www.wheresthepaper.org
Committee on Governmental
Operations, New York City Council
November 25, 2008
Thank
you for the opportunity to comment on these three resolutions. I oppose all
three because they introduce new, difficult-to-secure opportunities for fraud,
as well as unnecessary complexity in the conduct of elections. I urge you to
reject these three resolutions. Please do NOT recommend them for passage by the
City Council.
Low
voter participation in our nation will not be addressed by making voting more
“convenient.” Many people have gone to jail or died in the struggle to obtain
or exercise their right to vote. When something is valuable, people will act to
secure it for themselves.
Democracy
requires an engaged, informed citizenry. Our citizens are neither engaged in
civic life nor well informed. Our elections are overly influenced by money,
party-control of candidates, gerrymandering, and a corrupt media that is
controlled by a small number of owners. Efforts to get citizens to vote by
making it “more convenient” rather than by seeking ways to inform and engage
citizens, only cheapens our democracy even further.
1.
Wrong-doers
could go online and register real or non-existing people.
2.
There
would be no original signature on the electronic transmission to safeguard
existing registrations from false changes by others
3.
There
would be no original signature on file to be used to verify the voter's
identity on election day.
In Washington state, for example, part of the process consists of entering your driver's license number or a Washington “state ID number,” and then authorizing the state to use your signature on your license or ID for your voter registration. This means that a wrong-doer could go online and enter someone's driver's license number, and change their address or party affiliation. It also means that if a wrong-doer comes into possession of someone's drivers license and learns to sign their signature, the wrong-doer can vote as that person.
4.
In
NY State voters prove their identity on election day in the poll site by
signing the printed poll book under their printed signature that was obtained
from their paper registration form. (I believe the terminology is "NY is
an affidavit state" because by signing the poll book the voter legally
affirms that he/she is that person.) If the signature is to be eliminated, are
we to become an ID state where every voter needs a photo ID to prove their
identity? This would tend to disenfranchise poor, elderly, and city voters who
do not have a driver's license or other photo ID.
Res 1252 advocates same-day
registration.
1.
Same-day
registration opens the door to the use of electronic poll books which are
networked to the state voter registration list, to ensure that the same person
does not go to multiple poll sites, and register and vote multiple times. This
introduces vast possibilities for errors and fraud.
a.
Such
a network would create new opportunities for hackers or many local insiders to
add false new registrations and thereby enable persons to vote multiple times
by using multiple identities, or to change or delete existing registrations and
thereby disenfranchise many voters.
b.
Electronic
poll books would require additional poll workers who are computer literate to
handle registrations, or else the lines of registered voters would be greatly
slowed down each time a new registrant was served
2.
At
this time of budget deficits and cutbacks of essential services, if there is
extra money in the budget it should be spent on essential services, not the
cost of extra poll workers to enable persons to vote on the spur of the moment
on election day, or electronic poll books.
3.
Our
county boards of elections should be encouraged to place registration tables in
heavy-traffic locations on special registration days, rather than in
low-traffic locations. This would not create additional costs and would give
people a chance to register in advance of election day.
4.
Most
of the places with same-day registration are smaller, less-populated states.
The feasibility of same-day registration there does not mean it would be
feasible in NY.
5.
Same-day
registration introduces the opportunity for members of one party to change their
registration on election day in order to vote in primaries of another party.
6.
Civic
participation should be encouraged at all times, not just on one day (election
day). We offer high school graduates voter registration forms, and register
voters at the Department of Motor Vehicles and other public agencies.
The
draft resolution says that these practices relieve election administrators of
some burdens, but I don't believe that this is true. The main effect is to
complicate election administration, and create many batches of ballots and
tallies which need to be separately managed if security it to be maintained.
Right
now we still have our mechanical lever machines, for which record-keeping is simple
to manage. Once we convert to the more-difficult-to-manage electronic machines,
meaning optical scanners, we would need separate envelops for each day's
ballots, along with the tally printouts for each day's voting. The state
requirement of auditing 3% of the machines will become more complex, while at
the same time the possibilities for fraud become greater.
1.
In
some races the candidates are not finally known until resolution of litigation
which occurs as late as the day before the election.
2.
There
would be increased cost of poll workers, staff, and voting locations for
additional days.
3.
There
would be difficulty securing the voting materials over several days or weeks in
a public location.
4.
There
would be difficulty for candidates to provide poll site observers for several
days or weeks in the last days of their campaigns, when all their volunteers
are campaigning.
5.
In
other jurisdictions early voting seems to work as follows:
a.
The
jurisdiction acquires electronic voting equipment and later discovers that it
costs more to maintain and use than the budget allows, and that voters require
more time than estimated so that there are long lines of voters waiting.
b.
The
jurisdiction establishes early voting to reduce the number of voters who need
to use the equipment on election day. But this means that different new
procedures, differently-trained poll workers, and different new equipment is
needed, because early voters can go to a limited number of early voting sites
in their county and get the correct ballot for wherever they live in the
county.
c.
The
security of equipment and election materials is poor to non-existent during
early voting.
d.
Insiders
can use early voting tallies to determine how many votes need to be switched or
blanked out to enhance the final tallies for their candidates.
e.
in
some jurisdictions that use touchscreen "DRE" electronic voting
systems instead of paper ballots and optical scanners, early voters do not have
a secret ballot, because to ensure that voters don't vote multiple times their
ballot is electronically tagged with their identity.
The
greatest resources for security, observation, and use of proper protocols for
securing the vote and preventing fraud occurs on election day, and that is when
people should vote.
1.
coercion and vote-selling are facilitated by absentee voting.
2.
There are many opportunities for absentee ballots to "get lost" or be
replaced or altered on their way to the Board of Elections.
In conclusion, I urge
you to evaluate all aspects of election administration by using the criteria of
simplicity, understandability, ability of observers to witness and evaluate the
honesty of all procedures, and lowest possible use of technology.
Thank you for the
opportunity to list these problems. Please do NOT recommend these resolutions
for passage by the City Council.
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