The Independent View: Protecting Our Vote During the Midterm Elections

I just attended a Political Panel called "Protecting Our Vote During the Midterm Elections" at the 15th Annual National Convention of Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN). It is taking place this week in New York City at the Sheraton Hotel.

First, some history about NAN.

NAN was founded in New York City in 1991, as a social justice, social policy, activist organization born of America's historic civil rights struggle. NAN is in the forefront of challenging today's threats to equal treatment under the law, whether it is police abuse, misconduct or racial profiling, economic injustice such as a lack of access to capital and opportunity; or social policy injustice such as education equality, voting rights, immigration reform, gender equality, marriage equality, gun control, health care, housing or worker's rights.

Reverend Al Sharpton is NAN's founding president and has led the organization for 22 years. He is a noted civil rights leader, host of MSNBC's Political Nation, and hosts a weekly radio broadcast on Saturday from NAN's national headquarters in central Harlem. NAN has grown to over 50 chapters across America and maintains offices in Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Atlanta, Georgia; Detroit, Michigan; Las Vegas, Nevada; Los Angeles, California and Miami, Florida. NAN's website is at: www.nationalactionnetwork.net.

Last year, during the national election cycle, NAN took the lead in pushing back the real threat to voting rights by exposing the efforts of many states to suppress the vote of primarily poor, elderly and minority voters through restrictive Voter ID laws. NAN's work was hugely successful as demonstrated by the unprecedented turnout of voters and their refusal to be intimidated or turned away from the polls.

The panel's moderator was Reverend Al Sharpton.

The panel members were:

Barbara R. Arnwine - President and Executive Director, The Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Nicole Austin-Hillery - Director and Counsel, The Brennan Center for Justice
Bishop Victor T. Curry - President, NAN, Miami-Dade County, Florida Chapter, Pastor, New Birth Baptist Church, Miami, Florida
Patrick Gaspard - Executive Director, Democratic National Committee
Bishop Bobby Hilton - President, NAN Cincinnati, OH Chapter
Rep. Marcia L. Fudge - Chairwoman, Congressional Black Caucus, 113th Congress
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries - Congressman, 8th District of NY
Rep. Gregory W. Meeks - Congressman, 5th District of NY
Laura Murphy - Director, Washington Legislative Office, American Civil Liberties Union
Rep. Charles B. Rangel - Congressman, 13th District of NY
Rep. Alicia Reece - State Rep., 33rd House District of Ohio
Rep. Joseph Crowley - Congressman, 14th District of NY

During the first round the panel talked about these issues: Voter ID Laws, Reduced Early Voting and Church Sunday Voting, Reduced Polling Places, Forced Provisional Ballots that are Not Counted, and Misinformation Tactics. The other issue was the Supreme Court June decisions about the Voting Rights Act Law and Section 5 Preclearance.

Then each panel member gave their ideas for the upcoming 2013 and 2014 elections and called this the "New Civil Rights Movement".

Some of the ideas were:

- Calling out corporations that are using shareholder's money to fund organizations that are responsible for the above tactics, using the term "There has to be consequences".

- Get involved in local Judge elections since they will be deciding some of these issues.

- This is a national issue, but now it is more important to get involved locally in a state by state fight.

There will be work to create a state by state agenda to first decide how to fight current situations and also preempt new ones. The Brenner Center had a three part program: reform the election system, increase early voting, and create national standards for each part of the election process.

The Justice Department has been preparing their ideas about changing our voting system.

Assistant Attorney General Perez spoke at the George Washington University Law School Symposium on Friday, November 16, 2012. He discussed the Civil Rights Division’s work to protect the fundamental civil right that is the lifeblood of our democracy: the right to vote.

Some of the changes addressed what we can do both to protect the right to vote, and to improve the voting process:

1. Ensure that every eligible person entering a social service office can register to vote.

2. It should be the government’s responsibility to automatically register citizens to vote, by compiling, from databases that already exist, a list of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction. Of course, these lists would be used solely to administer elections and would protect essential privacy rights.

3. Election officials should work together to establish a program of permanent, portable registration – so that voters who move can vote at their new polling place on Election Day. Until that happens, we should implement fail-safe procedures to correct voter-roll errors and omissions, by allowing every voter to cast a regular, non-provisional ballot on Election Day. Several states have already taken this step.

4. Same-day registration is a reform we should be considering seriously – it would both facilitate election administration and promote electoral participation. For the 2012 election, eight states plus the District of Columbia had same-day registration in place. (Two more states have recently enacted it and will implement it next year – California, and Connecticut.) And we know that it increases participation: in both the 2008 and 2010 general elections, each of the eight states with same-day registration had higher turnout of the voting-eligible population than the national average. In fact, for the 2008 presidential election, five of the six states with the highest turnout in the country were states with same-day registration. Preliminary turnout estimates for the 2012 election show that this pattern will likely continue.

5. Voter fraud is not acceptable. But we also need to reform deceptive election practices and dishonest efforts to prevent certain voters from casting their ballots. Over the years, we’ve seen all sorts of attempts to gain partisan advantage by keeping people away from the polls – from literacy tests and poll taxes, to misinformation campaigns telling people that Election Day has been moved, or that only one adult per household can cast a ballot. Senators Schumer and Cardin recently introduced legislation that would deter and punish such harmful practices. This bill has sparked and helped to advance a critically important dialogue across – and beyond – Capitol Hill.

6. Provisional ballots - In some states and elections, large segments of the electorate are required to cast a provisional ballot instead of a regular ballot on election day, for any of a number of reasons. The Justice Department will be considering whether we need to propose concrete solutions, such as national standards for counting provisional ballots for federal elections, to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by moves close to an election, by appearing in the wrong polling place or precinct, or by poll worker errors.

7. It’s time to rethink our largely partisan system of state and local election administration. We risk leaving our election processes open to partisan mischief – or to the perception of such mischief. We should have a serious conversation about solutions to this risk, including developing an entirely professionalized and non-partisan system for administering our elections.

What are your ideas about changing the election process?