http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050524/registering_dissent.php
Registering
Dissent
Steve Carbo
May 24, 2005
Carbo is the
director of the Democracy Program at Demos, a national, nonpartisan public
policy organization based in New York.
Election
2004 was supposed to be different. But as many Ohio residents witnessed last
November, things haven’t quite gone according to plan. Voters continue to be
frustrated by the shoddy and inept administration of elections. Problems with
voter registration topped the list of complaints received by the massive
election protection campaigns mounted last year by a consortium of voting
rights organizations.
In the last
five years, millions of individuals—in the United States and around the
world—have witnessed serious problems with American elections. In state after
state, voters showed up at the polls only to find that their names had been
left off the voter registration list. Some had submitted voter registration
applications that were never processed in time for the election. Many others
who had voted in the past were inexplicably purged from the rolls. Then there
were the widespread reports of problem after problem with machine breakdowns,
ballot shortages, too few poll workers, ballots ending up in the trash, and the
list goes on and on. Something is very wrong with our democratic process
So now,
states across the country are racing to meet a January 1 deadline for reforming
our election systems—as they should be. The danger is that many may squander
this once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Congress has
tried to remedy some of the lingering problems that bubbled to the surface, and
into the public view, following the 2000 election. They proposed several
remedies over the past few years; prominent among them was the computerized,
statewide voter registration list that was a key provision of the Help America
Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). Under HAVA, as of Jan. 1, 2006, each state is required
to have in place a fully functional electronic voter registry that would link
together each local election board and be able to cross-check voter data with
information kept by the Social Security Administration, state departments of
motor vehicles and public health, and other agencies. Voters would get
up-to-date technology that would avoid the human and systems errors that omit
or erase the names of those eligible to cast a ballot, while election officials
could more easily flag the names of ineligible or deceased individuals.
The linchpin
in the transition to these computerized voter registration lists is the
Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Created by Congress in 2003, the EAC
would advise states on how to implement HAVA’s new federal voting requirements
and satisfy voters’ expectations of smooth and accurate election administration.
The EAC’s draft guidance to the states on their development of computerized,
statewide voter registration lists, was published in the Federal Register on
April 12, 2005. The public is invited to comment on the proposal by 5 pm EST
tomorrow, May 25, after which final recommendations will be drafted and
published in time for states to meet the January 1, 2006 deadline.
Never was
there so much to say about so little. The draft “guidance” is most notable for
providing little-to-no real advice on how states should go about developing
complex new computer systems that can finally fix our broken voter registries.
In fact, the core of the EAC document consists of a mere six paragraphs, and
does little more than reiterate the very vagaries of HAVA that is was meant to
clarify.
It is time
for Americans to act now and let the EAC know that well-designed computerized,
statewide voter registries are our best hope for accurate voter rolls that will
allow eligible voters to cast a ballot that will be counted. With strong
leadership and guidance from the EAC, states can build databases with basic
voter-protection features such as these:
* Strong safeguards against erroneous
purging or modification of voter records;
* Access to information from state and
federal databases to supplement and correct voter registration information, and
help eligible voters stay on the rolls;
* Real-time updates;
* User-friendly capability that allows
voters to check their registration status, polling location, and other relevant
information online before Election Day;
* Expansion of registration and voting
opportunities by connecting social service agencies and disability services
offices to election agencies;
* Access by election officials at each
polling place on Election Day, thereby both safeguarding the integrity of
election results and facilitating adoption of Election Day Registration; and
* Tough for security measures that prevent
unauthorized access to the database, require tracking of all transactions, and
preserve the privacy of confidential voter information, such as Social Security
numbers.
Thousands
more voters will find themselves kicked off the rolls if some glaring systems
errors are not compensated for at the outset. Chief among them are the
limitations and inaccuracies embedded in the records of the Social Security
Administration (SSA).
The SSA
maintains a vast source of information on tens of millions of American citizens
and residents and is a key link in the chain of state and federal databases
that will be referenced to verify a voter’s eligibility. Come January,
elections officials will begin cross-referencing the information a voter
provides on her voter registration application against SSA records. Where the
data doesn’t match, applicants will need to substantiate their eligibility
through some other means.
But the SSA
database is seriously flawed. Pete Monaghan, Director of Information Exchange
and Computer Matching of the Social Security Administration, admitted at a
February 2004 national conference of secretaries of state that a voter
registrants’ name, date of birth or other identifying information may not match
data in social security records in as high as 10 percent of instances. The SSA
database has more errors in the instance of “foreign” and hyphenated names.
It’s not hard to imagine mismatches. How many Americans notify Social Security
when they marry and adopt their spouse’s name?
Any then
there’s human error. Without strong auditing requirements, data entry mistakes
can easily work to keep eligible voters off the rolls. The danger was
highlighted in New York City last September. At the time, the New York City
Board of Elections forwarded a file of 15,000 voter registration records and
driver’s license numbers to the state department of motor vehicles, to be
cross-checked against the DMV database. Almost 3,000 bounced back. Information
provided on these voter registration forms appeared as inaccurate or false.
Fortunately, a fair-minded elections commission insisted that staff at the city
office double-check their work. That audit revealed that 99.7 percent of the
mismatches were traceable to typing errors by election workers inputting voter
registration data. Had the city board of elections rejected those voter
registrations when they didn’t match DMV files, close to 20 percent of this
batch of new registrants would have been disfranchised. That is precisely the kind of problem that
HAVA was intended to remedy.
Regrettably,
many states seem prepared to use the new computerized databases to keep voters
off the rolls. At last count, about 20 states reported that they would reject
the registration application of a would-be voter in instances where a social
security or driver’s license number could not be matched against information in
a motor vehicle or social security database. In contrast, other states plan to
still register such persons, and take further action to verify eligibility, so
that no rightful voter will lose the ability to cast their ballot. Such is the
patchwork of interpretations and contradictions that define our election
administration—voters’ rights are compromised based on state lines and partisan
views of our federal guidelines.
Voters
should expect strong, far-sighted leadership from the EAC. They need to show
states the way to fix the voter registration problems and other flaws that
taint elections year after year. Pick up the phone, or send an email or fax and
tell them just that.
Contact
Juliet Thompson, General Counsel to the Election Assistance Commission, at
(202) 566-3100, (202) 566-1392 (fax), or guidance@eac.gov. An electronic copy
of the draft guidance can be found on the EAC’s website at http://www.eac.gov.
-----------------------------------
Demos Action
Alert of 5/23/05
ACTION
NEEDED
Use the
message below to send an email or fax today to the EAC's General Counsel,
Juliet Thompson, via email at guidance@eac.govmail or via fax at 202-566-1392.
The deadline
for comments is 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 25, 2005.
THE MESSAGE
Urge the EAC
to amend the draft guidance in order to:
1. Provide voter-protective standards on
statewide databases. Voter registration applications should never be rejected
simply because information provided on registration forms did not match
information contained in state or federal records.
2. Encourage states to use information
from state and federal databases to supplement and correct voter registration
information, and help eligible voters stay on the rolls.
3. Propose strong safeguards against
erroneous purging or modification of voter records.
4. Press for security measures that
prevent unauthorized access to the database, require tracking of all
transactions, and preserve the privacy of confidential voter information.
5. Ensure that states take steps toward
enabling all voter registration agencies – including motor vehicle, public
assistance, and disability agencies – to be electronically integrated with the
voter database. At a minimum, the database should facilitate the electronic
transmission of voter registration records from these agencies.
FAIR USE
NOTICE
This site
contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our
efforts to advance understanding of political, democracy, scientific, and
social justice issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For
more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you
wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that
go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.