Provisional voting -- succor or sucker?

[december]

Missouri has adopted a new procedure to let people vote provisionally if their voting status cannot be easily determined. Their status can be carefully checked later. Their vote will count only if they're eligible. This looks like a good way to handle SNAFUs.

OTOH there is a concern that this practice may open the door to chicanery (http://www.washtimes.com/national/inpolitics.htm). Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican, fears that Democrats will use his state's new provisional-voting procedure to flood the system with fraudulent votes...

Mr. Bond told the newspaper that no more than 1,000 provisional votes should be cast legitimately in Missouri on Nov. 5. If election officials' predictions of 50,000 or more turn out to be true, that would be evidence of possible vote fraud by the Democrats, Mr. Bond said.

Election officials expect the state's Democratic-leaning urban areas, especially St. Louis, to produce most of the provisional votes...So, will provisional voting help or harm the election process?

[hansel]

What's up with all the Democrat slagging? Is it impossible for Republicans to somehow abuse the system?

[december]

Originally posted by hansel
What's up with all the Democrat slagging? Is it impossible for Republicans to somehow abuse the system? Do you have any cites about Republican abuse?

[Gadarene]

Do you have any cites about Democrat abuse, and not simply Republican scaremongering thereof?

[hansel]

I'm talking about Bond, a Republican senator, essentially saying "if we use this system, the Democrats will abuse it," implying that Republicans won't. Why? Because Democrats are all power-hungry cheaters, while Republicans are noble, upstanding citizens who would never do anything to take advantage of the electoral system for their own gain?

Any electoral system can be abused. I don't see any partisan issue here that justifies singling out the Democrats as a source of abuse. Your cite looks like grandstanding by a Republican.

[JDM]

Originally posted by hansel
What's up with all the Democrat slagging? Is it impossible for Republicans to somehow abuse the system?

The GOPers are trying to preempt discussion of their tactics in Florida, where tens of thousands of black vaters were illegally purged from the voting registration rolls and kept from voting. Interestingly enough, this has not been rectified yet- they are still off the rolls, and action will not be taken until after the upcoming election. The story is detailed in Greg Palast's book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and there is an overview here. (http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=122&row=1) You can find more information online- it is an incredibly disgusting story, a real "high-tech lynching" for which Jeb Bush bears full responsibility. He should be in prison. The story puts a very different light on GWB's saying that Jeb had "promised that he would deliver Florida." Here (http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/06/05/fla.civilrights.vote/) is another article.

As to the OP, I have wondered about this to solve the Florida problem, but I think that provisional voting would create the potential for problems as well, not the least being a very increased degree of messiness in an election. OTOH if a voter's eligibility has been illegally terminated, that voter must be able to have it restored immediately.

I think that the first step must be to tighten rules on scrubbing voter registration, and the notification of people whose registration has been terminated. What happened in Florida simply cannot be allowed to recur.

I think that provisional voting should not be the normal procedure in elections, but it should be available by court order if there is evidence of improper voter purging, or similar crimes. Its use should be on a one time basis, and the state involved should then be compelled to rectify the problem that led to its use.

The final answer must be to ensure that no legally eligible citizen who wishes to vote is not kept from doing so. JDM

[december]

Originally posted by Gadarene
Do you have any cites about Democrat abuse, and not simply Republican scaremongering thereof? No. AFAIK provisional voting has not be tried before. So, all we can do is make intelligent judements as to how well it will work.

My guess is that it will do more harm than good. By and large the old-fashioned sysem, where voters registered so many days before the election, worked fine. This new system may permit new methods to finagle.

E.g., what sort of security is there to control for back-dated registration documents? Probably none, because that wouldn't have been a concern under the prior system. So, a party could get a bunch of non-registered people to vote for their slate. Afterwards, they might be able to create phony, back-dated registrations for these people.

[JDM]

Originally posted by JDM


The final answer must be to ensure that no legally eligible citizen who wishes to vote is not kept from doing so. JDM

By which I mean, of course, "The final answer must be to ensure that no legally eligible citizen who wishes to vote is kept from doing so. JDM

[Gadarene]

My guess is that it will do more harm than good. By and large the old-fashioned sysem, where voters registered so many days before the election, worked fine. This new system may permit new methods to finagle.

All of which is fine and fair. Do you agree with Senator Bond that Democrats are more likely to behave fraudulently in this regard than Republicans? If so, what evidence do you have that this is the case?

That is, would you have begun this thread if the "chicanery" warned about in the Washington Times article was alleged to be *snicker* party-neutral?

[december]

Originally posted by Gadarene
That is, would you have begun this thread if the "chicanery" warned about in the Washington Times article was alleged to be *snicker* party-neutral? If you read the cite, you'll note that the Washington Times picked the story up from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a Democratic newspaper. *snicker*

[litost]

december's two-dimensional glasses: Democrats or us.

[Gadarene]

If you read the cite, you'll note that the Washington Times picked the story up from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a Democratic newspaper. *snicker*

Which, in fact, didn't answer my questions at all. Color me agog.

[december]

I will answer your questions, gadarene. although they are hijacks, In return I would ask you to respond to the OP.Originally posted by Gadarene Do you agree with Senator Bond that Democrats are more likely to behave fraudulently in this regard than Republicans?Yes. If so, what evidence do you have that this is the case?In the last couple of years, there seems to have been more Democratic voting fraud than Republican. Several instances of Democratic fraud that come to mind.
-- One was the re-opening of St. Louis polls in 2000, by order of a "fixed" judge. This enabled many people to cast votes after Republican poll-watchers had left.

-- Another case is the 400 or so fraudulent registrations from an Indian reservation in South Dakota.

-- Yet another from 2000 was Hillary Clinton's 99+% of the vote from a normally conservative Hassidic community, followed by a Clinton pardon of a couple of their crooked leaders.That is, would you have begun this thread if the "chicanery" warned about in the...article was... party-neutral? Possibly yes. Provisional voting is an interesting innovation, and well worth debating.

Of course, you are right in implying that I skew my threads to pro-Republican. Plenty of other posters skew their threads the other way. Overall, the Board seems to have a good selection of topics IMHO.

[Tejota]

-- One was the re-opening of St. Louis polls in 2000, by order of a "fixed" judge. This enabled many people to cast votes after Republican poll-watchers had left.

Actually. it was Republican's that behaved badly in this case. The problem was that the polling places didn't have enough ballots or machines to handle the demand. People were waiting more than 2 hours to get to a machine.

So a Judge (an honest, one, despite your slander) Ordered that the polls stay open late so that they could handle the backlock. The theory is that people who show up the the polls on time should be allowed to vote, regardless of how long the line is.

Republicans went to another Judge and got the polls shut in the face of people who were trying to vote honestly.

You can defend the anti-voter behavior of the Republicans if you like, december. But don't lie about what really happened. Republicans used the law to deny legal voters acting in good faith the right to vote. Doesn't matter how you slice it, that's wrong.


-- Another case is the 400 or so fraudulent registrations from an Indian reservation in South Dakota.

Another lie. 400 ballots were alleged to be fraudulent by republican's. They were examined and two of them were invalid, possibly fraudulent, possibly simple mistakes.

I don't doubt that your third example is bogus as well, but I don't know anything specific about it, and you've provided no cite to check.

So, while it is indeterminate whether or not democrats or republicans cheat more. It's quite clear that Republicans lie about it more...

[december]

Originally posted by Tejota Another lie. 400 ballots were alleged to be fraudulent by republican's. They were examined and two of them were invalid, possibly fraudulent, possibly simple mistakes.You're behind the times, Tejota. There was a point in time when only two bad ballots had been confirmed, but that was early in the checking process. From yesterday's South Dakota paper (http://www.southdakotaelections.com/Story.cfm?Type=Election&ID=1124)15 false absentee ballot applications found
By David Kranz & Corrine Olson
Argus Leader published: 10/25/2002
Voter-fraud questions mount

A voter-fraud investigation has turned up 15 bogus absentee ballot applications in South Dakota so far, and more may be coming, Attorney General Mark Barnett said late Thursday.

State and federal agents targeted 25 South Dakota counties after allegations of misconduct surfaced earlier this month, Barnett said.

In each case, signatures were forged on the applications that a person uses to obtain a ballot, he said.

All the alleged instances of ballot fraud discovered so far are tied to Becky Red Earth-Villeda, Barnett said. Red Earth-Villeda - also known by her Dakota name, Maka Duta - was an independent contractor in the Democratic Party's efforts to increase Native American participation in the election.

Investigators believe Red Earth-Villeda, whose contract was terminated by the Democratic Party, may be linked to as many as 1,750 absentee ballot applications in the state, Barnett said.

"I have no idea how many of those might be false," he said. (emphasis added)