Blog
By Adam Skaggs – 09/19/08
Cross-posted from the Huffington Post.
Concerns about matching voter data with motor vehicle records were back in the news last week in New Jersey, Wisconsin and Florida — but for very different reasons. In one case, the matches were conducted in an attempt to add voters to the registration rolls; in the others, to take them off. But the experience in each state teaches the same lesson: matching data between the voter and driver databases is an inherently flawed process — and one that's far too unreliable to make a successful "match" a precondition to registering and voting.
In New Jersey, it was an attempt by Secretary of State Nina Wells to expand the voting rolls that gave rise to the latest kerfuffle. Wells was concerned that some citizens who'd applied for driver's licenses hadn't been given the opportunity to register to vote, as is required under the "Motor Voter Act." So she had the Division of Elections cross-check the voter registration database against motor vehicle records. The data comparison turned up 880,000 driver's license records that couldn't be matched up with voter registration records. Officials concluded that this meant there were 880,000 drivers who weren't registered to vote. So, to be helpful, they began sending all those drivers a voter registration form, along with a letter encouraging them to fill it out and register so they could vote in November.
Unfortunately, a lot of those drivers already were registered, and they weren't too happy to receive letters implying they were not. The confusion arose because minor discrepancies between their records in the voter and motor vehicle databases — like missing middle initials or inconsistent treatment of hyphenated last names— prevented officials from matching a driver's record in the motor vehicle database with the same person's voter record.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Purges and Challenges, Voter Registration
By Maggie Barron – 09/17/08
Those of us raised on cop dramas take for granted that in this country you have the right to an attorney, and that if you cannot afford it, one will be provided to you. What Americans don't know is that in courtrooms across the country, there is a lot of room to interpret what "afford" actually means.
This week, the Brennan Center for Justice released a new report, "Eligible for Justice," exposing the lack of standards for determining who is eligible for court-appointed defense counsel. In a national study, the Brennan Center found that many jurisdictions use flawed screening processes to separate those who can afford counsel from those who cannot, and as a result are denying government-funded defense counsel to people who should receive it, in violation of the Sixth Amendment.
The landmark Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright requires that states provide counsel to all people charged with felonies who are unable to afford their own attorney without substantial hardship. Yet states have been provided with little instruction on how to determine which individuals are genuinely unable to pay for counsel. Some courts have no standards at all.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Legal Aid, Civil Right to Counsel, Fair Forums, Criminal Justice
By Monique Chase – 09/15/08
In a CNBC interview last week, Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy Co., answered questions stemming from a recent decline in his company's stock. When asked to respond to a New York Times editorial highlighting Massey's legal trouble and his suspect dealings with the West Virginia courts, the CEO dismissed the facts as skewed, and would not acknowledge that his actions posed any conflict of interest.
(For more background on this case, we have written on Blankenship's campaign contributions and questionable relationship with judges HERE and HERE)
While it is unclear how Blankenship managed to keep a straight face during the interview while denying that even the perception of a conflict of interest exists—even the news anchors on the pro-business CNBC appeared to find Blankenship's answers unsatisfactory—what is clear is that events like these make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for state courts to preserve public confidence.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Fair Courts, Judicial Advertising, State Judicial Elections
By Adam Skaggs – 09/08/08
When Wisconsin
considered preventing voters from
casting regular ballots if the state didn't find a "complete match" of the
voter's data in the motor vehicle or Social Security database and the voter didn't
have acceptable proof of residence at the polls, we warned
them it was a bad idea. As we explained,
it's bad policy to make a complete "HAVA match" a precondition to voting a
regular ballot, because matching voter data fails from 20-30% of
the time.
We were right: the initial
results from Wisconsin
showed a match
failure rate of 22%. That is, nearly
1 in 4 voters weren't successfully "matched" with other government data—not
because they weren't eligible to vote, but because of typos, missed middle
initials, and other minor problems.
Thankfully, Wisconsin
heard the message and rejected
the proposed matching rule.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases
By Liz Budnitz – 09/05/08
Looks like conservative pundit Abigail Thernstrom thinks the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" is outdated. The song she thinks we should sing now is "We Overcame, So Quit Whining."
According to Thernstrom's recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, disenfranchisement of African Americans is "a closed chapter in American history." After all, impediments to black voting have all but disappeared and civil rights groups are just habitually pessimistic, fighting a battle that has already been won, she claims.
Turns out Thernstrom has a healthy case of civil rights revisionism. How could the civil rights movement be finished when legal barriers still keep hundreds of thousands, even millions, of African Americans from the polls?
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction, Voting Rights & Elections
By Adam Skaggs – 08/29/08
In 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled
it was unconstitutional to require voters to pay a $1.50 poll tax to
vote. In 2008, Americans living overseas—including members of the armed forces in Iraq
and Afghanistan—may have to fork over as much as $23.50 if they want to be sure their votes
count in November.
That's how much FedEx will
be charging
some overseas Americans to guarantee their absentee ballots will be delivered
in time to be counted. But while $23.50
might seem like a steep price to pay for casting a ballot, the FedEx service—a joint initiative with the Overseas
Vote Foundation—is actually a step in the right direction. The initiative offers steep discounts on FedEx's
normal rates, and means that Americans living abroad have at least one way to
guarantee their ballots make it back home in time to be counted. That's more than they've had in the past.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Election Day Issues, Voter Registration
By Adam Skaggs – 08/28/08
*Update of posting regarding Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board.
The GAB met on August 27th and, by the slimmest possible
margin, rejected
the proposal to relegate all un-matched voters to casting provisional
ballots.
The close vote was likely influenced by data released by the
GAB indicating that, since Wisconsin
started conducting "HAVA matches," 22% of voters didn't
match. That means that if the GAB hadn't
voted against the misguided proposal, nearly a quarter of voters submitting new
registrations or address changes would have been denied a regular ballot in
November based on typos, data entry mistakes, missing middle initials and other
trivial clerical errors.
Although local advocates expect the issue to crop up again
in 2009, this victory means that Wisconsin
voters are at least safe for the November election.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases
By Adam Skaggs – 08/26/08
Having already rejected a proposed rule that would
needlessly disenfranchise eligible voters this November—joining forty-five
states and the District of Columbia in the process—Wisconsin unfortunately
appears to be reconsidering the policy.
Back in July, the state's Government Accountability Board ("GAB") considered
an emergency rule that would have prevented voters from casting regular ballots
if the state didn't find a "complete match" of the voter's information in the
motor vehicle or Social Security database and the voter did not show up at the
polls with acceptable proof of residence.
The GAB rightly rejected the proposal in July, after concluding it
had insufficient data about how well "matching" voter data worked, and how many
voters would be affected.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Registration
Page 4 of 25 pages « First < 2 3 4 5 6 > Last »
0 comments | Permalink