Moving the Goalposts
Battles against the use of electronic voting machines, or DRE’s, in free and fair elections are being waged and won all the over the world, including in the Netherlands where the government just banned electronic voting machines from future elections and are returning to paper ballots to protect the integrity of the vote.
After years of activists and independent journalists sounding the alarm, this country has also caught on, for the most part, to the threat DREs pose to our democracy. The dialog is occurring out in the open now (even Republican strategist Mike Murphy said yesterday on Meet the Press that the Democrats “want to beat George Bush again“) and the days of being labeled a tin-foil hat-covered conspiracist for even bringing up the topic are long gone.
Oh goody, just in time for the vote suppressors to move the goalpost as they try to stay one-step ahead of those trying to protect our precious right to vote. Forget DRE’s…where are your IDs?
Happy to report that in some instances, the shift to require photo ids to vote is not working and no one arguing against the voter ID laws being introduced in state legislatures or being upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court are being called “crazy.” Instead, the push-back against these laws that disenfranchise citizens is working even in conservative places like Tulsa, OK, where a local news service reports that, “House Republicans expressed disappointment over the death of legislation yesterday that would have required identification to vote.” Said partisan hack Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa, “Apparently the Senate Democrats who worked to block this legislation don’t care about the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court or eliminating voter fraud in our state.”
What Ms. Tibbs neglects to mention is that this type of ID-based fraud is almost non-existent. Take Texas’ Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott who “declared war on what he claimed was rampant vote fraud in Texas” and “set up a special vote fraud unit and got a $1.4 million grant from the feds for the work.” That was in 2006. In 2008, the Dallas Morning News reports on the results of his efforts - 26 cases, all involving Democrats, and almost all involving minorities. TPM continues:
Of the 26, 8 appear to have been genuine cases of fraud, two of which were cases of people actually casting fraudulent ballots, as opposed to bogus registrations.
The remaining 18 cases all involved eligible voters casting legitimate mail-in ballots. The ‘fraud’ was that others collected the ballots and deposited them in mailboxes without putting their own name and address on the envelope in which the mail-in ballot was sent. These latter instances were almost all cases involving elderly or disabled voters who could not easily mail their own mail-in ballots. In other words, the great majority of the cases in his meager haul were technical violations that non-politicized prosecutor’s offices most likely never would have pursued.
And let’s not forget Missouri, whose state legislature just adjourned for the year without even bringing up a law that would have required proof of citizenship, would have prevented up to 240,000 Missourians from voting, and would have taken effect before the November election. According to Missourians for Fair Elections, pressure included over over 4,200 calls to lawmakers against the legislation.
Nobody likes it when old people and nuns are disenfranchised. And don’t you dare even go there with old nuns…
May 19th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Well said Mary! I love your “moving the goalposts” analogy. I applaud Tennesee’s decision to move away from DREs–congrats on your role in that. I’d love you to elaborate on the statement “this country has caught on, for the most part” to the threat of DREs. I feel that the average citizen has very little insight into the problems, and governments at all levels are so slow to act. But you have been traveling the country and living with this is a different way than I…
We loved having David on our radio show on 5/14/08.
Thanks! Lori, program coordinator internet/radio show “Voice of the Voters!”
May 19th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Hi Lori! You are so right about the slowness of government. Sheesh it’s frustrating! In light of all the election integrity issues we face as a country, I may have overstated the average citizen’s awareness. But the “glass is half-full” part of me sees the huge difference between having the discussion about DRE’s in 2004 and having it now as huge progress. That’s not to say that there aren’t always more people to convince and difference issues to be vigilant about. The election integrity fun never stops!
May 19th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
thanks mary! Just in time for the panel in Radford. I needed something up to date on “voter fraud.” We plan to show UnCounted either Fri or Sat night.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Your welcome, Marj! I get a lot of these updates from Mark Crispin Miller’s News From Underground email newsletter, Jon Gideon’s Daily Voting News, BradBlog, and ElectionLegislation.org’s email updates. Good resources all…but what am I missing?
Let me know if you need anything for the screening!