Get Out And Vote

Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers

The Progress Report

November 3, 2008

ELECTION '08

All the ads, door-knocking, polling, speeches, and rallies culminate tomorrow as Americans head to the polls to vote in one of the nation's most historic elections. With 90 percent of the electorate holding the opinion that the country is seriously off track, voters are engaging in the political process as never before. Approximately 153.1 million Americans are now registered to vote (a record 73.5 percent of citizens 18 or older), record numbers are turning out to take advantage of the early voting systems in more than 30 states, and election officials are expecting record turnout overall. But with such unprecedented engagement comes the possibility of massive problems, including long lines, votes not being properly counted, and even deliberate suppression. Conservatives continue to demagogue about the potential of vast voter fraud, although they have virtually no solid evidence to back up their claims. The possibilities of such problems, however, shouldn't deter anyone from voting. As Mary G. Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters, noted, the "willingness of people to wait in line for this historic vote...is 'affirmation our democracy is alive and well.'" If you have any questions on how or when to vote, or if you would like to report problems registering to vote or casting a ballot, visit the Election Protection Coalition or call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has more voter protection resources here.

MYTH OF VOTER FRAUD: In the weeks before the election, conservatives have stepped up their calls to combat "voter fraud," claiming that "hundreds of thousands of new voter registrations are questionable" in Ohio and warning that the election could be "stolen." On Oct. 23, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) campaign sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting a federal investigation into voter fraud. "Voter registration fraud can quickly turn into vote fraud -- especially in the case of absentee balloting and in states that do not require photo identification to vote," read the letter. No one wants a fraudulently registered person to vote. Luckily, it doesn't appear that this problem is real. The conservative focus on "voter integrity," which began when John Ashcroft was serving as President Bush's attorney general, "targets fraud in the voting process, from voter registration to voting and ballot counting." Voter integrity efforts have done more harm than good. "It's one of those great euphemisms," Pamela S. Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School, observed. "By and large, it's been targeted at minority voters." When pushed by ProPublica recently, the McCain campaign was able to produce virtually no evidence to back up its claims of rampant voter fraud. Scholars who have published extensively on election fraud are unable to think of a single example of registration fraud. In 2007, the New York Times reported that after a five-year effort by the Bush administration to crack down on supposedly widespread voter fraud, just 86 people were convicted.

POTENTIAL PROBLEMS: Aside from over-hyped concerns about voter fraud, there are real problems for legitimate voters trying to reach the polls. In July, a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law warned that some voters may still face poorly designed ballots, similar to the Florida debacle in 2000. Last week, CNN reported that approximately 50,000 Georgia voters had been "'flagged' because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote." Similarly, "numerical errors or misspellings" in Ohio have resulted in voter registration applications that did not match other government databases. Conservatives quickly jumped on this as evidence of fraudulent voters and tried to force the state to provide information making it easier for them to challenge the registrations, but the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed their case. When a person's voter status is in question, he or she is allowed to cast a provisional ballot, which is sometimes never counted. In Ohio's March primary, the Cleveland Plain Dealer found that 20 percent of the provisional ballots -- or approximately 20,000 ballots -- were rejected, even though "many people shouldn't have lost their votes." More perniciously, there have already been reports of deliberate voter suppression and intimidation. Early voters in North Carolina, who were mostly African-American, were heckled by a "group of loud and angry protesters," almost all of whom were white. A phony Virginia Board of Elections flier was recently distributed in Hampton Roads, VA, incorrectly telling Democrats that they were now scheduled to vote on Nov. 5.

ELECTION PROTECTION: While serving in the Bush administration, Ashcroft pursued "voter integrity" by assigning federal prosecutors "to watch for election crimes in each judicial district." This move troubled civil rights advocates. "A lot of assistant U.S. attorneys are going to be more interested in voting integrity than in voter protection," said Jon Greenbaum, a former lawyer in the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section. "How many people are scared off from voting because you ask them a question at a polling place? There is no way to know." In September, however, the Justice Department took a giant step away from the sordid legacy of Ashcroft and his successor, Alberto Gonzales, by announcing that it would not be stationing prosecutors at polls on Nov. 4.

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