With all the primaries going on at the moment, and with many Americans themselves not understanding the US electoral system, it is probably little surprise that the average Australian knows pretty much jack about it, despite extensive coverage here. So it was interesting to have an expert in the studio on ABC (Australia) radio the other night to talk about it in depth in a “for dummies” kind of way - and he’s Australian too, so he knew what analogies etc to use. He talked about a whole range of negative stuff like candidates sending out a huge motorcade to disrupt traffic in the evening peak hour to prevent after-workers from voting, if the candidate thinks that will help them. Also a few other things I forget now.
But there was one thing which astounded me, and which he didn’t expand upon, so I turn to you, fellow Dopers. He said that if you have the same name as a person with a criminal record in your county, you can’t vote. Period. Apparently, there was one particular instance where this disenfranchised a large number of black voters named Leroy Jackson (or something). Anyway, I was waiting for this guy to explain that people in this situation would have to go through a process of proving who they were, so they could vote. But he didn’t. He presented it as “you can’t vote, so tough noogies”.
My question is simple: is this for real or just an omission on this radio guy’s part?
Sounds like hogwash to me. Generally, a voter need only show up at the correct polling place, show a voter registration card, or in some cases just a valid ID, and is able to vote.
In many states, convicted felons cannot vote, even after serving their sentence. But that should not affect others with the same name, except that there have been cases where electoral rolls have had people taken off mistakenly. Of course, people taken off mistakenly can be put back on, but they may not be able to do it easily or in a timely fashion.
I hadn’t heard of that exactly, but a few years ago, the state of Florida sent out notices to people who were convicted felons telling them they couldn’t vote. However, they didn’t have all the current addresses, so would pick out names in the same area with the same name and send out the notice. Thus if Leroy Johnson the felon had a last known address in Miami, a perfectly innocent Leroy Johnson in the city might get a notice. There was not a lot of quality control in the addresses (nor did they care – it was a tactic to scare people away from the polls).
This is referring to Florida in the 2000 election. Greg Palast’s book " The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" has a lot of detail, but in essence Florida has a law saying convicted felons can’t vote, even after being freed. Legally this only applies to those convicted in Florida, but in 2000 they applied it to those convicted in other states too.
And yes, they combed through the electoral rolls and removed thousands of people, many of whom just happened to have the same - or even a similar - name to a felon. The state government was Republican, and these non-felons were overwhelmingly black and voted Democrat - draw your own conclusions.
But this was an exception, if the expert you mentioned said this is a universal rule in US elections he is wrong.
Sort of for real. Back in 2000 or so, the state of Florida hired Atlanta-based Choicepoint to purge their voter rolls; i.e. remove the names of people ineligible to vote because of death, felony conviction, moving out of the area, etc. Periodic purges of the voter rolls are fairly normal, and are done in many jurisdictions. Remember that in the USA, elections are handled on a local level – states & counties do all the work. Also, different states have different standards on how to treat felons – many states allow felons to vote once they’ve been released from jail, others require the felon to petition the court to have their voting rights restored, and some permanently prevent convicted felons from voting, period.
Choicepoint did a pretty shitty job of the purge, especially on the felon part. They removed people whose names were similar to those of convicted felons, on the theory that a felon might use an alias. Of course, this ended up removing lots of innocent people – I’ve seen reports that as many as 95% on the names on the purge list were there erroneously.
Worse yet, the state seemed to accept this list as authoritative; they took their time in setting up a process by which those placed on the list erroneously could get themselves removed. Once they set up the process, they then forgot to tell the public about it – even in the 2004 election, most of the people who were on the list erroneously had no idea of how to get off it.
It should be noted that the Governor of Florida at that time was Jeb Bush, the brother of the current President. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
I think the criminal record / same name thing is an exaggeration but certainly possible. It’s a combination of the two things that others have said. In some states, felons and ex-felons can’t vote and the address checking is bad. I hadn’t heard of the traffic trick. Maybe something sort of like that sort of happened some time and the story has grown.
I’m a Kiwi here in the US. I don’t know much about Australian elections (except for the compulsory voting thing) but I’m guessing that they’re not too much different to ours in New Zealand so I can probably relate to some of the differences that you would notice.
One big difference here is that even though its a federal election, voting is run by the local authorities, i.e, counties, cities or towns. That means different standards and facilities in different places. One thing that sticks in my mind from the Florida debacle in 2000 is the story of a black woman in a poor area who said that she showed up to vote but through no fault of her’s there was something wrong with her details on the register. The person at the polling place tried to call the central state election office on the phone but the line was constantly busy. They eventually gave up and she couldn’t vote. In the more affluent areas, they had computers online to the state database so they could easily check. I guess I’m naive but it just hadn’t occurred to me that voting wasn’t a uniform thing everywhere.
Most elections are on a Tuesday. I know weekends have less significance these days but it still seems to me that it would be more convenient for more people if voting was on a weekend.
I don’t know the rules in Australia but in New Zealand, no campaigning is allowed on election day, all billboards must be removed by midnight before the day, exit polling is not permitted and there is pretty much a political news blackout until the polls close other than general mention of the election and turnout observations etc. It’s time for the candidates to shut up and let the people have their say. Here in the US there’s what seems to me to be an uncivilized last minute begging for votes late into election day as the sun moves west across the timezones. Billboards become trash on the roadsides for months after the election.
Results and exit poll results are announced in the east before some people have voted in the west. Does Australia do that? I guess it’s easy in NZ with only one timezone.
I believe the district boundaries are often twisted into odd shapes to favor the party in power. From what I’ve heard on the news, both main parties are guilty of this.
It’s all simple first past the post voting here no preferential / runoff type voting like you have in Australia so the spoiler affect of a third candidate can be significant where a candidate can win even though his or her policies are supported by a minority of the people if there are two similar opponents.
>It should be noted that the Governor of Florida at that time was Jeb Bush, the brother of the current President. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
It might also be noted that the Secretary of State for the State of Florida, Kathryn Harris (sp?), with overall authority for conducting the state’s elections, was also a member of George Bush’s campaign staff.
I’ve heard so many stories of abuses, I’m inclined to think many are true. FWIW I know that in the area I live, Republican campaign signs stay on people’s lawns for months, but whenever I put up a Democratic campaign sign on my lawn it’s gone in a day or two. A local newspaper ran some photos of local Republican campaign workers pulling Democratic signs out of people’s yards during the 2000 campaign.
Nothing specific to add, but I want to point out The ReDistricting Game, an educational game about this very subject which I’ve seen linked to on a political blog.
I think it’s similar here. Campaigning stops, but the roadside litter stays for months.
There’s not actually much difference then in potential outcomes, though the route taken to get there varies. A third (and/or fourth, fifth etc) Australian candidate can direct their preferences to the guy who is coming second, effectively meaning they have helped take office away from the candidate who leads on the primary vote (even if he or she has over 50%).
First, you are not legally allowed to campaign on Election Day, so a big motorcade would not happen. Plus you’d need a parade permit for it, and the police would never give one where it would disrupt traffic.
Secondly, voting locations are scattered all over the city. I can’t see any one place where a big motorcade could disrupt traffic for everywhere in the city. Even if you could block the major routes out of downtown, that would be only temporary. And the polls stay open at least 3-4 hours after the usual departure time – it would be real hard to keep traffic disrupted all that time.
Thirdly, this would really annoy people. And annoying voters on election day is a bad idea. So annoying them with a big motorcade with your name plastered all over it would not be a good tactic.
I don’t know how much the network paid that ‘expert’, but it was too much!
Yeah, it is looking that way. He was some academic I’d never heard of, so who knows?
Another thing he said was that many Americans register with the party they don’t like so they can try to get a weaker delegate/candidate up. Is this widespread?
No. Most Americans are way too busy with mundane matters to bother to register to vote for the other party, or to vote in the “wrong” primary, etc. Some do, but the vast majority, no.
Crossover voting happens more frequently, but I personally believe that’s mostly the result of people attracted to the candidate of the opposite party, such as is happening here with Obama this year.
Just the “convicted felon” part- and please pardon my ignorance. If I have spent any time in the slammer does that make me a convicted felon? For instance for drink driving? Even though I may know more about politics than most idiots who do get to vote?
He may have been thinking of a possible situation in states with open primaries (that is, registered members of either party may vote). This year, since McCain looked to be locking up the Republican nomination pretty early, some registered Republican voters may have voted for whichever Democratic candidate they think has the least chance of beating McCain. I’d say that this is not a widespread thing, though, and I doubt many people have done that so far this election cycle.
Time in jail /= convicted felon. Whether or not you are a felon depends on the crime you have committed and the local jurisdiction’s classification of that crime. This Wikipedia page has a decent overview: Felony - Wikipedia
For the record, drink driving (or drunk driving, as it’s called here) isn’t necessarily a felony, unless someone has more than one DUI offense - and even then, it depends on the laws of the state in question.
Having a felony conviction is a Big Deal and can keep you from holding certain jobs and having certain privileges. Whether or not a convicted felon can vote is up to the individual states.
>Crossover voting happens more frequently, but I personally believe that’s mostly the result of people attracted to the candidate of the opposite party, such as is happening here with Obama this year.
In the recent Texas Democratic primary election, shortly after Rush Limbaugh asked his listeners who are Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton to damage Obama’s chances and lengthen the inter-Democratic fighting, over 100,000 Republicans voted for her, in what would have otherwise been an enormous surprise based on polls that show very few Texas Republicans say they would want her to be President. In fact, the number of Republican votes for Hillary in Texas was slightly greater than the vote margin by which she won the Texas vote, and so it was an important number.
I don’t have a text cite for this, but just watched an explanation of it on Chris Matthew’s television program “Hardball” last night.
