For the past 24 hours you may have noticed the site has been down and in its place a message saying, “This site has been suspended!” The reason the site was down was because of you: there were so many people trying to get into the site that it overwhelmed the server and they had to shut it down. In order to get the site running again, I had to reduce bandwidth and cut images, etc. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the site will make it through the Election Day deluge.

There is a larger message in this that has nothing to do with this site and everything to do with the American people. I have no illusions that this site has any great words of wisdom. I believe the site was overwhelmed not because of the site itself but because this year American voters are exerting a huge effort to find information about this election. In short, this election has generated more interest than any election in my lifetime and historically since at least 1960.

People are hungry for information–even from a place like this one. They are willing to read the longer essays on here because they want issues covered in depth. The site had 800,000 hits in September and is headed to a similar number this month–not necessarily because of superior content but because they are willing even to come here for information.

To me this is a testimony to the American people. It has become fashionable at both extremes of the political spectrum to decry the sad state of the American voter and the American people. Those on the far left wonder how people could support George Bush and now John McCain and people on the far right wonder how they could support Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama. Both sides view people as ignorant dupes who can easily be convinced to vote for anybody or support anything.

At both extremes lies a thinly veiled contempt for not only their ideological opposites, but also for all Americans. But this last 24 hours has convinced me that both extremes are wrong. It reaffirms my belief that people will do the right thing if only given help to overcome the occasional bad luck that befalls them, education to cope with those who would take advantage of them, information that is predicated on fairness, and the right to cast their vote and have it fairly counted.  Democracy is, by nature, a liberal institution, for it is founded on the notion that the collective wisdom of the people serves as a force for good. The level playing field depends on this view. If you believe people are by nature good then you believe they should all have an equal chance.

No matter how this election turns out it has a different feel than any Presidential election in my lifetime and that feel is due to the American people. It is as if they have said enough is enough and we are going to reassert ourselves. We are going to turn over every stone–even obscure web sites like this one–in order to track down the information we think we need or hear ideas that we cannot hear in the mainstream media.

Something bigger than this election is going on in this country that the 24 hours of this blog being down because of too many visitors signifies. Mike at Crooks and Liars refers to sites like this as “off the beaten path.” He does not do so out of contempt but merely as a statement that people normally do not find their way to sites like this.

Americans seem to be heading off the beaten path. Maybe it is because of this economic crisis where the usual experts do not seem to have any answers and those that do shout too loudly that they do have the answers are suspect. Americans feel it is time to get off the beaten path and explore other options for themselves and their country. They are looking for alternatives, for new answers, for new perspectives.

Over the past year, poll after poll has shown that people are pessimistic about the future. Most Americans believe their children will face a tougher time than they had. Last January, a New York Times-CBS poll showed an ominous spike in those who thought the economy was getting worse. Three quarters of the survey’s respondents echoed those in Iowa a year before who believed that the nation had “seriously gotten off on the wrong track.”

Yet if America has gotten off track, the American people are willing to go off the beaten path to help the nation get back on track. It is a old truism that in a crisis you can have several reactions: you can panic or freeze, you can deny it is happening, you can run away from it or you can deal with it. The unprecedented response this election has generated suggests the American people have chosen the latter. Rather than panicking or running away from the crisis they are actively seeking answers.

People do not find their way to web sites like this without some effort on their part. They do not read two thousand word essays if they do not care. So I take the fact this site had to shut down because so many people were trying to get into it not as an affirmation of this site but as an affirmation of the American people.

In his book The Conscience of a Liberal, the late Paul Wellstone wrote,

Politics is not about left, right and center. It is about speaking to the concerns and circumstances of people’s lives.  People yearn for a politics that speaks to and includes them.

To quote Winona LaDuke,

We are all ultimately interconnected.

The unrpecedented interest this election has generated says to me that no matter what the results are Tuesday that America is going to be just fine.

NOTE:

Apologies to all of you who tried to get into the site during the shut down–AND thank you for coming.

PREVIEWS:

With the election looming closer I will publish copies and analysis of the “Predict Your Own Results” charts that became so popular during the primaries. The charts will allow you to fill in data as it becomes available on election night so you can make your own predictions.

Tagged with: 2008 election • American people • American voter • Barack Obama • collective action • economic crisis • George Bush • information • john mccain • new perspective • political extremes • Presidential election

After some thought and my usual procrastination I decided to vote by absentee ballot. Being disabled, I qualify to vote early in my home state. I hate to admit this, but I actually did not vote in the primary because of a sudden flare-up of my disease that put me down for several days. I decided this election was too important to be left to the whims of my disease. I also did not relish the thought of possibly having to stand in line for what could be too long. If the turnout predictions are to be believed, my state, which has historically been one of the top five in voting percentage, is a likely candidate to generate those lines everyone is worried about.

My state allows you to vote early in person or by mail. Considering the unpredictability of the U.S. Mail, the record number of absentee ballots that already have been filed, and what no doubt is an overwhelmed Secretary of State’s office, voting in person seemed a no-brainer.

In Minnesota if you elect to vote in person it must be at the county courthouse. For some people in some counties this can be quite a drive. In Northern Minnesota where my parents lived that drive could easily be over an hour. In what we term “the cities,” it also probably means large parking fee. I bring this up just to illustrate the unequal playing field many people face when trying to vote early. I thank my state for allowing early voting in person, but wish they would make it easier for everyone. Luckily my courthouse is only ten minutes away with no parking fee.

I guess I should not have been surprised at what I found when I arrived. There at the absentee ballot office there was a line–not a very long one–but a line just the same. Luckily I had downloaded the requisite form and filled it out so I did not have to wait to do that.

The people in charge could not have been more helpful or accommodating. They had set up about a half-dozen voting booths near by so there was no wait to actually vote once I had received my ballot. The clerks carefully explained the procedure as if they actually wanted to be sure every ballot counted.

The most surprising development was how liberal they seemed to be in interpreting the absentee ballot standards. Most people just checked the appropriate box and were handed a ballot without question. One woman asked the voting officials if it was OK to vote absentee because she worked on Election Day and was not sure she could make her polling place in time (our commutes are some of the nation’s longest due to guess what–budget cuts in highway construction). They told her she better vote now. To another voter they remarked, “Those lines are going to be long.” It was almost as though they were encouraging early voting to prevent an overload on Election Day.

When I had my ballot and walked back to the voting booth, the seriousness of the moment hit me. It had not expected it, having voted enough times that it has become routine. But the importance of this election as a watershed in American history finally hit home as I stared at my ballot. I was about to vote for an African American for President. That this should happen in my lifetime had me taking a firm grip on the pen used to fill in the ovals in the optical scan ballots we use.

But the moment also made me reflect on its national importance. This election has the feel of what it must have been like in 1960 or 1932 or 1912. The choices between the two tickets were stark and obvious. Our country stands at a figurative fork in the road and each of us standing there voting was having a voice in the choice of which fork to take.

Something else also hit me. For the first time in a long time this was not a hold-your-nose and vote choice. The feeling of actually voting for a candidate doe positive reasons was an emotion I thought had been lost, buried by the likes of John Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Dukakis. I had not ever felt this good voting for a candidate.

This was not an anybody but Bush vote or an anybody but the Counterrevolution vote. It was a vote for possibility, for hope, for Jefferson’s idea that every once in awhile this nation needs a shakeup that takes us in a new direction.

I have expressed my doubts that Barack Obama is a true transformational leader, but in the voting booth the words I recalled were Colin Powell’s comments about the possibility of transformation. As I carefully filled in my ballot I did so believing in the possibility of that transformation. The future will show if Barack Obama is truly a transformational President, but right now all I had to go on was what I had seen and heard over the last year. This writer who has criticized the Democratic Party numerous times found himself believing that transformation truly was possible for the first time in my lifetime.

That thought had me checking my ballot to be sure everything was in order. I felt like a grade schooler being lectured about coloring inside the lines when I filled in those ovals even though I knew the optical scanner was forgiving as long as the choice is clear.

The penultimate moment came when I sealed that ballot in its envelope. Something in me wanted to prolong that moment, to photograph the memory in my mind. On the day after Election Day when I made my ritual pilgrimage to Paul and Sheila Wellstone’s graves there would be much to ponder.

I anticipate that some people, especially older people of color, may leave the voting booth with tears of joy in their eyes. That envelope I had just sealed has become part of history.

More than that it has become part of the promise of America, not merely because a person of color could very well become President, but because something larger. Call it promise, call it possibility, call it optimism or faith, but I hoped that ballot would become part of a river of similar ballots that all flowed over America washing away the Era of Bad Feelings and the last eight years in a torrent that said once again our country stood for something that would make the world again see the American Dream and celebrate it.

I handed my ballot to the election official with all the emotions of a student handing in what they think will be an “A” essay. I had not written a word, but I had made myself heard. And somehow I knew there would be as lot more voices like that. And maybe that was the true meaning of handing in that ballot, for I felt connected to America and Americans in a way that had the future opening up for all of us even as we face one of the most serious times in our history.

America was going to be ours again, not the plaything of a privileged few, not the rogue nation that has the rest of the world wondering what crazy thing we will do next, not the nation that belittles its own government, not the nation that has forgotten its commitment to the level playing field. One ballot at a time we would retake this nation. It feels good to be one of those ballots.

Tagged with: absentee ballot • age • Al Gore • bad feelings • Barack Obama • candidate • colin powell • counterrevolution • county courthouse • Democratic Party • disabled • early voting • election day • faith • Jefferson • John Kerry • level playing field • Michael Dukakis • northern minnesota • Obama • person of color • press • secretary of state • Sheila Wellstone • transformation • transformational • transformational leader • turnout • unpredictability • voting booth • voting booths • Wellstone

One issue lies at the heart of this election. The pundits call it the economy, but it’s really about social and economic justice. What America has become under eight years of George III and the Republican Counterrevolution is not a city on a hill whose values shine like a beacon of equity and justice but the equivalent of a gated community which only a privileged few may enter.

Even as the economy slides towards a depression, the tilted playing field that represents George W. Bush’s legacy has become a precipice that even the skilled, the well-equipped and the lucky find it all but impossible to succeed in climbing.  If you are an immigrant, a person of color or just an innocent victim of a layoff, an unexpected health care bill, a mortgage foreclosure, you carry a weight that makes that precipice all but impossible to climb.

When Dr. King constantly evoked the metaphor of climbing a mountain to describe the struggle to reach the dream he described standing in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln and looking out across the stilled waters of the reflecting pool towards George Washington’s obelisk, he knew that the struggle to reach social and economic justice would be arduous, but not even Dr. King could have imagined that in eight years a President would make it an Everest, its summit so high that many days we can not even see it, let alone reach it.

Dr. King would not have predicted that we have not moved forward but slid backwards so that the social and economic justice for which he fought has taken us back a century, to the era of tycoons, less government, no income taxes, and separate but equal. So less than a week before the election we lie huddled on that mountain Dr. King evoked, a storm raging around us that threatens to blow us off the place where we huddle uncertainly, barely sustained by faith in our system and our institutions.

At this time, in this place the only statistics and charts that really matter are personal. Not in the egotistical way of me-first or even the much-misunderstood idea of American individualism, but because with the storm swirling around us it has all but obscured any big picture, distorted the voices that loudly offer answers, and obscured any sense of where we are and how to navigate through this crisis.

So all we can do is to take stock in our own situation, tallying up where we are, where we were and where we expected to be. We don’t need the pundits to tell us how bad things are because we can look at our own bank statements, the for sale signs dotting our neighborhoods and the balloon payments due on our mortgages. We can look at our schools, the condition of our roads and bridges, the cash register total at the grocery store. We can lie awake in the darkness and know the uneasy sleep that comes with the fear of a layoff, a serious illness, the pressure of trying to give our kids a college education, the gnawing guilt that the world our children will inherit will not be as pleasant as the one our parents willed to us.

Our accounting is not merely economic but moral for we know that this crisis is less about the Dow Jones, unemployment statistics and the GNP than it is about the loss of principle.

We know greed has always lurked in shadowy corners of our minds and always comes clothed in fabric woven from venerable threads that predate any sacred tablet entwined with the latest hot trends, the must-haves of the moment. All of us sense this crisis is about more than greed, it is about the loss of that moral compass that helped us to navigate the storms of what we nostalgically refer to as the American Century.

Woodrow Wilson held that compass when he said, “Justice, and only justice shall always be our motto.” Al Smith held that compass when he said, “Nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.” Franklin Roosevelt held that compass when he said it was time “to once more put our faith in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” Harry Truman held that compass when he said, “The welfare of the whole people should always come first.” John Kennedy held that compass when he said, “The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”

As we cast out ballots it is those words that should resonate in our heads. As your eyes navigate down the columns of names we should ask which of them truly offers a chance to recover the principles that inspired that rhetoric. We all know what America has become and what it should be. So who offers to narrow that gap between dream and reality, principle and actuality? Who is visionary enough to see how the chasms that have opened  between us might be bridged? Who will again act to restore the principle of the level playing field that lies behind the words of those who lead us through the American Century.

For all of us it is time to cast aside the bitterness and cynicism of the Era of Bad Feelings and trust again in ourselves. For if nothing else comes from this contentious election I hope we recover that moral compass, our commitment to the level playing field and our faith in each other.

Tagged with: Abraham Lincoln • Al Smith • America • american century • city on a hill • college education • community • counterrevolution • crisis • depression • Dr. King • economic justice • economy • education • election • election day • employment statistics • equity • faith • Foreclosure • foreclosure auction • george iii • George Washington • George-W-Bush • graphs • greed • Harry Truman • health care bill • individualism • John Kennedy • layoff • level playing field • moral compass • mortgage • mortgage foreclosure • precipice • principle • pundits • reflecting pool • social justice • statistics • tycoons • unemployment • values • Woodrow Wilson

Wonder why the Obama Campaign and the Democratic Party are urging people to vote early? Because once again we face an election that could hinge on voting rights. By having people vote early on paper ballots, the Obama campaign is wisely ensuring there will be no voting machine problems, no waiting in long lines because election officials did not adequately prepare for a large turnout or because GOP operatives are deliberately slowing things down in an attempt to drive voters away from the polls.

Obama’s Early Vote Push

A week ago in Florida Obama told voters:

Don’t wait until Nov. 4; your car might break down. You might have an emergency . . . the alarm might not go off and you don’t get to work on time.

The he added the real reason for this push:

We’re going to make sure your vote is counted.

Hillary Clinton joined in the early voting campaign:

You don’t have to wait any longer. You can vote today, tomorrow, the next day, and begin our march to take our country back. Now is the time to close the deal for Barack Obama and close the book on eight years of failed Republican leadership.

Joe Biden has also been holding “Early Vote for Change” rallies across the country designed to get people to vote early. In addition the Obama campaign web site has instructions on how you can vote early.

How to Vote Early

Thirty-four states now have some form of early voting. To find out if yours is one of them and if you don’t want to stand in line on election day go to the following URL for instructions. Note: Until I went to do my own early voting, I did not realize the URL I first listed requires you to give an email address to the Obama campaign.

The URL below is nonpartisan and actually walks you through the process of filing an absentee ballot. Because some states have specific requirements about voting early (in my state of Minnesota you must have a reason) this site tells you whether you meet those criteria. I would recommend using it. Second, in my state the request must be mailed, faxed or emailed, so if you in such a state I would recommend you DO IT NOW if you are going to vote early.

http://www.govoteabsentee.org/

Why Vote Early

The Obama Strategy may well hold the key to this election along with suggesting a potentially huge shift in how this country conducts elections. His effort may mean that we will not know the winner of the Presidential race or other significant state races until after election night. Those exit polls and calling state winners may prove irrelevant and impossible since many states do not count absentee or mail-in ballots for as long as several days after the election.

The Boston Globe reports:

With early voting becoming more popular, some analysts believe that as many as one-third of all voters this year could cast their ballots before Nov. 4.

The Christian Science Monitor adds:

In some key states, like Colorado, where many people are casting their votes early by mail as well as in person, over 60 percent of ballots may be in before Election Day.

If Obama’s strategy pays off it could well signal a change in how all of us vote and provide a solution to the voting rights problems that have plagued recent elections. at the root of those problems lie major tensions in our democratic society. The first is between the need to prevent voter fraud and the desire to ensure that everyone can vote. The second–perhaps most contentious–is over the people who are actually allowed to vote.

Voter Fraud and ACORN

The voter fraud issue has become almost gospel to many Republicans who believe the Democrats encourage all kinds of voter chicanery from former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s infamous counting tombstones to Lyndon Johnson’s ballot box 13. Already voter fraud is playing a role in this election with the ACORN controversy.

Unless you have been on a long vacation to some remote area, you have probably heard about the ACORN voter controversy. Last summer canvassers hired by ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, were indicted for filling out false voter registration forms. According to the Seattle Times:

Temporary workers hired by ACORN for a voter registration drive gathered at the downtown Seattle library to fill out bogus registration forms. They copied names from newspaper stories — such as those of actress Katie Holmes, New York Yankees relief pitcher Mariano Rivera and New York Times columnist Frank Rich — pulled them from baby-name books and telephone directories or just made them up.

Similar false registration controversies have occurred in other parts of the country, spawning an FBI investigation of ACORN. John McCain made the ACORN cases a centerpiece of his last debate with Barack Obama charging ACORN:

Is on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history … maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

Along with the Ayers and Reverend Wright controversies, ACORN has been the subject of many of the McCain campaign’s negative ads and robocalls. Yet McCain either does not understand American voting laws or he is deliberately nurturing a false rumor.

As the Times editorialized:

Voter-registration fraud — at least, of the type ACORN workers committed in Seattle last year and allegedly engaged in elsewhere this year — is annoying, potentially costly to taxpayers and certainly illegal, but not, by itself, a serious threat to democratic foundations.

Voter fraud, on the other hand, can change the outcome of elections.

Even the Republican who prosecuted the Seattle cases agreed:

The ACORN case in Seattle had nothing to do with manipulating outcomes and everything to do with the workers’ efforts to keep their $8-an-hour jobs. If anyone was defrauded, it was ACORN, an acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Voter Fraud: The Big Picture

The type of voters ACORN solicits have long provoked controversy in America. For a long time, many of them were not allowed to vote. In recent years, the GOP has actively sought to discourage the poor, the elderly, and voters of color from voting because they tend to vote Democratic.

The reverse side of the ACORN story was the investigation of the 2000 Florida election by the Civil Rights Commission, which heard over twenty hours of testimony from more than a hundred witnesses.  It concluded:

Restrictive statutory provisions, wide-ranging errors and inadequate and unequal resources in the election process denied countless Floridians the right to vote. The disenfranchisement of Florida’s voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of African Americans. Statewide, based upon county-level statistical estimates, African American voters were nearly ten times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected in Florida.

A 2006 draft report for the federal Election that was never issued stated:

Many of those interviewed stated the new identification requirements are the modern version  of voter intimidation  and suppression.

The draft notes that the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division of tghe Justice Department was reluctant to provide data for the report. It also notes that under the Bush Administration the Department was bringing fewer cases focusing on intimidation and more on voter fraud.

Meanwhile, Democracy Now reports the intimidation has already begun:

Early voting has begun, and problems are already emerging at the polls. In West Virginia, voters using touchscreen machines have claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans are being accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility.

The Supreme Court and Voter IDs

As for voter fraud, the tension between how far the government can go to prevent it without turning voting eligibility into the equivalent of filling out a 1040 form figured in one of the past term’s most important Supreme Court cases. The Court ruled in favor of an Indiana voter ID law. The most telling sentence in that opinion reads:

Petitioners ask this Court, in effect, to perform a unique balancing analysis that looks specifically at a small number of voters who may experience a special burden under the statute and weighs their burdens against the State’s broad interests in protecting election integrity. Petitioners urge us to ask whether the State’s interests justify the burden imposed on voters who cannot afford or obtain a birth certificate and who must make a second trip to the circuit court clerk’s office after voting. But on the basis of the evidence in the record it is not possible to quantify either the magnitude of the burden on this narrow class of voters or the portion of the burden imposed on them that is fully justified. [p. 17]

It gets worse:

A voter complaining about such a law’s effect on him has no valid equal-protection claim because, without proof of discriminatory intent, a generally applicable law with disparate impact is not unconstitutional.

If I read this one right it says that the voter must prove “discriminatory intent” in order for there to be any challenge to voting laws. If you remember the history of segregation, the South once applied literacy tests to voters who were given such bizarre tasks as counting jelly beans in a jar to test their “intelligence.”

Voter IDs and Vote Early

The Democrats are anticipating that the voter ID opinion will give the green light for voting officials in states with ID laws–several of which are swing states–to harass voters at the polls or perhaps prevent them from voting altogether. The Obama campaign has entire page devoted to various unfounded rumors being spread about people who will not be allowed to vote.

This anticipated attempt to use voters IDs to both intimidate voters and slow down the process is one of the reasons the Obama campaign is urging people to vote early. Voting early takes care of the ID issue and it hopefully will help shorten lines on election night.

The Voting Gauntlet

These days voting has become a gauntlet that each voter must negotiate in order to be sure their ballot is counted.  It is a national scandal that two elections after the voting problems of 2000, we still do not have a national law that adequately resolves them.

In a summary of various studies of voting technologies and solutions, Rady Ananda points out:

None of these solutions, however, meet the Fair Vote Count standard enumerated by international authority (OSCE) to which the US is a signatory.)

The Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, 2005, Election Observation Manual, list 17 Criteria for a Fair Vote Count:

1. Is the count performed by polling-station officials, or are other persons involved?
2.  Do election officials appear to understand and adhere to the required procedures?
3.  Are ballots counted in an orderly and secure manner?
4. Is the count conducted in a transparent environment, with adequate arrangements for
domestic observers?
5. Does the number of registered voters recorded as having voted correspond with the
number of ballots cast?
6. Are unused ballots secured, cancelled, or destroyed after being counted?
7. Are invalid ballots properly identified in a uniform manner? Are invalid ballots appropriately segregated and preserved for review?
8. Do the ballots contain any unusual markings intended to violate the secrecy of the vote?
9. Does the number of invalid ballots seem inordinately high?
10. Does the counting adhere to the principle that the ballot is deemed valid if the will of the voter is clear?
11. Are ballots for each party or candidate separated correctly and counted individually?
12. Are any disputes or complaints resolved in a satisfactory manner?
13.l Are official counting records correctly completed at the end of the count and signed by all authorized persons?
14. Are domestic observers and poll watchers from political parties able to obtain official copies of the protocol for the polling station?
15. Are the results publicly posted at the polling station?
16. Are there inappropriate activities by police and/or security forces, such as taking notes and reporting figures or results by telephone?
17. Did polling-station officials agree on the vote-count procedures and results, and, if not, what action was taken in case of disagreement?

It is ironic that while we insist on these criteria for elections in  places such as Iraq or the former Soviet Union, they still are not in place in America.

Upcoming Problems

Today FairVote issued a report on election administration based on a survey of county clerks in swing states. FairVote staff and interns surveyed nearly every county clerk in Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as election officials in counties with at least 500,000 residents in Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The press release issued today stated:

Voters in the largest counties in 10 key swing states may experience problems on Election Day because of insufficient preparation and inadequate poll booth and machine allocation plans, according to a report released today by FairVote, a nonpartisan advocacy
group.

FairVote’s Adam Fogel, co-author of the report warned:

Many of the largest counties in key states are not prepared for Election Day. The across the board lack of uniformity we see in this report speaks to the patchwork election system we have in this country. Most local officials do the best they can with the limited resources they have available, but state and federal officials must do more to ensure transparent election administration and increased accountability after Election Day.

The nine page full report spells out some of the grim details. It is especially critical of inaction by the federal government to correct problems in America’s voting system:

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 does not specify what kind of voting equipment states must use. Furthermore, there are no requirements for the number of voting machines they have to put in each precinct.

In short, insufficient federal guidelines address the issue of voting system uniformity and their allocation.

On the issue of how officials estimated how many voting booths they need:

Not a single election official surveyed could refer to a specific scientific formula that they use for calculating the number of booths needed.

The report made four recommendations for future elections:

First, voting machines specifications, at least in terms of the way votes are counted, should be standardized across the country.

Second, a standard formula for the allocation of voting machines and poll booths should be implemented.

Third, all election officials should receive a draft of their ballot before printing a final version.

Fourth, post-secondary institutions should have polling locations on campus and students should not be subjected to allocation decisions that discriminate against them.

Trouble Ahead?

In my home state of Minnesota I still remember caucus night when the school parking lot where the caucus was held overflowed so badly many people were unable to attend on what was a cold winter night with six inches of snow on the ground. While the weather will be better (we hope), that same school will be serving as a polling place on election day. Will we witness a recurrence of what happened this past winter? Fairvote suggests that may well be the case.

Could we be facing a Presidential election in which officials have to hold the polls open past the designated time in order to allow everyone to vote? Could we facing the massive traffic tie-ups that caused people in my state to give up even  trying to get to last winter’s caucuses? Could we be facing an election in which people who want to vote are unable to do so because of lack or voting machines or inadequate voting machines?

We should not be asking these questions a week before Election Day in the year 2008 in the United States of America.  The fact that we are leads to a bigger question, “Why?” Why have both Congress and the White House dragged their feet on election reform?

Where Do The Candidates Stand

John McCain says nothing on his web site about voting rights. on the other hand Barack Obama states:

There is no more fundamental American right than the right to vote. Before the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, barriers such as literacy tests, poll taxes and property requirements disenfranchised many Americans, especially minorities. More than 40 years later, there are still numerous obstacles to ensuring that every citizen has the ability to vote.

Next week if you are stuck in line waiting to vote, or get harassed for an ID, or worry that the voting machine you are using will not properly count your vote, you might think about those two positions.

Next Week

The still unfinished agenda that began with Bush v. Gore asks will the country still firmly support the long-standing principle that free elections shall not be compromised by intimidation and manipulation? At the same time, will the independent, contrary spirit of the place the marble came from allow us to adequately meet the challenges of electronic voting and the still-unfulfilled promise made to those who are still systematically disenfranchised?