The Right to Vote

[groovedaddy]

Much about the presidential election is up in the air, but one thing is certain: voters will have trouble casting ballots on Election Day. In a perfect world, states and localities would handle voting so well that the public could relax and worry about other things. But elections are so mismanaged — and so many eligible voters are disenfranchised — that ordinary citizens have to get involved.

Since the meltdown in Florida in 2000, a large, nonpartisan coalition called Election Protection — made up of civil rights groups, good-government organizations and major law firms — has been doing critical work in standing up for voters. It is an effort that anyone who cares about democracy should get behind.

The civic books say that any eligible voter who registers in time can cast a ballot on Election Day. The reality is not so simple. People file registration forms that are not properly processed, or their names are wrongly purged from the voter rolls. They are required to present photo ID even when the law does not require it. They arrive at polling places and find machines that do not work properly or lines that take hours to get through.

A major reason for these problems is that states and localities are stingy about paying for elections, so election officials do not have enough workers, training, computers and voting machines. Frequently, though, the driving force is partisanship. Some political interests benefit from low turnout, particularly among minorities, the poor, students and the elderly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09sat1.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1218297730-KJ6ItajhUwy6w0Vc1jK88g

[tbyg52]

1. The corporate media is taking notice.

Hope springs eternal.

[Stevepol]

2. The right to vote is meaningless if the vote is not counted correctly.

It's good to keep in mind this principle:

When the vote is counted in total secrecy without verification on machines that are trivially easy to manipulate, hack, or otherwise fraudulently program in ways that are completely undetectable IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE A DEMOCRACY.

It would be good if people, whatever other salient and important point they are making, would tack this fact on as well. It's the basic reason that the outcome of the election in November is even in doubt. Kerry was never inaugurated even though he won the election with about a 3% margin. In American elections that's getting close to a landslide. Obama will win by more than that, but the machines can easily be tilted more than the 4% or so they were tilted in 04 or the 5-6% they were tilted in 06.

[Wilms]

3. Why don't we just use exit polls to determine election outcomes?

:shrug:

That's all some around here do. :eyes: