Vol. 3 No. 6 (October 2004)

Uncommon Denominator

The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org

"A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government."
-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, No. 1

Election Notice: Protect the vote
Talking Points: Felons and the franchise
Wit and Wisdom: Dick Cheney's new campaign strategy
Dispatches: Canada's version of the Patriot Act
Quoted! George W. Bush on military sacrifice
Check It Out: Trick or treat!
Featured Article: On the Sinclair Broadcast Group
Happenings: New CI Fellow; "Votergate" screenings
Endorsements: Joan Blades
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor

ELECTION NOTICE

The upcoming Presidential election could be a mess. Charges are already flying about balloting procedures, electronic voting machines, voter intimidation, and electoral fraud - meaning that as the political campaign winds down, the legal campaign may just be winding up. And remember: This is not merely a question of technical administrative problems, but of the integrity of the democratic process itself.

The following websites tell you how to take action to help protect your own vote and the vote of others. This information comes from the Verified Voting Foundation.

VoteWatch (www.votewatch.us). Sign up to be a Mystery Voter (monitor your polling place on Election Day), a Vote Watcher (in swing states OH, NM), or a Closing Voter (check the tally in your precinct on Election Day). VoteWatch is a non-partisan, citizen-driven election monitoring organization.

Verified Voting (www.verifiedvoting.org/eirs). The Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) needs lots of volunteers with professional backgrounds - mainly those with computer expertise, but also trainers, form designers, and managers. Many other groups will be funneling reports of suspicious incidents into the central EIRS for investigation and possible lawsuits. At the main Verified Voting site (www.verifiedvoting.org), you can also take action on national legislation, get updates on what is happening nationally and in each state, and sign the Resolution on Electronic Voting. Verified Voting was founded by Stanford Professor David Dill, who is an advocate for voter-verifiable paper ballots and national standards for electronic voting machines.

Black Box Voting (www.blackboxvoting.org). Sign up here to be a member of BBV's Clean Up Crew. Beginning with the swing states, and then proceding to counties whose election officials have been secretive, Clean Up Crew members make formal requests of public records to force officials to disclose their electoral procedures, and take them to court if they refuse. Headed by e-voting activist Bev Harris, Black Box Voting has been a leader in documenting investigations, exposés, whistle-blower accounts, and many examples of flawed elections.

Election Protection Coalition (www.electionprotection.org). If you are concerned about civil rights issues and voting, Election Protection offers many volunteer opportunities such as Poll Monitoring (monitoring activities at the polls, assisting voters, and reporting evidence of problems for same-day legal assistance) and Bill of Rights Canvassing (informing citizens of their voting rights and encouraging participation on election day).

VotersUnite! (www.votersunite.org). Dispel the e-voting misinformation that abounds in America by joining with other activists throughout the nation by hand-deliver copies of "Myth Breakers for Election Officials" to ALL local election officials. Pass it on to legislators, the public, and the media as well. Let them know about serious bugs recently detected in election software, ballot programming concerns, potential ballot printing delays, the importance of backing up election data.

TALKING POINTS

Two hundred years ago, most Americans -- including unpropertied men, women (propertied or not), African Americans, soldiers, illiterates, and non-English-speakers -- could not vote. Today, there's just one group that, as a matter of law, is routinely barred from voting: felons.

Progress, certainly. But that remaining restriction -- "criminal disenfranchisement" -- is a doozy. About four million U.S. citizens are now barred from voting because of a criminal conviction. The majority of these people are not incarcerated - either because they're on probation or parole, or because they've completed all elements of their sentence. The United States not only executes more offenders than does any other democracy, but it is the only democracy that indefinitely bars so many criminals from voting.

The penalty falls heavily on African Americans. Nationwide, one in seven black men has indefinitely lost the right to vote because of a criminal conviction. In Florida and Alabama, the number is one in three. These figures reflect not just differential conviction rates but the racially biased history of criminal disenfranchisement. Like such devices as the poll tax, the grandfather clause, and the literacy test, criminal disenfranchisement law came to prominence after Reconstruction, when a number of Southern states tailored their voting laws to target crimes of which blacks were more likely to be convicted than whites. The Supreme Court has struck down the most egregious of these Jim Crow provisions, yet the racially unequal effects of felon disenfranchisement remain.

Fortunately, criminal disenfranchisement laws have faced increased scrutiny recently. State legislatures are considering reform bills; courts are hearing fresh challenges to the policy, and reform advocates convened three national conferences in 2002 alone. The crucial catalyst was a 1998 report by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch that reviewed the patchwork of state laws governing disenfranchisement and attacked arguments in favor of the policy. But it was the 2000 Presidential contest in Florida (where else?) that put a spotlight on state laws barring felons from the polls.

The spark was Florida's disastrous effort to attack fraud. The kindest version of the story is this: county clerks needed to clean up their voting rolls, eliminating those people who had died, moved, or been convicted of a felony. State officials hired a Georgia company called ChoicePoint to do the research. ChoicePoint claims that it generated a rough tally of all those who might have needed purging from the rolls, which county officials would then verify, voter by voter. But state and county officials say they thought they were getting the final list, and they promptly disqualified everyone on it. In the process, many living, local, law-abiding citizens lost the opportunity to vote - including a disproportionate number of blacks. Now, as the 2004 election approaches, it remains doubtful whether this fiasco has been cleared up, and whether people with a record who should be able to vote will be properly registered.

The most common argument in favor of disenfranchising convicts is that it constitutes part of their punishment. It appeals to the tough-on-crime mentality: "They broke the law, so they should pay. Why let 'em vote?" At first glance, this position seems perfectly reasonable. Yet its logical flaws and drawbacks as policy are serious.

To be worth the name, criminal punishment must aim at some combination of incapacitation, deterrence, rehabilitation, and retribution. Disenfranchisement fails at all four. Incapacitation, first, would justify disenfranchising only those who commit vote fraud, not all felons. As for deterrence, it is unlikely that a man not deterred from crime by the prospect of a long prison sentence would stay his hand for fear of losing the vote. And disenfranchisement serves no conceivable rehabilitative goal; if the purpose of "corrections" is to bring offenders back into law-abiding society, maybe we should consider forcing them to vote.

That leaves retribution. We take rights from offenders to pay them back for taking the liberty, property, or happiness of others. Incarcerated convicts can't travel, assemble, read, or enjoy privacy with the freedom the rest of us have. But these restrictions are necessary aspects of incarceration; convicts, after all, can still publish their writings, own property, and file civil lawsuits. Abandoning penal necessity as the standard for rights deprivation is a dangerous step. Moreover, it is not clear that taking away the vote in this automatic, invisible way - from a criminal population which we know to be largely estranged from politics already - has any retributive power whatsoever.

The history of voting in the U.S. is the story of "common-sense" policies being overturned. For centuries, policy-makers regarded universal suffrage as a lunatic notion. Those who owned no land lacked the "stake in society" necessary for responsible political participation; women lacked the right kind of reason to practice politics; it was absurd for people who couldn't read their own Constitution to claim a role in lawmaking; and so forth. These ideas held sway for a long, long time, but modern Americans found them unpersuasive. It is now time for Americans to re-evaluate the wisdom of barring criminal offenders from voting.

Reforming and/or repealing criminal disenfranchisement laws would serve two vital public interests. First, it would help rehabilitate offenders and solidify their reintegration into society. Nobody, after all, has ever claimed that barring them from voting actually reduces crime. Indeed, the inverse is probably true: allowing the participation of ex-convicts in the political process might create the sense of personal investment that would lead away from a life of crime. More fundamentally, moving past criminal disenfranchisement would strengthen American democracy. It would expand the franchise by eliminating a major and unjustified exclusion -- unjustified because punishments should serve a legitimate purpose and be linked to the actual offense. Democracy is weakened when we deprive people of political rights as a way of punishing them. Americans love to be tough on crime, but we shouldn't be tough on the values that our legal system is supposed to embody.

WIT AND WISDOM

Cheney Vows to Attack U.S. if Kerry Elected

"Greensboro, NC -- In an announcement that has alarmed voters across the nation, Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he will personally attack the U.S. if Sen. John Kerry wins the next election."

-- from The Onion. Read more.

DISPATCHES

Canadians tend to keep silent on the subject of 9/11, knowing that no words could sufficiently honor the grief and loss of their American neighbors. Nonetheless, they felt the same dread born that day -- and the Canadian government has reacted in some similar ways.

In the United States, the Patriot Act has generated fierce controversy by greatly expanding the federal government's powers. What is less known is that in its own response to terror, Canada also did too much, too soon. Within three months of the 9/11 attacks, leaving little time for reflection or careful drafting, the Canadian federal government adopted measures such as the Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill-36), despite an existing body of criminal law that addressed terrorist activity.

"Canada went further than its American or British counterparts in giving the government the powers to fight terror," according to Reid Morden, a former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency. "The likely result will be an impairment of the right to legitimate protest." (Read Morden's full commentary).

Prominent among the Anti-Terrorism Act's features is a sharp restriction on citizens' access to information. It empowers the Minister of Justice to prohibit the release of information relating to defense, national security, and international relations, in effect superseding the Access to Information act. "'This means that citizens will have no effective right to complain to the Information Commissioner about abuses of the new power," wrote Professor Alasdair Roberts, Director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute of Maxwell School at Syracuse University. "The Information Commissioner will have no authority to inspect records to determine whether this new power is being reasonably applied. Nor will the Federal Court have authority under the law to review the Minister of Justice's decision. Canadians will not even have a right of access to the certificate itself." (Read more).

By the end of 2001, objections to the legislation were coming in fast. In an open letter to then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, the Canada Peace Alliance (CPA) wrote that "we are concerned that Bill C-36, the Anti-Terrorism Act, is itself a threat to the legal and civil rights that Canadians now enjoy. Enacting Bill C-36 will result in a legacy that all Canadians will regret." The CPA noted the "imprecise and overly broad definitions that will catch innocent people in the net meant for terrorists" and the fact that the powers can be used in secret, "resulting in the potential for a wholesale violation of civil rights." As in the United States, the fear was the legislation would "result in religious and racial minorities suffering a disproportionate share of the Bill's significant impact."

That Canada overshot its mark is clear from the legislation's definition of "terrorist activity," noted Morden, "which is not nearly as clear, careful or restrained as it should be." In consequence, protest activities, such as workers' strikes, could be declared unlawful. In any case, the definition, in some respects, is broader than the already wide definition of terrorism in the United Kingdom's Terrorism Act of 2000, after which it was modeled.

Perhaps the most disturbing of the federal government's new powers is the holding of secret trials and proceedings. Take the case involving the arrest and deportation of Canadian citizen Maher Arar. Born in Syria, Arar came to Canada 18 years ago. He earned a master's degree in engineering and became a telecommunications engineer. In September 2002, on his way home to Canada from vacation, Arar made a stopover in New York, where U.S. officials detained him. Although he carried a Canadian passport, he was deported to Syria. Returning to Canada a year later, he said he had been imprisoned and tortured. In February 2004, a commission of inquiry was created to investigate and report on the actions of Canadian officials in relation to Arar, and to recommend a review mechanism for the activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). A portion of the hearings was held in public during the summer; other portions will be held in camera. But neither Arar nor his lawyers can hear the evidence against their client, or about how the security intelligence agencies enabled his deportation to a foreign country that uses torture. However, in September, the inquiry released an internal report of the RCMP that, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), acknowledged that the RCMP, at the time it had targeted Arar, had lacked expertise in conducting national security investigations. (For more on the case, see the Arar Commission website and CBC News Indepth).

In the meantime, no inquiry has been offered into the incarceration of five Muslim men under the security certificates, which authorize the arrest and imprisonment without charge of anyone deemed a threat to national security. Evidence against the suspects -- Mohamed Harkat, Adil Charkaoui, Hassan Almrei, Mahmoud Jaballah and Mohammad Mahjoub -- has been withheld from family, friends and even lawyers.

Fortunately, some features of Canada's anti-terror legislation are being tested in the courts. In June, the Supreme Court of Canada, on a 7-2 ruling, held that the post-9/11 threat doesn't necessarily justify secret court hearings to identify terrorist plots. "The open court principle, to put it mildly, is not to be lightly interfered with," the court said. However, in a separate decision, the court ruled that compelling someone to appear before a judge to testify in new "investigative hearings" does not violate the Charter of Rights. (See Steve Bosch's June 24, 2004, article in the Vancouver Sun).

Terrorism is a real danger, and the threat it poses should not be underestimated. But when a government overreacts and overreaches, that's also a danger, and it represents a defeat for liberty and democratic principle. This point has been made many times, by many people, but we must repeat it as long as fear continues to trump good judgment.

-- Lindsay Kellock

QUOTED!

"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." -- President George W. Bush to Pat Robertson, before the start of the Iraq war. The White House has denied that the President ever made that comment, but Robertson, a prominent evangelical Republican activist, told CNN that "I mean, he was just sitting there like 'I am on top of the world'."

CHECK IT OUT

In every close Presidential election, observers raise the prospect of a last-minute "October surprise" that shifts the balance of the contest. The most famous (reported) surprise was the deal struck by Ronald Reagan's team in 1980 to delay the release of Iranian hostages, thus fatally undermining Jimmy Carter's reelection effort. Today, rumors abound as to what events might transpire at the eleventh hour to sway the electorate this time: The capture of Osama bin Laden? Another terrorist attack on American soil? The discovery of WMD stockpiles in Iraq?

Such routine speculation became feverish after wily Presidential adviser Karl Rove told Fox News's Sean Hannity, on Sept. 29, that "We've got to make it sure that we lose none of the close states that we won in 2000 -- Florida or Ohio or Colorado or Nevada or New Hampshire -- but, and you also gotta have a couple of surprises, and we've got a couple of surprises that we intend to spring."

Five days later, on Oct. 4, House Democratic leader (and endorser of the Commonweal Institute) Nancy Pelosi told CNN: "I assume that it will be something. We have to be ready for that." (Read article).

Barring some dramatic surprise, which might in fact backfire against the instigator, the most likely scenario -- indeed, the one that already seems to be playing out -- is a drip-drip-drip of news stories favorable to the administration.

Take the recent excavation of a mass grave in Iraq, containing the bodies of as many as 3,000 Kurds. Archaeologists, with the approval of the American military, took the media on a tour of the site in mid-October, and the news was cited as further evidence of the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime. True enough. But the mass grave was actually found a year ago by the U.S. Army.

Or consider the just-released report on "Gulf War Syndrome" suggesting that the cause was soldiers' low-level exposure to nerve gas or other toxins while serving in Iraq. The research, conducted at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, under the auspices of the Veterans Affairs Department, funded by the Department of Defense, reminds us all of the chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein did actually possess. Strangely, this new report is contradicted by almost every other research study on Gulf War Syndrome, including that of the National Academy of Sciences.

Soon, perhaps, we'll be hearing that the redeployment of 650 British troops to help the Americans in "pacifying" Fallujah is evidence of the strength of the coalition.

Who knows. Maybe all these stories have a life of their own, independent of politics, and we should overcome our cynicism and take 'em as they come.

Or you could just jump on the conspiracy bandwagon instead and at least have some fun predicting what might happen. If so, you might want to check out two new websites about the possibility of an October surprise. The first, www.nametheoctobersurprise.com, is run by Mark Green, president of the New Democracy Project, a lecturer at New York University, and editor of What We Stand For: A Program for Progressive Patriotism (Newmarket Press). The second, www.octobersurprise.net, allows you, in a democratic spirit, to vote for what you think is most likely to happen between now and Nov. 2: Vote suspended due to red alert? U.S. opens a new front in the war on terror? The possibilities are endless...

FEATURED ARTICLE

The Sinclair Broadcast Group has been in the news a lot the last month for its plans to air, on its 62 TV stations, a "documentary" (read hit-piece) about John Kerry's protest activities against the Vietnam War. Facing criticism and boycotts, Sinclair has backed off, "gone meta," and is now planning to show a documentary about the documentary. But the program may still have an effect on the election in critical swing states. Liberal media? Hardly. Sinclair is just one more example of the orchestrated penetration of far-right ideology into the public sphere. To shed some light on the company's shadowy corners, here's an excerpt from Paul Schmelzer's "Sinclair Foreshadows the Death of Local News," which appeared back on April 30, 2004, in the online edition of The Business Journal:

"Like many a media empire, Sinclair grew through a combination of acquisitions, clever manipulations of Federal Communications Commission rules, and considerable lobbying campaigns. Starting out as a single UHF station in Baltimore in 1971, the company started its frenzied expansion in 1991 when it began using 'local marketing agreements' as a way to circumvent FCC rules that bar a company from controlling two stations in a single market. These 'LMAs' allow Sinclair to buy one station outright and control another by acquiring not its license but its assets. Today, Sinclair touts itself as 'the nation's largest commercial television broadcasting company not owned by a network.' You've probably never heard of them because the 62 stations they run -- garnering 24% of the national TV audience -- fly the flags of the networks they broadcast: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and the WB."

"TV Barn's Mark Jeffries calls Sinclair the 'Clear Channel of local news,' a reference to the San Antonio, Texas, media giant that has grown from 40 to more than 1,200 stations today thanks to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which relaxed radio ownership rules. But the parallels extend beyond their growth strategies. Jeffries describes Sinclair as having a 'fiercely right-wing approach that makes Fox News Channel look like a model of objectivity,' while Clear Channel is best known for sponsoring pro-war 'Rallies for America' during the Iraq conflict. And like Clear Channel's CEO Lowry Mays -- a major Republican donor and onetime business associate of George W. Bush -- the Sinclair family, board, and executives ply the GOP with big money. Since 1997, they have donated well over $200,000 to Republican candidates."

Click here to read the whole article.

Also, if you're interested in exerting pressure on Sinclair, visit Media Matters for America, where you can learn about which mutual funds and pension funds own stock in the publicly traded company. You may be a shareholder yourself! "If that's the case," says Media Matters, "you can express your concern that Sinclair's management has placed partisan political interests ahead of its financial obligations to the company's shareholders, and request that your fund manager immediately divest from any Sinclair investments that may be held in your mutual fund."

HAPPENINGS

New Senior Fellow -- The Commonweal Institute is very proud to welcome Patrick O'Heffernan as a new Senior Fellow. Dr. O'Heffernan was formerly the Director of Development for LEAD International and for Rainforest Action Network, and served as Vice President for Development of the Population Media Center. He was Professor of International Relations and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was responsible for fund-raising and media research programs. He was also Director of Foundation Relations at the university.

Dr. O'Heffernan helped launch the TBS television program "Network Earth," and served as a commentator on National Public Radio. He has received an Emmy, four Tellys, and a Peabody nomination, among other awards. He was Executive Producer of two first-ever global public affairs television campaigns, for the United Nations Conferences on Environment and on Population and Development. He served as Environmental Staff Consultant to California Governor Edmund G. Brown and on the staff of the California Energy Commission.

Dr. O'Heffernan has authored six books and numerous articles and book chapters. He holds a Ph.D. in International Affairs and Technology Policy from MIT, as well as degrees in journalism, advertising, and political science. The Commonweal Institute is honored to have him on board.

"Votergate" screenings -- This new documentary, sponsored by the Commonweal Institute in conjunction with the Democracy Media Project, and co-produced by CI co-founder Katherine Forrest, explores flaws in electronic voting technology and the potential for fraud or the violation of voting rights. It screened on Oct. 21 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., and on Oct. 24 at the Hamptons International Film Festival. To learn more about the film, visit www.votergatethemovie.com. Please contact the Democracy Media Project at (917) 757-1485 if you have questions.

ENDORSEMENTS

"Quality information is the basis on which all good policy must be built. Commonweal Institute's mission, to research, educate and communicate on issues of importance, is key for policymakers and activists alike." -- Joan Blades, co-founder, MoveOn.org

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Uncommon Denominator

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