FairVote Feed: Fair Access to Participation

Learning a Lesson from Egypt’s Universal Voter Registration

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:28:06 -0800

Egypt’s first parliamentary election since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak began in certain parts of the country on November 28 and will continue into early next year. The vote is to ultimately fill the 498 seats of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of the legislature, through a combination of proportional representation and winner-take-all runoff elections.

Egypt is experiencing high turnout for a nation that is undergoing such turmoil. One reason is the sentiment that under Mubarak’s rule, voters were denied a political voice. Thus, voters now feel that they have the freedom to express themselves at the polls. Turnout rates were also bolstered by proportional representation, which encourages voters everywhere to vote and helps voters to elect candidates of choice.

There’s another reason for this high turnout, a reason with direct relevance to elections in the United States. Unlike the United States, where as many as three in ten eligible voters are not registered to vote, Egypt this year established a system of universal voter registration. Each citizen has a national identification card. Every individual age 16 years old or older is entered into a national database based on the address on his or her national identification card. That database is used as the national register for voters. Voters who are at least 18 years or older need only show their national identification card at the polls in order to vote.

The effect of this change, approved by Egypt’s Higher Election Committee prior to this year’s election, was not only to grant easier access to those voters in Egypt, but also to those Egyptian voters living abroad. In this current election, all eligible Egyptian expatriates are allowed to vote if there is a polling place established in their respective embassy or consulate. All those Egyptian expatriates who had a national identification card or a passport issued prior to September 27, 2011 are able to vote in this current election. With the ease of registering using only a national identification or passport, hundreds of thousands of Egyptian expatriates registered to vote online prior to the November election.

True, American citizens are not voting next year in the wake of a revolution; yet, there are lessons to be gleaned from the Egyptian experience that are instructive for U.S. elections. Our elections would benefit from a type of “democracy passport” that all Americans would automatically obtain upon becoming citizens. That “passport” need not be a physical piece of paper, but rather a unique identifier that every American citizen would receive for the specific purpose of participating in our democracy.

That kind of universal voter registration system would make it much more likely for us to uphold the goal that votes are only cast by those who are eligible to vote and that voting is not denied to people who are eligible to vote. Our current flawed system neither upholds election integrity nor voter access. Indicative of this flawed system is the fact that millions of Americans have active registrations in more than one jurisdiction, while tens of millions of eligible voters are not even registered to vote.

In contrast, the type of universal registration system created through the use of a “democracy passport” places the burden of registering voters on the government, not on voters themselves. It also modernizes the registration process by eliminating errors inherent in paper registration and creates a standardized system of registration in every state.

Though the details of administering this type of system still need to be developed, it is well within reach, given the realities of modern database technology and systems already in place to give out social security numbers. Seeing brand-new democracies like Egypt soar past the United States in terms of both the access and integrity of its voter registration system is a sobering reminder that the status quo is unacceptable.

Why Settle? A Review of the Conference on “Creating the Voting Rights Act of 2012”

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:36:53 -0700

Why Tuesday? held its 2012 election campaign kickoff event on November 7th. The organization, which is famous for travelling the country asking political leaders why America votes on Tuesdays, hosted a program entitled “Creating the Voting Rights Act of 2012.” Why Tuesday? will have every 2012 presidential candidate explain what they would do to improve voter turnout in the United States.

The conference had four panelists who addressed current voting barriers, possible solutions to those barriers, and how voters, particularly young voters, can take action in urging political elites to get serious about electoral reform efforts that combat poor voter participation. The speakers were: Meghan McCain, daughter of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain; Why Tuesday? Executive Director, Jacob Soboroff; Mimi Marziani, Counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice; and David Becker, Director of the Pew Center on the States Election Initiatives. The moderator was Why Tuesday? Board member Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

Mimi Marziani of the Brennan Center began by explaining that state legislatures have severely targeted voting rights today. To date, there are 21 new laws in 14 different states that have decreased the ease of voting. The Brennan Center’s report found that restrictions on acceptable forms of identification at the polls and reduced periods of early voting will likely affect up to five million students, racial minorities, poor, disabled and elderly Americans.

In Texas, for example, a law was recently passed declaring college or university IDs to be invalid forms of identification on Election Day. However, Texas does allow handgun licenses as an acceptable ID. Looking at the statistics provided by the Brennan Center, we find that African American students make up 17% of the university population in Texas. But only 7.5% of African Americans in the state of Texas have handgun licenses. This law puts students, especially those who are studying out-of-state, at a potential disadvantage in successfully casting their ballot on Election Day.

In Florida, a civics teacher who was helping her students register to vote (doing something FairVote has backed strongly in making use of the state’s new law-- one passed with bipartisan support- allowing 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to “pre-register” to vote) now faces thousands of dollars in fines because she was not in compliance with Florida’s new election law. Florida’s new law on voter registration makes it harder for third party organizations to aid eligible citizens in registering to vote.

Those in favor of these restricting election laws say it is voter fraud that has driven them to make these changes. But opponents of these laws, like Norm Ornstein, explained that the claims being made about voter fraud at the polls is virtually non-existent.

Whether these new laws now seen as suppressing voter turnout are the product of political motives, or whether they are guided by a desire to protect the right that so many Americans hold dear, it is clear that modernizing voter registration is a better way to safeguard the right to vote. One out of every nine Americans moves each year, and that amount is double among young people. We live in a technologically advanced society, yet the question still remains, why are voter registration procedures still functioning within the confines of the 19th and 20th centuries?

The United States is just about the only major democracy that puts the burden of voter registration on the voters. If voter registration information is shared between states, updated by the states, managed online, and is operated on an opt-out basis rather than an opt-in basis, it would take away that burden put on voters. It would also reduce problems that arise when election officials receive waves of new forms due to a mobile society right before the deadline, and would eliminate the struggle of trying to read illegible handwriting on paper applications.

Solutions such as the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) and state-run automatic registration when eligible citizens turn 18 years old will help alleviate some of the costs of voting. There are many brilliant ideas on how to fix our voting system that have surfaced from both electoral reform organizations and unaffiliated voters alike. But with a country in the midst of a debt crisis and an economy slow to bounce back, it is hard to get political leaders to see the importance in reforming the current electoral system. The ability to choose the few people who are tasked with making decisions on behalf of the many is important, and that selection process should not be looked at as insignificant by those leaders themselves.

Here’s how FairVote suggests you can get involved!

-If you are a student or know a student, have them take advantage of any poll worker opportunities in your community
- Voice your views on the importance of voter participation by using email, or through free social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter
- Have discussions with those you know about why you are a voter, how meaningful it is to participate in choosing who represents and speaks for you in government
- Be ready to work for structural reforms to our electoral process. When we are in a position to cast meaningful votes in contested elections, we can expect voter turnout to rise.
-Show appreciation for your ability to vote by going to the polls on Election Day!

Stay tuned for FairVote doing a lot more to make it easier to get involved in these activities.

Voter Fraud: Let's Modernize Voter Registration First

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:52:36 -0700

The Heritage Foundation held a conference on October 6 entitled, “The Constitution and the Right to Vote: Protecting Against Voter Fraud.” Expert panelists discussed issues regarding voter fraud in the U.S. and the increasing need for voter ID laws.

John Fund, author and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, began his speech by talking about the latest municipal election in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 4. Albuquerque adopted a law requiring voters to show identification at their polling locations. Reported by KRQE News 13, Albuquerque voters showed up in high numbers to vote on Tuesday. Mr. Fund made the point that any beliefs about voter turnout being depressed as a result of voter ID laws are non-other than “dubious,” citing Albuquerque’s successful election as an example despite its voter ID law.

Fund is right that having voter ID laws don't prevent relatively high turnout, as was also true in states like Indiana and Georgia that had voter ID during the 2008 presidential elections. But KRQE News 13 was pointing out the reason voter turnout was so high was because Mayor R.J. Berry’s bond package was on the ballot. The plan to spend $25-million on a new sports complex during economic times where every dollar counts was not something that resonated well with many voters.

In addition to this anomaly in voter turnout, Albuquerque’s voter ID law was passed in 2005. The immediate effects of a law like this would be much harder to see six years after its implementation. It also doesn't change the fact that certain eligible voters may not have voted due to the law.

Turning to questions about voter fraud, Hans von Spakovsky, a Senior Legal Fellow for The Heritage Foundation’s Legal and Judicial Studies, used Wake County (NC) as an example of a location where three people voted twice in a recent election. What was not said about the three people, was information regarding their lack of knowledge concerning voting procedures. After telling a poll worker on Election Day that they had already voted once under North Carolina’s rules for early voting, they cast a second ballot to “make sure their vote counted.” In a county where 440,000 votes were cast in the 2008 presidential elections, three people violating the law in such an apparently non-malicious way is obviously not many.

This is not to dismiss in the least the importance of maintaining fair elections, but in the case of voter ID laws, having photo identification in this instance would not have kept these people from voting twice. It would have confirmed they were the person they said they were, matching the voter’s appearance with the picture on the card and providing an in-state address, doing nothing to provide a solution for what was a lack of voter education.

It is safe to say that the U.S. electoral system has its flaws. It is also clear that the Heritage Foundation favors voter identification laws as a way to reform the often inaccurate registration rolls. States do not have an effective method of sharing information across state borders to account for the abundance of mobility within the country and election boards increasingly go without the manpower necessary to run tip top elections. But, America already has the lowest turnout rates in comparison to other modernized democracies, and state governments already require voters to jump through many hoops in order to register and vote. If a voter ID law is to be pursued anyway, safeguards need to be built in that it doesn’t lead to eligible voters being denied their right to vote.

Other advocacy organizations have provided their own solutions to fixing inaccurate voter rolls. The Brennan Center believes one way to fix voter registration is to make it permanent, preventing voters from being taken off registration lists even if they move. The Pew Center on the States has already produced a program called the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), where the responsibility of updating and getting voters on registration rolls will be left up to the states.

FairVote is open to many suggestions that will modernize voter registration in our support for full and accurate voter rolls. We are particularly interested in the idea of a national system grounded in every eligible voter automatically and efficiently receiving a "Democracy Passport." This would be a unique national government identifier that would systematically register every eligible citizen and update voter registration rolls.

FairVote also supports the establishment of a federal standard that all states must meet to make sure eligible citizens are registered to vote. Still, it will be left up to the voters to decide whether they will accept the solutions state governments believe will solve this problem, and it is the voters who will determine if they think it is right for them to take on the extra burdens of problems that are institutional in nature, an institution that is in dire need of reform.

Modernizing Voter Registration: An Overview of the American Enterprise Institute Conference

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:26:44 -0700

The American Enterprise Institute held a conference on September 19th discussing the ways in which states currently handle voter registration and ways to improve it. Two groups of electoral reform experts, each with three panelists, plunged into discourse regarding the complications of current voter registration systems and possible solutions to ameliorate how citizens go about registering to vote.

A few key points were made clear about why voter registration is even necessary. Looking back on the history of elections, there once was a time when elections were more or less debates over the candidates, and eligible voters able to participate cast their vote by orally stating the candidate they supported. This method of voting was prone to be rigged with fraud, intimidation to vote for a specific candidate, and even riots, as there was no way to ensure that only those people who met the requirements to vote were the ones actually voting. Voter registration was introduced in part as a way to validate eligible voters while also keeping those who were not eligible away from the polls.

Maintaining accurate registration rolls has been a difficult task for many states. For example, it is easy to look at the way European countries handle voter registration and question why the U.S. does not share in the same success stories as Europe— having significantly higher rates of citizens registered to vote and lower rates of errors in the voter rolls.

One reason is that the United States is unique in having such an extremely mobile population. As stated by Charles Stewart III, professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, within a four year time span, 85 million people move throughout the United States, with 45 million changes of address. That is a lot of people to track, and with each state having its own regulations about voter registration, citizens may not be informed about that information and may be unaware that they must update their voter registration in compliance with the laws of the new state in which they reside.

Accompanying this burden of citizens taking the initiative to keep their voter registration up to date is poor record-keeping by some states. Since the 2000 presidential election especially, states have been much more cautious about purging voters from the rolls in order to avoid accidentally getting rid of voters who are still eligible.

The Director of Elections for the state of Ohio, Matthew Damschroder, highlighted three problems that hurt state Board of Elections the most.

•First, most of the country still relies on paper-based methods of registration forms. –This brings the complication of trying to read the hand-writing of citizens. If an election official entering the registration information into the computer system cannot read the hand-writing, and inputs a misspelled name, for example, this can cause major problems when that voter shows up to vote on Election Day.

•Second, registration information is unverifiable by the voter.—Often times, citizens send off their registration form and simply hope for the best. It is not standard practice in every state to have citizens verify that the information election commissions have in their system is in fact correct.

•Third, the current registration system is dependent on “third parties” (not political parties, but independent associations).—People from various organizations get eligible voters to fill out registration forms that those third parties will then drop off to election boards for the applicant. This is not always reliable. In Ohio, a woman working for a third party entity had five-hundred registration forms sitting in the back seat of her car, along with her laptop. When her car was broken into, the thief not only stole her laptop, but made off with the registration forms as well, seemingly useless items that were then discarded in a dumpster. The registration forms were found the day after the registration deadline, and hundreds of eligible citizens who thought they were registered showed up on Election Day to find out that they in fact were not, thus losing their ability to vote.

In light of the many factors like these that signal a registration system in distress, there is some hope to having a better voter registration system. The Pew Center on the States announced a new approach to reforming the registration system. Pew brought together 42 technical experts, academics, and election officials from 21 states to produce a plan for better handling voter registration. The result was the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, where data on people who may be a new voter or may be moving can easily be shared between states. ERIC would allow states to update records on existing voters and get rid of duplicate and invalid records from state files.

Here’s a reminder about FairVote’s stance on modernizing voter registration. We believe:

States should establish means to automatically place eligible voters on registration rolls, ideally based on a unique national government identifier- a kind of “Democracy Passport.”

The federal government should establish minimum standards that all states must meet to ensure all eligible voters are registered and that provide a means to establish a more nationally coherent voter roll.

States should establish a standard pre-registration age of 16, actively (and perhaps automatically) registering citizens in their high schools and at the DMV in conjunction with a voting curriculum that will prepare first-time voters to vote as soon as they turn 18 years old.

To learn more about FairVote’s position on voter registration visit Universal Voter Registration, and click here to watch the full broadcast of AEI’s Bringing Voter Registration into the 21st Century conference.

The Disappearing Vote: A Spotlight on the Disenfranchised Felon Population of the US

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:26:42 -0700

The Disappearing Vote: A Spotlight on the Disenfranchised Felon Population of the US

It is common knowledge that citizens of the United States exercise their democratic liberties by voting in elections. Yet not all citizens are allowed to share in what should be the right to participate in electing the country’s leaders and officials.

A Merriam-Webster definition of someone who is a citizen is someone who is “entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman.” The word to focus on in the previous sentence is “freeman.” Citizens who have been convicted of a past felony are still citizens, and they are free people who have been deemed safe enough to enter back into society. They should be able to reap the benefits of being a citizen in America, but according to the NAACP, the ability to vote in elections has been stripped away from up to 5.3 million Americans who have a felony conviction.

Depending on the state in which a free citizen with a felony conviction may live, they may or may not be able to vote. But how are we to expect people convicted of felony charges to re-enter society and be law-abiding citizens if they have no direct say in what that law should be?

The disenfranchisement laws for these individuals send a message to those previously convicted that their voice, livelihood, and future success no longer matter to the rest of the country, and certainly not to the politicians who are supposed to be representing them. It is already hard enough for people with felony convictions to find places of employment and neighborhoods to live in where they are not ostracized, and these voting bans only lead to a cyclical pattern of alienation. Taking away their voting abilities shuts them out of the democracy for which this country stands, and has actually been shown to increase recidivism, or a reoccurrence of crime. It also sends an unfair message to these peoples' children; studies have shown that children are more likely to vote if their parents vote.

As if losing voting rights were not enough, the racial minority population, particularly African Americans, is faced with the reality that state laws forbidding citizens with felony convictions from voting has a disproportionate racial affect on their community. Marc Mauer, Assistant Director of The Sentencing Project, testified before Congress stating that nearly 1.4 million or 13% of African American men cannot vote because of disenfranchisement laws. This is seven times the national average. In the seven states refusing ex-offenders the right to vote, 1 in 4 African American men are affected.

Kentucky and Virginia are the two states with the harshest of policies surrounding the voting rights for people convicted of a felony. As a resident of the state of Virginia, I have seen first-hand the devastating effects of Virginia’s strict disfranchisement law. A dear friend of mine is faced to live in this country each day without the chance to systematically directly or indirectly impact the laws that affect his day-to-day life. Now a decade since making one life-changing mistake, he has become a great contributor to his community, yet still cannot go to the polls.

--Here is what he has to say about being a free citizen with a felony conviction in Virginia:

“As a citizen with a felony conviction in the United States, I feel like an alien in my own home. Millions of citizens with criminal records realize how detrimental it is to not be included in our country’s decisions. We all have a hand in changing the nation, or at least should. But once our civil rights have been stripped from us, we cannot vote, hold office, become a notary, or serve on jury duty. ” Read More…

The populations in the U.S. who are prohibited by law from voting in local or national elections consists of those persons under the age of 18, those who are mentally incompetent, those who are not citizens and those living in states that limit suffrage rights due to felony convictions. By disallowing citizens with felony convictions the chance to vote, we equate them to juvenile individuals who cannot effectively make decisions that will add to the overall good of society, a generalization that simply is not true.

There needs to be a widespread calling for an automatic restoration of rights, a system, for example, that isn’t built on conditional laws that require citizens convicted of a felony to take up the painstaking task of finding a job in order to pay their outstanding fines. They often cannot pay their fines because their history of having a felony conviction makes it difficult to get hired. This of course leads them to be ineligible to not only vote, but ineligible to even resubmit registration forms because their fines aren’t paid. It’s a vicious sequence of events that has the potential to boost the rate of voter apathy and indifferent attitudes in terms of obeying the law.

America strongly stands for democracy. For that reason, the government should know that democracy works best when as many people as possible are fulfilling their civic duty by voting. As stated by James Madison in the Federalist 10 paper, democracy does not work when there are majority factions out-speaking minority factions. Democracy does not work if those with voting rights deny the ability to vote to fellow citizens of voting age. It is time for all of our voices to be heard.

UPDATE: FairVote is pleased to announce that on September 28, 2011, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, granted a full restoration of rights for the man who gave his account of life in Virginia as a citizen convicted of a felony. Referred to in this blog as "Anonymous Voice," he has now regained his civil rights in its entirety, which includes the ability to vote, run for and hold public office, serve on juries, and serve as a public notary. The total process took eight months. While FairVote is extremely happy for this restoration of rights, the Anonymous Voice is but one happy story out of many stories where citizens convicted of felonies are still awaiting the day when they too will have their rights restored. There is still much work to be done to turn that dream goal into the reality that it should be.

H.R.2212 or the Democracy Restoration Act of 2011 (DRA) is federal legislation that aims to restore the voting rights for about 4 million Americans who are no longer incarcerated and are contributing members in their community. It was re-introduced by Rep. John Conyers on June 16, 2011 and was referred to the subcommittee on the Constitution on August 25, 2011. Search The Library of Congress for updates on the status of H.R.2212.

To learn more about felon disenfranchisement, visit the Brennan Center for Justice

Right to Vote Advocates Give Testimonies to US Senate Judiciary Committee

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:07:08 -0700

Today, September 8, 2011, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on state voting laws, in particular, laws that could be seen as suppressing voter turnout. It is great to have this hearing, and we applaud the many organizations who provided testimony to the Senate in hopes of protecting voters' rights.

Our Constitution currently reads as a document that disallows government from denying its citizens the ability to vote on the basis of race, gender and age. But government is not required to go out of its way to make sure that those who do want to vote, be supplied the means or education in order to meet the requirements to participate in the electoral process. This is why a right to vote is so necessary, and not simply amendments that prevent voters from discrimination. A uniform understanding of the federal electoral process should be established, as in H.J.R.28, a proposed constitutional amendment for the right to vote, instead of having 50 different sets of voting rules and regulations. Variations in state electoral laws often leave communities confused about voters' rights, while impacting the United States' already considerably low voter turnout.

-Here is what top advocacy organizations are telling the Senate about the right to vote:

“The right to vote is fundamental to the attainment and preservation of all these rights. It is essential to our democracy. Indeed, it is the language of our democracy. Thankfully, in securing the right to vote, the days of poll taxes, literacy tests, and brutal physical intimidation are behind us. But today’s efforts at disfranchisement, while more subtle, are no less pernicious. Rhetoric like that of Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval that ‘the right to vote is a privilege’ – a contradiction in terms if I have ever heard one – cannot be tolerated in a democracy founded on equality.”
- The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

“Although the right to vote is widely recognized as a constitutionally-protected,
fundamental right, barriers to political participation, such as those discussed in my
testimony today, threaten to render that right meaningless. No one should have to choose between feeding one’s family and exercising the most fundamental right of our democracy. Moreover, LDF urges Congress to prioritize those efforts that are aimed at ensuring equal and full participation for all voters.”
-NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund

“Organizations, individuals and policymakers in Congress and in state legislatures must continue the fight to prevent more states from enacting these voter disfranchisement measures. This era must not go down in history as one in which the right to vote in this country took huge strides backward toward discrimination and exclusion.”
-Dēmos

“The Lawyers’ Committee will continue to aggressively protect the right to vote for ALL voters and work to ensure the enforcement of our nation‘s voting rights laws.”
-Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

“Systematically making it more difficult for everyone to vote is profoundly harmful to our democracy and should be of concern to all citizens, including this Subcommittee.”
-Fair Elections Legal Network

“The right to vote is the most basic of all political rights. Over the last several years, the
American public has become aware of the many inconsistencies that exist in voting systems throughout the country and which compromise the integrity of the election process.”
-AARP

“Instead of creating unnecessary and discriminatory barriers to the ballot box, state governments must re-direct their resources to ensuring the right to vote for all. No right is more fundamental than the right to vote. State laws that impose new restrictions on voting, however, undermine our strong democracy by impeding access to the polls and reducing the number of Americans who vote and whose votes are counted. In order for the United States to continue as one of the world’s leading democracies, it must ensure all eligible citizens are able to register and cast their ballots. Elected officials should be seeking ways to encourage more voters, not inventing baseless excuses to deny voters the ability to cast their ballots.”
-American Civil Liberties Union

"The right to vote, particularly for racial minorities, young voters, senior citizens, the working poor
and people with disabilities, is under assault. The country has not seen this level of attempted suppression since the
days of poll taxes and literacy tests."
- Advancement Project

Bill H.J.RES.28, which seeks to establish a constitutional amendment for the right to vote, has been introduced to Congress and was referred to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution on February 28, 2011. It currently has 35 cosponsors.

Tell your Congressperson to support H.J.R. 28.

Continue to track this legislation.

Top Two Primaries: The Right to Write In in California

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:19:20 -0700

The “Top Two” primaries enacted by California voters in June 2010 as Proposition 14 has become a popular proposal among many centrists, election reformers, and anyone unhappy with the partisan primary systems in their own states or the two-party system in general.

But at best, the implementation in California has been significantly flawed. At worst, the system itself is not what it’s cracked up to be. Several concerns flagged by FairVote back in an August report on Prop. 14 are now being litigated, and other states contemplating a Top Two system should watch and learn.

One issue is the "ban" on counting write-in votes cast in the November general election between the top two, which due to conflicting laws still on the books threatens to deceive and disenfranchise California voters.

A write-in vote on this ballot would be thrown out, unbeknownst to the voter.

As a policy matter, write-in voting serves as a vital safety valve for those instances where unexpected or late-developing issues arise. For instance, when Rep. Tom DeLay resigned from Congress in summer 2006, it was too late to replace him on the Republican ticket, so a write-in candidate was the only option for the GOP. In 2010, Sen. Lisa Murkowski had a miraculous write-in win in Alaska. After losing to a more conservative Tea Party candidate in the GOP primary, she defied party leadership and in November was elected.

The policy problems by banning write-in votes are compounded by other facets of the Top Two system that make the longstanding role of write-in voting all the more important. Most notably, the June date of the "open" primary leaves five months for revelations, scandal, health problems, and gaffes (remember "macaca" in Virginia in 2006?) to take one or both of the top two candidates out of the running.

Granted, if a candidate agrees to formally withdraw from the race, the third-place June finisher gets promoted to the November ballot. But even then, the substitute candidate will have drawn the primary votes of an entirely separate segment of the population. It's quite possible that the substitute candidate would be of a different party.

In Washington state, this is remedied by allowing the recognized party whose endorsement the dropout candidate had accepted to nominate a replacement. When such vacancies occur in Nebraska, which uses a non-partisan variation of Top Two, they can be filled by candidates who file petitions by September 1 or by write-ins.

In Louisiana, the so-called "cajun primary," a non-partisan version of Top Two, takes place only a few weeks before the general election. Military and absentee voters use instant runoff voting in the primary, and those preferences are then applied to the general election.

Holding the primary and general close together seems the best solution because it would also address other issues with the five-month gap between elections that FairVote listed in its August 2010 report, including the effective silencing of third-party and independent candidates unable to reach to general eleciotn.

The simplest and most likely solution in California would come from the courts. The Democratic legislature has little interest in fixing the statute as it stands-- Prop. 14 would not have made it onto the ballot at all if not for a last-minute deal struck with a Republican legislator whose support was needed to reach the 3/4 majority required to pass the budget.

Legally, the ban on counting write-ins conflicts directly with existing state law and grossly misleads voters. The ongoing litigation, Chamness v. Bowen, involves both the right to write in and the right to run as a write-in candidate. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that states need not allow write-in voting at all, but California has long opted to promote and protect this tradition.

The California Constitution states that "A voter who casts a vote in an election in accordance with the laws of this state shall have that vote counted."

The right to write in under the Elections Code is pretty straightforward. Section 15340 states that each voter is "entitled to write the name of any candidate for any public office...on the ballot of any election" and that such votes shall be counted if certain specifications are met. Section 13212 requires that blank spaces appear in each race on all ballots.

The hastily drafted implementing statute for Prop. 14, however, banned the counting of write-in votes. Section 8606 now states, "A person whose name has been written on the ballot as a write-in candidate at the general election for a voter-nominated office shall not be counted."

The effect is essentially a trapdoor for voters. The general election ballot must include space for write-ins, and nothing on the ballot alerts voters that the blank space is a black hole. Californians' right to write in has become purely symbolic, but nobody told them that.

Plaintiffs in the federal suit, Chamness v. Bowen, are awaiting a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Otis D. Wright on their motion for summary judgment. Last fall, state courts refused to grant an injunction against implementation of Prop. 14; plaintiffs had asked that it be enjoined until the write-in issue and a ballot label problem were fixed. Most court documents can be found here.

The Constitutional Right to Vote Blog: Rock the Blog!

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:16:26 -0700

The last Constitutional amendment (aside from the 27th amendment which started its ratification process in the late 1700s) was the 26th amendment. Ratified in 1971, it states that “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.” While the language is intended to serve young people well, it still leaves open a loophole in Constitutional law- while young people cannot be discriminated against based on their age, they can be denied the chance to vote, or have their ability to vote abridged, for reasons that can also undercut voting rights for older citizens.

As demonstrated by the new Rock the Vote report, the 2011 Voting System Scorecard, we still have significant progress to make to better include 18-25 year olds in our elections. Perhaps more glaringly, the report indicates that less than 59% of young people (defined as 18-25 years old) are even registered to vote; this makes young people the segment of the US population least likely to be registered. Of those registered or eligible to be registered, many report difficulty understanding the processes.

The report works like this: it breaks down a series of areas related to voting, and gives each state a score in each of these areas. Topics include

registration (with scores for automatic registration, portable registration, online, same-day, and third party) for a possible area-total of 11 points,
voting (identification requirements, convenience, residency, absentee, overseas/military) with a possible area-total of 7 points,
and preparation (civic lessons, pre-registration) with a possible area-total of 3 points.

All together, the highest possible score is 21 points. Information on each sub-topic used to evaluate a state was collected from a variety of sources including FairVote, the Brennan Center, Demos, PEW, CIRCLE, the Fair Elections Legal Network, and several others.

Even the state with the highest score (Washington) received only a total of 14.2 or 68%. This score was based on a number of practices Rock the Vote endorses like online voter registration. States tied for the lowest score (South Carolina and Virginia) received an abysmal 3.8, or 18% of the total possible score. Some states such as California, Delaware and Maryland all received perfect scores in one area (“preparation”) but had room for improvement in other areas.

North Dakota was largely excluded from the report, since the state has no voter registration requirement. As a lack of voter registration requirements is often seen as a benefit to young people, Rock the Vote determined to discuss North Dakota as if full points had been given in the areas related to registration and pre-registration. If the state was therefore given full

points in these topics it would have a score of over 80%, more than 20% above any other state in the country, bumping North Dakota into the top-spot.
While this report shows many states making progress towards goal of more inclusive voting system, it is instructive about the case for reform that the highest score received was only 68%; a score that is barely passing.

Many states scored 0 points in the preparation section, which includes civic education and voter pre-registration. FairVote has taken a lead role in promoting good practices in this area. FairVote has been a national leader in promoting voter preregistration for young adults soon to be eligible to vote as a means to encourage voter registration in schools and at the DMV; we’ve taken a lead in securing it in recent years in Delaware, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. as detailed here. States where voter pre-registration bills are pending include New York and Massachusetts.

Rock the Vote reports that nationally less than 4% of 12th grade students were performing “above level” in civics classes; more than 60% are performing at a “basic” level. It is no wonder then that so many young people are registering to vote in the wrong way or at the wrong time. (For more information on FairVote’s civic lessons for students, please visit here). For related resources , see FairVote links on civic education ,an interactive map on registration,blogs related to the topic and pending legislation on voting reform.

Youth voting’s abysmal turn out numbers involve more than issues with pre-registration and civic learning, of course. Many problems arise when young mobile persons want to vote, but find themselves unable to obtain a ballot. As highlighted by the Rock the Vote report, this is often because some young people become most interested in a campaign close to an election, at time at which many states’ registration deadlines have long since passed. In fact, Rock the Vote found that 15% of people who tried to use their online voter registration form in 2008 did so after the deadline for the upcoming election, and 10,000 tried to register to vote on Election Day! Without same day voter registration, and easy-to-use absentee voting procedures, 18-25 year olds are often left out of the pool of eligible voters

Yet, in light of the difficulties involved with youth mobilization, Rock the Vote contends that 30 states have tried to pass or have passed legislation in the past year which would actually make it more difficult for young people to register and to vote.

Such legislation include requiring a state issued ID in order to vote, proposals to eliminate same day voter registration, and plans as radical as New Hampshire’s failed proposal to limit voting among college students to those whose parents lived in that community prior to the student attending college to avoid students “voting their feelings”.

Overall, what reports like Rock the Vote’s highlight are the needs for more comprehensive programs to educate voters and potential voters as to what options are available when registering and learning about civics in their area. However, such efforts will most effective if paired with efforts to reform current systems to become more inclusive for all citizens, easier for voters to understand, and streamlined. It’s very telling even the highest performing states received scores that no student would ever want to find on a report card.

More broadly, while the 26th amendment was a giant step forward for young people, the Rock the Vote report underscores the fact that it didn’t establish an absolute constitutional right to vote for young adults; rather, it gave them the all-too-tenuous level of voting rights provided to older citizens. Without a more affirmative right to vote in the Constitution it’s too easy for states to make decisions that undercut our voting rights – for people of any age, but often with the greatest impact on young adults.

New Mexico Redistricting: Super Districts for U.S. House

Tue, 24 May 2011 07:34:02 -0700

When it comes to the complexities of redistricting, New Mexico is no exception. On May 14^th, It’s legislative leaders named an 18-member committee to work on the monumental task. In the past, several Congressional redistricting maps have ended up in the courts due to fights over partisanship and incumbent protection - leaving the judicial system to redraw the lines. But as recently as the 1960s, New Mexico elected its U.S. House seats at-large - -and should do so again with a single "super district" and a proportional voting system.

Below is the map New Mexico has been using:

As can plainly be seen, gerrymandering is a factor in this map. When it comes to partisanship, Districts 1 and 3 are about 56% Democratic, and District 2 is 56% Republican. Although having a history of being relatively competitive, each district now is represented by the expected party, leaving the smaller of the major parties in each district unrepresented. Backers of small parties like the Greens and Libertarians (of which New Mexico has plenty, with Green candidates earning more than one in seven votes in two of the state's three districts in elections in 1997-1998) is forced to strategically vote from one of the two larger parties or risk "spoiling" the election. A winner-take-all system (with a threshold of exclusion of 50%+1) such as the one used in New Mexico obviously skews representation, discourages turnout, and shuts out independents and minor parties..

Can this democracy deficit be solved? Yes, by going back to New Mexico's history of having the entire state be a single super district with three seats elected under a proportional voting system such as choice voting or cumulative voting. New Mexico is one of two states with more than one House seat that was forced by a 1967 law mandating one-seat House districts to give up at-large elections and use one-seat district.

We recommend implementing a proportional voting system over a return to at-large elections because at-large elections remain winner-take all, giving a state-wide partisan majority the ability to unfairly elect all of the state's representatives (as was the case for the Democratic Party for over a decade, 1948-1958). Alternatively, a super district system utilizing choice voting or cumulative voting under a proportional system would allow non-majority groups to elect a candidate if they pass the diminished threshold of exclusion (25% in a 3-seat super district).

The new map is below:

With a single super district electing three representatives under a proportional voting system, scattered like-minded voters can elect a representative if votes are concentrated into a single candidate. Every vote matters and votes for third parties aren't automatically thrown out when choice voting is used. This is because a three-seat super district system would enable any group with 25% support (passing the threshold of exclusion) to elect a like-minded representative. Under such a system, Democrats would be guaranteed one representative, Republicans would be guaranteed one representative, and the third seat would by a toss-up leaning Republican -- but just barely. This would encourage every voter to turnout and exercise their right to vote in every election.

When considering ethnicity, the 46.3% of New Mexico that is Latino (according to census data) would hold significant weight in Congressional elections and likely help elect a Latino House Member; all U.S. House Members from New Mexico were white for more than a decade until 2009, when Ben Lujan was elected when Tom Udall vacated his seat to run for the U.S. Senate.

Finally, the super district system would avoid New Mexico's gerrymandering issues since no lines would need to drawn after the 2010 Census. Elections would be more representative of real grassroots opinion and every vote would count. It's democracy at its finest.

Missouri Redistricting: Super-districts are Superior

Wed, 11 May 2011 11:45:53 -0700

On May 4th, the Missouri legislature voted to override Gov. Jay Nixon's veto of House Bill 193, a bill which would redraw state lines using the 2010 census. In an unexpected turn of events, seven Democrats joined with the Republicans in a 104-44 vote to override Gov. Nixon's veto and pass the new lines into law, the first occurrence of such an event in Missouri history.

Since Missouri's population growth hasn't kept up with the rest of the country, the new lines needed to eliminate a district and integrate pieces of it into conjoining ones. Not surprisingly, the Republican legislature decided to erase the third Congressional district (which was leaning Democrat) and split its former territory between three neighboring, Republican-leaning districts. As could be expected, the Governor accused the new districts of being partisan and sent it back to the state legislature with his veto - but to no avail. Below is the state's new congressional map to be used next year.

As is visually obvious, there is quite a bit of gerrymandering in the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th district which either place Democrats into a hyper-concentrated district (as is the case with St. Louis, district 1) or extend out districts which were Democrat before and combine them into Solid Republican districts (as is the case with former district 5 being expanded into the territory of district 4 and 6).

Although FairVote lacks hard partisan data on the new districts, we can still estimate with relative certainty that the new map will drop Democrats below the threshold of exclusion (50%+1 in a first-past-the-post system) in territory that was leaning their way before the new lines were drawn.

We did want to showcase a better way for Missouri, however - -one grounded in American history with multi-seat congressional districts and use of non-winner-take-all voting system in various cities around the country.

If we were to redraw the state of Missouri into two super-districts by combining districts 1-2-3-8-7 and districts 4-5-6 like the map below (SD-1 with 5 seats, and SD-2 with 3 seats) using a proportional voting system such as choice voting or cumulative voting, we would successfully return partisan balance and competitive elections to the state by reducing the threshold of exclusion to about 17% for the 5 seat district and just over 25% for the 3 seat district. By performing this simple task, we can end the harmful effects of gerrymandering by expanding boundaries and allow any group holding a bloc-vote at or near the threshold of exclusion to elect a like-minded representative.

When considering partisanship within our super-district system, since Democratic concentration passes at least 17% in super-district 1 (SD-1) and 25% in super-district 2 (SD-2), we can estimate that both parties would be nearly certain to have representatives in both districts.

Looking at SD-1 (with a threshold of exclusion of 17%), Democrats will be guaranteed to take 2 seats, Republicans 2 seats, and the fifth competitive seat being Republican leaning.

In SD-2 (with a threshold of exclusion of 25%), the Democrats will be guaranteed to take a seat, the Republicans a seat, and the third competitive seats leaning Republican.

This means that, on an average year, 5 seats will go to the Republicans and 3 seats will go to the Democrats (very close to the current partisan proportions of the state). Therefore, the delegation statewide would likely be either 5-3 Republican of split between the parties, which is a fair reflection of the state's current overall partisanship. Of course this would vary with the strength of candidates and national trends.

Using a proportional voting system with two super-districts would allow Missouri's electoral outcomes to reflect the true partisan makeup of the state by allowing Democrats which currently reside in district 6 to vote for a strong candidate from district 4 and the Republicans which currently reside in district 1 (where their vote wouldn't matter since district 1 is guaranteed to go Democrat) to vote for their ideal Republican candidate from district 7. Using a proportional voting system would clearly give voters the most choices possible and ensure each vote counted by allowing wide-spread support to be concentrated into a single candidate. When compared to a single-member district system, a proportional voting system relieves us of our democracy deficit. It's a matter of voter equality.