Monitoring Election Problems
EFF today launched a new website dedicated to improving transparency in the electoral process: http://www.ourvotelive.org/
Published on behalf of the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition, the website collects and analyzes voter calls to the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline, gathering important data about voters' questions, registration and identification problems, difficulties with voting machines, and polling place accessibility issues.
In addition to raw incident data, OurVoteLive.org also features incident maps, nationwide trend information and an active election issues blog that will highlight important election incidents as they develop. As part of our defense of digital rights, EFF is committed to protecting the electoral process and producing tools that help educate and inform the public.
Transparency, disciplined review and diligent enforcement are the three key prongs needed to develop faith in the purity of the election process. Kudos to EFF and the Election Protection coalition for working to stop such dishonest, disenfranchising practices as...
Suppose in your neighborhood there are 600 registered voters per machine, while across town there are only 120 per machine. (That's a 5 to 1 disparity, which is what exists in some places in Virginia today.) On Election Day, your line wraps around the block and looks to be a four-hour wait, while in other areas lines are nonexistent.
This ought to be a crime. It amounts to a "time-tax" on your right to vote, and some of your neighbors will undoubtedly give up and go home.
Voting rights advocates in Colorado, to take just one example, told a federal judge Wednesday that the names of nearly 30,000 voters were recently purged from the state registry in violation of federal law and ought to be restored by election day. In a compromise, those voters will be allowed to cast provisional ballots.
Lack of trust in voting machines.
Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week. This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for 'Barack Obama' kept flipping to 'John McCain.'
A variety of other attempts to disenfranchise voters and swing elections.
A separate report by Common Cause found voter suppression tactics in 10 key states, the most frequent being aggressive use of "voter match" requirements that put thousands of voters at risk if, for example, a middle initial on a voter registration form doesn't exactly match the name on a driver's license. Republicans in Ohio demanded a list of 200,000 voters' names with such minor mismatches so that they could be challenged at the polls. Fortunately the US Supreme Court ruled that the Ohio secretary of state did not have to supply the names, and the US Justice Department has declined to wade into the controversy, despite a personal request for a review from President Bush.
Prop H And The SPUR Voter Guide
A letter to the editor opposing Prop H, penned by my great friend Laura (of the San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association (SPUR)), was published in the Chronicle today. Writes Laura:
Proposition H will not bring more renewable energy to San Francisco. Prop. H is so poorly written that it could even result in our electricity mix becoming dirtier. Across the state, renewable energy developers and utilities alike are scrambling to add solar, wind, and other renewable projects to the grid, in order to meet strict state energy rules. The rules will be even stricter next year when our landmark climate change legislation, AB32, takes effect. Our real "clean energy" challenges are improving transmission - to the city and throughout the state - and lowering peak-time demand through energy efficiency. San Francisco taking ownership of the local distribution system will not solve these challenges at all. What we'll get with Prop. H is one of our largest employers leaving the city, a loss of oversight and support from the state to meet clean energy targets that apply to private utilities, and an aging local grid that won't have workers to repair it. There's simply no evidence the city will do a better job running the local grid than PG&E does. Prop, H is a distraction from the real goal of bringing about a clean energy future for San Francisco.
I'm a big fan of SPUR, dating back even before they showed their characteristic wisdom and hired Laura. My favorite SPUR publication is their voter guide for SF/CA propositions. The guide is transparent, thoroughly researched and well-considered.
If you're having trouble cutting through the double-talk and getting to the core of ballot issues this November, give the SPUR Voter Guide a look-see.
What A Rough Week
Apocalypse Now
In more-or-less chronological order, here's a list of some of the ridiculous and troubling events that happened last week...
- Fannie May and Freddie Mac are bailed out by the Federal government. $500 billion dollars to take control of these quasi-governmental institutions, ruined in the "mortgage crisis." As an astute poster on digg.com mentions, why is it that there's no money for universal healthcare, yet the government can scrape together half a trillion dollars in no time flat to bail out financial institutions?
- United Airline's stock dropped from nearly $12.50 a share to $3 a share... for no good reason. Here's what happened: Google News' software found an old article in the Chicago Tribune about a 2002 United bankruptcy-court filing. As the old article wasn't properly dated, it was posted by Google News as though it were new news. Software used by stock traders to automatically buy and sell stock found the article and started to sell. And sell. And sell. This automated sell-off, combined with the Tribune article and pre-existing fears about the weakness of United's stock amid ongoing trouble in the airline industry caused the rumor to spread like wildfire. When the dust cleared later in the day, trading of United stock had been frozen at $3. The price went back up to $10.60 a share, but the damage had been done. $1.14 billion had been lost -- gone, evaporated, *poof*.
- McCain caught Obama in the polls. Sure, the RNC provided a bump, but the larger cause for the bump is most troubling. All Palin, all the time. She has minimal experience, her primary interaction with the public was a well-delivered speech written before her nomination, and until a Thursday interview with ABC, she refused to answer questions (for good reason; the VP should probably know what the Bush Doctrine is, at least well enough to BS an answer). Yet because she's a pretty woman selling herself as a religious frontier-mom, she's polling through the roof. McCain v. Obama? The actual contest? Who cares. In the popularity contest that is the Presidential election for much of America, Palin's revisiting her role as Prom Queen. Issues and experience be damned.
- David Foster Wallace hanged himself at home in Claremont, CA. I've read some of his essays, and had just started his masterwork, Infinite Jest. Only twenty pages in, I was already wondering how anyone could walk through life with such thoughts rattling around in one's head. It seems that over time, not even he could handle it. The greatest young author of the last hundred years is gone, dead at 46. Some who knew him offer tribute.
- A freight train and passenger train collide, head-on in California. At least 23 dead. Possible cause of the accident? One of the engineers may have been texting with teens interested in the railroad, as an education/public service task, just before the accident -- the worst of its kind in the region.
- Syria invades Lebanon. (Sadly, I'm guessing you may have heard about it here first.)
- Hurricane Ike pummels the Texas coast.
- The financial sector continues its slide to the bottom. Can the banks fall further? Apparently yes. "Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself on Sunday to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection and hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer. . . . But even as the fates of Lehman and Merrill hung in the balance, another crisis loomed as the insurance giant American International Group appeared to teeter. Staggered by losses stemming from the credit crisis, A.I.G. sought a $40 billion lifeline from the Federal Reserve, without which the company may have only days to survive." Alan Greenspan, the former Fed Chief who could have done a lot to minimize this problem by raising interest rates a touch while he was still in office, now says that the economy is in a "once-in-a-lifetime" crisis. For a better understanding of what's going on and how we got here, Paul Krugman provides insight.
- To end on a positive note, Tina Fey and Amy Pohler did a great job leading off this year's SNL season opener.
[Photo via Waxin' and Milkin']