Misleading Mailers Descend on Swing States
From Miller-McCune.com
Short on detail or just plain wrong, mailings with GOP return addresses are sowing confusion on voting status with fewer than two months before the big day.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Mass-mailers sent to more than 1 million voters in at least eight likely swing states are sowing confusion — and in some cases could disenfranchise voters — across the political spectrum.
Republican mailers sent out in the past two weeks contained either applications for absentee ballots or requests for updated voter registration records. In most cases, the mailers contained missing or confusing information, which could cause voters to believe they would receive an absentee ballot in the mail or be properly registered when they in fact would not.
Full story here at Miller-McCune.com.
Ohio Removes Vote-Caging Possibility
Originally posted by Miller-McCune.com
Re-posted by HuffingtonPost.com, and Truthout.org both without the update.
UPDATE: Ohio removes vote-caging possibility
FRIDAY VERSION: Nearly 600,000 subject to possible caging in Ohio
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
O hio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner took decisive action on Friday to clarify and amend the state’s voter challenge law with particular aim at a contentious statewide mailer, which Miller-McCune.com reported Friday, the same day the notices went out and Brunner issued her directive. (The original Miller-McCune.com story, which appeared under the headline “Nearly 600,000 Subject to Possible Caging in Ohio,” appears below.)
In the Sept. 5 directive to county boards of elections, Brunner said that no voter shall lose the right to vote based solely on the state’s 60-day non-forwarded notice having returned to election officials as non-deliverable. Voter rights advocates worry that the returned notices would give Republicans the means to level mass challenges against thousands of Ohio voters similar to what occurred in 2004.
Report: Vendor Control Undermines Elections
From Miller-McCune.com
Nonprofit group claims vote-counting machine vendors are the ones in control during some elections.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
A new report by the nonprofit VotersUnite.org lays out an anecdotal case for how corporations that make and service electronic voting machines have gained substantial control of the American election system, and it outlines what public officials can do as the November presidential election approaches.
The report arrives as a growing number of mainstream media outlets have joined Miller-McCune.comexamining flaws and irregularities in e-voting procedures across the nation, leading the number of voters expected to use touch-screen voting this November to fall from 44 percent to 36 percent. in
Within the 53-page report, “Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections,” voting rights activists led by VotersUnite.org co-director Ellen Theisen present several case studies to illustrate the pervasive control the makers of voting machines have over election administration in many states.
Full story here at Miller-McCune.com.
Voting Rules Create Land of Disenchantment
From Miller-McCune.com
Advocacy groups are battling New Mexico’s strict third-party voter registration laws.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Jo Ann Gutierrez-Bejar remembers volunteering for the annual voter registration drive in Albuquerque, N.M. She remembers the camaraderie as the group of usually 30 to 40 volunteers headed out in the morning, clipboards in hand, to knock on doors and register new voters.
But those days are over.
“It’s gotten to the point where a neighbor can’t register another neighbor to vote,” said Gutierrez-Bejar, now the communications organizer of the statewide Latino advocacy group, SouthWest Organizing Project — the same group for which she used to volunteer.
The group blames a 2006 state law aimed at regulating third-party registration drives. Part of the law imposed criminal penalties for failing to return completed applications within 48 hours. It also requires form gatherers to pre-register, become certified and sign out a limited number of voter registration forms at county offices.
Opponents of New Mexico’s law believe it could have enough impact to sway the November election, considering that President George W. Bush beat Sen. John Kerry in the state by fewer than 6,000 votes in 2004. So even the slightest margin could tilt the balance.
Full story here at Miller-McCune.com.
BUYING THE FARM
From Miller-McCune.com
With health insurance costs these days, why not just buy the whole clinic?
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Jim Carnicella, human resources director for the city of Ocoee, a small town in Central Florida, had just accomplished something worthy of a parade with a marching band entirely in his honor. No, he hadn’t slain the local alligator. He actually will have saved the city about $1 million by the end of the year through lowering the city’s medical costs by close to 30 percent. Just how he did it says a lot about insurance companies in the America and the middlemen who are sucking it dry.
View the full story here at Miller-McCune.com.
What Barriers Stand in Your Way to the Polls?
From Miller-McCune.com
The methods are far less conspicuous than fire hoses and more legally ambiguous than poll taxes and literacy tests.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
A group of elderly nuns were turned away from the polls on May 6 because they didn’t have the proper photo ID. Based on election law in Indiana, where the nuns attempted to vote, they could cast a provisional ballot. But the sisters said they couldn’t make it to the motor vehicle branch in 10 days to complete the process, so they went home without voting.
Now were these fraudulent voters or, worse yet, felon nuns?
Truth be told, a million Americans were likely prevented from voting for similar reasons in U.S. primary elections this year. Many more will be turned away in November, and there’s a good chance that unlike the nuns in Indiana, most of those denied the right to vote will be racial and ethnic minorities likely to vote for a Democrat.
Despite the lack of evidence that massive voter fraud on the part of individual voters actually occurs, state lawmakers — mostly Republicans, although some are Democrats — in hotly contested swing states have attacked the issue with vigor. Their policies, while aimed at rooting out fraudulent voters, have denied far more legitimate voters their constitutional rights than they have nabbed or prevented actual criminals.
FAULTY MACHINES READY TO COUNT YOUR VOTE
From Miller-McCune.com
Based on scientific research, we have a clearer picture of just how vulnerable our American voting system really is.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Some of the biggest battleground states this primary election season — New Hampshire, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and Indiana — have also been some of the worst performing states for voting integrity. And the first four are likely swing states come November.
These states not only received a large number of reported malfunctions and complaints, they also used many of the same ballot-counting machines that computer scientists across the country have shown are faulty and easily hacked.
With election officials and the general public largely blocked from knowing how the computers that tabulate our elections work, and manufacturers saying that theoretical risks are just that — theoretical — politicians have turned to scientists at America’s leading universities to help them make informed choices.
But despite the overwhelming research identifying them as insecure and prone to failures, these same voting machines are likely counting close to 90 percent of the nation’s ballots this year, said Bev Harris, an expert on election integrity issues who runs the nonprofit BlackBoxVoting.org
Full Story click here
Miller-McCune: A Prognosis on Mandates and Guarantees
“Experiments” in eight states provide pointers on how America might provide guaranteed health insurance.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Should the government require everyone to have health insurance? It’s a question Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have used to mark a defining difference between them in taking on the nation’s biggest domestic issue. In reality, they almost completely agree.
Both Clinton and Obama reject a nationalized, single-payer health plan. They both believe, however, that insurers must accept everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions. Thought of as a right to buy insurance, or guaranteed issue, the law is something most Americans typically support, but experts say it creates unintended consequences.
