I wish I had the space and time to quote and describe all of the insightful words spoken by such distinguished representatives of the Election Integrity community.
Professor Bob Fitrakis, also attorney, PhD, and activist based in Columbus, Ohio, informed us that former President Jimmy Carter told a reporter from the German version of Time magazine, Der Spiegel, that the United States has no functional democracy. Among the 47 Democratic nations in the world, this country ranks 47th in terms of accuracy and integrity of elections. "Why not 47?" ask members of the GOP. I must recall that in my 2012 book Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols there is mention that one GOP secretary of state showed no concern when back in the early 2000s her state ranked lowest in the nation in terms of quality and effectiveness of elections.
Fitrakis pointed out the alarming reality of the huge disparateness among election systems, including methods of voter roll purging. For example, between 2004 and 2008 1.2 million voters were purged in Ohio because they hadn't voted in two previous, successive federal elections. In four GOP-dominant counties, 118 percent of the populace were registered since purging hadn't occurred, a figure that was reduced in 2012. The 2 million purged votes racked up under the tenure of Secretary of State Jon Husted (2010-) has set a record.
Fitrakis recalled the flipping of the winning vote total in Ohio from Kerry to Bush in 2004 by means of a complicated man-in-the-middle system that restructured the vote count by means of a GOP server located in Chattanooga, Tennessee--Kerry had been up by 3 percent and then suddenly fell behind Bush by 2.5 percent, figures belied by an exit poll that counted Kerry as winner. And the same system flipped votes from Kerry to Bush in other battleground states that year.
But perhaps most outrageously, he stated, Florida and Ohio aren't really swing states. The huge amounts of corruption bring vote totals far closer than they really are--a nightmare for the future, if not recent past, of what's left of our democracy.
Then there is crosschecking among computerized state voter databases: if one man named Michael Jackson is a felon, off go all other Michael Jacksons from the voter rolls of crosschecking states. Partisanship among election system vendors adds to the brick wall of repression. Fitrakis's forthcoming book, written with Harvey Wasserman, The "Strip and Flip" Election of 2016: Voter Suppression, Electronic Vote Rigging and Other Jim Crow Tactics, details the corruption we can look forward to in November and what needs to be done to achieve that oasis, clean elections. Among many other bullet points, Fitrakis specified the need for a Constitutional guarantee that all qualified citizens have the right to vote; restoration of voting rights to all felons and ex-felons; and banning of all paperless voting machinery, DREs, still being used in this country. About 25 percent of systems still in use are DREs.
"Nothing changes without controversy," said Fitrakis, quoting Confucius. "We have to occupy government offices."
This atrocity must be rectified by Congress! asserted Alejandra Gomez of the Latino rights group Living United for Change in Arizona. 180,000 provisional ballots were tossed. Youth, so essential to the future of Election Integrity, will wonder, Will my vote count? and Why attempt to vote at all?
She specified the reduction of polling locations from 200 to 60 for the Arizona primaries, attributing the resulting chaos to this "money-saving" decision and the substitution of "voting centers" for precincts, meant to reduce confusion over where to vote, officials said. But the chaos and long lines stretched over blocks, made parking impossible, and created traffic jams that led to polls staying open past midnight until the last in line cast her vote--but not the last person who had attempted to vote and had either given up or been prevented from joining the lines.
Arizona is no longer a "safe space." Latinos are "hunted, jailed, detained, deported.' Her group has completed 10,000s of registrations and plans to completed 90,000 before November 2016.
Professor Lindsay Nielson of the University of California at San Diego spoke about a report she co-authored that was the most rigorous study of voter ID laws to date. She said that as of 2016, 33 states require some form of voter ID, which will involve 59 percent of the voting population. Strict ID laws are the most repressive, though they have no effect on white voters. But 11 states--that is, 28 percent of the voting population, will have this category of ID requirement. With strict ID laws, in general elections, Hispanic votes fall by five points, as do Asian American votes; those of multi-racial voters fall by seven points. The full report, available online, is titled "Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Voters."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
