In the 2008 Minnesota election for US Senate, Al Franken beat Norm Coleman by less than three hundred votes. In that race, almost four thousand absentee ballots were not counted because votes didn’t sign the envelope, as required. The problem was a flaw in the design of the envelope. Voters didn’t notice the signature line, an innocent mistake that ultimately disenfranchised them. That screw-up prompted the Minnesota secretary of state’s office to redesign the absentee mail-in envelope to include an outsized X to prominently indicate where voters needed to sign. In the 2010 election, the missing-signature total dropped to 837.

The way your ballot looks influences how you vote. Anyone who paid attention to the 2000 presidential election will remember how “butterfly ballots” in Palm Beach County, Florida, confused thousands of voters, who may have voted for Patrick Buchanan rather than Al Gore, because the layout of the ballot was ambiguous. More recently, in the 2018 senate election in Florida, thousands of voters didn’t mark their ballots for that contest, because it appeared at the bottom of a long column of instructions—a column that many voters skipped. Election officials calculate that more than 30,000 votes may have been lost because of that design error. The winner of the Senate race, Rick Scott, won by less than 10,000 votes. No one will ever know if that margin of victory was attributable to the missing votes.

In 2020, as American politicians, election scholars and administrators try to figure out how conduct elections in a pandemic—and increasingly by mail—ballot design is going to be a critical factor in getting it right.

The Washington Post recently posted this very informative, four-minute video on this subject. Watch it here.

The post Ballot design is important, especially now appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In the final hour of the 2020 legislative session, the Missouri Senate passed SB631, which would allow Missourians to vote absentee by mail in 2020 in the upcoming August and November elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However—and this is a big one—unless you expect to be confined, ill or in a specified high-risk category for COVID-19, the absentee mail-in ballot still must be notarized. The provisions will go into effect once the bill is signed by the Governor. It will expire on December 31, 2020 so this provision will not continue beyond that date. At that point, the rules will revert to the confusing state of being that existed before SB631. So just when you’ve figured out what to do in 2020, the rules will change back again in 2021–adding a further level of consternation to a situation that could easily be remedied by simply allowing no-excuse absentee voting–as is allowed in 29 states and Washington, D.C. (in addition to Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Hawaii and Washington, where all voting is conducted by mail.)

The Missouri Voter Protection Coalition has created this chart in an effort to clarify the changes. The chart is a worthy effort to explain the overly complicated rules. No doubt, the new “system” will generate many calls to election hotlines across the state.

The post New rules for absentee voting in Missouri: More complicated than ever appeared first on Occasional Planet.

For those who don’t vote in the US because they think it’s too time-consuming, too complicated or too confusing, consider the voting process in the African nation of Burundi.

Burundi, for the Africa-map-challenged, like me, is landlocked country. It’s that little red dot on the map between Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and southeast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Lake Tanganyika lies along its southwestern border. Its capital cities are Bjumbura ( the political capital) and Gitega (the economic capital). Burund’s population is about 11 million. The country’s literacy rate is 68 percent. It operates politically as a constitutional republic with a bi-cameral parliamentary structure. Currently, 24 different political parties hold seats or are vying for them.

And that’s where the complexity sets in. According to the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa [EISA], in parliamentary elections, each valid voter is given 24 ballots – each bearing the name and symbol of a different party – and two envelopes. In the polling booth, the voter puts her chosen ballot paper in the white envelope, and the rest into the black one. Exiting the booth, voters then put the white envelope with their chosen ballot paper into one box for votes cast, and the black envelope into another box, before having their thumbs marked with indelible ink so they can’t vote again. The number of black envelopes containing useless ballot papers (at any given polling station) have to match with the number of white envelopes to avoid cheating.

I have now read that description about a dozen times, and I think I’m beginning to understand it. But still, I’m glad I’m not a first-time voter in Burundi.

Burundi is slated to hold a presidential election on May 20. 2020. With six candidates vying for the job, voting will presumably be somewhat simpler than the complicated routine of parliamentary elections, and the current ruling party is expected, by knowledgeable observers, to win the day. Notably, other African nations have postponed their national elections due to the coronavirus pandemic, but as of this writing, Burundi is moving ahead.

The post How to vote in Burundi appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder—to overturn the “pre-clearance” requirement in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—continues to have major ramifications for voting rights in America. Just before the decision came down in 2013, The Brennan Center for Democracy looked into its crystal ball and envisioned what would happen if the Court decided against pre-clearance. The predictions were ominous, and, unfortunately, they began to materialize, just days after the Supreme Court’s opinion went live. Here are the general categories into which new voting rights abuses were likely to fall, according to the Brennan Center’s prescient predictions. Check them against what has actually happened. I’m republishing this post because of its continuing relevance in the Trump era of diminishing American democracy.

Jurisdictions could try to revise discriminatory changes blocked by Section 5.

To give you a sense of the scope of this category, consider that 31 such proposed changes have been blocked by the Justice Department or the federal courts since the Voting Rights Act was last reauthorized just eight years ago. In just the past six months, after the 2012 election, many such challenges have been rejected.

Jurisdictions could put in place broad discriminatory practices they were previously “chilled” from implementing by Section 5’s pre-clearance requirement.

In South Carolina v. Holder, a Section 5 challenge that preceded the 2012 election, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, an appointee of George W. Bush, highlighted the deterrent effect of the statute — how it prevented state lawmakers from moving forward with the most obviously discriminatory practices, and how these officials narrowed the scope of their proposed voting change to track the requirements of the Section. That deterrent effect will be gone.

Jurisdictions might implement those discriminatory practices they tried but failed to get past the Justice Department under Section 5.

The Brennan Center reports that 153 such voting measures have been submitted and then withdrawn in recent years after federal officials questioned the discriminatory nature of these proposed laws. Even if just half of these policies were to be reconsidered and adopted in the absence of Section 5 they would significantly change the voting rights landscape in several Southern states.

Finally, the most obvious impact — jurisdictions might try to adopt restrictive new voting measures they neither contemplated nor dared submit for preclearance under Section 5.

For best effect, those lawmakers could do so on the eve of an election, forcing voting rights advocates to scramble and practically daring the federal judiciary to enjoin the measures. We wouldn’t likely go back to the age, as John Lewis recounted, where black voters would have to guess the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. But we wouldn’t be too far off, either. Just last election cycle, in Texas, lawmakers sought to impose what amounted to a poll tax on indigent — or carless — registered voters.

If you think these predictions sound hysterical, Orwellian and unlikely to occur in this country, think again. In the past seven years, states and local jurisdictions enacted legislation on many of the fronts outlined by the Brennan Center. We need to stay on full alert.

The post Life after the Voting Rights Act appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Many documents require a signature verification by a notary public. But if you’re social distancing, going to the bank or your lawyer’s office is not something you want to do. But there’s an app for that: It’s called remote online notarization (RON). It is not clear, yet, whether this workaround will apply to the notary requirement that some states have for voting absentee. [Missouri’s secretary of state, for example, says that remote online notarization will NOT apply to ballots.]

In response to the coronavirus emergency, numerous states have put in place emergency measures that eliminate the requirement that documents be signed in person in the presence of a notary public. The details differ from state to state, but the intent is the same: to allow people to fulfill various signature requirements without breaking the social-distancing barrier.

RON is a major departure from tradition, and some notaries and government institutions were, initially reluctant to accept it. But with the problems presented by the coronavirus pandemic, that opposition has mostly dissipated, especially now that that face-to-face contact can be satisfied online using audiovisual technology such as a webcam. The signer can be in another town, another state or even another country.

How does a remote notary confirm a signer’s identity without being able to hold and examine an ID? One of the safeguards includes asking for knowledge-based authentication—known as KBA—in which the signer must correctly answer a set of computer-generated questions related to their life, and credit and financial history. If the signer cannot successfully pass the KBA, the notary will not perform the notarization. Another, simpler method to confirm the signer’s identity is for the signer to hold their ID up to the camera, allowing the notary to check that the signer looks like the person on the ID and that other details match the information on the ID.

A recent article published by the National Notary Association (NNA) gives the details of how it’s done, state by state. Some have allowed RON for several years; others are new to the game; some are allowing RON only for a limited time period during the pandemic. A map on the NNA website indicates that almost every US state authorizes some form of remote notarization.

On a broader scale, US Senators Mark warner (D-VA) and Kevin Cramer (R-ND) recently introduced an act that would authorize remote online authorizations nationwide.

It’s just one more way that America is changing as a result of the pandemic of 2020.

The post Need a notary for your document, but quarantining? Do it online. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Today, I accompanied a group of 28 fourth-grade students on a tour of my local election headquarters. I’ve taken this tour at least four times, but never with anyone—adults or teens—who asked more creative or challenging questions.

I’ll list some of them below. Some may strike you as amusing, in a “Kids Say the Darndest Things” way. That’s not why I’m sharing them. I’m not here to demean or condescend to these kids, or to draw a laugh at their expense.  I’m awed by them–and not in an “Aww, aren’t they cute way.” They earned my respect and admiration for their confidence and their creative thinking.

Observing them, I could see that they haven’t yet learned much about how elections work. (I’m sure that’s about to change, as their fourth grade theme is “Citizens Making A Difference.”) But the questions they asked reflected a level of curiosity and engagement that was very impressive. The first question was, “How do you register to vote?” I think the sophistication of that question impressed the staff, and they knew, instantly, that this was a group of really smart and well-prepared kids.

These young people will be eligible to vote in eight years. If they manage to stay civically engaged until then–and beyond–and if schools, religion, mass media and the entertainment world don’t kill their souls and brains before then, we’ll have a new generation of voters who just might save us all.

Here are some of their questions and the responses (paraphrased) they received from the election staff. (I learned a few things, myself.)  Kudos to the staff for taking every question seriously and not talking down to the students.

Q: Do people have to vote?

A: No. But there are some countries where you’re required to vote, and if you don’t, you pay a fine. That’s how it is in Australia and Brazil, and maybe some other places, too.  Some people in those countries go to the polls and sign in, but then just leave their ballots blank.

Q: Which part of government are you? [Last week, these same students visited the state capitol, so government branches may have been on this student’s mind.}

A: Great question! We’re not part of the judiciary branch, because we’re not judges. We’re not part of the legislature, because we don’t make the laws. And we’re not part of the executive branch, either. Elections are sort of a branch of their own. It’s kind of odd.

Q: So, if you guys are in charge of running the elections, are you allowed to vote?

A: Yes. But we have to vote absentee, because on Election Day, we have to be here in the office from 4 a.m. until we finish counting and reporting the votes—that can be after midnight.

Q: If you think you’re a Republican, can you still vote for a Democrat?

A: Yes. Anybody can vote for anybody.

Q: Can the President vote for himself? Does the President’s vote count more than anyone else’s?

A: The President can definitely vote for himself, or herself. I’d be surprised if candidates didn’t vote for themselves. The President gets one vote, just like everyone else: One person, one vote.

Q: Can you vote if you’re on house arrest? Can you vote if you’re in jail?

A: In Missouri, if you’ve been convicted of a crime and you’re in prison, you can’t vote. If you haven’t been convicted yet, and you’re in jail waiting for your trial, you can vote. If you’re on house arrest, that means you can’t leave home. But in that case, you can vote absentee.

Q: Do celebrities get special votes?

A: No. But in some states, if people don’t want to be seen in public, they can vote absentee, too. In Missouri, you have to have a better reason than that if you want to vote absentee. And you can’t vote early in Missouri, either.

Q: Is there a dress code for voting?

A: No. Well, actually, you have to be wearing something. We won’t let you in if you don’t have any clothes on. It’s okay to vote wearing flip flops, workout clothes, a business suit, or even a bathing suit. We’ve even had people come to vote wearing Halloween costumes.

Q: Can you go to jail if you cheat at voting? How do you make sure no one steals the votes or changes stuff around?

A: We have a lot of security. Everything is locked up. We have security cameras everywhere. We have a lot of checks and balances. Every time someone touches a ballot, there has to be a Republican and a Democrat to okay it. None of our counting machines or voting equipment is connected to the internet. And yes, you can go to jail if you cheat at voting.

[As a bonus, the election staff set up a mock election for the students, where they used the county’s new paper ballot-on-demand system and digital scanners to cast their votes for fictitious and/or historical candidates. One staffer told me that the the students did a much better job of filling out the ballots than many adults. Voting was clearly the highlight of the tour. It prompted questions, too.]

Q: Where should I sign my ballot?

A: Nowhere. You might have to sign a test paper at school, but in voting, we have a secret ballot. No one gets to see how you voted, and we don’t keep track of who each person voted for.

Q: […As she placed her paper ballot into the scanner…] Is that a shredder? Does it just eat the ballot?

A: It’s definitely not a shredder. It’s a ballot box. When you feed your ballot into the scanner, it records your vote and then drops the paper into the ballot box. We collect all the paper ballots, and we count them  by hand, if we need to.

Q: Do you get paid to do this?

A: Yes. [Author’s note: But not enough for the level of democratic responsibility they take on, or for the long hours they work, especially during Presidential election years, but in “off-years” as well. We got a free tour today. It was worth a lot.]

The post 12 election questions posed by smart 10 year-olds appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In another attempt to destroy a long-standing international agreement, Donald Trump threatened to create chaos for overseas voters by withdrawing from the Universal Postal Union (UPU), a United Nations body that has regulated mail services for 145 years. But disaster was averted today, when UPU, in tense last-minute negotiations, agreed to changes in its rate structure that satisfied U.S. concerns.

If Trump had gotten his way, overseas voters could have found themselves on the outs on Election Day, because they would have had no way to mail in their ballots and could have been left with the necessity of sending them via air-express services at a very prohibitive cost.

U.S. trade negotiators had contended that postal rates set by UPU gave unfair advantages to America’s economic rivals, especially China—and they may have had a valid point. But in focusing solely on that imbalance, and by making international postal rates part of Trump’s ongoing trade war with China, they ignored the impact that a withdrawal (which had been dubbed “Pexit”) would have had on U.S. elections.

How Pexit would have affected military and overseas voters

The National Association of Counties (NACO)—whose members include the election officials who administer voting across the U.S—had been strongly opposed to “Pexit.” Here’s how NACO explained its potential impact:

Military service members, their eligible dependents and U.S. citizens living abroad face unique challenges in participating in our elections. The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) estimates that about three-quarters of the 1.3 million active duty service members and three million other U.S. citizens across 170 countries are covered under the Uniformed Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which allows these citizens to vote absentee while away from their voting jurisdiction.

One of the largest barriers for UOCAVA voters is the transit time to receive and return a ballot, which can vary depending on ballot delivery method, submission options allowed by state law, duty location and internet connectivity. As primary administrators of our nation’s elections, counties are responsible for transmitting and processing military and overseas ballots. To allow extra time and mitigate possible delivery issues, federal law requires these ballots be transmitted no later than 45 days before federal elections. In the 2016 presidential election, counties sent nearly a million absentee ballots to UOCAVA voters. Most ballots are returned to the county through postal mail.

As many counties prepare to mail UOCAVA ballots in mid-September for state and local elections this November, any disruption to the mail service could negatively impact the ability for military members, their spouses and other overseas citizens to participate. Additionally, a U.S. withdrawal from the UPU this October could have even broader implications on the 2020 primaries and presidential election.

Talking Points Memo interviewed Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor at the Democracy Fund, which works with election officials on voting administration issues. Patrick said, “I’ve had sleepless nights worrying what will happen for voters that won’t have the ability to return a ballot.

She and others in the voting space feared it would be more expensive for overseas voters to cast ballots, if they had to rely on private carriers to do so, or that it would be altogether impossible for them to know for sure whether they’d be able to get their ballots submitted in time.

“This action could seriously jeopardize the integrity of the overseas vote,” said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president of the U.S. Vote Foundation, a non-partisan organization that offers voting assistance to overseas Americans.

In addition to military members, those Americans include their families, U.S. contractors working internationally, other Americans whose jobs take them overseas, as well as students, missionaries and participants in programs like the Peace Corp.

Many of them rely on the mail to submit ballots, with 19 states requiring that overseas ballots be sent back by mail only.

So, the crisis appears to have been averted, for now. But still, as long as Trump is in the White House, I will vote for continued vigilance.

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Ten days before the high-stakes 2018 midterm election in Missouri, Eric Fey, St Louis County’s director of elections, led a group of high-schoolers on a back-stage tour of election headquarters. Three months from now, he’ll be in the warehouse, overseeing the de-tangling and re-rolling of miles of orange extension cords used to power up the Nov. 6 election. The highs of making big-news elections work, and the lows of post-election mop-up are the bookends of a job that few voters understand.

Correction: Fey is actually co-director of St. Louis County’s Board of Elections, and that’s important to know. He’s a Democrat. The other co-director is Rick Stream, a Republican. In St. Louis County, we get two directors, because, by Missouri law, all election administration has to be bi-partisan. Every function requires a Republican and a Democrat: You need an R and a D to open the door to the tabulation room. You need an R and a D to approve every absentee ballot. You need an R and a D to check voters’ IDs at every polling place.

“The only thing you can do here by yourself is go to the bathroom,” says Fey. “Everything else requires a bi-partisan team.”

In the world of election administration in the US, that’s unusual. Across the US, 70 percent of election officials are, themselves, elected, and there’s no requirement for party balance—which can lead to doubt about independence and fairness. “The person counting the votes is, him or herself, on the ballot,” comments Fey. “That doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.”

That’s just one of the intriguing tidbits Fey shared during the two-hour tour that took us into places most people never get to see: the areas where election workers process voter registration cards, verify signatures on petitions, respond to requests for absentee ballots, sort out mailed-in ballots, electronically count the votes, and service voting machines—among myriad other election-critical tasks.

During the tour, Fey reeled off some key statistics that offer insight into the scope of the St. Louis County election operation. Here’s an annotated rundown:

Polling places in St. Louis County: 411  [The largest election district in Missouri]

Registered voters in St. Louis County:  750,000

Active voters in St. Louis County:  650,000

Workers employed on Election Day:  3,500

The election board is constantly recruiting election day workers—begging, really. The hours are terrible—5 am to 7 pm or later, depending on how things go. The pay is lousy — $125, which covers a separate two-hour training session plus the 14+ hour day. And it’s all one shift.

Election Day payroll:  $600,000  [The largest line item in the election board’s budget]

Petition signatures verified in 2018:  approximately 400,000

The 2018 midterm ballot in St. Louis County includes 4 amendments to the Missouri constitution, 3 statewide propositions, one countywide proposition, and  7 amendments to the St. Louis County charter. It’s the longest ballot ever produced in Missouri history, Fey noted. [His office, though not responsible for the wording on the ballot, had to negotiate with various sponsoring groups to edit the propositions, because, as originally written, they wouldn’t all fit on one piece of 8 1/2 x 19″ paper, which is the largest size that can be read by optical scanners.]

For every petition initiative, county election workers had to review each signature—to verify that the signer was a registered voter in St. Louis County and the signature matched—within reason—their original voter registration.

Early voting days in Missouri:  0

Missouri is one of just 13 states that do not allow early voting, notes Fey. Ninety-percent of voters cast their ballots on Election Day, putting a lot of pressure on Fey’s operation all in a single, 14-hour day.

The only “early voting” option is to vote absentee, either by mail or in person at headquarters or at a satellite location, if the jurisdiction opts to have one.  You have to provide a reason for voting absentee. Disability, being an election worker, or being outside of the voting jurisdiction on Election Day are acceptable reasons, so many people just say they’re going to be out of town. They are not required to show proof. “Our rules make liars out of a lot of voters,” says Fey.

In the cavernous, bare-bones warehouse that looks spookily like a set from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Fey showed our tour the election-day equipment he manages, and explained the limitations of what he has to work with:

Touch-screen voting machines:  1,800

Optical-scanner voting machines:  500

St. Louis County uses touch-screen machines purchased in 2005, at a cost of $10 million. Fey noted that the technology is 20+ years old. The machines operate on the now-antique Windows XP, which is no longer supported. Replacing broken touch-screen machines is not possible, because a) they are no longer manufactured by the supplier, ES&S, and there is no additional inventory. Only about six companies make voting machines in the US, and they haven’t been interested in maintaining their older models as they roll out newer ones.  “It’s a racket,” says Fey; and b) You can’t fill in, incrementally, with newer machines, because they won’t work with Windows XP, which is also the operating system for the equipment that counts the votes.

Also, you can’t borrow replacement machines from other Missouri jurisdictions, because many don’t use this model: In Missouri, each county election board is its own fiefdom. There are no statewide standards for voting equipment, so each county decides, independently of others, which equipment to buy and from which vendor. [On the plus side, notes Fey, it could be argued that this decentralization of the voting process is a positive—a fortuitous defense against widespread tampering.]

A few years ago, Fey learned that the voting district in in Troy, MO experienced an equipment disaster, when the roof of their warehouse caved in in a rainstorm, soaking all of their ES & S voting machines. The district’s insurance policy covered the purchase of new equipment. Fey took in the salvageable machines and cannibalized them for spare parts.

“The dirty secret in election administration is that we hope for a crisis—but not here,” quips Fey. He further explains that the hanging-chad debacle in Florida, during the 2000 presidential election, created a national electoral nightmare—which, in turn, resulted in Congressional legislation and federal funding for more advanced voting equipment. Although Fey is constantly asking for money for better technology, the state legislature and the county council just won’t come up with the funds, citing other, more pressing priorities. As an aside, Fey notes that rural jurisdictions have found it easier to upgrade their equipment, because they need fewer machines, so the overall cost is less.

“Our only hope is that money falls from the sky again, as it did after 2000,” says Fey.

So, with all of this creaky equipment, how does Fey know that votes are being recorded properly?

“We conduct a Logic and Accuracy test,” he explains. “We ‘vote’ on every machine in the warehouse, before they are sent out to polling places. This mock ‘vote’ has a pre-determined pattern that we can check for accuracy. This Thursday—five days before the election—is test day.”

Electronic poll books:  1,200

These i-Pad type tablets recently replaced the cumbersome, paper tomes that contained the names, addresses and precincts of all registered voters in St. Louis County. Election workers had to paw through hundreds of pages to find each voter as they came in to the polling place. Electronic poll books are a good-news, advanced technology update for Fey’s domain that are streamlining voter check-in. But a recent court fight over voter ID forced Fey’s IT department to reprogram the electronic poll books to match the new ruling [details, if you’re interested, here.] “We’re reprogramming 10 days before the election,” says Fey. “It’s a nightmare.”

Metal transport cases for Election Days supplies:  400+

These institutional-gray, banged up cases—an average-sized person could fit inside — look like they’ve been around for 50 years. Election workers stock them with all the standard paper forms and ancillary equipment [chargers, extension cords, pencils, pens, signs, forms and even American flags] needed at every polling place. It takes six days to deliver all of them. It takes three months—as noted before—to untangle the extension cords, clean out leftover materials and trash, and restock them for the next cycle.

“If you’re wondering what the heck we all do after the election, this is a big part of it,” says Fey.

Another stop on our tour was the tabulation room, where the actual votes are counted. Fey says that 98 percent of ballots in the US are counted electronically—as is also the case in St. Louis County. While some voting-rights purists wish that ballots were counted by hand, so that they cannot be electronically hacked, Fey contends that hand-counting itself can be subject to cheating, too.

Fey assured us that his tabulation machines are tamper-resistant, because they are not networked together [they are “air-gapped”] and are not linked to the internet. Nor are the electronic voting machines at polling places linked to each other or to the internet. Each voting machine records its votes separately from all others and stores the votes on a separate storage device. Election supervisors deliver the storage devices—in addition to paper votes recorded on optical scanners—to the tabulation room, where they are catalogued and entered into the tabulation machines.  Results are posted to the internet using what Fey calls a “sneaker net.” Wearing his election day sneakers, he walks the tabulated results to another room, where they are posted to the internet for public viewing.

At the end of our tour, Fey invited the high-school students to participate in an innovative, election-day internship program: While you must be 18 to be an election official, students 16 and older can work at polling places, timing the vote and conducting exit surveys to assess voters’ experiences of the process. Interns can be paid either in community-service hours or in real dollars [$120].  Nearly half of the 25 students on the tour took application forms—an encouraging sign about the next generation of voters.

The big stress test for Fey’s operation will, of course, come on November 6. I came away with the impression that with Fey in charge—equipped with his attitude of openness, fairness, bi-partisanship and transparency—we’re in good hands around here. But I’ll still be staffing a shift outside a polling place, as an Election Protection volunteer.

The post Back-stage tour of election headquarters: numbers tell the story appeared first on Occasional Planet.

“I don’t wanna be brave. I just wanna be safe.” – Lyrics from “The Most Vicious Cycle,” by Kesha.

Two must-watch videos. Two approaches to get out the youth vote. One is of the mind, and one goes straight to the gut.

In the first, Barack Obama, showing off his signature combination of brain and wit, obliterates the seven most often repeated excuses why young voters fail to show up at the polls.  The most spot-on moment is when Obama narrates over an image of a bespectacled, white-haired lady and asks, “You wouldn’t let your grandparents pick your play list, so why would you let them pick your representatives who will determine your future?”

The second video, called “The Most Vicious Cycle,” was produced for March for Our Lives, the gun-control advocacy group founded by survivors of the mass shooting that stopped short the lives of seventeen teens at the Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The video powerfully inserts the viewer into the moment in a high school corridor when bullets fly and the sound and blast of gun fire shatter the every day. Music and rap lyrics are by singer Kesha, and production is by Sage Sebert, a graduate of Marjory Stoneham Douglas.

I dare you not to chuckle at one and cry with the other. But after you’ve finished, share these videos and talk about them with your friends and family. Then work like hell to make sure that the people in your lives get out and vote.

Here’s what March for Our Lives wrote upon the video’s release: “After every shooting, there’s outrage, prayers and false promises. Then it happens again. End #TheMostViciousCycle. Vote for morally just leaders and share the video.” #VoteForOurLives on 11/6.

The post Two get-out-the-vote videos, one for a chuckle, one for a tear appeared first on Occasional Planet.

With a few heartening exceptions, the trend in voting rights in America is toward suppression and trickery—with just 9 weeks to go before the crucial 2018 midterm elections. As I recently observed, voting rights in the Trump era is a one-step-forward-two-steps back story. And just when you think you’ve caught up on the news, another state, another county, or another White House authoritarian surprises you with a new wrinkle. Here’s a roundup of some voting-rights developments that cropped up in just the past few days:

In Georgia’s Randolph County, a consultant recommended closing seven of the county’s nine polling places, as a cost-saving measure. The trouble was that Randolph County is predominantly black, and the closings would have forced many midterm voters to travel as far as 30 miles to get to a polling place. Also, it just so happens that there’s a hotly contested election for Governor on the November ballot that pits Democrat Stacy Abrams, who would be Georgia’s first black chief executive, against a white Republican—Brian Kemp—who  has been called a “master of voter suppression” by his political opponents.  Democrats cried foul—and won. At its August 18 meeting, the Randolph County election board rejected the proposed closings by a vote of 2—0.

So, will voters know whether their polling place is open, or will they be unsure and give up? Failing to complete their mission of suppressing the minority vote by making it impossibly inconvenient to get to a polling place, Georgia still has managed to sow confusion, which is a voter-suppression tactic in itself.

In North Carolina, a three-judge panel ruled – on Aug. 27, just 10 weeks before the midterms—that  the state’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans over Democrats and said it may require new districts before the November elections, possibly affecting control of the House.

According to the Washington Post,

The judges acknowledged that primary elections have already produced candidates for the 2018 elections but said they were reluctant to let voting take place in congressional districts that courts twice have found violate constitutional standards… North Carolina legislators are likely to ask the Supreme Court to step in. The court traditionally does not approve of judicial actions that can affect an election so close to the day voters go to the polls.

One judge has proposed some unusual ideas for remedying the situation: appointing a special master to draw new districts; holding general elections without party primaries; or even turning the November elections into a primary and holding the general election sometime before the new Congress convenes in January.

North Carolina’s record in voter suppression and racial gerrymandering has a long history, so this development is not a surprise. This is the kind of chicanery that was institutionalized in North Carolina before Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Then, in 2013, the Republican Congress gutted the 1965 act, and all hell broke loose in states, like North Carolina, whose voting authorities had previously operated under the watchful surveillance of the courts. States like North Carolina, freed from supervision, reverted to their natural states of voter suppression and discriminatory practices.

The question now is: How will this latest court ruling affect the November 2018 midterms? Can the state redraw its district maps with less than 10 weeks to go before the election? If it does, will voters know what district they’re supposed to vote in? The net effect is more confusion—and the logical consequence is less voter participation.

Meanwhile, at the White House, Donald Trump has made his own contribution to the confusion agenda. The Trump administration has pressured its Republican allies in the Senate to squelch a bipartisan bill to protect American elections against interference, Yahoo News reports.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) proposed the Secure Elections Act, which was then cosponsored by Democratic senators like Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Republicans Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Susan Collins (R-ME).

Before the White House got involved, the bill was expected to pass the Senate and become a rare bipartisan success story for Congress.

The bill would have given the top election official in each state security clearance to receive information on electoral threats, formalized information sharing between the federal government and the states, mandated an audit of federal elections, and incentivized the purchase of voting machines that leave a paper trail.

This move, passively supported by Republicans who constantly refer to themselves as “patriots” and guardians of the U.S. Constitution, reveals the true Republican agenda: Republicans benefit from election interference, and they will do anything to preserve their own seats in Congress and their overall majority—at whatever cost to the “democracy” they claim to defend.

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