartial or balanced system of conducting elections and verifying election results
– Accessible polling places, private voting space, secure ballot boxes, and transparent ballot counting.
– Secret ballots – voting by secret ballot ensures that an individual’s choice of party or candidate cannot be used against him or her.
– Legal prohibitions against election fraud
– Recount and contestation procedures
PERCENTAGE OF CITIZENS COVERED BY THE VOTING RIGHTSARTICULATED IN STATE CONSTITUTIONS |
||
| Num. of States
w/This Right |
Percent of Population
w/this Right |
GENERAL VOTING RIGHTS |
|
1
|
9.7%
|
Right to Have Every Vote Counted
|
|
9
|
10.5%
|
General Right of Suffrage
|
|
21
|
44.0%
|
Right to Free and Fair Election
|
|
28
|
55.3%
|
Right to voting by ballot
|
|
23
|
46.7%
|
Right to secret vote
|
|
3
|
5.6%
|
Right to Public Vote Counting
|
|
15
|
32.6%
|
Frequency of Elections Right
|
|
23
|
36.5%
|
Privilege from Arrest during voting
|
|
21
|
36.5%
|
Privilege from Arrest Exceptions
|
|
2
|
1.6%
|
Right to accessible polling place
|
|
Num. of
States
w/This Right
|
Percent of Population
w/This Right
|
QUALIFICATIONS and EXCEPTIONS
|
|
49
|
99.6%
|
Must be A US Citizen
|
|
46
|
91.2%
|
Must be Registered to vote
|
|
20
|
27.6%
|
State’s Deployed Solders Can Vote
|
|
37
|
83.9%
|
Felony Exception
|
|
12
|
15.5%
|
Treason Exception
|
|
13
|
30.9%
|
Incarceration Exception
|
|
33
|
69.5%
|
Mental Capacity Exception
|
|
2
|
0.5%
|
Moral Conduct or other Exception
|
|
23
|
34.0%
|
Restoration from Exception
|
|
10
|
17.6%
|
No quartered solders
|
|
2
|
1.8%
|
Right to Appeal Voter Ineligibility
|
Voting Rights, a State by State Analysis
What voting rights do you have in your state?
This is an uncommon question. We mostly assume that voting rights are contained somewhere in the US Constitution, but this isn’t true. What the Federal Constitution does say, in several different amendments, is that states cannot use race, religion, gender or the age of anyone 18 years old or older as a means to disqualify a US citizen from voting. The actual right of suffrage, or the “franchise” as the election process is sometimes called, isn’t a federal right at all. Elections and the voting process are the purview of each sovereign state.
There is a table below which lists the basic voting rights spelled out in our state constitutions. You will see how voting rights differ significantly from one state to the next. Before reviewing the table, however, it is important to acknowledge that most states honor a host of voting “rights” and privileges beyond what is articulated in the constitutions. These unarticulated voting rights are often expression in state chapter laws or in the states voting procedures.
Many of us have come to view voting rights as “unalienable”, but they are not. Unlike explicit constitutional language, laws passed by legislatures and voting procedures established by the state executive branches of government can be changed or reinterpreted in novel ways. When elections run smoothly no questions are raised. But should something ever go unexpectedly wrong we need explicit state constitutional protections to redress our grievances. A discussion of each basic voting right contained in the table below will follows, along with a table that summarizes how common these rights are in America.
Basic Voting Right Articulated in State Constitutions
 |
RIGHT TO HAVE EVERY VOTE COUNTED – The first voting right listed on the table above is the right to have every vote counted. California is the only state that has this protection in their constitution. This right may seem obvious or unnecessary at first, but there are documented instances where absentee ballots have gone missing and uncounted. One example took place back in 2008 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when garbage bags believed to contain missing ballots were impounded by police but not opened because it was unclear if the missing ballots had to be counted. This right, then, isn’t about hanging chads or undecipherable ballots, but about the obvious expectation that ballots properly cast are ballots properly counted, even if doing so doesn’t change who won.
GENERAL RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE – Many state constitutions have high sounding language about how all power is derived by the people, but only 9 state go on to guarantee the right of suffrage. Suffrage, according to Wikipedia, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process, It is the political franchise, or simply the franchise, which is distinct from mere voting rights. A right of suffrage forecloses the possibility of a state one day declaring a state of emergency and suspending elections. This is a seemingly remote possibility, but not so remote that 9 states have included this protection in their constitution.
RIGHT TO FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS – “In any State the authority of the government can only derive from the will of the people as expressed in genuine, free and fair elections held at regular intervals on the basis of universal, equal and secret suffrage.” So said the Inter-Parliamentary Council at its 154th session in Paris, 26 March, 1994. Here in the US, the State Department was actually very helpful in sharing their view on Free and Fair Elections with nations whose democracies are less advance than our own. They provide the following guidelines:
Free and fair elections require:
— Universal suffrage for all eligible men and women to vote – democracies do not restrict this right from minorities, the disabled, or give it only to those who are literate or who own property
— Freedom to register as a voter or run for public office.
— Freedom of speech for candidates and political parties – democracies do not restrict candidates or political parties from criticizing the performance of the incumbent.
— Numerous opportunities for the electorate to receive objective information from a free press.
— Freedom to assemble for political rallies and campaigns.
— Rules that require party representatives to maintain a distance from polling places on election day – election officials, volunteer poll workers, and international monitors may assist voters with the voting process but not the voting choice.
— An impartial or balanced system of conducting elections and verifying election results – trained election officials must either be politically independent or those overseeing elections should be representative of the parties in the election.
— Accessible polling places, private voting space, secure ballot boxes, and transparent ballot counting.
— Secret ballots – voting by secret ballot ensures that an individual’s choice of party or candidate cannot be used against him or her.
— Legal prohibitions against election fraud – enforceable laws must exist to prevent vote tampering (e.g. double counting, ghost voting).
— Recount and contestation procedures – legal mechanisms and processes to review election processes must be established to ensure that elections were conducted properly.
Many of our soverign states could learn a lot from what the State Department has been preaching abroad. Only 44% of Americans can claim Free and Fair Elections as a constitutional protection in their state. It is ironic that the government Website from which the above information comes contains the following disclaimer:
NOTE: The America.gov website is no longer being updated.
RIGHT TO VOTE BY BALLOT – There are many ways to vote if you think about it. You can have a show of hands. You can call for the yeas and nays and judge the outcome by the volume of shouts. You can even draw straws. Ballots, on the other hands are unique to each voter, often secret and never shared by more than one voter. They are usually pre-printed paper, but increasing voting is by electronic ballot. This is a pre-programmed selection on an electronic device. Hopefully the results aren’t also pre-programmed (see Blackboxvoting.org for much more on this scary thought) Originally, voting was conducted using black or white balls, black being no and white being yes. The voter would pick up the ball of his choice and drop it into a container (or ball lot?). An important point about ballots is that they can be secret, unlike other methods. Voting by ballot is a protection found in 26 of 50 state constitutions.
RIGHT TO SECRET VOTING – The secrecy of our vote is among our most cherished rights, except it isn’t a right at all for more than 146 million American citizens, or at least it isn’t a constitutional right. Secret voting is essential to assure that how we vote can never be used against us, yet only 21 states have explicit constitutional language to guarantee secrecy in voting. Several other states guarantee the right to vote in private, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it?
RIGHT TO PUBLIC VOTE COUNTING – Stalin has been credited with saying, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything”. This speaks volumes for both the right to have our vote counted and the necessity to have all vote counting conducted in public view. This is especially true when ballots are cast is secret or when they are electronically invisible. Public vote counting is even more important as we rely more and more on private corporations to count our electronic ballots. They claim that the software they use to count or votes is so proprietary that even state election officials are not allowed to peek. Coupled with a trend among election officials to view with suspicion any voter who wants to observe the process, it is shocking that only 3 states constitutionally protect this essential right.
FREQUENCY OF ELECTIONS – It is one thing to guarantee that the government will hold elections and another thing to actually schedule them. Ask anyone from a parliamentary democracy about this and how it can be manipulated to benefit incumbents. Perhaps more to the point there should be a performance standard by which to judge whether we have a right to suffrage. That standard for 15 states is some clear constitutional language about when, or how often elections are to be held. While 100% of Americans know when to expect their elections, only 30% of them have this guarantee in writing.
PRIVILEGE FROM ARREST AND EXCEPTIONS – Imagine yourself heading out to perform your civic duty on election day. You show up to vote and notice a police presence out front. Maybe you have some outstanding parking tickets or a warrant for not paying child support. Maybe you missed a municipal court date on some trivial matter. Do you walk past the police and risk arrest, or do you give up your vote to right out of fear of being arrested? This is the predicament that a privilege from arrest is designed to resolve. Unless your crimes are so felonious or treasonous, or unless you cause a public disturbance at the polling site, a privilege from arrest while going to, coming from or being at the polling place is constitutionally
guaranteed in 21 states. It should be all 50 states because this scenario is all too common. We should not see a police presence at or near the polling places. We are all presumed innocent unless actually convicted of an offense. No law enforcement authority should prevent anyone from exercising their right to vote. The absence of this constitutional privilege can have a disproportional impact on minorities and the poor, yet only a third of our citizens are covered by this protection.
RIGHT TO ACCESSIBLE POLLING PLACES – “… polling places shall be easily accessible to all persons including disabled and elderly persons who are otherwise qualified to vote,” says the New Hampshire State Constitution. Is this right necessary? After all, don’t we have the Americans with Disabilities Act? Yes we do, but does the Americans with Disabilities Act strictly apply? It’s an open question. More broadly, do we have a right to expect adequate polling places and voting machines in every community without undo commutation hardships or excessively long lines? We could do better. Only New Hampshire has this provision but something more broadly stated would be a good idea for every state constitution.
Here now is a summary of findings regarding state constitutional voter rights:
|
VOTING RIGHTS ARTICULATED IN US STATE CONSTITUTIONS |
||
|
Number of States With This Right |
Percent of US Population WithThis Right |
GENERAL VOTING RIGHTS |
|
1 |
9.7% |
Right to Have Every Vote Counted |
|
9 |
10.5% |
General Right of Suffrage |
|
21 |
44.0% |
Right to Free and Fair Election |
|
26 |
55.3% |
Right to voting by ballot |
|
21 |
46.7% |
Right to secret vote |
|
3 |
5.6% |
Right to Public Vote Counting |
|
15 |
32.6% |
Frequency of Elections Right |
|
21 |
36.5% |
Privilege from Arrest during voting |
|
21 |
36.5% |
Privilege from Arrest Exceptions |
|
2 |
1.6% |
Right to accessible polling place |
|
|
|
|
|
Number of States With This Right |
Percent of US Population WithThis Right |
QUALIFICATIONS and EXCEPTIONS |
|
49 |
99.6% |
Must be A US Citizen |
|
46 |
91.2% |
Must be Registered to vote |
|
20 |
27.6% |
State’s Deployed Solders Can Vote |
|
37 |
83.9% |
Felony Exception |
|
12 |
15.5% |
Treason Exception |
|
13 |
30.9% |
Incarceration Exception |
|
33 |
69.5% |
Mental Capacity Exception |
|
2 |
0.5% |
Moral Conduct or other Exception |
|
23 |
34.0% |
Restoration from Exception |
|
10 |
17.6% |
No quartered solders |
|
2 |
1.8% |
Right to Appeal Voter Ineligibility |
Can a Convicted Felon Vote? And other voting oddities…
Voting rights in America are mostly defined by state constitutions, not our federal Constitution. A look at all 50 state constitutions finds considerable variation from state to state as to which voting rights are actually protected by explicit constitutional language. All state constitutions include some language which specifies which individuals can and cannot vote. For example, 49 states say you must be a citizen to vote and 46 states require citizens to be registered before voting. On the other hand, only 20 states constitutionally guarantee that their residents in US military service retain a right to vote in their state when deployed elsewhere. The other 30 states may well have statues that grant this privilege to solders, but the right isn’t locked into their state constitutions. Below is a table which shows how common various voter qualification and disqualifications are in the state constitutions. The article is just another example of how confused we American’s are when it comes to our voting rights.
|
Number of States WithThis Right
|
Percent of US Population With ThisRight
|
QUALIFICATIONS and EXCEPTIONS
|
|
49
|
99.6%
|
Must be A US Citizen
|
|
46
|
91.2%
|
Must be Registered to vote
|
|
20
|
27.6%
|
State’s Deployed Solders Can Vote
|
|
37
|
83.9%
|
Felony Exception
|
|
12
|
15.5%
|
Treason Exception
|
|
13
|
30.9%
|
Incarceration Exception
|
|
33
|
69.5%
|
Mental Capacity Exception
|
|
2
|
0.5%
|
Moral Conduct or other Exception
|
|
23
|
34.0%
|
Restoration from Exception
|
|
10
|
17.6%
|
No quartered solders
|
|
2
|
1.8%
|
Right to Appeal Voter Ineligibility
|
Felons’ voting rights restored
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120406/EDIT05/304069992/1021/edit
Gilbert Holmes
Recently, I took it upon myself to conduct an unscientific poll.
I’ve asked colleagues, political activists and friends whether a Hoosier convicted of a felony can vote.
Most said no, and others were uncertain.
That tells me that it’s likely that the majority of Hoosiers are under the impression that if you’ve committed a felony, when it comes to voting it’s one strike and you’re out.
That mistaken impression has led to thousands of disenfranchised voters in Indiana who think that because they’ve been incarcerated, they can no longer take advantage of the voting rights guaranteed them by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.
This de facto voter disenfranchisement ripples across generations and communities, creating entire classes of people who don’t exercise their right to vote.
Indiana law restores a person’s right to vote after he or she is no longer incarcerated.
One reason it’s so common to think that former felons are permanently barred from voting is that 35 states have stricter voting restrictions than Indiana for felons, and in 13 of those states, a felon can permanently lose the right to vote.
But in Indiana, the loss of suffrage applies only during the actual time of incarceration.
Why should you care? People who vote are more likely to volunteer, give to charities and attend school board meetings.
Former felons who vote are less likely to be rearrested, because voting helps people connect and become part of something positive.
The disproportionate number of blacks affected by voter disenfranchisement, more than 1.5 million across the nation, is an even more stunning number when you consider that one in every 15 black men age 18 and older is incarcerated, and the zero-tolerance policies in our schools have created a pipeline straight to prison for many black teenage dropouts in our communities.
When such a large portion of the community is locked in the criminal justice system, you can be sure their interests are not represented either at the polls or in the halls of power.
If you’re a felon, and you’re no longer incarcerated, you have the right to vote.
If you’re on probation, or on parole, you have the right to vote. If you’re placed in a community corrections program, or subject to home detention, under Indiana
law, you still have the right to vote. Voting is a constitutional right, and it’s one all Hoosiers should be proud to exercise.
Outsourcing Our Privatized Voting Process Overseas
Bev Harris, Blackboxvoting.com
NEW CERTIFICATIONS, PLANNED EXPANSION: Black Box Voting has been investigating and reporting on this disconcerting trend for nine years now. Everything we’ve been reporting has not only turned out to be true, but is increasing. A press release today about the planned expansion of Unisyn into more USA locations renews attention on foreign ownership of corporations selling voting systems into the United States. Unisyn is owned by a Malaysian gambling outfit.
Another major elections industry player, Canada’s Dominion, purchased the massive Diebold Election Systems division (which it shares with ES&S); Dominion also owns Smartmatic, which handles electronic vote-counting in the Philippines and Belgium.
Military voting is now handled in several states by Barcelona, Spain-owned Scytl. In January 2012, Scytl acquired the largest election results reporting firm, SOE Software. Accenture, now based in Dublin Ireland (formerly headquartered in tax-haven Bermuda), claims copyright over the massive electronic voter registration/voter history databases used in several states, including Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Colorado, Wisconsin and Arkansas.
Accenture purchased its voter registration unit from Election.com, a Saudi-owned company based in the Cayman Islands. Because a computer will only do what it’s programmers and administrators tell it to do, whoever issues the commands gains ultimate control over how it receives, counts, and reports votes, voter registrations, and voter histories. UNISYN: According to Barry Herron (formerly of Diebold Election Systems), now Director of Sales for Unisyn, “Unisyn and our business partners are actively supporting installations in the States of Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, and Virginia. We intend to expand into other states in late 2012 and early 2013.” Unisyn also recently made inroads into Puerto Rico.
Another Unisyn election product called “Inkavote” is used in 4 million-voter Los Angeles County (Calif) and in Jackson County Missouri. IS THERE A PROBLEM WITH FOREIGN OWNERSHIP OF USA ELECTION SOFTWARE? Not if you don’t mind some unknown guys working offshore controlling whatever they choose to in the software processing votes and voters.
For more on Malaysian, Chinese, Canadian, Spanish, Saudi, Cayman, Irish ownership of USA election software, see full Black Box Voting article with supporting documents and links: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82176.html * * * * We APPRECIATE the wonderful support many of you have been providing over the years! It is the sole reason we still exist. Permission to reprint or excerpt granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Voter Suppression Humor: NJ-ACLU Cartoon Contest Winner
I was the winner of the NJ ACLU’s 2012 cartoon contest to come up with the best caption or punch line for a cartoon drawn by syndicated cartoonist, Drew Sheneman. Below is my winning entry. Thanks to NJ ACLU and Mr. Shenemen for the opportunity to participate in this fun.
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South Carolina Outsources Vote Count to Spain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKU
By Bev Harris
The genius of democracy is dispersed public control.
As we saw in Iowa when alert public citizens captured evidence of the actual vote count BEFORE it was reported by a centralized state committee, the state Republican Party and the news media initially claimed victory for the wrong winner. They only corrected this mis-call two weeks later, buying the favored candidate half a month of fund raising prowess and prestige.
In South Carolina, 100% of election results will be redirected through a private Barcelona, Spain-owned company, Scytl/SOE Software, before being reported to the public.
There is only one way to immediately find out whether Scytl/SOE reported the right results*, and that is for members of the public to capture evidence of reported precinct results when polls close tonight. Think of it as a giant neighborhood watch.
Precinct results should be posted at each polling site. In addition, during poll closing the public has a right to be in the polling place watching and videotaping what goes on.
Here is a four-minute video showing exactly what to do:
By the way, the results will be published here:
http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/36831/63425/en/select-county.html
Compare photos of what you capture at polling places to the results reported at the above link.
For computer buffs, there’s another thing you can do. (The above steps are easy and can be done by anyone.) But for tech buffs, you can download multiple times during the evening, and there are even Web snapshot tools to expedite this. It is not uncommon to see results change or disappear midstream.
In Broward County FL, the results reported by Scytl-owned SOE Software in 2008 showed an entire candidate, who was winning, disappear into vapor in the middle of the count, and in Hillsborough County FL and Dallas County TX, votes that had been reported began to disappear.
The way to see this is to download “time slices” — snapshots at various points in time, and compare them. More information for those of you who like technical stuff is available in the Black Box Voting Tool Kit – http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf
Follow Black Box Voting for further developments.
* Well, you have to put an asterisk alongside “the right results” because in South Carolinia you get a two-fer. Results could be incorrect at either end of the pipeline — from the ES&S iVotronic paperless touchscreen voting machines, which have a history of incorrect totals, or from the private results reporting firm Scytl/SOE Software, which has centralized control over what gets reported. More
(USA) 1/12 – THE TRAGIC TALE OF EDWARD TRUE AND JAMES FALSE -Permission to excerpt granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org
By Bev Harris
The actual Iowa winner may “never be known”, and one of the “dead” voters in New Hampshire has now shown up — alive.
It matters, and it’s called journalistic malpractice. TV networks announced that Romney won Iowa, and newspapers pronounced his 1-2 “wins” as “historic.” Candidates dropped out, donors dried up or rushed to send cash to the reported “winner”.
Now we are being told that the Iowa results “don’t matter.” They matter, regardless of any rent-an-expert who shows up in the press. Misreported results manipulated the candidate field from which the rest of America can choose.
The Des Moines Register is now reporting an even greater malfeasance: that the final, certified Iowa result may “never be known.” There were several typos, they say. Some precincts will never be reported, they claim.
That we got a heads up at all about bogus media results was due to an alert Iowa citizen, Edward True, who captured evidence of the 20-vote misreport in his Appanoose County precinct. That people like Edward True were stationed all over Iowa capturing results before they hit the state Republican Committee tabulation was due to Black Box Voting, where the need to do this was explained, and to radio hosts and sites like Bradblog and Facebook, where the word went out.
Mainstream media then began its next act of theatre: They started spinning the false result that THEY THEMSELVES announced as — instead of their own foolishness — “making Iowa look foolish”.
But if we’re looking for truth, here’s what we will find: The mistakes saw light of day because the Iowa caucus was conducted in open public meeting allowing citizens to watch ballots as they were hand counted.
At least it WAS an open system, until the Republican State Committee pitched the bizarre idea that some precincts might never be reported in the final certified result, and the media failed to bay like bloodhounds tracking the truth.
But there is some good news in this: It’s great that public citizens are starting to understand their role in the “neighborhood watch” component of election integrity.
AND NOW FOR JAMES FALSE, OF THE ANTONYM ORGANIZATION “PROJECT VERITAS”
In New Hampshire, media hammertime revolved around James O’Keefe and his “Project Veritas”, who reported that dead people were allowed to vote, “proving” it by sending people around the state to impersonate the dead. He’s basically getting fat grants from fat cats who don’t want so many (real, live) people to vote. He admits to receiving $50,000 for the New Hampshire piece. They are busy manufacturing evidence to manipulate public opinion in favor of voter ID legislation.
Problem is, another alert citizen — who they were reporting as dead — called them on their malfeasance. Robert William Beaulieu is on the video as a successfully impersonated dead voter. Embarrasingly for Project Veritas, Robert William Beaulieu is very much alive.
It seems that Project Falsum Project Veritas did not even bother to check birthdates to match names to dead persons. They mistook a 23-year old for an 80-year old.
Now, we recently saw an article coming out of South Carolina alleging that 900 dead persons voted, and that should immediately call into question how the match was made. By name only? Name and birthdate? Or Social Security number?
Matching by name only doesn’t pass the sniff test, and it turns out that matching by name and birthdate is trickier than you might think. I found 130 people named Mary Williams in a Shelby County (TN) database. Two had the same birthdate. In fact, any time you have a common name, with 100 or more instances, you will find the same birthdate as often as 1 in 3 sets. In a statewide database like South Carolina, it would not be surprising to see 900 name/birthdate matches.
The only way to do a match is with Social Security number, and this is not available to public interest groups.
Data Driven Viewpoints 