Adam is Right to Vote Director at FairVote.

Today, FairVote released its third in a series of reports highlighting potential problems in swing states on Election Day. The newest report focuses on Colorado, a state that has been safely “red” in recent years and has only gone Democratic once since 1964 (Clinton won in 1992). Western states like Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada have taken on an increased significance, as the presidential campaigns have visited and poured in unprecedented resources into them this year.

The report, Uniformity in Election Administration: A 2008 Survey of Swing State County Clerks — Colorado Edition is a compilation of interviews and surveys with county election officials in 44 Colorado counties. It covers an array of topics, including machine and poll booth allocation plans, types of machines used and accessibility to the polls for students.

In short, we found that many counties were not adequately preparing for Election Day. Most counties won’t be publishing a written plan and voters have no way of seeing the ballot before they actually vote. However, since Colorado has early voting, some of these problems may be averted. The more people that vote before November 4, the less problems there will be at the polls.

You can read the full report, along with the other reports in the series here.

Felons don’t have the right to vote in most of the states considered “competitive” in the 2008 presidential race. In 3 of the most crucial battleground states – Florida, Virginia, and Nevada- most people convicted of felonies have many obstacles in regaining their voting rights. Yet, if these citizens could vote, it would likely have a significant impact on the outcome of the election. Some examples:

In Florida, where Bush won by only 381,147 votes in 2004, there’s a high probability that in November the gap between the two candidates won’t exceed a 1 to 3 percentage points. Yet, about 1,179,687 people are currently disenfranchised in this State–which represents more than 9% of the population according to Sentencing Project.

In Nevada, where polls also predict a close election (Bush won by only 21 500 votes in 2004), 43,594 felons won’t have the right to cast a ballot this November (2.63%) of the population.

Since incarceration rates are racially disproportionate, banning people with felony convictions from voting results in significantly limiting the number of African-Americans who can vote. In Virginia, Florida, and Washington State, more than 15% of the African-American voting age population is disenfranchised because of felony convictions (19.76%, 18.82%, and 17.22%, respectively). In all States, these rates are far over the general population disenfranchisement rate – with a nationwide average of 13% of black men unable to vote.

As incarceration rates keep growing, the felon disenfranchisement phenomenon becomes increasingly likely to alter the results of elections. Blocking one sector of the population out of the voting process obviously casts a doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral outcomes and significantly weakens our democracy.

Rob Richie is director of FairVote. See his page at fairvote.org for more information.

This is the fifth San Francisco election cycle with instant runoff voting (now generally called “ranked choice voting” in San Francisco, so I’ll call it “RCV” in this opst). It can take time for political players to adapt to a new system and its incentives. In its first use in the city in 2004, ranked choice voting had an immediate impact on that candidate culture, but now that lessons from who has won or lost various hard-fought campaigns have been well-analyzed and broadly understood, it’s valuable to see how the latest campaigns are going — and it’s a good story for advocates of IRV-RCV.

I found this political analysis by Tim Redmond in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Redmond knows his city very well — he’s been editor of the Bay Guardian for many years. His post is from a progressive perspective, but applies equally to candidates across the spectrum. I wanted to highlight two particularly important observations:

* Voter Choice: A number of good candidates can run without concerns about splitting the vote — there isn’t suppression of voter choice. As Redmond puts it:

“Three progressive candidates in an old-fashioned election might very well split the left vote, and leave the door open for someone like Eva Royale — a much less appealing candidate who’s backed by the mayor. There would have been a huge power struggle early on, and some of the candidates would have been under immense pressure not to run, and their backers would be running around trying to cut the other folks off at the knees.”

* More positive campaigning: Candidates who appeal to similar voters have to distinguish themselves in order to get first choices, but at the same time not alienate those similar voters who have decided to support another candidate — in other words, reducing the most divisive kind of negative campaigning, which is when candidates who share a lot of the same views start attacking one another. Redmond writes:

“In this case, though, one of the three good guys is going to win — and it will probably be the one who gets the most second-place votes. So it’s in everyone’s interest not to go negative. If Sanchez, say, started to attack Quezada, the Quezada backers would get mad and leave Sanchez off their ballots — and that would hurt Sanchez when the second-place votes are counted. So everyone has been pretty well behaved in D9; I’ve heard a few whispers here and there, and a few people have tossed off a few nasty comments, but overall the candidates and their supporters recognize that it’s better to stay positive.”

And of course all this happens in San Francisco in one high-turnout November election rather than spreading the vote over two elections, one of which almost always has much lower turnout.

Keep an eye on the progress for instant runoff voting at www.instantrunoff.com and www.fairvote.org/irv

A person who is deprived of freedom should not be deprived of his basic human rights. Yet in the US, in the last election, 4.7 million citizens were disenfranchised due to their status as felons or ex felons.

In some states (Kentucky and Virginia), all felons, regardless of the nature of their crimes, are disenfranchised for life. This also used to be the case in Florida, but in April 2007, the governor and Clemency Board moved to restore voting rights to individuals convicted of non-violent offenses who have completed their prison term, probation and parole, and paid court fees – however, the implementation of this new rule still leaves much to be desired. In Alabama, because of the lack of a public and definitive list of crimes involving disenfranchisement, most felons and ex-felons assume that they have lost the right to vote. In these 4 states alone, 1.5 million citizens, 1/3 of whom are African-American, are currently disenfranchised.

In others (such as Arizona or Mississippi for instance), they are permanently prohibited from voting only if they have been convicted of certain types of felonies or convicted a certain number of times. In the majority of states, felons are only banned from voting for a set period of time, and their right to vote is restored once they are released from prison or a set period later. However, this period can last up to 2 years, in some states– Nebraska being one example. Only 2 States, Maine and Vermont, currently allow incarcerated felons to vote. In short, the United States is lagging far behind the rest of the free world on the issue of felon and ex-felon disenfranchisement.

In contrast, other countries are bringing forward this issue and reforming their penal law to make it more protective of prisoners’ human rights. Indeed, prisoners’ having the right to vote is quickly becoming the norm. A series of court decisions and legislative reforms around the world has enshrined the right to vote as an inalienable and often constitutional entitlement. This was the case in South Africa in 1999,in Canada in 2002, and in Australia in 2007, where the Constitutional Courts granted the right to vote to all prisoners. In march 2004, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British government was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights in his refusal to grant prisoners the right to vote. The United Kingdom is now compelled to change its law.

The next step, in many countries, is a new wave of reforms aimed at actually putting into practice this prisoners’ right to vote. This is the case in France, where a Prisoners’ Rights Act is currently under examination in Congress. In this country, prisoners are legally allowed to vote. Prohibitions exist (for a maximum of 10 years), but they only apply to felons convicted of specific crimes–often electoral crimes and/or whose court sentence specifically included a restriction on voting rights. However, very often prisoners face difficulties when trying to register to vote since they have no place of residence. The Prisoner’s Rights Act enables the prisoners to register in the electoral polls in the county where they are remanded prisoners, by declaring their penitentiary as their legal residence. Other countries have implemented practical reforms to technically allow prisoners to cast a ballot. In Canada, there are voting stations in prisons, and prisoners vote 10 days before regular polling day by special (absentee type) ballot. Prisoners can register to vote and vote in their ‘home’ electoral district, in the electoral district where their spouse or partner lives, or the electoral district in which they were arrested or convicted. In New Zealand, polling teams visit the prisons on Election Day. Ireland allows prisoners to cast postal votes, proxies or absentee ballots. The US is hardly in keeping with the international standard. It obviously missed the boat. It is time to catch up.

For state-by-state facts and figures about felon disenfranchisement, have a look at the Sentencing Project website