Gerrymandering a Federal Election?

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

Earlier in the week COL Lang wrote about a proposal to get the voluminous amounts of money out of US politics and political campaigns through the creation of a constitutional amendment that would reverse not only the recent Citizens United ruling, but the far older Buckley Vs. Valeo decsion that gave us that in regards to politics money is equal to protected speech under the First Amendment.  

But there is something else that Americans need to keep their eyes on, which is the concerted efforts to disenfranchise voters, gerrymander the electoral college vote, as well as overall election system security.  So lets take these one at a time.  The disenfranchisement of voters has taken many forms over the years in the US, but over the past forty-six years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act it has tended to be a one sided affair: an attempt to keep minority, disabled, some elderly, and younger voters from being able to cast their ballots.  While this has ranged from Operation Eagle Eye (presided over by William Rhenquist) to voter caging by sending mail to addresses on voter rolls and then challenging eligibility based on returned mail** (for which the Republican Party is under a court order to restrain from, but which they still engage in) efforts at voter disenfranchisement, which is itself a type of voter fraud, have been amped way up.  The Bush (43) Administration's US Attorneys firing scandal revolved around the attempt to push the US Attorneys to bring partisan voter fraud investigations and indictments.  The only problem was that there was, and still is, precious little voter registration and casting fraudulent ballots actually happening in the US.  The most recent efforts are state level attempts to push through legislation regarding voter identification (this goes back to our discussion of ALEC here at SST as they are the ones pushing the model legislation out) to resolve the virtually non-existent fraudulent voting problem and to PA's interest in splitting its electoral college vote for the 2012 presidential election.  NYU's Brennan Center's recent report on the effect of the new voting laws indicated that 5 million Americans eligible to vote will have significantly harder times doing so in the 2012 elections.  This is the result of the need to get a state issued photo ID (and before anyone says "so what's the big deal?" the issue is that locales to issue them are being closed as cost cutting measures in areas with the highest concentrations of voters without them), as well as the reduction of early voting days and/or hours and the attempt to scare college students*** into not voting with threats of prosecution (college students, as well as deployed military and governmental personnel, are also two of the biggest targets for vote caging).

 

As to voting system security, while the safety and accuracy of the electronic voting machines have been in question since they went into widespread use, new technological security examinations have found them to be easily hackable.  Apparently the current problem is a man in the middle hack that allows for votes to be tampered with remotely and that leaves no trace on the internal software audits.  The tech to perform the hack costs about $15...  According to the Department of Energy's study and report the machines are vulnerable while in storage, in transit, or while at the voting site before and after being set up.  So even if you are actually able to cast a ballot, there is no way to actually know that it was counted or went to the right person.  

Basically we have a voting system that in many places seems intended not to instill confidence in the citizenry.  When we couple all of this with the wacky hodgepodge of fifty different sets of state electoral laws (because as currently envisioned federal elections in the US are structured according to state law and know two states have the exact same rules), some of which are further confused by the states allowing each county to establish its own protocols, combined with active attempts to prevent some Americans from voting and we have a system that is designed to fail.  If we actually lump this together with our wacky need to spend two years conducting every federal election (congresspeople, 1/3 of our senators, and the potential presidential contenders all seem to be almost constantly running), the grossly exorbitant sums involved with running nearly perpetual campaigns, and the now bizarrely mutated primary system by which we select candidates, especially the presidential ones, and its amazing the system does not completely seize up.  Our electoral system is in dire need of reform - one set of rules and procedures applying to everyone in every state would be a good start.

* Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College and/or the US Army.

** I was actually subject to a voter caging attempt while deployed in Iraq in 2008.  I had my mail set up to be forwarded, from my previous address, to my Mother's residence in FL, where I had also set up my driver's license, permanent non-deployed residency, and voter registration (I did this all in JUL 2007, a year before the next election and just prior to my leaving for my pre-Iraq training).  As the trick in caging is to mark the mail "do not forward", when it was processed to be sent to me it bounced back to the sender (whoever was being paid to do this form of direct mail scam - usually they send a piece of candidate advertisement or issue advocacy mail).  While I did get and vote by absentee ballot while in Iraq, once I got back to the US I got a letter, well after the election, from the local supervisor of elections office asking me to verify my residency at the listed address.  Basically I had been voter caged.  I have no idea if my absentee ballot was counted or discarded in the 2008 election.

*** I just love the Maine Secretary of State's comments that they have found no evidence of voter fraud (as in fraudulent casting of ballots) in Maine, but that its a serious problem and threat so he's pushing for legislation to remedy it.  Even though it does not exist.  As one of the articles, and the Brennan Report indicate, in the past decade, with over 300 million ballots cast, there have been only eighty-four confirmed instances, and therefore prosecutable offenses, of fraudulent casting of ballots voter fraud.

Comments

[Walrus]

Google "Australian electoral commission". You could do worse.

[Adam L Silverman]

Walrus:

We do use your balloting format (sort of) as the template for ours.

[confusedponderer]

"Our electoral system is in dire need of reform - one set of rules and procedures applying to everyone in every state would be a good start"

I agree.

IMO all this crap is happening because the US still doesn't have effective voter registry. Some states have theirs outsourced. The states are cooking their own thing in this regard, and one can think of the Republic and the states as one wants, in federal elections that zoo of rules is not a good thing. In sharp contrast to the riotous spectacle presented in America, our elections in Germany are boring, as they IMO ought to be. Yes, we have recounts at times, and challenges in court, but they the exception. And we only have elections on Sundays, so that people have time to cast their ballots.

GOPers usually win by short margins, and their vote rigging schemes are a way to get that 0.1% needed.

50.1% wins elections and legislative battles, but it is not a governing strategy. 50.1% means that half the country, the Congress or the Legislature wakes up every day thinking the winner's use of power is illegitimate. Stupid, short term thinking on the GOPs part to rely on that.

What I find striking is that the GOP has no qualms about undermining the trust into the electoral process system by using these dirty tricks. Reckless in the extreme. How can one call himself patriotic if one tramples in such a way the spirit of that Republic the sainted Founders set up? Oh never mind. It's "winner takes all" politics, and the end justify the means. They presumably just like old font.

Just as a side note: Our constitutional court has ruled the electronic ballot unconstitutional because of lack of transparency. Here's the verdict in English; the arguments made are valid irrespective of the differences in constitutional law in Germany and the US.

http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rs20090303_2bvc000307en.html

The US need to get their act together, alas, there appears precious little ability to reform itself short of a major failure. Good luck with that in light of present partisan polarisation and GOP obstructionism.

[William R. Cumming]

Dr. Silverman a great post! I also was on active service in the fall of 1968 and deprived of my vote. I understand absentee ballots routinely trashed at the APOs!

Yes we need at least a federal voting law and its enforcment at least for federal elected positions. We don't need a Landslide Lyndon adding 48 votes to win a Congressional seat again. And TEXAS seems as wide open as any state when it comes to voter fraud. Well time will tell whether the USA survived the political hand of the TEXANS!

[jamzo]

i want every american to have a clearly established right to vote

below - a cut and paste from wikipeidia aptly defines the present status of our right to vote

(from voting rights act entry - wikipedia)

No affirmative right to vote

While the title of the Voting Rights Act might imply that it established an explicit right to vote for U.S. citizens to vote in presidential elections, there is no such federal right. However, the Voting Rights Act and three constitutional amendments that prevent discrimination in granting the franchise have established in United States Supreme Court jurisprudence that there is a "fundamental right" in the franchise, even though voting remains a state-granted privilege. However, states are given considerable leeway when it comes to this "fundamental right".

In Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), the Supreme Court noted that, "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States," a logical conclusion given the history of the Electoral College. States do not have to extend suffrage to ex-felons, nor do they have to allow citizens to register and vote on Election Day. In 2008, the Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law which required all voters to provide a photo ID, holding that the Indiana law could be considered a legitimate attempt to deter voter fraud.[34] While the Supreme Court has stated that the right to vote and the right to be a candidate are connected, they have often upheld state laws that make it difficult for independent and minor party candidates to be included on the election ballot.[35]

i don't think voting should continue to be regarded as a state-granted privilege

[Nancy K]

I recently watched on line a George Carlin show and he was so right on about our government and both parties. His language was a bit rough but he said it just like it is. Our government and politicians do not care about us the voter, they care only about power and money, and the average American has neither.

[john in the boro]

A while back I read a letter to the editor in which the author expressed his opinion that the Democratic Party is the party of ethical institutions and immoral persons while the Republican Party is the party of moral persons and unethical institutions. I'd say he was about half right in each case. Electioneering began before the ink dried on the founding documents and has proven highly innovative and especially resistent to rules or regulations. Simply, people eventually figure out ways to game the system until society says enough. Are we there yet?

[BT]

I can't fail to notice that all of the examples of vote suppression listed are Republican Party initiatives.

I just don't understand the equivalency people ascribe to the 2 dominant political parties. Neither are fabulous, but they do have their differences. Just ask anyone who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000.

[juliyya]

Rachel Maddow had a report yesterday of Colorado's Republican Sec. of State ordering county clerks not to mail ballots to registered voters who didn't vote in the 2010 election as well as U.S. servicepeople stationed overseas. The two biggest areas affected are populated mostly by Hispanics who voted heavily Democratic in 2008. The Sec.State is suing a clerk who intends to mail those ballots, claiming that the voter registrations are not currently valid for a variety of reasons -- without proof, it seems -- and he wants the clerks to first send a postcard verifying their registration status, and then they may be mailed ballots. The deadline is October 10th. The clerk wishes to avoid that step on the basis of costs for mailing and manpower hours, and sees the move as an overt attempt to suppress the vote.

[Politics Matters]

Fred Hudson, 2nd Vice-Chair of the Virginia Democratic Party, discusses redistricting and gerrymandering on the locally-produced Charlottesville, VA, politics interview program Politics Matters with host and producer Jan Madeleine Paynter: http://bit.ly/pm-hudson. The current program features Bob Gibson, Executive Director of the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, discussing journalism and the media.

[Charles Pergiel]

Seems to me that all this griping about the rules is being done by people who are getting the short end of the stick. Why is that? It's because your opponents are better organized. No, the playing field is not level, and it never will be. Politics is just another form of warfare, and all's fair in war, so get your shit together and fight back. Don't waste time trying to make the field level. The other side certainly isn't.

[confusedponderer]

Charles Pergiel,
what nonsense. What's wrong about people getting the short end of the stick complaining.

Rape victims get the short end of the stick, and they have every right to complain. You call them sore losers?

What's being raped here is the electoral process, and the trust in the integrity of the electoral process, not for the first time, mind you. It's a continuation of the old tricks used to disenfranchise black voters. The Republican (and formerly Dixiecrat) tactics are trampling the idea of fair elections. What they do is only slightly more sophisticated than ye olde ballot stuffing, banana republic style. It's somewhat more subtle but just as odious.

When Republicans undermine the trust in the electoral process they cause serious harm to the body politic. There is ample and good reason to complain.