A strategy session focused on the escalation of election corruption in the preceding eighteen months.

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The escalating assault by state governments on voter rights, especially in the previous eighteen months, was the subject of an afternoon strategy session at the Take Back the American Dream conference on Tuesday, June 19. Panelists, led by moderator Robert Brandon of the Fair Elections Legal Network, included Victor Sanchez of the United States Student Association, Cindy Smalls of AFL-CIO, Jotaka Eaddy of NAACP, and Steve Spaulding of Common Cause.

Brandon began by enumeratede the targets of this most recent assault on voter rights: youth, both students and nonstudents; handicapped populations, the poor, prisoners, and senior citizens. Thirty-four states have considered strict photo i.d. requirements for voters; out of these seven passed the legislation and in five Democratic governors vetoed it. Other similar measures are still in process.

The provision of early voting in many states has been a boon to working people, especially single mothers, throughout the country. Fully forty percent of Ohio's voting population use this alternative, but last year this time window was decreased in Ohio from thirty-four to seventeen days and in Florida from fourteen to eight days.

Ohio legislators voted to repeal the change and in counties in Florida that have been the locus of the most electoral controversy the DoJ has challenged it.

In New Hampshire students are required to vote at home rather than school despite a SCOTUS decision in 1974 to allow them to vote where they study. In Texas state officials accept gun permits as legitimate identification at the polls, but not college i.d.s.

The DoJ is challenging similar descriminatory legislation in Texas, Tennessee, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Alabama and also restrictions on third-party registration by groups like the League of Women Voters. In Florida, the regulation requiring all filled-out registration forms to be handed in within forty-eight hours with a penalty of $1,000 for each handed in late has been blocked, as has the purging of so-called illegal aliens; in this case an original list of 182,000 has already been whittled down to some 2700, which says a lot about the validity of this attempt at illegal discrimination.

Eighty of these voters have already stepped forward to prove their citizenship; the others have a month left to do the same.

The DoJ's challenge is based on the regulation that no purging of voter lists can occur within ninety days of an election, and in Florida one is scheduled for August.

What can we victims, the American people, the vast majority, do to fight back? Education is so important--education without scaring the people away as much as unethical electoral practices. We need high-quality trainers and poll watchers, people who can effectively face down intimidation from the other side, which takes so many forms that must all be understood and anticipated.

AFL's role in this endeavor was the subject of Cindy Smalls's contribution. Members must be educated on all the destructive legislative changes in process with the goal of keeping things clear for the general public. Intimidation must be avoided and all votes counted.

The battleground states, she continued, are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Florida, Wisconsin, and Ohio. The point is not to overlap with efforts of other organizations to keep elections as clean as possible. One positive effort will be to recruit retired AFL workers, to supplement government efforts with their own, assuming correctly that former workers can communicate most effectively with those still on the job.

Representing NAACP, Jotaka Eaddy. the first black woman to be elected student president at the University of South Carolina and regrettably the only one so far, remarked that this year attempts at pushing back voter repression are the most intense in more than a century--well funded and well targeted toward goals to shift political power and counter fear tactics. Former South Carolina governor Nicky Haley did her best to perpetrate the myth of voter fraud by claiming that in the most recent election nine hundred dead voters voted. The strategy, to misinform and confuse voters, was effective enough at the national level, to absorb 173 electoral votes, even though Haley was ultimately proved wrong.

More encouraging is the news that according to the 2010 U.S. Census, the minorities will soon comprise a majority; more nonwhite babies are now being born every day than white babies. The tidal wave will rise so high that Carl Rove will drown despite all of his paper efforts. The electorate must expand to encompass this reality. The narrative must shift. A federal-level Constitutional right to vote must encompass all the states' provisions and legitimate them at a level that can't be challenged, as the beleaguered (by supposedly unrelated charges from Republicans) DoJ is attempting. The Voting Rights Act is under attack--so far upheld by the Supreme Court, more or less, but stay tuned if you want to.

Eaddy suggests the following counteractive measures: 1) Make the challenge visible; 2) Win and defend in 2012; create a groundswell for the DoJ; 3) Educate voters; and 4) Challenge the game and become the offensive, and overturn voter i.d. laws and restore prisoners' rights.

Working to defend students' rights, Voctor Sanchez reminded the audience of Election 2008, when students turned out in record numbers, up against more political attacks against voters than ever, even, as mentioned above, the Voting Rights Act. People are feeling disempowered; students must reclaim our democracy, bringing in new leaders, incorporating the values of Occupy and our Constitutional right to register to vote. Up against spending cuts on schools, universities and colleges should nonetheless work hard to assure their students the right to vote.

A longer-term strategy is needed since students will have to live within this corrupt system

longer than the boomers joining with them and cheering them on. What are the possible goals? 1) Get students into poll-worker jobs and their importance; remind them that fewer than ten votes can put one candidate into office while the other loses; 2) Keeping in mind generations that will follow; 3) Educatin students on the voting system; 3) Reaching as many students as possible.

Attorney Steve Spaulding reminded listeners that Election Day is only four and a half months from now. Organizations that intimidate voters should be tracked; programs are needed to provide disadvantaged voters with as many photo i.d.s as possible; lawyers and allied organizations should litigate and legislate to address unfair voting laws--in Wisconsin and Texas an organization called True the Vote is tied to the King Street Patriots, who in turn are allied with the Koch brothers.

Caging practices should be combatted and illegal voter purging lists eliminated. In Florida, voters' chamber of horrors, defending voters bear the burden of proof in court settings; in Virginia, if they skip a hearing for any reason, they lose the right to vote.

In Texas and Wisconsin, laws forbidding voter intimidation are ignored, whether or not a voter can produce the requisite i.d. Poll workers and monitors are needed and should be well trained. In Ohio provisional ballots given out because a voter comes to the wrong precinct are not counted.

Poll monitors should also stand outside of the polls to fend off any attempts at intimidation while voters stand in line, Spaulding concluded.

During the audience question period, the first person called on stressed the importance of anger among voters being so duped in so many ways. He said that this aspect of the experience has not been recommended nor resorted to, but that it should be.

Mention was also made of the incrimination of Maryland's lieutenant governor for aidingand abetting robocalls and other devices used to prevent underprivileged voters from voting.

Another issue was the increasing population of voters without addresses because they have been foreclosed on. The response was that in most places these people had the right to use their former addresses when asked where they reside.

As always, at least in the preceding decade, voter-related legislation is pending in Congress but not close to being passed; two examples are the Deceptive Practices Act and the Voter Empowerment Act, neither of which is expected to come to the floor this year. The is also Representative Rush Holt's latest legislation toward Election Integrity, the 2009 Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 2894).

Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.