What are the lessons of Election 2000? The official report

Great Debates
41

Oh don’t worry, Elvis they could always vote by absentee ballot {rimshot}

(BTW, it did my little heart good to see folks rally 'round about the concept that felons should be able to regain the right to vote)

Tedster some reasons for the lack of photo id - Not everyone has photo id. I know it may seem strange to you, but folks on the bottom rung often have little positive proof of identity. If you’re not cashing checks, renting videos, using a credit card, why would you need one? It’s tough to have an ID mailed to you if you’re homeless, too.

And, in any event, just 'cause my wallet got stolen yesterday or I left my ID in the drive up tube at the bank shouldn’t mean I should be denied my right to vote.

The right to vote is considered by many to be damn near sacred, and to deny that right 'cause of computer error or happenstance, bad luck or what have you, is wrong, IMHO.

The issue about letting some one cast a ballot when their right to vote was being disputed would have helped a substantial number of folks in FL this year (and I’m sure it happens from time to time anywhere). Computers make mistakes, people make mistakes, etc. Some of the folks who complained in FL this year had gone to the poll with their registration card, and then found out that they weren’t on the rolls. Later it was discovered that some had been erroneously pulled 'cause of the felony question, in other cases their polling site had moved, etc. They were disenfranchised 'cause of some one else’s mistake. that’s not ok, right? or would you say ‘tough noogies’ to that if it happened to you?

42

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by minty green *
**

**
Sounds logical enough to me, and with slightly over 3 years to do it might get it accomplished in time for the 2004 election. Or do things only go slowly at the state level in NH?

Ok, but the ballots would have to look significantly different than regular ones(so it’s obvious to everyone if they’re of dubious validity,) and there’s an issue of having enough volunteers to check the voter’s status and to handle the valid ones and properly destroy the invalid ones.

Call me an optimist, but I think more people would vote if this were to happen. It’s only once every four years, so it’d be less disruptive than other national holidays.

Was the ballot considered difficult? I thought all the problems arose because some post offices overseas don’t use postmarks. Now, if they mandated something along the lines as accepting(or not) military ballots that don’t have postmarks, that’d be something more like a solution.

I’m going to sit on the fence on this one.

Unless they come up with a magic way to raise some voters’ IQs I don’t think this would help. You can’t force people to understand things, because some really do believe ignorance is bliss.

And this means…? Practice voting? In educational testing, that’s what benchmarking would be, so I’m wondering if this is the intent. If this is so, would everyone be expected to participate or what?

While I would love to see optical scanned votes be the standard, and punch card systems banished to dark closets never to be seen again, I’m not sure that this is practical. Where is the money to pay for this supposed to come from?

I’m not sure why this isn’t already the case. To be honest, I thought it was asine that some counties in FL were counting the ballots on which the instuctions had not been followed. Were these standards put into place, at least there wouldn’t be county to county disputs next election.

Hopefully the major networks will think about the embarassment to the country, which they contributed greatly to, over the last election and voluntarily submit to the restriction on time. I hold vain hopes probably…

Fine use of tax money…

What would these people actually do?

Depending on what the intent is, this could trample states rights.

While some of the ideas presented are pointless, at least there is some thought about trouble-shooting now, when there’s time to implement useful measures; I find that sort of refreshing.

43

Moving Veteran’s Day is a Bad Idea… My estimation of both Presidents Ford & Carter has gone down because of this kind of thing.

Letting people vote who are not on the rolls, and then determining the validity of the vote later seems a perfect recipe for more Florida style battles in the future. Seems to me, again, FOUR YEARS is quite long enough to ensure that everything is correct.

I heard Bruce Williams (syndicated talk show fellow) mention the fact that while a literacy test might not be exactly fair, a “civics test” might not be a bad idea. I’m inclined to agree. Of course, asking americans to show a degree of general competence in this day and age is pushing it. Ever watch Jay Leno go out on the streets and ask simple questions to folks? Supposed to be funny, but it’s pretty sad if you think about it.

44

:rolleyes:

Do you really think the producers of Leno’s show are about to bore the audience by showing tapes of all the people who got the answers correct?

45

Given that they can find so many people out there that stupid is bad enough. It’s pathetic.

46

If Jay Leno and a camera crew stuck a microphone in your face, would you give the correct answer, or say something funny to try to get on TV?

47

Um, what is the (existing) Federal Elections Commission for?

48

A couple of people have now mentioned that they think uniform, federal voting standards would violate states rights. Would you please explain what makes the conduct of federal elections a matter over which states have virtually unfettered discretion? And if it is a state’s right that Congress may not touch, how do you account for the plain language of Article I, section 5, which I quoted above?

Elvis: My understanding is that the FEC mostly deals with the conduct of campaigns. I’m unsure what role they play, if any, in how the elections themselves are carried out. But even if they don’t handle much of that stuff now, it makes a lot more sense to me to expand their role rather than create an additional agency whose duties are likely to overlap with the FEC anyway.

49

minty, what am I missing here, I thought states chose the president in whatever manner they saw fit? How wouldn’t setting federal standards violate that?

Of course, personally, I’m in favor of allowing everyone to vote period. Nothing you can do can disenfrachise a person. Ever. Well, with the slight exception of being dead, legally dead, or in a coma. Otherwise, vote away.

I’m also in favor of federal voting standards, but that’s only because I don’t want to hear people whining about stolen elections anymore. I can’t believe people still bring it up.

50

Forgot to mention the most important thing: for every registered voter who doesn’t vote, in counts as a (-1) vote to all candidates. A candidate can only become president if s/he both wins the relative majority AND over one-third of the total votes in the nation. Otherwise, the president in office stays in office indefinitely. If that president has served his/her eight years, then there will be yearly elections until such time as a new president is decided upon.

[sub]this is of course after modifying things so the constitution requires that there be a public vote[/sub]

51

MAn
Of course, what I meant to imply wasn’t that a no-vate subtracted from existing votes, just that a no-vote counted as a vote itself.

52

Please ignore the previous three posts. If you found them interesting, then join me here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=80370

Sorry for the intrusion. :frowning:

53

There’s one reform that I’m disappointed the committee didn’t recommend: breaking up VNS (Voter News Service), the cartel that the 4 networks, CNN, and several newspapers set up to conduct and analyze exit polls.

 First, on general principles, the VNS seems to clearly violate anti-trust laws, since the networks have set up a system to deliberately eliminate competition among themselves. (This made it extremely ironic to watch the different networks on election eve itself trying to tout how fast and accurate their particular results would be -- they're all using the same data and analysis to make their announcements!)

 Secondly, during the 2000 elections in particular, if each network had its own polling and analysis system, then: (1) they might have each independently avoided the mistakes the VNB made that had them call Florida for Gore, then too close to call, then for Bush, then back to too close to call; (2) even if some of the networks made incorrect projections, they'd be somewhat neutralized by the other networks. So, for instance, Gore presumably wouldn't have made his premature concession call if there had been one network calling Florida for Bush and four declaring the state too close to call, rather than all five marching in lock-step to declare Bush the winner.
54

Antitrust laws do not work that way. There’s nothing illegal about companies deciding to eliminate competition among themselves. Only if they try to eliminate all competition by monoplizing a market will they violate the Sherman Act. And there are many different news organizations and polling firms out there that still carry out their own election-day polling without the slightest interest from VNS.

Not to mention there’s this little thing called the First Amendment that makes regulating the news media decidedly unconstitutional.

55

In general, all elections are administered by local officials, be they for national elected posts [Congress, President], state [gov’nor, state representatives] and local [mayor, sheriff, tax collector, judge … supervisor of elections] based on their own standards. That’s why a vote in Jacksonville FL might have a 10% chance of getting thrown out while folks in Detroit have a less than 2% chance.

Why should someone living in Detroit have a better chance of getting their vote counted than me in Jacksonville FL? Seems to me that all registered voters [including exFelons living anywhere] have the right to expect a reasonably good chance for their vote being counted.

That’s why I like the National Commission’s report - the emphasis is on performance and one indicator is reducing error rates to less than 2%. I see the recommendations as designed to equalize the value of each registered voter’s ballot. The ability of an exfelon to register to vote is differs from state to state. Machines/technology are not standarized. The Motor/Voter Act is not uniformly enforced across all states. Provisional ballots are not in general use in all states. Overseas and absentee ballots are counted based on different standards. That’s ok for local elections only. It is not equal protection for you or I during state or national elections.

I do not like the Commission’s report because it did not address the issue of direct election of our president. We are still girdled by an antiquated system which places higher value on certain individual’s vote over others. I find this offensive to the average American citizen as well as the political spirit of American law. Unfortunately, I do understand that it would have been improbably, if not impossible, to get the Electoral College out of our lives thru this report.

Finally, I am sorry that there is nothing that we can effectively do to prevent the undemocratic and self serving behavior of the US Supreme Court in deciding Gore v Bush. They had no judicial [good use of the word?] reason or business to cut the Presidential election process short. IMHO, they staged a coup d’etat.

56

and, what makes you think that the issues don’t come up at the last minute? (not to mention voting occurs more frequently than every four years).

If I lost my purse the night before the election - I wouldn’t have ‘four years’ to get things straight. However, the folks at the polling place would have my sig on file and could compare it etc.

Many of the people who complained in FLorida **did not know ** until the day of the election, at the poll that somehow they’d been removed from the list. They, too didn’t have ‘four years’ to take care of it.

57

Hypothetical situation: You show up at the polling precinct ready to vote for your candidates and issues when the poll worker says “sorry, you’re not on the rolls. good bye.” Last November and before that, you could either go or request poll worker to call up the Supervisor of Elections office to verify if you are on the rolls and which precinct you should vote at. The precinct worker generally has a list of registered voters for that precinct and not others.
So you can wait up to three hours getting confirmation from the central office [the only link from you to them is a telephone bank of 12 lines all are very busy because there are lots of errors on the registered voter roll].

Let’s look at the reasons why you might not be on the list:

  1. you moved and forgot to get your registration changed: your fault.
  2. the precinct changed and you weren’t notified, not your fault
  3. bureaucratic error - the vital statistics dept decided that CS David died [that’s you] and not CD David who did die two years ago. SoE office purges the list with vital statistics death records; not your fault
  4. the supervisor of elections office used the No Vote List provided by the Secretary which was given out to an incompetent consulting firm from Texas which identified you as an ex mass murderer felon; you live in FL not Georgia so you couldn’t vote whether you were convicted-served time or not. not your fault
  5. you moved, changed your driver’s license address and they also promised to forward your new address to the SofE office as required by the spirit of the Motor/Voter law. Like many folks found out in Nov 2000, the DMV did not send on the information. Not your fault.
  6. 7pm is approaching and your poll worker is tired. He can’t find your name and the phoneline to the SofE has been jammed since 3pm. You show your registration card. Nope cant vote coz you are not on the rolls. Not your fault.

My point is that there are many reasons why a person has been denied their constitutional right to vote due to stupid and idiotic reasons [all of these are from the Nov 2000 experience plus a gazillion others]. The only way to get around this is to have provisional ballots which allow someone to vote with the Sof E verifying their voter registration the next day.

The verification process can be simplified by having complete lists of all registered voters in the county at each precinct. You will need computer and computer literate poll worker. Even then, you need to have a failsafe method to allow someone to “override” stupid mistakes ie: your name isn’t even on the rolls even tho you have done everything that you need to do to be registered. You can use a modum to connect to the SofE main computer to look thru the rolls once again. But, assuming that you hold true that a citizen’s right to vote is key to a democracy, there must be a final catch all others mechanism which is the provisional ballot.

58

The Electoral College a very important part of a number of checks and balances regarding election of the President. It’s not going away, since small population states would be cutting their own throat by voting against the EC, it would require majority vote in both houses to change.

Oh, I’m assuming the Senate needs to go away as well, right?

Seriously, I can’t imagine any rational person wants to do away with the Electoral College.

The first mistake is thinking we are a direct democracy.

Convicted felons (Call them “ex” if you so desire) have no business voting, I agree that needs to be standardized across the board.

In any case, in any election there are bound to be errors, and 95+ per cent accuracy is actually outstanding when you think about it. Bring back literacy tests, I say.

59

odd that Tedster ignores two different people challenging him on the provisional ballot item with scenarios and reasons why it’s a good idea.

You stated that felons/exfelons shouldn’t be able to vote. Why not? You do understand, don’t you, that some people did something stupid when they were young, and went on to lead perfectly straight lives in the meantime, don’t you? You do realize, don’t you, that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mrs. Bush all did things in their ‘younger days’ (remembering that Mr. Bush was what, 30 or so, as was Cheney) that in many jurisdictions are could be or would have been charged as felonies, right? So what makes it different that for example, that Mr. Bush did his drunk driving when it wasn’t yet a felony in that jurisdiction? It’s the same action that you find to be sufficient for permanent disenfranchisement for others.

So, someone could have had a felony from years ago, been a tax paying citizen in the meantime and as far as you’re concerned should never be able to vote again? (Tim Allen you know, is a convicted felon for example)

60

You must have a very limited imagination, huh?

Yeah, beat the stuffing out of that strawman! Woo hoo!

So much for the conservative “state’s rights” argument, eh?

Actually, a 5% error rate is hideously, unexcusably high. Would you accept a 5% error rate from your bank? Or an employee? Then why should we accept it from our voting equipment?