PDA Supports Voting Rights Legislation - Civil Rights Emphasis
Edited on Fri Feb-18-05 06:04 PM by kevin_pdamerica
How Quickly we Forget One of the strengths of the Republican Party machine is its institutional memory, both long- and short-term. Democrats would do well to learn from that example. It is not enough to simply move on-we must also move forward. A groundswell of outrage swept through the grassroots over the voter disenfranchisement occurring in Ohio and elsewhere surrounding the November 2, 2004 election. Unlike in 2000, when Democrats cried foul over possible voting fraud, the 2004 effort was nonpartisan in nature. Progressive groups coalesced around the notion that everyone should have equal access to voting and that we must work to be sure that minorities and low-income populations do not have to suffer the voter suppression and intimidation of 2004 during the next election cycle and beyond.
Though surprised by the election losses in 2004, and even more surprised at Kerry’s knee-jerk concession, progressives focused on the rights of individuals, rather than complaining about the defeat. Much of the motivation for this effort came from reports of what went on in Ohio before and after the election. Many things occurred that are unacceptable to those who value equal citizen’s rights, including:
•Secretary of State Blackwell’s controversial position as co-chair of Bush’s re-election campaign in Ohio.
•Confusing changes in requirements for voter registration, including a demand for 80-lb paper.
•Inappropriate purging of voter lists.
•Confusing rules regarding provisional ballots.
•e-voting machines with no paper trail.
•Voter intimidation.
•Mismarked and discarded ballots.
•Problems with electronic voting machines.
•Targeted disenfranchisement of African American voters.
•Long waits to vote-up to 10 hours-in minority districts.
•Election challengers inside polling places.
•Lack of adequate security for ballots or voting machines in a number of Ohio counties.
•Widespread problems with the Ohio recount.
•Refusal by a number of Ohio counties to do a full hand recount, as required by law, when their 3% hand count did not match the machine count.
Progressives, Republicans, and the Pivot For the first time in a long time, progressives have found a common goal. Rather than linger on their disappointment over the election results, progressives moved forward with plans to ensure every American has an equal right to vote, and to have that vote counted. The Republicans, no doubt recognizing the potential of this emerging movement, attempted to execute what’s known in the public relations world as a pivot, shifting the voting discussion from civil rights to a technicality.
This was clever of the Republicans, making it easy to view those supporting the technical side of voting as “sore losers” trying to make sure their party is triumphant in future elections. It suggested that the left was really saying, ‘If this had been in place before the election, my candidate would have persevered.’ It shifted the focus away from the voter suppression at the core of the progressive complaint. It was also an effective way to drive a wedge through the middle of the progressive movement.
Unfortunately, a number of Democrats and Progressives bought into the Republican shift. Fearing that no bill requiring substantial changes to support civil rights issues would get passed in this Congress, they instead focused on technicalities. This move away from civil rights became clear from the progressive response when Rep. John Conyers, a true hero throughout the 2004 election debacle, introduced H.R. 533, The Voting Opportunity and Technology Enhancement Rights (VOTER) Act of 2005, a few weeks ago. H.R. 533 is a civil rights bill specifying, among other points, that deceptive and coercive intimidation is unlawful and empowering and directing the Attorney General to prevent persons, partnerships or corporations from such activities. The Conyers bill also mandates a minimum number of machines and poll workers in relation to number of registered voters at each polling station, requires states to make early voting available, and calls for same-day voter registration.
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) joined with Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, AFL-CIO, People for the American Way, NAACP, UAW, Rainbow/PUSH, Black Leadership Forum, and the National Voting Rights Institute in support of this bill, particularly supporting the civil rights portions of it. While it is possible to support more than one bill, PDA committed to only supporting bills at the national level that deal directly with the issues of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
The only section of the Conyers bill that was weak dealt with voter-verified records. Though Conyers did call for verifiable voting records, his attempts to accommodate disabled voters opened the bill to criticism from many in the voting technology community who will accept only very specific language in this arena. One way to look at this bill is to consider it a steak dinner. While the steak came exactly as we wanted, the Conyers bill ordered mashed potatoes instead of the baked potato recommended by the experts.
Many people chose to throw out the baby with the bathwater, refusing to support any part of Conyers bill because of its flaws. This left them supporting only bills that ignore civil rights, such as Senator Ensign’s Voting Integrity and Verification Act (VIVA) of 2005, S. 330, and Rep. Holt’s Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005, H.R. 550, which has become the gold standard for voter-verified paper ballot language. PDA chose to support the civil rights language in the Conyers bill along with the voting language in the Holt bill. While it is certainly true that there was “disenfranchisement by machine” in 2004, we must also consider all the people who never made it to the machines.
Progress: A New Bill to Support Until recently, there wasn’t a civil rights voting bill to endorse in the Senate. This has recently changed with the introduction of S. 450, a bill that a wide spectrum of progressives should be able to support. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer have managed to merge the two competing discussions into a single bill. Including some of the civil rights language in the Conyers bill and taking their cues from experts in verified voting, they have created a bill that deals with both potential machine tampering and voter suppression, though not as comprehensively as Conyers or Holt.
Though the Conyers bill had flaws in the technical voting section, we must commend him for keeping the civil rights issues at the forefront of the voting debate. Had he not introduced his bill early on, it is possible the Republican pivot toward the technical aspects of voting would have been successful. In addition to H.R. 533, Conyers has introduced H.R. 63, the Democracy Day Act of 2005, which would treat election day as a legal public holiday, and he will be introducing a bill that gives ex-offenders the right to vote.
We expect many more bills to be introduced on the subject of voting during the 109th Congress. The Clinton/Boxer legislation will certainly not be the final bill introduced on this topic during the 109th Congress, and it may not turn out to be the best. While it adopted a small portion of the civil rights language from the Conyers bill, it could certainly do better, particularly on the issue of voter intimidation. John Kerry and others are preparing currently preparing bills for introduction. Some of these bills will fine-tune the message of S. 450, others will attempt to distract progressives, once again, from the civil rights issues found in the Conyers bill and to a lesser extent in the Clinton/Boxer bill.
Working at the national level for the passage of bills is only one way to affect election policies. Given the current political climate, many feel it is unlikely we will be able to get any substantive legislation passed at the national level. The Senate Republican Policy Committee is already putting out the message that any voting reform passed through Congress should require voters to show photo identification, to examine the extent to which early and absentee voting is open to fraud, and to examine the integrity of the voter registration process. This adds up to a national plan to disenfranchise more voters.
The steep uphill climb at the national level is no reason to take our eyes off the prize. It has often been said that when the people lead, the leaders will follow. As we continue to work for reform at the national level, we must also take the civil rights principles of the Conyers bill and the voting language of the Holt and Clinton/Boxer bills to the local and state levels. We must push for the Voting Rights Amendment Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. will soon introduce. We must continue to work in our local communities toward the day when every American is not only allowed, but encouraged, to vote.
Joan Krawitz here ... National Ballot Integrity Project.
Although, as advocates of fully auditable elections, we can't endorse a bill that falls down badly in that area, as the Conyers bill does, we are in full accord with you on the critical need to pass the sort of strong civil rights and voting rights reforms Conyers advocates. We're fully in support of your endorsement of the bill because it supports the heart of PDA's mission, which we support as well. And if he's able to strengthen the language around voter verified paper ballots, we'll be thrilled to endorse the bill. The problem for us is not just that the language in this section isn't as good as Holt's or even Ensign's, but that it actually undermines the ability to ensure verifiable voting in the states because it inadvertently mandates touch screen voting without mandating paper ballots for audits and recounts, or providing an audit mechanism.
Although it's easy to see this as a purely or mostly technical issue, it is not. The truth is that there was substantial disenfranchisement by machine in the last election ... though perhaps not as much as we would have seen if the VVPB movement hadn't managed to stall many of the planned purchases of paperless touch-screen machines. The fact is that the undervote rate on these machines is excessively high in minority precincts, and we fully expect this trend to continue and worsen if paper-based audits aren't mandatory. Even worse is the fact that disenfranchisement can be accomplished at the central processor level without touching the machines in the polling places. This is true of every type of computerized vote counting, with or without paper ballots. However, a robust and mandatory random audit will make high levels of rigging far less likely to occur because of the much greaterr chance that the rig will be found and the perpetrators potentially identified.
We back the Ensign bill because it will, at least, prevent states from purchasing paperless machines with their HAVA funds right now. We back the Holt bill and the Clinton-Boxer bill because they will achieve the same goal while implementing the kind of audit that's needed. We're still studying the Clinton-Boxer bill but, at this point, expect to be able to endorse it fully ... just as we would be thrilled to support Representative Conyers' bill if the one section that we're charged with protecting is fixed. We're
We're huge advocates of PDA, and fans of yours and of Rep. Conyers, who is a great hero of ours. And we look forward to working in concert with you far more often than those times when our position is not identical. We're all part of the same quilt, after all.
two strong patches on the larger quilt! we have to come to understand that when organizations don't 100% agree on issues like this, it does not negate the posability of allied work. thank you for this note. we hear you, and support all of your efforts. we still can work together, and i look forward to it!
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