The New York Times editorialized today their desire for the Supreme Court to uphold Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the portion of the law that makes states with a history of discriminatory voting practices go through a series of checks before changing voting rules in those areas. The election of President Obama, they say, is not reason enough to peel back a law intended to expand and protect the franchise.

The election of the first African-American president last year was an undeniable sign of racial progress. But even that breakthrough cannot ensure that legislative districts will not be gerrymandered, voting rolls purged or election procedures modified at the state and local levels in ways that diminish the rights of minorities. For that, as Congress wisely recognized, we still need the Voting Rights Act.

We’ll stay on top of this. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on this today. We’ve shot a couple of tweets to Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic who will be at the White House tonight for President Obama’s prime time presser. He’s soliciting questions for the news conference. We submitted two, one about election reform generally, and the other about Section 5 of the VRA.

Previously in the NYT:
American Voting System STILL Broken
Voting Rights Act Scaled Back
Uphold the Voting Rights Act
Why Tuesday? NYT Op-Ed: Everyone’s Voting For The Weekend

Posted in Election Reform, Election administration, Existing laws, Voting Rights Act | Comments Off

This past week, Senator Herb Kohl (WI) and Representative Steve Israel (NY) introduced the Weekend Voting Act in Congress in an attempt to increase America’s voter participation. Despite unparalleled enthusiasm about the 2008 campaign, nearly 40% of Americans sat idle, at home, away from the voting booth, and American voter participation ranks near the bottom of all countries in the world!

So what might President-Elect Obama say about the idea of a Weekend Voting Act? Below, in his own words, is the President-Elect on the state of America’s voting system. I spoke with the President-Elect when he was still Senator Obama, in 2007, at the MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Well, couple things. Number one, I think we have to make it easier to vote. And I’m assuming that “Why Tuesday?” is for in favor of, for example, having it one weekends so that more people can vote. Same-day registration I think in a lot of states has shown to make sense. You know, early voting is another way to encourage people and make it more convenient for them to vote. But I think that, more than that, we also have to change what people are voting for. And if we don’t have serious campaign finance reform legislation, if we are not restricting the power of lobbyists and special interests to determine what the agenda is in Washington then people are going to get discouraged and no matter how easy you make it for them to participate they won’t participate.

To watch the video of my interview with President-Elect Obama, click here.

Still don’t know why we vote on Tuesday? Here’s the answer.

Photo of Democratic Presidential Nominee, Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle voting in Chicago, IL on election day by David Katz of Obama for America via Flickr.

Posted in Barack Obama, Election 2008, Election Reform, Existing laws, Herb Kohl, New York, Steve Israel, Weekend voting, Why do we vote on Tuesday?, Wisconsin | Comments Off

Right now on the front page of FOXNews.com there’s a story by Judson Berger based in part on the blog post I wrote yesterday about the Obama campaign’s call to off take work or school on Election Day. A screen cap is below.

Berger speculates that Obama’s ad “might help rekindle a debate over whether Election Day should be made a national holiday or moved to the weekend as a way to boost voter participation.” Even so, he didn’t have much luck getting an answer from either campaign about the candidates positions on our voting system.

Neither Obama’s nor McCain’s campaigns would comment on whether the nominees actually support holding Election Day on a holiday or weekend.

Not to worry. During the primary election cycle, I spoke with both Senators Obama and McCain about their feelings about our voting system, and what they think we can do to increase voter participation. Click here for my interview with Senator Obama. Click here for my interview with Senator McCain.

Posted in Election 2008, Existing laws, WT? in the news, Why do we vote on Tuesday? | Comments Off

An election reform bill (S. 3212) sponsored by Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinsten and Republican Senator Robert Bennett of Utah was panned by the New York Times this morning in an editorial. The Times says election reform is indeed necessary, but not in the form put forth in this bill. Here’s a quick look at the Times’ POV:

Voters cannot trust the totals reported by electronic voting machines; they are too prone to glitches and too easy to hack. In the last few years, concerned citizens have persuaded states to pass bills requiring electronic voting machines to use paper ballots or produce voter-verifiable paper records of every vote. More than half of the states now have such laws.

There is still a need for a federal law, so voting is reliable in every state. A good law would require that every vote in a federal election produce a voter-verifiable paper record, and it would mandate that the paper records be the official ballots. It would impose careful standards for how these paper ballots must be “audited,” to verify that the tallies on the electronic machines are correct.

For the complete editorial, click here.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: As we constantly mention here, election reform shouldn’t just be about looking at the ways we vote, but the day we vote as well. In 2006, we caught up with Senator Feinstein in California to talk to her about why we vote on Tuesday. Do you know why? To see whether Senator Feinstein knew the answer (most members of congress don’t know) check out this video. If you don’t know the answer, you can find it right here.

ABOUT US: If you’re new here, we invite you to learn more about our nonpartisan mission at Why Tuesday? including who we are and what we do.

Posted in Election Reform, Electronic voting, Existing laws, Why do we vote on Tuesday? | Comments Off

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law is circulating a draft policy paper about universal voter registration, and it’s pretty interesting. This system would place the onus of registering to vote on the government, not the individual, by requiring municipalities, states and perhaps even Washington to reach out to all eligible voters with a way to register — rather than the other way around. (more…)

Posted in Election Reform, Election administration, Existing laws, Registration | 1 Comment »

NPR’s Ina Jaffe took a look yesterday for Weekend Edition Sunday at the vote-by-mail election system in Oregon, and how the rules there make campaigning a unique experience.

A big critique of vote-by-mail, which has been echoed here by Norman J. Ornstein, is that the process negates the secret ballot. “We got rid of that big reform that guaranteed secrecy in the voting booth,” said Jim Moore, political science professor at Pacific University, “and got rid of the idea that no one can come between you and directly placing your ballot in the box — a sealed locked box.”

Listen to Jaffe’s piece here. My piece this week for NPR Sunday Soapbox, which was teased on Weekend Edition Sunday, was about how super delegates are shifting the election reform debate from our voting systems to our party system.

Posted in Election Reform, Existing laws, Oregon, Vote-by-mail | Comments Off

Why Tuesday? Board Member Norman J. Ornstein

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is one of the good guys in Congress — smart, thoughtful, decent and hardworking. Now, fortunately, he is turning his attention and considerable energies to election reform, a broadly defined issue.

It is fortunate for two reasons: First, there are big issues out there and enough people distrustful of the electoral process or cynical about it to create a real crisis of governance the next time we have a very close election. Second, precious few lawmakers have decided to devote their time and attention to this topic.

Despite the emotions raised by problems with voting, this is not a slam-dunk winner of an issue politically. And those lawmakers who were instrumental in passing the Help America Vote Act in 2002 have either lost interest in the issue, are exhausted from it or believe we should wait awhile before acting again.

They are wrong. We do need to be careful about rushing to major reform without considering the costs and consequences; we are paying now for the rush to employ touch-screen devices known as DREs, or direct-recording electronic machines. And every major reform has to be absorbed by hapless election administrators who have neither the resources nor the trained personnel to make big changes on a frequent basis.

(more…)

Posted in D.C., Election Reform, Election administration, Electoral College, Electronic voting, Existing laws, Vote Centers, WT? in the news, Weekend voting, Why do we vote on Tuesday? | Comments Off