I saw Julian Bond of the NAACP on MSNBC last night, and he made reference to the use of pencils at polling places, while he was discussing voting irregularities. He said it’s not supposed to be done, as pencils can smudge.
Now, I just spent a goodly amount of time sifting through Michigan election law, and it does make reference to pencils specifically, as in, they will be provided for use. We don’t use them for the actual vote, just for when we fill out the little slip that says you were there to vote (can’t remember what it’s called right off the top of my head), or, I assume, to write in a candidate.
So what’s up with this? Pencils at the polling places are quite obviously legal in Michigan–are they illegal in other places? Could smudged pencil really be called a “voting irregularity”?
Oh, he also mentioned something about one county having a sherriff’s deputy stopping African-American men outside the polling place and checking their ID’s. Apparently several were turned away because they were supposedly convicted felons. Now, I don’t know enough about election law to know whether or not a convicted felon has the right to vote once he or she has served their time, but stopping all the African-American males seems very, very wrong. Anyone else know anything more about this?
Each state can determine whether pencils are allowed when voting. So what happened in Michigan does not necessarily have to be the rule in Florida or whatever.
As far as detaining people just in case they’re felons, that’s a simple case of harassment. If they’re felons, they wouldn’t be registered and that would be discovered when the go to sign in. If this did happen, it’s a serious issue.
You may be interested that Bond was put into contention for the Vice Presidential nomination in 1968 (I think). I don’t recall if he actually was named on the floor of the convention or not.
He withdrew because he wasn’t 30 years old at the time, and was thus ineligible.
I don’t know how he stated it, but your description is of an illegal activity. If it happened like you describe it, I am surprised that he did not mention that the cops were arrested, or did HE forget to report it to the police.
Perhaps he was just describing methods that were used in the 60’s to harass voters.
(e) The board of election commissioners of each county shall provide, at the expense of the county, for each state, district or county election in said county, as many black or blue lead pencils as may be necessary to supply each election precinct with at least 3 of such pencils for each booth erected in such precinct. The pencils provided for each precinct shall be enclosed with the official ballots when delivered to the city or township clerk as by law provided. The inspectors of election shall attach such pencils with strings, or in other suitable manner, to the shelf of the booth. The board of election commissioners of each county shall issue a warrant in payment for said pencils, and said warrant shall be paid by the county treasurer out of the general fund of the county.
Starfish: He did mention the state & county, but for the life of me, I cannot remember what he said. He was not describing methods from the '60’s, though–that’s why it caught my attention. He was listing it amongst current voting irregularities, along with the pencil thing. I’ll see if I can find something somewhere.
I have a great deal of respect for Julian Bond, and I was quite surprised at these things. The pencil issue caught my attention because, well, where I vote, we’ve always used pencils, and I wondered if it really was a problem. The ID checking thing was just plain scary. I live in a city that’s over 60% African-American (Flint, MI, the first stop in the “Flint-to-Florida Corridor” that the pundits have been mentioning recently), and I cannot imagine what would happen if deputies did something like that here.
Under Virginia law a convicted felon can no longer vote. Voting rights may be reinstated by an act of the Governor. When doing a neighborhood study in graduate school I examined the amount of voter participation as a measure of civic participation. The particular neighborhood had a very low turnout in ever election. I asked the Registrar why she thought that might be and she said, very succinctly, “Because nearly all of the residents have been convicted of a felony.”
I know that this isn’t the case in every state, as there was recently a story on Morning Edition about this very issue and an inmate who is trying to gain the right for other incarcerated people in his state the ability to use right-in-ballots was interviewed. He made it a point of saying that he would be able to vote once he got out.
I don’t know what the laws are in other states, but here in Texas, we use pencils to mark our ballots, so there must not be a federal, nationwide ban on the use of pencils in voting.