Commonweal Institute Blog

All who are hoping for continued Democratic control of Congress, and perhaps the presidency as well, in 2008 would do well to get serious about election insecurity, voter disenfranchisement, and the like now, while there's still time to make progress on fixing Anerica's broken election system. And of course this is true, too, for those who would just like to see honest elections in which those who want to vote are able to do so, and the votes of those who do vote are counted correctly.

According to top Republican strategist Karl Rove, speaking to Time magazine correspondent Mike Allen, their Nov 2006 loss was not extraordinary. The RNC is emphasizing how narrow the margins of victory were in quite a few races.

The Republican National Committee has been pointing out that a small shift in votes would have made a big difference. A shift of 77,611 votes would have given Republicans control of the House, according to Bush's political team. And a shift of 2,847 votes in Montana, or 7,217 votes in Virginia, or 41,537 votes in Missouri would have given a Republicans control of the Senate. In addition, the party has calculated that the winner received 51 percent or less in 35 contests, and that 23 races were decided by two percentage points or fewer, 18 races were decided by fewer than 5,000 votes, 15 races were decided by fewer than 4,000 votes, 10 races were decided by fewer than 3,000 votes, eight were decided by fewer than 2,000 votes and five races were decided by fewer than 1,000 votes.

The implication is that politically or financially motivated hackers and programmers; corrupt, lazy, or incompetent election officials; and sundry other malefactors will likely be able to make a significant difference yet again in 2008 unless we sort out our election mess very quickly.

Taking into account that it may take months to get federal legislation passed, that the primaries are only about a year away, and that it can take up to six months for an election jurisdiction to prepare ballots and set up the mechanics for an election, we have no time to waste.

Visitors to the Indonesian island of Bali are often surprised to see farmers, herders, children - virtually anyone and everyone, making professional quality art. When asked about this, Balinese are often puzzled by the question - in their world there are no professional artists, everyone has some talent and everyone uses it for his or her own joy. While some artists are clearly better than others, and some artwork reaches a "professional level" in a commercial sense, everyone has access and everyone creates the art that inspires them. Art has not been "professionalized" in Bali as in the West- it is still democratic. Like art, politics and media have also been professionalized in the West - made undemocratic through the exclusion of ordinary citizens.

It hardly seems possible. Our country has gone through four flawed national election cycles—2000, 2002, 2004, 2006—and still hasn’t managed to correct the systemic problems plaguing our election system. Is this a democracy, if one cannot have confidence that one’s vote will count? Why is this not a central issue for everyone who is actively involved in politics? Why don’t we hear more about it in the media?

Last week, Secretary of State Debra Bowen released a report on her "top-to-bottom review" of voting systems in use in California. No sooner had the report come out than Stephen Weir, President of the California Association of Clerks & Elections Officials (CACEO), other election officials, and voting system vendors all mounted a full-throated attack against the top-to-bottom report. What’s going on here?

Business Wire announced today that “DAN RATHER REPORTS” will present conclusive evidence of the failure of electronic voting machines used across the USA.

A 13-minute screener clip from this controversial episode highlights serious problems with Election Systems & Software (ES&S) machines that Rather traced back not only to a factory in the Philippines, but further back to manufacturing sources within the US.

The full one-hour program, Dan Rather Reports “The Trouble with Touch Screens”, will be broadcast on HDNet Tuesday, August 14 at 8:00 p.m. ET and at again at 11:00 p.m. ET (5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. PT).

We have just over a year until the 2008 general election. If you want your vote to count in November 2008, you'd better get informed and get active on the election integrity issue NOW.

Last week, Dan Rather hosted an expose on Touch Screen voting machines which covered some new ground and left one with some troubling questions. As Kate said, this was definitely a show to watch. The program covered two questions:

1. Why were there so many problems reported with the touch screen voting systems in Florida in 2004?
2. What caused the problems with the formally extremely reliable punch card systems in 2000 which led to the rapid adoption of the touch screen systems?

One of the more blatant problems for the 2006 election happened in Sarasota, Florida where Democratic candidate Christine Jennings lost the election by 369 votes when there some 18,000 votes that mysteriously did not get cast in the Congressional race. A number of voters came forward to report problems with these machines and specifically complained that their votes did not get registered for particular races.

What Dan Rather's investigation found was the ES&S touch screens that were used in the Florida election were extremely unreliable. And why were they unreliable? Because they were being manufactured under terrible conditions in a plant in Manila. A plant that was never disclosed by ES&S to the US Election Assistance Commission as was required by law.

As Dan Rather's program documents, ES&S commissioned Pivot International to manufacture the touch screens that were used in this precinct's election. Pivot prides itself on using offshore manufacturing to help companies like ES&S manufacture their systems. But when they setup their offshoring in Manila, they picked what appears to be a classic sweatshop. The Philippine news reported that the workers in the plant would be paid $4 per hour, but the workers were actually making $2.15 to $2.50 per day. And despite the problems they experienced with the systems, they were told they must turn out many systems even when the base screens failed.

I usually work at the polls on election day. When voters ask me why we don't require them to show ID to vote I tell them that Americans are not required to "carry papers." We, the People are in charge here and we do not have to prove to anyone that we are citizens.

Valdis Krebs and other social network analysts attribute the outcome of the Iowa Republican presidential caucus to use of social networks to develop support for winner Mike Huckabee, in contrast to greater reliance on conventional campaign techniques by his nearest competitor, Mitt Romney:

The common wisdom in politics is that money wins -- s/he with the biggest machine marches on. Since Huckabee couldn't outspend his rivals he had to out-think them. Huckabee chose to network his way to success. […]

He found local social networks of conservative Christians, gun owners, home schoolers and tax reformers. It was in these networks that Huckabee's message caught fire and spread to other networks that intersected with these. Soon Huckabee had large clusters of interconnected supporters, all reinforcing one another -- friends talking to friends.

Meanwhile, Romney and the others where following common campaign wisdom and setting up phone banks, canvasing neighborhoods and spending money in the mass media -- strangers talking to strangers.

Why does this work so well? Consider the social aspects of voting:

Messages to people alone on the phone, alone in the car [radio], alone on the couch [TV], alone with the newspaper, alone with the computer, don't STICK the same way messages conveyed in a group of trusted others. Alone, we hear the message, forget the message, make the promise, forget the promise. In a group, we hear the message, discuss the message, internalize the meassge, make the promise to the group, keep the promise to the group.

The close ties between the Republican Party and strong social-networked groups such as evangelical mega-churches and the National Rifle Association – even Chambers of Commerce – have been used for years to develop support for conservative candidates.

Progressives who want their preferred candidates to win this year would do well to learn and act on this lesson—social networks work in politics. We can work our own networks to increase the likelihood of voting as well as influence people to vote for progressive candidates.

How can we do this? Think of the social networks you yourself are in—at work, in recreation, at your church or temple, with your neighbors, even online. These are all places in which you can talk politics and encourage your friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances to vote. We should use every possible network connection we have to mobilize the forces we'll need to turn our country around.

Here's the number to call if you or someone you know thinks their voting rights have been violated, or if you think there may been fraud or equipment malfunction, or if you have questions about the voting process and your rights as a voter:

1-866-OUR-VOTE

That's the number of the Voter Assistance Hotline, which is run by the nonpartisan Election Protection Coalition led by People for the American Way, the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights under Law, and NAACP. You can also volunteer to help them, share videos you have made of the voting process, etc.

Spread the word!