The Nation: 2008 will go down as a year activists were able to keep a rotten electoral system honest

[marmar]

Antitheft Devices
By Andrew Gumbel


November 6, 2008


2008 will go down as the year voting rights activists finally learned how to push back and keep a rotten electoral system acceptably honest.

For all the anxiety about possible meltdowns--machine failures, voter challenges, large-scale disenfranchisement and outright vote theft--the election went off remarkably smoothly. And the credit for that has to go to the armies of lawyers, voting rights advocates and policy institutes that challenged suspect laws and attempts at dirty electioneering, monitored every move made by election officials and party operatives, and either mitigated or headed off a multitude of potential catastrophes on election day.

None of this, of course, should be an acceptable substitute for durable election reform. It is still far too difficult to register to vote--the biggest problem in this year of Obama-inspired mass participation. Local election officials are still given far too much discretion to purchase lousy voting machines and too little guidance on how to ensure that the supply of those machines will meet demand. Partisan Republicans, inspired by Karl Rove and a heavily politicized Justice Department, had far too much leeway in their efforts to suppress new voters and promote their bogus campaign against the nonexistent problem of individual voter fraud.

Still, the lesson of November 4 is that election protection works. Thanks to the unstinting legal challenges to Republican dirty tricks, the courts rejected pre-emptive attempts to challenge tens of thousands of eligible voters in Colorado, Ohio and other swing states. The activist groups did not sit back as the usual crop of deceptive fliers and e-mails popped up urging Democrats to vote on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. They made their own robocalls to counter the disinformation, hiring Danny Glover to put out a message heard in more than 400,000 households.

In just about every precinct in the land, lawyers were present to make sure paper ballots were in plentiful supply in case of machine breakdown; that those ballots were not relegated to provisional status unless the law required it; and that voters unable to have their vote counted immediately knew what to do to prove their eligibility. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081124/gumbel

[CTyankee]

1. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty as Jefferson said.

This is what it takes, truly.

[BlooInBloo]

2. You mean we're not doomed?

[BeFree]

6. You mean we weren't just crying wolf?

You mean we had real issues? Wow, who'd a thunk it?

[liberalla]

3. Yeah for us!

"voting rights activists finally learned how to push back"

Now, let's fix the damn system.

[malaise]

4. A superb article

Special thanks to all the DUers involved in this massive project.
This thread should receive 200 recs.

Here's my first one - damn I only have one.:D

[dkofos]

5. Don't think that just because they lost this one, that they won't try

some new tactics in 2010.

We still need to get rid of the electronic voting machines.

[joeunderdog]

7. kik

[Stevepol]

8. I agree in the main with the posting but unmentioned was the EVMs

I would repeat what should be obvious to anybody who gives it the slightest thought: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE A DEMOCRACY if the vote is counted in secret by private companies WITHOUT VERIFICATION. IMPOSSIBLE!!!

This is just obvious. What we have in the US is a vote count conducted by private companies using a source code that is entirely off-limits even to the elections officials, in many cases (GA, AL, most of TX, etc.) without even any paper to use for audits and recounts, using machines that have been shown in every serious study to be completely vulnerable to every sort of hacking, patching, or just plain fraudulent programming (especially by insiders) with only the remotest possibility of detection.

I of course applaud all the activists who kept the pressure on the elections officials and the news media such as it is so that the last election was not manipulated to a agreater extent than it was.

According the election defense alliance, the preliminary estimate is that the alleged vote count for the whole country is off by about 2-3%, less than what it was for 04 nd 06 but still beyond the margin of error considering the size of the sample. In specific venues, the degree of tilt was far greater than that I would suspect. Maybe the MN recount will reveal how far that state's count was from being accurate. In AK, it was probably even further off. I don't know if AK can even be checked. I think there is some paper there and maybe they can have a fair recount, but I doubt it.

Anyway, despite the good results from this election, nothing really has fundamentally changed. It still remains the most critical long-term issue in the country today.

[DeepModem Mom]

9. K&R

[Karenina]

10. bttt!

:kick:

[Hubert Flottz]

11. The "electoral system" a place where "CHANGE" is needed most

of all...A "democracy" is not much of a democracy, if voters can't trust the electoral system.

WE pay the taxes, WE fight the wars...WE want our votes fairly counted on election day. That shouldn't be too much to ask in a flag waving "DEMOCRACY" like ours.

[Rebellious Republican]

12. Here is my K&R, now that we have an ethical admin in place, maybe

we can go to work on the EVM issue. It seems to me that if a company wants to sell technology to the people of the United States , they must give up the proprietary codes along with the hardware. If they are not willing to give up the codes and are only willing to sell the hardware, then should not be allowed to sell the technology. So companies are worried about their proprietary rights, easy, the President and congress can put together a special non Parisian oversight committee to insure their precious codes are not stolen, while insuring our voting rights are not stolen. No codes, no sales, simple!

:kick:

[DCKit]

13. "Too Big to Steal" is more accurate.

It's not as if the Republic machinery wasn't still in place and in use - The problem the Republicans had this time around was an election that wasn't close enough for a plausible theft. Even with the EVMs, too many voted for Obama, in too many states.

It's not that they didn't try. They didn't have "Teh Math" this time.

[curse of greyface]

14. You be correct. nt

[Orsino]

15. "Acceptably honest."

:rofl:

I don't find the rampant corruption acceptable, and thank goodness that activists didn't, either.

"Election protection works." :mad:
No, it doesn't--it was merely able to swamp the election theft this year. Real election protection, IMO, would make voter registration the default, and put the burden of proof on the government and on crooks. The government would acknowledge its responsibility to register the intent of every voter, as well, and shenanigans such as the GOP has pulled wouldn't happen, and might be properly labeled as hate crimes.

[walktall7]

16. Question

Was it kept honest or did we just win by too big of a margin
that the machines couldn't change more than 20-30% of the
votes and a couple of elections were won while many thousands
were lost and forgotten in the euphoria of a couple of wins?

[OwnedByFerrets]

17. Somewhat Honest