CE Week #9: “7 Things That Could Go Wrong on Election Day”
Introduction
We can go to the moon, split atoms to power submarines, squeeze profits from a 99 cent hamburger and watch football highlights on cell phones. But the most successful democracy in human history has yet to figure out how to conduct a proper election. As it stands, the American voting system is a worrisome mess, a labyrinth of local, state and federal laws spotted with bewildered volunteers, harried public officials, partisan distortions, misdesigned forms, malfunctioning machines and polling-place confusion. Each time, problems pop up on the margins; if the election is close, these problems matter a great deal. Republicans and Democrats predict record turnouts, perhaps 130 million people, including millions who have never voted before. The vast majority will cast their votes without a hitch. But some voters will find themselves at the mercy of registration rolls that have been poorly maintained or, in some cases, improperly handled. Others will endure long lines, too few voting machines and observers who challenge their identities. Long a prerogative of local government, the patchwork of election rules often defies logic. A convicted felon can vote in Maine, but not in Virginia. A government-issued photo ID is required of all voters at the polls in Indiana, but not in New York. Voting lines are shorter in the suburbs, and the rules governing when provisional ballots count sometimes vary from state to state. As Americans cast their ballots on Nov. 4, here are some problems that threaten to throw this election to the courts again.
1. The Database Dilemma
“Joe the plumber” is not registered to vote. Or at least he is not registered under his own name. The man known to his mother as Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who has become a feature of John McCain’s stump speech, is inscribed in Ohio’s Lucas County registration records as “Worzelbacher,” a problem of penmanship more than anything else. “You can’t read his signature to tell if it is an o or a u,” explains Linda Howe, the local elections director.
Such mistakes riddle the nation’s voting rolls, but they did not matter much before computers digitized records. The misspelled Joes of America still got their ballots. But after the voting debacle in 2000, Congress required each state to create a single voter database, which could then be matched with other data, such as driver’s licenses, to detect false registrations, dead people and those who have moved or become “inactive.” In the marble halls of Congress, this sounded like a great idea — solve old problems with new technology. But in the hands of sometimes inept or partisan state officials, the database matches have become a practical nightmare that experts fear could disenfranchise thousands.
In Wisconsin, an August check of a new voter-registration database against other state records turned up a 22% match-failure rate. Around the time four of the six former judges who oversee state elections could not be matched with state driver’s license data, the board decided to suspend any database purges of new registrants. But database-matching continues elsewhere. In Florida, nearly 9,000 new registrants have been flagged through the state’s “No Match, No Vote” law. (Their votes will not be counted unless they prove their identity to a state worker in the coming weeks.) In Ohio, Republicans have repeatedly gone to court to make public a list of more than 200,000 unmatched registrations, presumably so that those voters can be challenged at the polls, even though most of them, like Joe, are probably legit. “It’s disenfranchisement by typo,” explains Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks voting issues.
Elsewhere the purges are peremptory. A county official in Georgia this year removed 700 people from voter lists, even though some of those people had never received so much as a parking ticket. Another Georgia voter purge, which seeks to remove illegal immigrants from the rolls, has been challenged by voting-rights groups that say legal voters have been intimidated by repeated requests to prove their citizenship. Back in Mississippi last March, an election official wrongly purged 10,000 people from the voting rolls — including a Republican congressional candidate — while using her home computer. (The names were restored before the primary.)
With just days until the election, the scale of the database-purge problem is unknown. Millions have been stripped from voter rolls in key states, but the legitimacy of those eliminations remains unclear. The sheer volume of state voter checks against the federal Social Security Administration database, however, has raised concerns. Six states that are heavily using the federal database were recently warned by Social Security commissioner Michael Astrue about the danger of improperly blocking legitimate voters. “It is absolutely essential that people entitled to register to vote are allowed to do so,” he said in October.
2. ‘Mickey Mouse’ Registrations And Polling-Place Challenges
Thanks to a few bad apples, ACORN is no longer just an oak-tree nut. McCain blames the group for “maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history.” Members of Congress have demanded investigations. The fbi is asking questions. Republican protesters have started crashing political events in squirrel costumes.
Yet the problem of registration fraud is age-old. For decades, both parties and many other groups have paid people to go out and register new voters. In the case of acorn, a community group that represents low-income and minority communities, this led to a massive registration drive this year, which signed up 1.3 million new people, mostly in swing states. The problem is that a small fraction of those new voters don’t exist. That’s because the 13,000 part-time workers conducting the acorn registration drive were paid on a quota system, providing them a clear incentive to fabricate registrations. Across the country, registrars have flagged thousands of acorn forms as suspect. In Florida, “Mickey Mouse” tried to register with an application stamped with the acorn logo. The starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys signed up to vote in Nevada. But there’s a difference between registration fraud and voter fraud; the latter has not been documented on any significant scale in decades. Phony registrations are difficult to translate into fraudulent votes. Under federal law, new registrants still have to provide election officials with identification before casting their first ballot. Unless Mickey Mouse has an ID, the chance that he’ll vote is slim.
Democrats complain that trumped-up charges of voting fraud could scare people from the polls. On the other hand, the acorn effect makes elections suspect — and that’s bad for everyone. Republicans in several key swing states have argued that the false registrations make it necessary to monitor polls and challenge suspect voters. If that happens on a grand scale, the voting process could become more like running a gauntlet than exercising a right, with polling-place delays and confrontations that could scare people off or just lead them to conclude it’s not worth the time.
3. Bad Forms
Until the palm beach county butterfly ballot had its 15 minutes of fame, few believed that bad design could determine the fate of the world. But then a local election official created a form that confused elderly voters, causing thousands to mark both Al Gore and another candidate on the same form, disqualifying enough votes to put George W. Bush in the White House.
Eight years later, punch-card ballots are mostly a thing of the past, but bad design lives on. This summer, the McCain campaign sent poorly designed absentee-ballot forms to more than 1 million voters in Ohio. The form included a redundant box for voters to check if they were “qualified electors.” Though the box was not required by law, the Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, rejected thousands of otherwise complete forms with unchecked boxes. Luckily for the voters, the state supreme court stepped in to overrule Brunner’s order, which it noted “served no vital public purpose or interest.” A lawsuit has yet to be filed in a similar case in Colorado, where Republican secretary of state Mike Coffman, who is running for Congress, ruled that more than 6,400 new registrations should be rejected because people failed to check a box before providing the last four digits of their Social Security number. Again, the box was redundant, since new registrants provided all the other required information, yet Coffman has declared the forms incomplete and sent letters alerting voters that they have just a few days to fix the mistakes or be left off the rolls.
4. The Voting-Machine Fiasco
As soon as the last chad was counted in Florida, Congress got to work on a new law that authorized $3.9 billion to buy new, high-tech voting equipment. On the whole, the new machines were an improvement over the old punch cards and levers, but many parts of the country now find themselves yearning for the old problems of paper.
About one-third of voters this fall will use electronic machines, usually touchscreen systems that produce no paper record of the vote. If the machines are miscalibrated, they are known to malfunction, sometimes causing the selection of one candidate to show as a vote for another. But the bigger concern, which has been echoed by computer scientists, is that the machines have no independent paper backup. A memory failure or a corruption of the data leaves no route for a recount. The 2006 congressional election in Florida’s 13th District produced the nightmare scenario. Republican Vern Buchanan won the contest by a margin of 369 votes. But in a single, Democratic-leaning county, more than 18,000 voters mysteriously failed to record a selection in the congressional race, an undervote as much as six times the rate of other counties. There is no way to know for sure what, if anything, went wrong.
Since that election, several states, including Florida and California, have required paper records for all electronic-voting devices. A bill in Congress that would mandate paper records of all machines nationwide has gathered 216 co-sponsors, including 20 Republicans.
Meanwhile, 11 million people live in counties that will use lever machines or punch-card ballots this year, even though the congressional deadline to replace that equipment passed in 2006.
5. Unequal Distribution of Resources
This summer, a local democratic county clerk in Indiana noted a surprising increase in new registrations from the area around Ball State University. He suggested that a new early-voting location be set up on campus. But the county’s Republican chairwoman, Kaye Whitehead, opposed the plan, calling it a “political ploy” that would encourage students to vote in exchange for freebies like hot dogs. “This is a serious election,” she told the local newspaper, before the lone Republican on the election board blocked the site. “You need voters who are informed.”
Partisan squabbles about access occur regularly across the country, often with major effects on Election Day. In 2004 lines in Ohio’s Franklin County led some Democrats to complain that Republicans were using resources to affect the outcome of the vote. While suburban precincts had enough machines so voters didn’t have to wait, largely Democratic precincts in Columbus had lines with four-hour waits — often in the rain. Bipartisan estimates suggested that between 5,000 and 15,000 voters gave up on waiting and never voted. But even the question of which precincts get election machines is a maze: in Wisconsin, one voting machine is required for every 200 voters registered in a precinct. In Virginia, by contrast, the law calls for one machine for every 500 to 750 voters, depending on the size of the precinct. In Colorado, which saw six-hour waits for ballots in 2006, the law simply calls for a “sufficient” number of voting booths.
6. New Burdens of Proof
The sisters of the holy cross in notre Dame, Ind., don’t have much use for driver’s licenses. Or at least that’s what a dozen of the nuns thought on May 6, when they went to vote in the presidential primary. They were each turned away as a result of a recently established ID-check requirement at Indiana polls.
In the intervening months, the elderly sisters have all had a chance to get government identification. But an explosion in voter-identification laws has raised the prospect that thousands will turn up to vote next month and find themselves turned away. Federal law now requires that all first-time voters who register by mail provide some sort of identification either when they register or when they vote. But states have applied that rule in markedly different ways. In Pennsylvania, first-time voters can use a firearm permit or a utility bill to identify themselves, and longtime voters don’t have to show anything at all. In Georgia and Florida, gun permits don’t help; all voters must show a state or federal photo ID at the polls. In Indiana, residents who attend state schools can use their student IDs in many cases, but students who attend private schools cannot. The laws have been established to prevent voter fraud, but some experts worry that voter suppression will result. “There is very little evidence of widespread voter fraud,” says R. Michael Alvarez, co-director of the Caltech/mit Voting Technology Project. “Imposing these additional barriers doesn’t seem terribly justified.”
How big a barrier? A 2001 study found that 6% to 10% of the voting-age population lacks driver’s licenses or other state-issued IDs. The most reasonable worry is that many local ID requirements are not well known to voters, which could lead to significant numbers of people leaving the polls frustrated on Election Day without casting their ballot. That should not happen: in all states, voters without IDs are permitted to cast a provisional ballot. But in many states, for the ballot to count they must bring a valid ID to election officials within days after the election, proving that they are the person they claim to be.
7. Confusing Rules, Bad Information
As election day nears, dirty tricks surface. Flyers are left on cars telling Democrats that they should vote on Wednesday, not Tuesday. Anonymous automated phone calls warn people that they will be arrested at the polls or that their polling places have moved. The impact of such gambits is usually small, and in an increasing number of states, such tricks are punishable by law.
A more insidious type of misinformation starts months earlier with local officials. Last March, the president of Colorado College in Colorado Springs received a letter from the El Paso County clerk, Robert Balink, warning that out-of-state students cannot register to vote if their parents claim them as dependents in another state. This was false. The registrar of elections for the area around Virginia Tech issued other confusing messages to students there, obliquely suggesting that their parents’ tax status could be jeopardized based on vague state-board-of-elections guidelines.
A widely circulated anonymous e-mail warns voters that they will be turned away from polling places if they wear a barack obama button or a john mccain T shirt. This is true in only a minority of states. In Virginia, for instance, wearing a candidate’s T shirt or button can get you tossed from a polling place. After agreeing to the policy, Virginia Board of Elections officials said decisions about what to do will be subject to the interpretation of local poll workers and judges — which is a pretty good metaphor for the controlled electoral chaos that is about to unfold all over America in a few short days.
—with reporting by Marti Covington and Maya Curry / Washington
I think that this article raises a very good point with the statement, “We can go to the moon, split atoms to power submarines, squeeze profits from a 99 cent hamburger and watch football highlights on cell phones. But the most successful democracy in human history has yet to figure out how to conduct a proper election.” Why is it that we can’t figure out the best way to elect who we want to be in charge of us? Is it because deep down we all want it to be ourselves who is in charge but are too afraid to take the step and run? I don’t think that’s it but I really don’t understand why it is we don’t have a more effective way of electing our leaders? The election itself I do not think is what is flawed; I think it’s the delegation of election law to the states that creates the problems. There is no way to have a unified election process when 50 different states are making laws about the same thing. In my opinion there should be an amendment made making election law federal law. I, however, strongly doubt that this will EVER happen due to the hoops that have to be jumped through to amend the constitution.
Connection: The granting of all “non enumerated rights” to the states has created this problem and the states’ right to veto any amendment will prevent this power from being relinquished to the federal government at any point in the near future.
The seven things that could go wrong are all things that could decreases voter turnout. They make it so hard to vote nowadays. Actually, it’s easy to be registered but too many people are getting tuned away at the polls. How many times do you need to show them your ID? Not everyone is a member of ACORN. If I were a person who was turned down at the polls, I would be so mad. That’s something that needs to fixed and it better not actually be something that goes wrong on Election Day. I think its confusing how each state has its own registration laws because each law is different for each state. It’d probably be better if there was one common law. The worst thing that I think could go wrong is the seventh point the author mentions. It’s the one where people do dirty tricks to confuse other people. I’m really gullible and if somebody called me and told me that the polling place changed, I’d believe it and it somebody stuck a flier on my car telling me to vote on Wednesday instead of Tuesday, I’d believe that too. That’s a sad thing to say but its true and I’m sure a lot of other people would believe it too. And I don’t think that the seven things that could go wrong on Election Day will affect the election too much, at least I hope not.
Connection: Voter registration of page 305 of the textbook. Voter registration varies from state to state. North Dakota has no voter registration and some states like Maine can register on Election Day. This affects voter turnout in each state. If it is easy to register, then it is easy to vote.
As much as I hope that the election will go well, I can see where these things could cause some issues. I think it is really ironic that Joe the Plumber technically isn’t even a registered voter. However, I think that there are a lot of ways to make sure that names aren’t misspelled, especially when it is something as important as an election. If someone knows that they don’t have legible handwriting, they should realize that they should have someone else write or type it in for them.
I think it was idiotic to pay people for the number of people that they registered. Of course they are going to start filling them out themselves. ACORN wasn’t very smart when they thought that one out. Not only have they produced a huge amount of fraud, but the lists of registered voters may never get fixed completely. I don’t think it will matter much, however, seeing as the people who do come to vote need picture ID. There are already a tremendous amount of registered voters who don’t show up, and the only voices that get heard are of the ones who actually come to vote. I just know that I would love to hear about Mickey Mouse actually showing up to vote.
I think it’s really horrible that someone would actually try to convince people that they shouldn’t vote on election day or that if they show up, their “parents’ tax status could be jeopardized”. I don’t really understand why someone would want to do that in the first place, but I know I wouldn’t be happy if I was one of the people who believed it and then found out that it was a hoax after the fact.
Basically, I just hope that this election doesn’t turn into another election of 2000. There are a billion things that could go wrong on Election Day, besides the ones that are mentioned in this article, but hopefully none of the really bad ones happen.
Connection: This article goes along with a lot of the things we have talked about in class. I know we went over the ACORN incident briefly, so I wasn’t as shocked when I read it in the article. We have talked a lot about voter fraud and “vote early, vote often”. In all reality, maybe that is what the ACORN people are trying to pull. If they just make a whole bunch of fake IDs, they can vote as many times as they could possibly want to.
First of all, I completely agree with the author’s stance on ACORN. Sure, the organization may be getting away with fraud, but its registration fraud, not voting fraud. Registration fraud does nothing to affect the outcome of the presidential race. Like the author said, “Phony registrations are difficult to translate into fraudulent votes. Under federal law, new registrants still have to provide election officials with identification before casting their first ballot. Unless Mickey Mouse has an ID, the chance that he’ll vote is slim.” So, the chance that the fake registrations will actually turn into fraudulent votes is nearly impossible. I think the Democrats should use this point the author makes to their advantage. If Obama begins to make this point in his defense against McCain’s attack, McCain will have to find a new angle to get to Obama.
Connection: “As Americans cast their ballots on Nov. 4, here are some problems that threaten to throw this election to the courts again.” When he says “again,” the writer of this article is obviously referring to the election of 2000 between Bush and Gore. As we all know, Bush v. Gore was such a disaster because of voting problems on Election Day. We, as a country, cannot afford such a disaster again.
The United States is a mess when it comes to voting in elections. It is absolutely ridiculous that we can’t seem to get it right. You know that saying…people should learn from their mistakes…well that doesn’t really apply to the government. 11 million people live in counties where lever machines or punch ballots are still used despite the fiasco in Florida eight years ago. I like the idea that election law is state law; it gives the states some power in deciding elements of the election, but past years have show that some states can’t seem to handle it. I realize that certain dilemmas come into play such as money issues, but it seems unreasonable that with the era of technology we are in now some states are still in the stone age of voting. This almost makes me think that we should allow the national government to decide on one way of voting for the entire country, the best way, but I suppose that would be violating the freedom of something or would be ruled unconstitutional.
It amazes me how many little things can go wrong on Election Day. All of them seem equally likely to happen and probably do happen every time an election comes around. The most amusing to me was “Confusing Rules, Bad Information”. I am at a cross between people are so gullible they believe anything that is put on their cars and this “bad information” is actually believable. It seems silly to me that voters would actually believe they would be turned away from the polls for wearing Barack Obama or John McCain memorabilia. HELLO…FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION!
Connection: Elements of this article are the perfect example of the movie “Recount”. Florida in the 2000 election had so many things go wrong on Election Day that the results were completely corrupt. The ballot forms and voting machinery were a mess causing panic among the people.
“Franklin County led some Democrats to complain that Republicans were using resources to affect the outcome of the vote.” Well, if the candidates have the money, they should spend the money – if they don’t have the money, then tough luck. If the states were wise, they would simply create mail-in ballots, like Great Washington does, and not have to worry about standing in a line, or any of that nonsense. That will also eliminate the money-gap that could affect the election in a way it did for Franklin County. I’ll bet that this year there will be complaints that the Democrats are outspending the Republicans. I mean, last month alone, Obama raised $150 million, and McCain, no matter how much he raises, can spend only $84 million, roughly half.
As we have gone through in class, the 3 most important factors in winning an office are: momentum, media, and money. The candidates have each had their momentum swings after their debates. The media has covered each side; their names are obviously out there. But what the deciding factor is, especially this late in the race, is the money. Who has the most, who spends it the best, and who wins the presidency will come down to money, for the most part.
Let’s face it; a perfect election is most likely impossible! There is no way for counties and states to have any idea if the election held in their proximity was one-hundred percent accurate. As for people being turned away from the polls for their poor penmanship, that is acceptable; if a person can’t write their own name eligibly than that person forfeits their right to vote. Acorn is ridiculous, it truly is sad that people need to register a “Mickey Mouse” to vote because they lack faith their own candidate will come out victoriously. I honestly can not grasp the fact that the designers of a ballot can make them complicated. There is no reason the ballot shouldn’t be the most simple thing to do. There is either serious problems with the designers of the ballots, the people who are not wise to figure them out, or me because I have never filled out an official ballot and probably have no idea what I’m talking about in this concern. As for unfair distribution of resources, I don’t know if that is the case. I think the problem is that loyalists to both parties are trying to bribe people into voting their way no matter if the person is informed or not; that is a serious problem. Every voter should have their own choice, the only way for them to know what their own choice is for them to maybe pay attention to the debates. I think states should definitely try to work together to come up with some semi-universal rules for voting. When the rules are different in every stare people get confused, like telling someone to drive 90 mph while driving north and 20 mph while driving south. It’s absurd!
The paradox of mass politics comes into this article when the article mentions the unfair distribution of resources. If these people who are being bribed by hot dogs had any knowledge of what is going on they wouldn’t be voting a certain way for a hotdog! It really is not all that difficult to become informed. I also remember talking a little bit about Acorn and I’m glad I was able to learn more about the organization from this article.
It is depressing that one of the most important aspects of one of the world’s strongest political powers is so pitiful. Our government has many wonderful features; the electoral system is not one of them. The fact that there is a 22% error rate in voter databases in Wisconsin means that almost ¼ of that state’s residences will be lucky if they are allowed to vote. Such a high match-failure rate is absurd. Given the fact that up to 1/3 of voters may vote electronically, one would hope that the machines were accurate. Why would they allow voters to use machines on which votes might accidentally fall to the wrong candidate and records are completely inaccessible? Another disturbing fact is that, in a 2001 study, 6-10% of the voting-age population lacked the ID that is often required in order to vote. This single requirement could bar over 22 million people from being able to vote. I know that there have been many reforms in the election process, but as far as I am concerned, we still have a long way to go.
Connection: Low Voter Turnout- It is no wonder that the turnout rate in America is so low. There is confusion as to where the polls are, many eligible voters are inadvertently barred from the polls, and even those who get there are not necessarily able to give their vote to any candidate at all, let alone the one whom they intended to choose.
November fourth has crept up so quickly and on Election Day, mishaps when voting will happen even faster. In this article I found it quite ridiculous that when voting with electron machines, not all are backed up with paper. In the world today, people go off what is on paper, not what you tell them. So if there needed to be a recount…it wouldn’t happen. You would just say I’m sorry you waited in line for a few hours to vote but unfortunately it does not count. I would have thought that people would understand by now that technology doesn’t always work the way you would have hoped. I am glad to see though that those working the polling booths are checking ID because this will be another way to prove you are who you say you are and not get away with voting twice or anything else. And going back to voting ballots…why can’t there be the same voting device throughout all 50 states. It is obvious that in the 2000 election Florida had a fun time with their voting ballots. In the lecture notes you can see that 1,000 voters voted for all ten presidential candidates, 3,600 voted for all ten except Bush, 700 voted for all ten except Gore, and 7000 voted for both Bush and Gore. (pretty impressive)
All in all, there are probably 14,000,000 things that could go wrong on election day. Everything from a few drops of rain to the entire state of Washington having to recount ballots several times. You just never know. But this list of things that could go wrong on election day seems to pretty much sum up the big ones. First of all, in regards to the “voter registration” issue, people are going to try and rig it, or vote multiple times. Americans think that that one vote is really going to have a huge effect on the outcome of the presidential race. (political efficacy) The truth is, why do these few individuals feel the need to fault this system when that vote doesnt really make that huge of a difference. And as far as the whole joe the plummer thing goes, he is getting way to much publicity. He’s a plummer. Next, to go along with the whole accuracy and clearness of ballots, Americans need to read. Like we talk about it in class frequently, voting really isn’t that difficult. You can request an absentee ballot, bubble in the vote at home and mail it. You don’t even have to leave your house. The punch cards, and the electronic voting systems can’t be that hard either, if you read what it is asking you to do.
Connection: Political Efficacy, thinking that your vote makes a difference
NO CREDIT – In the future provide a more substantive and direct connection to what we have covered in class.
It’s unbelievable that our impeccable ability to adapt hasn’t been able to improve the way we vote and tally said votes as a country. Most of the problem seems to be stemming out from the system itself, meaning the vote collecting methods, but people are also having an adverse affect on the situation. The article said that Congress put into law that paper ballots had to be replaced with more efficient computer methods by 2006. But then people, who probably originally advocated for such a law, are now wanting the old problems of paper again just because computers are almost worse. That makes no sense to me why they didn’t speculate these problems in the first place. It’s a pretty well known fact that the people who vote have a greater chance of being old. Computers probably make their heads hurt, not to mention all the glitches that could occur. However, this reform of the voting system will probably affect more than just old people. As we discussed in class and read in our books, the easier voting was made for the masses, the more the voting percentage dropped. By introducing computers as the new method for vote counting, the government has attempted to simplify the process; though all that’s accomplished is devastating results elsewhere and probably some frustration from voters.
This problem is not going to go away. There is no magical cure. The best thing that we can hope for is a landslide victory, and hope that the laws in place kept out much of the corruption. As for the voter rolls I believe that the easiest solution would be for the government to shift this responsibility to smaller groups. Such as the county keeping voter roles or even smaller segments. Of course the problem worsens with population density, but it has to be easier than attempting to maintain a statewide voter roll. Registration fraud has been around for a long time, and with the new laws in place I doubt that there is any chance of this effecting the election. Although I would be willing to bet that there are a lot of McLovins out there. Hopefully the butterfly ballot and those like it have been eliminated since the 2000 election and if the ballot is intentionally designed to cause confusion there should not be any difficulty tracking down the guilty party. The allocation of resources is the biggest concern, it would be quite easy to just send X amount of voting machines to each precinct, and ignore the populations of the areas in question. This would most likely benefit the Republicans, considering the urban areas are usually Democratic strongholds. I strongly hope that those who maliciously attempt to stifle the freedom of speech of others are caught. With the technology that we have now we should be able to trace these phony phone calls to their source and nail whoever is behind it. There are many problems in the American system, but I am confident that we will not be governed by them.
Connection: How ironic would it be if we have a Democratic sweep in the House, Senate, and the Presidency, all because of voter fraud. If these problems are so prolific that they have a huge influence on the election and instead of having a mandate from the people we see a coup as the Democrats seize control of the government.
Every one knows that there are going to be problems whenever there is an election. This is inevitable. But these problems can be cut to a minimum with a few simplicities. First every state should adopt the same voting laws and the same voting machines so that all confusion will eliminated. The voting machines should be simple so that if a person is not smart enough to figure them out, then that person is not educated enough to vote in a National Election. The problem of registration and voter fraud seems to be blown out of proportion because, like it was said in the article, I do not think that any fake registrations are going to translate to fake votes. There are too many checks for that. All states need to be funded by the federal government so that they can all have the same systems. The places that people vote at should be fair for both parties so that neither can complain. Finally, when voting each party or citizen should put his or her partisanship behind them so that the election can be a success. These tricks such as flyers with false information, or calls that mislead voters are childish and really bring out the ugly side of politics, and how partisan our nation has become.
Connection: I relate this back to the 2000 election just as the author of the article did. With so many different systems there is bound to be some type of error or mistake. In the video we watched on the 2000 election the Florida legislature complained of how it was to expensive for all of the counties in the state to switch to the same type of voting machine. I believe that this is an important matter, our elections. The government needs to provide funding for the states so that they can have sufficient machines. The results of elections are very important so we need to be sure that we are getting the correct results.
This article seems to be making an excellent point. In today’s day and age, after all the technological breakthroughs we have been through, why is it that voting is such a hassle and we don’t know how to fix it? It seems like a simple enough problem compared to everything else we have achieved and yet, it is continually having problems. I think that Florida’s new “No Match, No Vote” law will prove to be a real problem for the Democrats in that state. I would say that probably the majority of Republicans have a driver’s license or some sort of other official identification card. Comparatively, I would say that many Democrats do not. This could drastically affect the vote in Florida.
Although electronic-voting seems reasonable in this age of computers and other electronic devices, I would have to agree with the article in that electronic-voting does not seem like a good idea. There are just too many places for errors and problems to occur in which it would be impossible to retrieve the information back. I cannot believe how far people will go just to see their candidate in office. The dirty tricks that people are playing are seriously wrong and I feel sorry for the people who get tricked and don’t have the chance to exercise one of America’s greatest freedom: the right to vote.
Connection:
This article connects to the 2000 presidential race in Florida. Here was on of the biggest examples of how screwed up our voting system is. This election prompted the thought of maybe having electronic voting machines. Also, this was a very close race in which every vote really did count. This article is trying to find out better ways of counting everybody’s vote, and how far some people will go so that other people’s votes aren’t counted.
I agree that the election system is a mess where the mess is really seen in close calls. 2000 is a great example of that. I think the biggest problem that causes the mess is that there is not a uniform system to conduct the whole process. “Congress required each state to create a single voter database, which could then be matched with other data, such as driver’s licenses, to detect false registrations, dead people and those who have moved.” That was definitely a step in the right direction. But, the disenfranchisement that occurred in states because of this shows a fault in the states. “Phony registrations are difficult to translate into fraudulent votes. Under federal law, new registrants still have to provide election officials with identification before casting their first ballot” If only there was some way to avoid all the phony registrations. Maybe the federal government should have a more active role. “A bill in Congress that would mandate paper records of all machines nationwide has gathered 216 co-sponsors, including 20 Republicans.” Congress seems to be working on the election problem that generates its self in most states. “In Virginia, by contrast, the law calls for one machine for every 500 to 750 voters, depending on the size of the precinct. In Colorado, which saw six-hour waits for ballots in 2006, the law simply calls for a “sufficient” number of voting booths.” Uniform, federal law would ease the problems caused by election law being state law. For example, turning away of voters for wearing articles that support a candidate in Virginia.
Connection: The Federal government has enumerated powers which are powers specifically addressed in the Constitution. It is unlikely that Congress could use implied powers, the power to make laws necessary and proper to carry out its powers, to justify taking over the election process.
Yikes this article makes me not want to even try to vote. I did not know that there were so many different forces out there trying to keep people from voting or making their vote not count. I think that voting laws, especially in national elections, should be uniform throughout the country. People should be required to bring some sort of identification, whether it be a birth certificate or a state ID or a driver’s license, with them to the poll and then they should allow that person to vote. If someone wants to go to all the trouble of falsifying a birth certificate or paying someone to make them a fake ID so that they can cast a second or third vote, then let them do it. It’s not like their one extra vote is going to make a difference anyways. And even if there did end up being more fake voters, there would most likely be enough extra real voters participating to nullify the votes of the fakes, since more people would show up and cast their vote if all they had to do was to show their ID. Also I do not think that it is fair for “election” people to be able to go through the lists of registered voters and decide to take them off of the lists because they think that their name sounds fake or the person can’t quite read all of the letters in someone’s signature.
This article connects to the extra credit movie that we watched the other day about the 2000 presidential election. There were thousands of disenfranchized voters in the 2000 election because officials decided to take their names off of the lists of registered voters because their name was similar to or the same as a convicted felon living somewhere in the state of Florida.
Voting is becoming a huge burden. The government has made it easier to vote in some senses, but also has made it more difficult in others. Some thing that stood was the “unequal distribution of resources”. Why should some voting districts have more voting booths or (this may be either a good thing or a hindrance) more technologically advanced methods of voting? Preferably, everyone would vote with all the same conditions, but each individual state has the ability to run the election however they wish, so that is very unlikely. Also, in the article, the author pointed out that disadvantaged districts (which primarily vote Democrat), have longer waiting lines (like we saw in one of the extra credit movies… I’m not sure which one though) and also have less booths per registered voter. Equality is a big issue, and I think that we need to give equality to the people who are selecting their public officials. Even people of disadvantaged backgrounds have a voice, and their voice should be heard (even if they vote for McCain).
Another thing that stood out was that fictional people are registered to vote. But then the author states that even “Mickey Mouse” would have to show identification to vote and that there was a difference between “registration”, and actually voting (the name Mickey Mouse should bring up a red flag when the person is voting, so they might handle it there).
A thing that I think we really need to act on is the ballot design. As I said earlier, it is the states’ rights to run an election as they see fit, but confusing your voters is plain stupid. Ballots that have either unclear directions or unclear designs should be banned because they (unless we look at the INTENT of the voter) will skew the results.
Connection: We discussed how the government has tried to make registering for voting simple (e.g. the Motor Voter Act), and that the states’ all have a right as to choose how they run an election, even though a simple, uniform ballot/system/set of rules would make the election so much more representative and so much more simple. Also, voter intent is important from the 2000 election.
This article did a very nice job of summing up exactly what can (and probably will) go wrong on Election Day. It was nice to read an article that didn’t focus specifically on Barack Obama or John McCain for a change. These “7 things that could go wrong” are very real concerns for many voters and politicians alike. Knowing about the cause-and-effect of each key item will help eliminate potential sources of bias (voter response, voter turnout, undercoverage, etc.).
The Database Dilemma – “In the hands of sometimes inept or partisan state officials, the database matches have become a practical nightmare that experts fear could disenfranchise thousands” (Michael Sherer). The previous statement is entirely accurate when you sit down and really think about it. Many voters are stripped of their chances to participate in elections simply because their credible information cannot be found in local databases.
Bad Forms – I thought it was very funny to read about the “butterfly ballot” again; it made me think back to the extra credit movie we watched a while back… “So Goes the Nation-2004.” Will voting forms ever be identical in all public places? Or will this chaotic state of voter confusion carry us into future generations? Only time will tell in this debate.
Confusing Rules, Bad Information – “The impact of such gambits [dirty tricks] is usually small, and in an increasing number of states, such tricks are punishable by law” (Michael Sherer). It seems that playing pranks on unsuspecting victims is simply part of human nature. At one point, they are rather hilarious. However, when humorous intentions turn sour to the point of endangering public safety, the comical factor seems to disappear entirely.
Connection: Progressive Era. In Europe, governments automatically register their citizens as voters. In the United States, eligible voters must register with state election boards before they may vote. Progressive Era reformers introduced registration requirements at the end of the 19th century to make voting more difficult and thereby reduce voting fraud and other forms of electoral abuse. In Southern states, these requirements also provided an additional way to deprive both blacks and poor whites of the opportunity to vote.
If people have displayed difficulties filling in a punch-hole ballot in the past, then what makes the election officials think that people will have an easier time working with a piece of new technology. I think that it is time for our voting to catch up with new technology, but in reality how trust worthy can this equipment be, especially with the registering errors that have already occurred? I like the idea of the paper records for all electronic-voting devices is a good way to check the accuracy as well as promise a valid vote.
I disagree with the law that some states require driver’s licenses as the only way to be able to vote. As the article suggests, what about the young adults who have not yet gotten a license or people who have gotten theirs taken away for some reason. They still have the right to vote. Each state should have to require identification, but it could be in different forms such as birth certificates, i.d.’s, student i.d.’s, bills, etc. No one should be allowed to vote with out proof of who they are, but no one who is eligible to vote should be denied that right. I think it is very interesting how we as a nation are so technologically advanced and yet, we are still unable to prevent all these “seven” things that could go wrong.
Connection: This article relates completely to the 2000 election where there was the recount, then not recount in Florida. People who were dead, or did not exist were registered to vote, the ballots were confusing and many were unable to be counted. Because the race was so close in Florida, they called for a recount, but it makes you wonder how the accuracy of the other states are and what could really be shown by a nation-wide recount in 2000.
It seems that a lot of the same problems are still around that were plaguing the country in past voting years. Though new rules and machines have been applied, they seem to just make the system harder. These new electronic voting machines, the ones without a back up memory card or hard drive, do not seem very trustworthy because they could break down at any time and then all of those votes would be lost. That doesn’t seem to make sense that the government would risk that over a recount, which is something that would be lost if a malfunction were to occur. Why can’t all states make it as easy as it is here? Mail-in ballots seem to be a simple and effective way for votes to be counted. It’s just a simple fill in the bubble and it would be easy to recount if that were to unfortunately happen again. The need for identification should be the same in all states and should be available for every one. As the article mention, 6%-10% of the legal American adults able to vote don’t have a driver’s license or some sort of state legal identification. The federal government should be in control of what supplies are where and the proof that is needed to vote.
Connection: Reason number 3 relates in a major way to the movie that we watched not but 2 weeks ago. The failure of Palm Beach County and the butterfly ballot, caused the new spur of use of technology to be used for voting.
NO CREDIT – Connection not specific enough – “show what you know”.
I don’t even know where to start because this article was so long. You would think that by now the voting system would be perfected. I wonder how other counteries conduct polls (if they do)? Although, it seems like we are trying to improve. The author talked about the law passed in 2006 requiring the punch-card polls to be upgraded. Now, most counties are using an electronic polling system. I have mixed feelings about this because if there is a glitch votes could be lossed so easily. I agree with the states that use electronic polling but require print out copies. The section about making it harder to register seems like a catch 22 because many of the rules seem unreasonable and discouraging votes is not good. One in particular I didn’t like, was the one that restricted wearing candidate apparel to an election. On the other hand, the restrictions are placed with good intentions. I can see why it would be necessary to bring ID to an election. I did feel bad for the nuns who didn’t have drivers license’s As for all the false information and “threats” people have received, I think this is just ridiculous.
Connection: When I read this election I thought of the video we watched in class about the 2000 election. In fact, the author actually mentioned the butterfly ballot. I think the thought that validity of elections has not changed since then is scary because it is apparent that every vote might count if the election is close enough. At least most counties have improved ballots now.
“Back in Mississippi last March, an election official wrongly purged 10,000 people from the voting rolls”—I think that it is absurd that people just get taken off of voting rolls left and right. The states are way too strict on who can vote. If people want their voice to (kind of) be heard, they should be allowed that privilege. Maybe if they are dead or if they moved then they should, but just because they don’t match up with some name in the computer the voting coordinators should send out reminders in the mail so that people know they are on the list prior to Election Day. Is there any way to check and see if you are on the voting roll prior to the election?
I think that with all these registration forms getting tossed out, there is someone behind it. For instance, in Colorado Mike Coffman (R) threw out 6,400 forms just because a little box was not checked even though all the information was filled out. I’m guessing they were Democratic voters and he is Republican so he just didn’t want them to vote. (I’m not saying anything bad about Republicans, just that it might be a scam.)
CONNECTION>>>
I believe this article in some way connects to a critical election. This is so because there might be a scam behind all these registration forms getting thrown out. This is SUCH a close race and people are sometimes way to political and want everything to go their way, that they decide one minor detail of a person in the opposite party’s ballot is wrong so they just chuck it. If the Democrats really do this and they throw out some Republican ballots, then yes, it shall be a critical election indeed.
Why is it so hard for us to get these things right? I thought that the 2000 election was a wake-up call? Obviously it wasn’t. This all just seems so ridiculous. There are states with this law, but it isn’t a law in another state. You can use this kind of ID here, but not here. There are different types of voting machines. It’s all just one big jumbled mess. I think that the federal government should just set up all the rules for voting. I know that the constitution says it goes to the states and blah, blah, blah, but I really don’t care. The system that we have obviously has issues that need to be fixed. One thing that really makes me nervous is the computer voting system. It would be so easy to tamper with it, and with no paper copy, there is no of telling if the computer was messed with or not. It also runs a great risk f malfunctioning. The whole thing about the registration fraud is just comical to me. The republicans are just freaking out because Obama worked with ACORN for a while many years ago. That does not mean that he is still affiliated with him. And I highly doubt that he is behind it at all. I’m sure that it happens on both sides of the party line. It seems like it was just greed on the part of the ACORN employees. So let’s just fix this damn thing once and for all, and stop all of the complaining that’s coming from everybody.
Connection: This has to do with the thing about powers that the states get. Voting law is state law. I personally think that it’s dumb. Each state gets to decide how to hold their elections, and how to decide who can vote, and who cannot.
The voting system is flawed, a problem that was made clear in the 2000 election in Florida. It seems to me that the answer would be to have the states adopt a voting system that is uniform throughout the United States. I know this would be a difficult operation because it is the states that determine voting systems within their own boundaries; however, I think that because voting plays such an important role, exceptions should be made. At the very least, the same voting machines should be used. These seven issues should not be a problem. As I stated previously, voting is extremely important – there should be no room for error. These errors not only effect who is elected, but also public opinion. I think that a direct result of voting errors (not misunderstandings, but flaws with the actual system) is a growing distrust of the government. People should not have to doubt whether their vote counts or not. What really made me angry when I read the article was the “Confusing Rules, Bad Information” section. I can understand tactics that politicians and campaigners use to try to PERSUADE voters. But these people are purposely acting to prevent a fellow citizen’s vote from being cast. That is really low.
Connection: Florida
The outcome of Florida in the 2000 election is probably the most obvious connection. I distinctly remember that movie we watched in class about the election (I can’t remember the name). One mistake that the movie pointed out was the fact that some people were turned away from the voting booths because they were “criminals”, when in fact they weren’t. That is a mistake that should NOT happen. If I remember correctly, the government received lists of felons. The voters who were turned away had names similar to these people. In this case, I think the government needs to double check with these names. That’s just a dumb mistake.
It sounds like to me that only the educated are going to be able to vote this time around. The people who are educated in the latest voting qualifications I mean. I thought that the goal was to make voting and registration easy so that the voter turnout would increase. There is going to be a dramatic decrease in voter turnout in this year’s election. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to get turned down because of small accounts such as not having a state issued form of identification so that the people at the voting stations can verify that person is not a cartoon character of or a dead person. Also many people are not even going to show up because they know that it is going to take forever to get through the wild maze of identification and they will not think that it is worth all of that time. I personally think that Washington has the right idea with their absent tee ballots. With an absent tee ballot there is no standing in line for hours. If every state did this or at least made all of the registration and voting processes the same then voter turnout might increase rather than decrease even more. I understand that the educated should voter and not just anyone, but this is ridiculous.
Conection: A lot of the issues in this article about the registration and voting are a result of the fraud in Florida in the 2000 election between Bush and Gore. Many people think that Bush stole the election.
NO CREDIT – Connection – use specifics and provide the details you are referring to.
The thing that most columnists fail to see is the big picture. “200,000 unmatched registrations” is a large number to think about. But when you compare this number to the 122,294,978 who actually vote, this is only 0.0016th over all. Oh, and of all those 200,000 votes are distributed over about 50 states. So in the electorate collage those 200,000 divided up by the 50 states and in comparison to the 122,294,978, these results are miniscule and would make about no difference over all. The problem with these journalists is that all they care about is turmoil. The news will splatter your television screen with the gore and horror of a train wreck, but not the penny drive going on in the city. People see these problems that the journalists present as huge problems and respond just as the journalists want them to: by tuning in again to see what happens next. Keeping this in mind, taking a look at the 200,000 unmatched results, the 6,400 bad forms, the possible 18,000 no-votes in the congressional race, and the 5,000-15,000 give-uppers, this isn’t a huge number. Really.
Connection: This is a linkage institution; problems like these aroused by the media. It starts with the people’s concerns, which become political issues on the government’s policy agenda.
NO CREDIT – This connection is not direct enough or specific. I do not see the connection.
There are a number of things that can make a ballot invalid or go uncounted. Within the past few years, since the 2000 election and the poorly constructed ballots like the butterfly ballot, there have been many adjustments and new laws put into place. I think that these adjustments will help in the long run, but right now they are proving to be a problem. One of the problems being that there are still many issues with the databases of names. In some states there is “a 22% match-failure rate”, and in states like Florida there are as many as 9,000 people who are not counted. The 3.9 billion dollars to replacing old voting equipment with new high tech equipment authorized by congress should be sufficient enough so that a “fiasco” like in Florida will be avoided from happening again once the people become accustom to the machines. For some there is also a problem with proving that a person is who they claim to be, “a 2001 study found that 6% to 10% of the voting-age population lacks driver’s licenses or other state-issued IDs”. This problem will probably always be around, but to help with this problem some states accept a firearm permit, a utility bill, or a school ID to prove who they are.
Connection: This article is connected to the Voter Turnout Rate. To avoid a decrease in voters there have been changes made in states to make it easier to prove who a person is and to make the voting technology more user friendly.
This article seems to discuss everything that went wrong in the infamous election of 2000 between Gore and Bush.
The first problem dealing with databases will always happen it is just the scale of which it happens will be different. Nothing in this world is perfect, technology included. In the voting realm I think technology has caused the same amount of problems if not more than the classic voter registration. Things will get messed up due to bad handwriting or databases will crash or will dump large quantities of voters for no reason.
And who could forget the controversy over the ballot style? Mass confusion was everywhere from “voter intent” to “oops, I think i voted for Pat Buchanan.”
Another problem that has been a problem since the first presidential election has been the act of box stuffing or registering animated TV characters to the deceased. Every state has been trying to stop this act in an attempt to make sure every voter is still heard while taking out those who are trying to tip the scales. In trying to level the playing field voters have been turned away. If this has been going on for over 200 years worth of elections it is not going to stop soon, people will always find a way to beat the system.
Connection: All of these problems have been addressed in response to the total chaos caused by the 2000 election. The biggest issue of box stuffing could have changed the vote in 2000 or when Rutherfraud won the presidency.
Evidently our election process is flawed. What else is new?
First of all, all of these “unacceptable” voting issues are not actually substantial issues unless the race is close, and they become a deciding factor. If the victory is a landslide, these flaws are irrelevant.
However, this election at least appears close, therefore Americans do somewhat care about “unjust” voting practices. “In the case of acorn, a community group that represents low-income and minority communities, this led to a massive registration drive this year, which signed up 1.3 million new people, mostly in swing states.” Apparently, not all of the 1.3 million new people were legitimate voters. In fact, Mickey Mouse and the entire Dallas Cowboys football team were amongst the new registers. Very interesting…
What is also interesting is that some illegitimate votes are being counted, and some legitimate votes are not being counted. “Republicans have repeatedly gone to court to make public a list of more than 200,000 unmatched registrations, presumably so that those voters can be challenged at the polls, even though most of them, like Joe, are probably legit.” Very interesting….
Question: Why do states conduct national election policies such as specified registration, specialized ballots, etc? Shouldn’t the states be responsible for state elections, and the national government for national elections? Because evidently specific differences in voting patterns between contrasting states has negatively impacted the outcome of an election before (2000), and may again. Such inconsistencies probably need to end. Why aren’t ballots for national elections truly nationalized, or universalized? “A convicted felon can vote in Maine, but not in Virginia. A government-issued photo ID is required of all voters at the polls in Indiana, but not in New York. Voting lines are shorter in the suburbs, and the rules governing when provisional ballots count sometimes vary from state to state.”
This article definitely explains the flaws in our national voting process, however; it doesn’t really suggest a solution. What is a proper solution?
In response to Dave:
I do not believe that Washington is as great as you claim because of its 100% absentee ballot voting system. It does not even come close to eliminating all of the problems created by going out and voting at a polling station. We may not have to deal with the poll station volunteers who can barely see let alone read a name in tiny font off a list and match it with the even smaller font on the state id or contend with the potential for being refused the right to vote on voting day or anything else, but we have a whole other set of problems that we have to deal with. There is the issue of not receiving the ballot, or incorrectly filling it out or even worse, filling it out completely correctly and forgetting to sign the envelope. Hundreds of ballots turned in to the county auditor already have not been signed. This creates yet another issue, should they be returned to the voter so they can sign them or should the votes just be discarded? In my opinion they should not be returned, if the person were voting at a polling station in any other state then their vote would be thrown out if it was done incorrectly, why should Washington voters get a second chance? I think that a serious national reform is going to be the only real way to improve the voting process.
A Response on Katherine Kruse’s post.
I disagree on the strictness of state election laws, that 10,000 was incorrectly purged by Mississippi state standards. I don’t think that they’re really too strict in terms of state standards. You just have to be a resident of a state, not a felon if your state is against that, not currently in prison, not under 18, etc. They’re pretty easy to remember, most of them, but I believe that there should be federally mandated and inspected voting laws nationwide. This prevents voters having to recall any tiny asinine laws that their state has that could invalidate ballots. It seems likely that if the laws are national, they can’t be fiddled with to disenfranchise the opposition. I do think that your example of Mike Coffman does seem a bit suspicious, but jumping to conclusions about party affiliation and making it out to be malicious is rather silly without further evidence in regards tot hat. As for checking if you’re registered to vote, I imagine you could call your local precinct ahead of time, assuming you haven’t voted absentee and already received your ballot. I’m not exactly sure though. The majority of state rules are in place to prevent fraud, but their execution is rather poor. By ensuring that we have federal election laws in terms of counting ballots, we can prevent a large number of the items the article lists.
In response to Erik Layton,
This problem will most likely never go away, as you said. But, why on earth would you ever want a landslide victory? The closer the polls, the closer the battle, the stronger the party competition. Party competition is an important part of elections, as it greatly helps candidates raise money and get the word out. The next election, we hope, would be a fiercer and closer one because of this party competition. I agree that voter fraud is a major concern with elections, but there is simply nothing we can do about it from here. It might be a good idea to have online elections, but that is just asking to get hacked. Sure it would be more convenient, but, nobody would ever know if their information got to its destination – one could only hope. It amazes me that after hundreds of years, our nation can still operate with all of the corruption caused by others. It is a nice thought to think that those who are violating the freedom to vote are caught, although it is not a very likely scenario. There are just too many ways to hide one’s name, to get out of getting busted. But that’s just how our nation was built, and that is how it’s run. As a wise man once said – “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.”
In response to Matt:
I actually like your idea of just making everyone have absentee ballots, but, just like everything else, there could be a lot of problems with that, too. People could start going through the mail and messing up ballots, that wouldn’t be good. Plus, some of the ballots could get lost in the mail, making the totals add up different than they should be. However, I find the absentee ballot to be a better solution. When people vote before Election Day, the bandwagon effect doesn’t occur, since they don’t know the outcome of any polls anywhere in the country. I think that they are way better than the new computer voting. They can keep records of all the votes, unlike the computer system, and they are much more accurate.
I also understand where you’re coming from with the decrease in voter turnout. This whole thing seems to be getting more complicated every time there is an election. People aren’t going to want to vote if they have to stand in huge lines just to get into the place. I understand that having identification is a good idea, but I can imagine some people aren’t going to want to be questioned to rather they are actually who they say they are. Although more people are beginning to be liars and cheaters, not everyone in the country is going to lie about their identity just so that they can get more than one vote in. I think it has just become kind of ridiculous.
Connection: This has to do with voter fraud and “vote early, vote often”. It could also go along with the problems of the 2000 Election and ways they are trying to make it not happen again. In all reality, if they really wanted the elections to go well, they shouldn’t have changed anything. They worked until people started messing with the system to try to make them more accurate.
In response to Renee:
I have to agree, it was very poorly thought out of ACORN to pay employees based on a quota system. Unless they had perfect employees, they were bound to get some false registrations. But no one can hire 13,000 perfect employees. That would be ridiculous. Therefore, even though their employees turned in some false registration forms, there was really nothing they could do. By law, they must turn in every registration form they receive. Think of what would happen if that law wasn’t in place: in ignorant, racist parts of the country, African American registration forms might not get turned in. It’s a good law, and it ties ACORN’s hands. Better that all registration forms get turned in, fraudulent or not, than have some real registration forms not get turned in. I also commend ACORN on getting more voters registered. When people say ACORN, they only think about the falsification of registrations; they never talk about get more people to vote. I know that many people (cough, elitists, cough, cough) would rather that only people motivated to vote, who follow politics and have thought their opinions through, would actually vote, but I disagree. I believe that every American should vote. While that’s laughable, at least ACORN is trying. I do believe in quantity over quality because an election should represent the entire United States’ opinion. Not just half of it.
In Response to Renee Davidson:
I agree with you on the fact that names that are misspelled are a tremendous problem, but I don’t think it would be a reasonable solution to have other people write your name for you. First of all, many people don’t realize they have ineligible handwriting or atleast to the extent of misspelling their name. Second, having someone else write or type your name doesn’t seem plausible unless you have received and absentee ballot. However, I agree that this is a problem and countless eligible voters are not getting a voice heard because of something as simple as a misspelled day.
I also agree that the ACORN group was more or less a sham because of the variety of registered voters they received were not real people or people that really did not register. I do think the concept is positive in the sense that is is trying to get more people involved and that in itself is a job so why shouldn’t they get paid. The point is that registering these people will not harm the election because no one is going to come to vote as “Mickey Mouse”. There just need to be a better way to check registered voters coming in through these people. I agree, we don’t need another 2000 election, things need to be made easier as well as quicker.
One of the biggest problems that this author points out is that “voters gave up on waiting and never voted” because “it’s not worth the time.” Your choosing the president of the United States of America, that is not worth the time? But I’m sure that waiting in line for hours in line at midnight for Super Smash Brothers Brawl or to see opening night of Dark Night is worth the wait. Seriously good riddance I didn’t want you to vote anyways. And people who don’t take the time (once they took the time to get there) and read all the instructions and vote properly I’m sorry your vote didn’t count but whose fault is that?
Anyways I don’t see what the problem is with having to show ID before you vote. I think that it should be required for everyone to show their ID that is the best way to know that the person voting is actually the person voting. Of course someone could get a fake ID but there is no way to completely stop voter fraud unless everyone became completely honest, which I don’t see happening any time soon.
Connection: The State is in charge of voteing they decided how votes are conducted. There is no way for the central government to make unified voteing laws.(which the auther seem to disagree with)
In response to Tyler konsonlas:
I agree with you on the fact that “there have been many adjustments and new laws put into place. These adjustments will help in the long run, but right now they are proving to be a problem.” I also agree that “one of the problems being that there are still many issues with the databases of names.” People think that it will be more beneficial for their candidate if they vote twice or maybe even three times, but what they don’t know is that it doesn’t help their candidate, it just makes things worse. I like in the beginning of the article where is states, “We can go to the moon, split atoms to power submarines, squeeze profits from a 99 cent hamburger and watch football highlights on cell phones. But the most successful democracy in human history has yet to figure out how to conduct a proper election.” With all of the technology that we have today, you would think that it would be easier to catch people cheating. The only thing that I do not like is the checking of the ID at the door before you vote. Not everyone has ID and yes “some states accept a firearm permit, a utility bill, or a school ID to prove who they are,” but not all and only first time votes. Overall I think that voting is becoming more complicated and it is lame that we have to worry about people voting under false ID.
Makayla Sander’s comment was very interesting. “People should be required to bring some sort of identification, whether it be a birth certificate or a state ID or a driver’s license, with them to the poll.” This comment was very strange to me. So basically she is saying that everybody who wants to vote HAS to have identification. Well wouldn’t that mean that we would be prejudice against those who didn’t have identification, like homeless people? I believe that everybody should have the right to vote, whether they have identification or not. Voting is one right that America is proud to say anybody has the right to, and we don’t discriminate. Also, I would say that usually one extra vote wouldn’t make a big difference. But what about in the election of 2000? In this election, because it was so close, a few ‘fake’ voters and it could have really made a difference. And I think that if just showing your identification were the requirement, there would be a much bigger proportion of these ‘fake’ voters. It would be very, very easy for someone to make a fake ID and vote two or three times. Although this seems like a good idea, I am not so sure that it is the best idea for our voting,
In response to Hillary:
I agree that these listed things should be no suprise that American elections are messed up. Most of these issues shouldnt really effect anything unless it is a close race like the 2000 election. When things come down to the people all the illegal voting practices and whatnot happen on both sides. So in the end it does not really change the outcome of the election. I do think that one major flaw that should be worked on fixing is that some of the illegitimate votes count but the legitimate ones are thrown away on suspicion.
In an attempt to fix the problem all the ballots should be the same. Also there should be a way to figure out which registrations are real and which ones are fake such as registering the Dallas Cowboys in Nevada. Even though that registration is obviously fake there should still be a way to tell if it is false. Not only should the ballots and registration should be the same but the laws should be universal as to who gets the right or who doesn’t get the right. I understand that the states want power as well but it would make the election process a great deal easier if everything was the same all across the board.
In response to Alexa Erickson,
I completely agree! The states should adopt a voting system that is uniform throughout the United States. I really don’t understand why the states don’t currently practice this. Since the election is national, shouldn’t the ballots be nationalized, or universalized, also? YES.
I also agree that “People should not have to doubt whether their vote counts or not.” American ideology is built around the concept of “equal opportunity.” If “equal opportunity” is disrupted and becomes irrelevant, what then, makes America attractive? If our voting system is skewed, if our democracy is corrupt, if our American dream is nonexistent (or simply not reachable), why vote? Why participate? Why even exercise a voice, when it won’t be heard? American ideology (the constitution) protects our right to participate in the political process. Therefore, these unfair voting practices i.e. “the people who are purposely acting to prevent a fellow citizen’s vote from being cast” are unconstitutional, and ultimately un-American.
Obviously, these unjust voting practices are unacceptable. Now, the government needs to IMMEDIATELY confront these issues, and fix them with a uniformed plan: uniform ballots.
In response to Jordan,
I don’t necessarily agree with the statement “In the voting realm I think technology has caused the same amount of problems if not more than the classic voter registration.” Yes there are flaws to technology, but don’t forget that a big factor in that category is the lack of ignorant citizens to take the time to learn how to use the new technology. Just because they didn’t use that technology ‘back in their day,’ doesn’t mean that justifies their inability to use it now. It is an absolute tragedy that thousands of American citizens have their voting privileges revoked every election. There are obvious reasons why one would be unable to vote etc., but when somebody’s right is taken away, they judge of this better be positive the voter is a fraud. While I do not think people should have their voting privileges taken away unjustified, if you can not eligibly print your name you probably don’t deserve to vote anyways. I agree that people will probably trying to find ways to cheat the system forever. Sad but true. There are always going to be ups and downs to an election and the process, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t vote; its all the more reason to vote.