Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's Worst Places to Cast a Ballot (or Tr

[Generic Other]

By Sasha Abramsky
Mother Jones
September/October 2006 Issue

Machines that count backward, slice-and-dice districts, felon baiting, phone jamming, and plenty of dirty tricks.

We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws - a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. How wrong a notion this was has become painfully apparent since 2000: As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework (which determines the voting age, channels money to states and counties, and enforces protections for minorities and the disabled), U.S. elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery. In some places voters still fill in paper ballots or pull the levers of vintage machines; elsewhere, they touch screens or tap keys, with or without paper trails. Some states encourage voter registration; others go out of their way to limit it. Some allow prisoners to vote; others permanently bar ex-felons, no matter how long they've stayed clean. Who can vote, where people cast ballots, and how and whether their votes are counted all depends, to a large extent, on policies set in place by secretaries of state and county elections supervisors - officials who can be as partisan, as dubiously qualified, and as nakedly ambitious as people anywhere else in politics. Here is a list - partial, but emblematic - of American democracy's more glaring weak spots.

MORE:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090406Z.shtml

[Nozebro]

1. Tricksters get promoted. Prospective voters get the shaft.

William Rehnquist began his career as a poll watcher in Arizona, where he did his part to harass, scare, intimidate and otherwise obstruct the right of minorities to cast a ballot. He eventually became a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ken Mehlman, perhaps Ohio's most well-known politician today, will more than likely "win" his election.

In this country, those that get into a position to further the interests of the rich and powerful, at the expense of the many, are far more likely to be rewarded for their efforts. Ford (Warren C.), Bush (CIA), Reagan (FBI snitch) and so on.

[buddhamama]

2. a little late, possibly

but it is my hope that the ruling in Ohio the other day will help to counteract Blackwell's attempts to destroy our democracy.

[Generic Other]

3. This is the thing we most have to fear in November!

It is so depressing that they can identify all these problems, yet so little has been done to correct any of them. Some of these election officials need to spend a few election cycles in prison! And lose their right to vote or run for public office as well.