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14 May 2008: On Screen and in Print: The State of the Vote
The last eight years could be called The Age of Limitations, as people have been far less aware of their power than the pointlessness of reaction. Wednesday evening on Voice of the Voters, hosted by Mary Ann Gould and Lori Rosolowsky of the Bucks County Coalition for Voting Integrity, the theme was Obstacles to Democracy: Denying Votes and Turning Away VotersIn the first segment, Lori interviewed the famous filmmaker David Earnhardt, who has been traveling the country with his feature-length documentary Uncounted, which will be shown next Tuesday, May 20, 7 pm, at the County Theater in Doylestown. Earnhardt said that he has been showing Uncounted mostly in independent theaters, starting with Sacramento and culminating in thirty screenings which he attended and hosted. He called dissemination of the film a "win-win" situation for election integrity (EI) activists: they attract the choir but also friends and family and a few other curious individuals. " " We leave each city . . . in better shape," said Earnhardt.
The niche is not so much "artsy" as "neighborhood" types, those who have been loyal to their independent theaters for years. A healthy cross-section of the population is represented, mostly in their thirties to fifties. Students have yet to be reached in sufficient numbers, though Earnhardt is direct mailing brochures to thirty-five hundred colleges and universities throughout the country to gain invitations to classrooms.
Overall, he said, the issues draw people together at a nonpartisan level; they cut to the core of our identity as a democracy, a "grand experiment."
And why the theater in preference to DVDs? Earnhardt cited the pros and cons of each: there is power in the communal experience; film as an art form is always greater on the big screen. With DVD showings, however, the disc can be stopped for discussion and the atmosphere is more intimate and homey, more conducive to lively conversation. Mary Ann said that CVI is planning a film consisting of comments and reactions to the crisis in voting in this country. Those who attend the May 20 screening may be interviewed for their opinions and suggestions.Even at this late stage preceding election 2008, Uncounted might influence Pennsylvania to offer paper ballots tallied centrally, she said. Theirs is the worst state for voting-fully 25 percent of all paperless machines in the country are in the Quaker State.
For more information on how to host house parties for screening Uncounted, visit www.uncountedthemovie.com. +++++
The next segment of Voice of the Voters consisted of a lively conversation between Professor Alex Keyssar, specializing in history and political science at Harvard University, and Professor Mark Crispin Miller, a media studies expert at NYU and prolific activist.The theme, centered around Keyssar's award-winning book The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2000), was the Constitution, the right to vote, and the state of our American democracy.
Keyssar's The book analyzes the diminishing vibrancy of our democracy. Voter turnout, even for presidential elections, is remarkably low: 30 percent in nonpresidential elections and 20 to 25% in local elections. Moreover, incumbents tend to remain seated while challengers in most cases fail.
We Americans nonetheless cling to the mythology that the U.S. is an exemplary democracy, which reflects both aspiration and ignorance of other democracies in the world. How does all this reflect the Constitution? asked Mary Ann.Keyssar answered that the right to vote is implicit but not otherwise actually worded in the Bill of Rights [where the large majority of rights do center on voting]. The effects are subtle, but real, he said. It is easier for states to interfere with the voting process, so recently exemplified by the Supreme Court decision to support Indiana's law requiring voter i.d.'s to avoid voter fraud although none has existed in that state for decades.
Our voting system excluded African Americans and women for years, and poor people were only given the vote in the 1960s.Describing Keyssar's book as bracing and edifying, Mark Miller asked for the implications of "turnout not impressive." Exit polls, for example, don't measure those who do not vote, and this number includes people eliminated by illegal processes such as caging, felon lists, and others.Said Keyssar, the "muted optimism" in his book will be only further muted in the second edition he is working on, which will be published in a few months.
The best turnout figures, he said, are based on the number of votes cast. The number of eligible voters is not easy to determine, and the number of no-shows is not measured. Some districts don't even count absentee votes. Because of the purging of voter rolls, both legal and illegal, actual figures are skewed so that the number of voters may seem to increase when it really remains the same as in previous years.
And what does turnout mean? The Constitution has counted African Americans as eligible to vote since 1900, though reality tells a different story.
The blame was laid largely on the political right-their view that the public is apathetic and dense. Miller labeled this a "campaign to keep people from voting."
Moreover, the Bush administration will not allow an updated census. A subversion of the system is feared, if it hasn't already happened--a system dedicated to limit the ability of the poor to participate in politics. Turnout varies by state and also social and economic status. Those affluent and well educated turn out in droves, while others hang back or are suppressed. The right interprets this behavior as poor people's contentment with the status quo. The more it can eliminate the poor and aged from the tally, the more their status quo can persist, reducing the Democratic vote by 4 to 6 percent.
Keyssar compared the number of cases of voter fraud in this country-eighty-six since 2002-to the tens of thousands prevented from voting through Republican machinations. "The franchise is a partisan battleground," he said.New York state, a case in point, required naturalization papers from some immigrants and required re-registration for each election cycle, he continued. At one time only two days were designated for voter registration, and they happened to be the two High Holidays for the Jews, who were obviously prevented from full representation as a result.
Keyssar's views on voting machines match those of CVI and other EI groups: optical scanners are the best we can do at this moment, and DREs are, well, "the pits" [my slang, not the professor's]. Election officials must not be partisan, he said. "This is a great time to make the system more fair and democratic." But the establishment and the media don't want to get involved.Said Miller, we must engage the public in this debate, move out of [what I call] the Age of Limitations, a difficult project and one the media treat as tangential anecdotes Change always happens on the edge," said Mary Ann, the strategist. Echoing John Adams, Miller said that the public must be [somehow] informed: the issues are civic, their effects far-reaching. We need a functional democracy.
This is not the time for complacency, added Keyssar; the Iraqi constitution allows all citizens the right to vote. The basic design should be to encourage people in rather than out."
