Cross-posted at Project Vote’s blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

We recently wrote about the Department of Veterans Affairs decision to open its facilities to voter registration drives after months of urging by voting rights groups and elected officials. This week, however, “VA voter suppression continues,” as AlterNet’s Steven Rosenfeld wrote Tuesday, with voter registration efforts being blocked in California and the VA general counsel criticizing the pending Veterans Voting Support Act (S. 3308), which would bolster federal protection of voter registration opportunities for all wounded veterans. With just three weeks left to register voters in most states, advocates say now is the time to support voter registration efforts in VA facilities and, most importantly, it needs to be explicitly protected from now on through federal law.

“Credibility of VA on this issue is very low right now,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. during a hearing on the Veterans Voting Support Act on Monday, according to Rick Maze of the Army Times. VA general counsel Paul Hutter says that the VA is being “proactive” in working with election officials and nonprofit groups to facilitate voter registration, but that “VA still believes that some limits are needed.”

These limits were enforced this week at a San Francisco VA facility when the nonprofit group Veterans for Peace was blocked from helping register voters in time for the 2008 presidential election. According to Rosenfeld, the group filed a legal motion in California federal court Monday, claiming that VA was trying to require Veterans for Peace members to go through the same screening process that VA volunteers must go through – a process that would delay registration efforts. “In contrast, the VA does not require screening for most other visitors,” Rosenfeld says.

Citing testimony from the Senate Rules and Administration hearing on S. 3308, the motion notes that of the 5.5 million patients in VA facilities, volunteers registered only 350 patients and 64 outpatients. “Those statistics show the VA’s internal process of screening volunteers who are then approved to register voters has had the effect of suppressing the vote of injured veterans in 2008,” writes  Rosenfeld.

As VA voter registration is administered solely at the whim of the VA itself, advocates warn that, without a federal mandate to provide voter registration and information to the nation’s wounded veterans, their right to vote could easily be lost. “VA can easily reverse course, again, and issue another policy banning voting assistance,” or could “easily fail to implement their new policy,” says Veterans for Common Sense executive director and S. 3308 supporter, Paul Sullivan.

Hutter claims a broad interpretation of the proposed law would open VA facilities as a voter registration agency to the public, potentially disrupting VA facilities and invading privacy of patients. Feinstein says that the intent of the bill is not to serve the public and that she is willing to make amendments.

“However, she did not see disruption as a major problem,” Maze writes, “because setting up a voter registration drive could be as simple as putting a table in the lobby of a hospital or clinic.”

In a recent New York Times report announcing the new VA policy, writer Ian Urbina quotes Sen. Feinstein: “Given the sacrifices that the men and women who have fought in our armed services have made, providing easy access to voter registration services is the very least we can do.”

The companion bill to S. 3308, H.R. 6625 passed the House by voice vote on Wednesday.

Quick Links:

S 3308: Veterans Voting Support Act

Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

H.R. 6625: Veterans Voting Support Act

Rep. Robert A. Brady, D-Penn.

Veterans for Peace

Veterans for Common Sense

In Other News:

Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands – Wired

Electronic voting machines have been the focus of much controversy the last few years. But another election technology has received little scrutiny yet could create numerous problems and disenfranchise thousands of voters in November, election experts say.

Ohio Republicans Use Lawsuit To Fight for State’s Crucial Votes – Wall Street Journal

The Ohio Republican Party spearheaded a lawsuit Friday over a directive from the office of Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner that would allow some early voters to register and vote on the same day.

Democrats accuse state GOP of hypocrisy – Wisconsin State Journal

Democratic Party Chairman Joe Wineke said Monday it was hypocritical for Republicans to defend mistakes in their mailing databases while pursuing a lawsuit over the state’s flawed voter registration system.

ACLU: Mississippi felons denied voting rights – Associated Press

JACKSON – Convicted felons in Mississippi are denied their constitutional right to vote in presidential elections, the American Civil Liberties Union alleges in a federal lawsuit filed Friday.

Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote’s Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).

A reprint of my writeup about the Diebold fiasco in Kern’s 06 primary.The original can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/2…

The state of California’s Select Committe on Integrity of Elections began holding hearings today in my city of Bakersfield. Kern county experienced significant problems during the ’06 primary, forcing some voters to become disenfranchised..Meaning they couldn’t vote. The following three areas were targeted as unacceptable. And the cause of the voter disenfranchisement and reporting problems here in Kern County:

The Voter Access Cards
Lack of paper ballots for backup if the machines failed to work
Tabulation of the votes after the polls closed.

The Voter Access Cards, or VAC’s, which activate the Diebold TSX voting machine for each voter, did not work in many precincts when the polls opened. I personally did not experience any problems, but several precincts, such as those in Delano, CA did not have any working VAC’s and people were waiting to vote when the precincts opened. The poll workers had not been trained in how to deal with this type of malfunction. They were told it wouldn’t be a problem.

But it was. And people were turned away or got tired of waiting and left without voting. A privilege and one protected by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

The root cause of the malfunction was determined to be old VAC’s from the previous election year that had not been updated with the new security codes. Who’s fault was this one might ask..Diebold piped up and accepted blame. But during the hearing, Diebolds California representative could not say with any certainty why Diebold dropped the ball in putting this crucial step into their training manuals sent out to Kern county, or why their representatives, who were in town on a weekly basis to the runup of the election, didn’t tell the Kern County Registrar that the VAC’s had to be re-programmed. The Diebold representative couldn’t answer most of the questions asked of him with any certainty. Neither could the Deputy Registar when it was her turn on the hotseat. The Deputy Registrar couldn’t even tell the senators how many paper ballots were cast because of the VAC malfunction. Neither individual seemed prepared for the hearing. Neither person could tell the Senators how much Kern County paid for the Diebold system that left voters out in the cold.

According to this article in the Bakersfield Californian, Kern County paid “about 5 million” for the system.

Two of the three senators conducting the hearing were Democrats. The lone Republican, Roy Ashburn however, asked many of the hard questions and didn’t accept the empty explanations and the “I don’t knows” offered by Diebold and the Registrar’s Office for the problems that occurred over the course of the election day and evening.

Some folks were given paper ballots. The county Registrar only issued 20 of these to each precinct. It should also be mentioned that Delano’s poll workers were lax in showing up to work. They had to grab folks that were not trained during the preceding months to fill in. When they ran out of paper ballots, they started giving people Spanish ballots, even if they didn’t speak Spanish. They also copied ballots and handed those out. They tried vainly to fill the need and rights of Californians to vote in an election. At one point it was mentioned during the hearing that the Registar had said she would accept “Faxed” ballots from voters. It had to be explained to the Registrar during the course of the election night that faxed ballots were not legal, and they were not accepted.

The third issue was the failure of Ridgecrest to transmit their voting results after the polls closed. Ridgecrest is over two hours away from Bakersfield. Each Diebold machine has the ability to act as a transmitter but the problem seemed to be blamed on the baud speed of the modems. The voting results had to be driven to Bakersfield, resulting in a major delay that should of never happened. The inability to transmit voting results from Ridgecrest, coupled with the processing of paper ballots led to a three hour delay in voting results after the polls closed here in California. When they did start showing results..they were being reported as “100% of precincts reporting” when in fact they had just started tabulating the votes.

Another problem in the process to tabulate the votes was the Security within the computer center for the Registrar. There was the expected panic when the numerous problems arose, however, people who had been hired for menial positions and were NOT cleared by security checks were given access to the computer room. Some were asked if they had any computer experience, and if not, would they be willing to learn. The secure computer room was no longer secure. Add to this mix, the paper ballots that were not expected to be processed because, according to several people that testified, this was never going to happen, and you had procedures that were ignored or altered after the fact.

These issues affect all voters, party affiliation has no bearing on this important issue of disenfranchisement. The three senators were Roy Ashburn, Joseph Dunn and the chair Debra Bowen. All three asked questions and participated equally. Sen. Ashburn was incensed that Ann Barnett, the Registrar, who is also our Auditor/Controller/County Clerk did not appear. He demanded to know why. He was told by Sandra Brockman, Deputy Registrar that she was “on vacation”. Sen. Dunn stated that accepting blame was easy for Diebold but providing restitution to the disenfranchised voters was no where to be found. Diebold’s representative stated they were going to pay for the helicopter needed to deliver working VAC’s to the precincts that did not have any when their polls opened that morning. This was not an acceptable response judging by the reaction of Sen. Dunn. Many of the important questions posed by the committee went unanswered. Since this is their first stop, I hope they will get answers to them somewhere down the road. Our right to vote depends on it.