Congressional Democrats Launch a New Strategy to Restore the Voting Rights Act

Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., center, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in support of a fix to the Voting Rights Act. (AP Photo / Lauren Victoria Burke)

The 2016 election is a year away, and many states are holding local elections today, but not everyone will be able to vote. 

Ari Berman

The 2016 election is one year away and many states and cities hold local elections today. But not everyone will be able to cast a ballot this year or next.

The 2016 election will be the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Twenty-one states have put new voting restrictions in place since the 2010 election, with voters in 15 states facing these obstacles for the first presidential cycle in 2016, including in crucial swing states like North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Legislation has been introduced in Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act (VRA) following the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision gutting the law, but neither the modest Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 or the more ambitious Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015, which both have bipartisan support, have moved legislatively.

Today congressional Democrats unveiled a new strategy to build support for the Voting Rights Advancement Act. The bill compels states with a well-documented history of recent voting discrimination to clear future voting changes with the federal government, requires federal approval for voter-ID laws and similar measures, and outlaws new efforts to suppress the growing minority vote.

Every Tuesday while in session members of Congress will speak about the importance of voting rights, calling it “Restoration Tuesday,” spotlight stories of modern-day barriers to voting and rally on social media with the hashtag #RestoreTheVOTE & #RestorationTuesday.

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WHY ALL MAIL BALLOT ELECTIONS ARE A BAD IDEA

Adapted from Why 'Vote-by-Mail' Elections are a Terrible Idea for Democracy by Brad Friedman

Lack of Transparency: Absence of evidence does not mean absence of fraud
As with any voting system that is not fully transparent, proving mail-in fraud can be difficult or impossible. Once we drop our ballot in the mail, we can't verify what becomes of it, and elections become a matter of faith. Additionally, should our ballots arrive in the central aggregating location untampered, they are likely to be counted by the same private, secretly programmed electronic systems that have been proven vulnerable to rigging, hacking, and undetectable error. Central counting makes fraud on a large scale easier to accomplish and harder to detect. 

Lack of Security 
Ballots are stored in hundreds of thousands of locations with no security for two to three weeks. The chain of custody lacks security as the ballots are handled by many anonymous persons throughout the process. Any unmarked contest on a ballot can be marked by someone other than the voter when the ballots are opened for counting.

Voter Intimidation 
Voting can be done as a group at churches or union halls with people looking over the voter's shoulder to make sure they vote "the right way."

Election Fraud 
There is no way to be certain that the person who signed the envelope is the person to whom the ballot was sent. Ballots can be stolen from mail boxes while the voter is at work or away from home on an errand. Other tactics include vote harvesting by persons who show up at your door to "help" you vote. The elderly and those with disabilities are particularly vulnerable.

Potential for Ballot Mishandling 
Post office or contract mailing company illegally forwards ballots; more than one ballot sent to voters; postal workers put ballots in the trash. (All of these thing have happened in Colorado)

Lack of Secret Ballot 
When election judges check in your ballot, they can see how you voted when they match the inventory number on your ballot to the inventory number next to your name on the voter rolls. The Colorado Constitution guarantees your right to a secret ballot. [ed note: as do most other state Constitutions and elections code.]

Additional Resources: "Why Mail Ballots Are a Bad Idea" by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D

Mathematician suspicious of election fraud hires lawyer to force Kansas to hand over voting records

Kansas mathematician said this week that she had retained a lawyer and had scheduled a discovery hearing to force Secretary of State Kris Kobach to hand over voting records after they showed evidence of election fraud.

“I don’t understand why those patterns are there, the patterns are very definitely real. But we don’t know what’s causing them or why they’re there,” Wichita State University statistician Beth Clarkson told KSHB last month. “They do fit what would be expected if election fraud is occurring, and that’s very concerning.”

Brad Blog’s Brad Friedman explained the suspicious activity in a recent column:

Confirming a theory initially reported by two other statisticians in 2012 [PDF], Clarkson has found that computer-reported results from larger precincts in the state, with more than 500 voters, show a “consistent” statistical increase in votes for the Republican candidates in general elections (and even a similar increase for establishment GOP candidates versus ‘Tea Party’ challengers during Republican primaries). Those results run counter to conventional political wisdom that Democrats perform better in larger, more urban precincts.

Kobach, however, went to court to block Sedgwick County from releasing voting records to Clarkson.

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Alabama to stop issuing driver’s licenses in counties with 75% black registered voters

The state of Alabama, which requires a photo ID to vote, announced this week that it would stop issuing driver’s licenses in counties where 75 percent of registered voters are black.

Due to budget cuts, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said that 31 satellite DMVoffices would no longer have access to driver’s licenses examiners, meaning that residents will need to travel to other counties to apply for licenses. The move comes just one year after the state’s voter photo ID law went into effect.

AL.com’s John Archibald asserted in a column on Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Justice should open an investigation into the closings.

“Because Alabama just took a giant step backward,” he wrote. “Take a look at the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters. That’s Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Bullock, Perry, Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, and Montgomery, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office. Alabama, thanks to its budgetary insanity and inanity, just opted to close driver license bureaus in eight of them.”

“Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one,” Archibald explained. “But maybe it’s not racial at all, right? Maybe it’s just political. And let’s face it, it may not be either… But no matter the intent, the consequence is the same.”

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If I Can Shop and Bank Online, Why Can't I Vote Online?

Photo by Image Source/DigitalVision / Getty Images

by David Jefferson, Computer Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 1 ], member, Verified Voting Foundation Board, Board of Directors, California Voter Foundation

There is widespread pressure around the country today for the introduction of some form of Internet voting in public elections that would allow people to vote online, all electronically, from their own personal computers or mobile devices. Proponents argue that Internet voting would offer greater speed and convenience, particularly for overseas and military voters and, in fact, any voters allowed to vote that way. However, computer and network security experts are virtually unanimous in pointing out that online voting is an exceedingly dangerous threat to the integrity of U.S. elections.

There is no way to guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future. Anyone from a disaffected misfit individual to a national intelligence agency can remotely attack an online election, modifying or filtering ballots in ways that are undetectable and uncorrectable, or just disrupting the election and creating havoc. There are a host of such attacks that can be used singly or in combination. In the cyber security world today almost all of the advantages are with attackers, and any of these attacks can result in the wrong persons being elected, or initiatives wrongly passed or rejected.

There is no way to guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future

Nonetheless, the proponents point to the fact that millions of people regularly bank and shop online every day without apparent problems. They note that an online voting transaction resembles an ecommerce transaction, at least superficially. You connect your browser to the appropriate site, authenticate yourself, make your choices with the mouse, click on a final confirmation button, and you are done! All of the potential attacks alluded to above apply equally to shopping and banking services, so what is the difference? People ask, quite naturally, “If it is safe to do my banking and shopping online, why can’t I vote online?” This is a very fair question, and it deserves a careful, thorough answer because the reasons are not obvious. The answer requires substantial development to explain fully, but in brief, in can be summarized:

1. It is not actually “safe” to conduct ecommerce transactions online. It is in fact very risky, and more so every day. Essentially all those risks apply equally to online voting transactions.

2. The technical security, privacy, and transparency requirements for voting are structurally different from, and actually much more stringent than, those for ecommerce transactions. Even if ecommerce transactions were safe, the security technology underpinning them would not suffice for voting. In particular, the voting security and privacy requirements are unique and in tension in a way that has no analog in the ecommerce world.

E-Commerce transactions are not, in fact, “safe”

Why do security experts say that ecommerce transactions are not safe when millions of people do them every day, mostly without problems? The question needs to be refined: “Safe for whom?” and “What degree of safety is required”? E-Commerce transactions may be relatively safe for consumers, but they certainly are not safe for financial institutions or merchants.2 Banks, credit card companies, and online merchants lose billions of dollars a year in online transaction fraud despite huge investments in fraud prevention and recovery. People have the illusion that ecommerce transactions are safe because merchants and banks don’t hold consumers financially responsible for fraudulent transactions that they are the innocent victims of. Instead the businesses absorb and redistribute the losses silently, passing them on in the invisible forms of higher prices, fees, and interest rates. Businesses know that if consumers had to accept those losses personally most online commerce would collapse. Instead, they routinely hide the losses, keeping the magnitude secret so the public is generally unaware. It’s a good business strategy.

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The Sustained Momentum and Growing Bipartisan Consensus for Voting Rights Restoration

Myrna Pérez, Tomas Lopez, Vishal Agraharkar

July 6, 2015

Currently, more than 4 million Americans living and working in their communities are unable to vote because of a felony conviction in their past.[1] Antiquated laws continue to deny citizens a stake in their communities, and the population as a whole loses out on the benefits that come from more civically engaged citizens. But the continued challenge does not diminish the real progress the United States has made this century. More people with criminal convictions in their past are able to vote today, and in more states, than they could 20 years ago — and efforts continue at both the state and federal levels to grow that number still. Over the past two decades, more than 20 states have taken action (legislative or executive) to allow more people with past criminal convictions to vote, to vote sooner, or to access that right more easily.[2] That includes reforms in six states over the past five years.[3] And just this year, in 2015, one bill was signed into law in Wyoming,[4] and reform bills moved in at least three additional states.[5]

One key factor in this progress is the growing bipartisan consensus on the need for criminal justice reform, and the recognition that restoring voting rights is a smart-on-crime policy. Leaders of both parties are acknowledging that we imprison too many people for too long, and do not provide adequate opportunities for people to reintegrate into society — rather than recidivate — after they leave incarceration.[6]  That recognition has led law enforcement professionals, faith leaders, and public officials from across the political spectrum to endorse voting rights restoration proposals nationwide.

The momentum for voting rights restoration is reflected in both the wave of reforms that have spread throughout the United States in recent years, and the growing number of supporters who see reform as common sense.

The Steady Wave of Reform

The nation’s felony disenfranchisement laws range from lifetime bans on voting for people with felony convictions in three states (Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky) unless a pardon can be obtained, to laws in two states that allow people to vote while serving their term of incarceration (Maine and Vermont). The remaining states exercise a range of policies,[7]many of which have changed in recent years to restore the right to vote to more Americans with past criminal convictions. The recent wave of reform has extended access to the vote to people with criminal convictions through both legislative and executive action, and through a variety of policy changes in more than 20 states.

Rhode Island Restores Voting Rights to Citizens Living in their Community, and Additional States Restore Voting Rights to Tens of Thousands More

Rhode Island implemented the nation’s most extensive recent reform. In 2006, voters approved a ballot measure that allowed citizens to vote when released from prison, or who were never incarcerated in the first place.[8] Additionally, since 2000, three states have fully lifted lifetime bans on voting by citizens with past criminal convictions and now automatically restore the right to vote when a person has completed their sentence, including parole and probation. Together, the legislative efforts to end lifetime felony disenfranchisement in New Mexico (2001),[9] Nebraska (2005),[10] and Maryland (2007)[11] restored the right to vote for more than 160,000 citizens.[12]

For a time, Iowa ended its lifetime ban and automatically restored voting rights for those who completed their sentences. In 2005, then-Gov. Tom Vilsack issued an executive order that allowed approximately 80,000 citizens to vote.[13] A later governor, Terry Branstad, reversed this action,[14] and the state is once again one of three, with Florida and Kentucky, where only the governor can restore a citizen’s voting rights.

Numerous States Have Restored Voting Rights to Some Citizens Living in the Community

Some states selectively restore voting rights to certain citizens in the community. For example, in 2001, Connecticut extended voting rights to citizens on probation, making it one of four states that make a distinction between the voting rights of probationers and parolees. Five states since 2000 have taken action to selectively expand automatic voting rights restoration to those with certain convictions.[15] While these distinctions can impose administrative costs and lead to confusion among both election officials and the general public, the expansion of voting rights restoration remains a positive development for both states and those who qualify for rights restoration.

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