NYC Mayor Bloomberg Election Law Changes

In the last three federal elections, the NY ranked 47th in average voter turnout. New York is one of the few states that does not have any major election reforms in effect, like early voting or online voting registration or the ability to switch one's political party within six months of a primary.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was joined by other local elected officials (State Senator-elect Michael Gianaris, State Assembly Members Brian Kavanagh, Karim Camara, Michael Benjamin and Jonathan Bing, Council Member Gale Brewer, Former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, Sr., Reverend Al Sharpton, Citizens Union Executive Director Dick Dadey, Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner, NYPIRG Senior Attorney Gene Russianoff, New York State Bar Association President Steven Younger, Deputy Director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program Wendy Weiser, New York City Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo and New York City Voter Assistance Commission Executive Director Onida Coward Mayers) to introduce a plan to increase voter turnout and improve the election system in the city and state.

Proposed Voting Reforms

1. Creation of an early voting period: 35 states currently offer early voting in some form, generally 1-2 weeks before Election Day at a selected number of “super poll sites.” An early voting period would give New Yorkers a much greater degree of flexibility as to where and when they vote.

2. At-home ballot completion: The newly redesigned paper ballot system can provide a unique opportunity for voters to complete their ballots in the privacy of their homes and then bring them to the polling site for scanning and submission. This will ensure New Yorkers spend more time making informed decisions and less time waiting in line at the poll sites.

3. Streamlining voter registration: New York State has some of the most cumbersome registration laws in the country. But we can immediately improve this situation by taking three simple steps. First, the law should be changed to allow registration ten days before Election Day, as is permitted by the New York State Constitution, rather than the 25 days permitted now. Second, modernizing the registration process by linking existing state and local databases to the Board of Elections would eliminate duplicative data entry and reduce the time required for processing. Lastly, New York State should allow voters to change their party affiliation, and participate in the primary of their choice, without having to wait over a year for the process to take its course. Such a reform would put New York State back in the mainstream, as 20 out of 25 states that require party affiliation to vote in primaries allow for changes within 30 days of Election Day.

4. Simplified Ballot Design: Guaranteeing that ballot instructions are readily visible and in plain language will ensure that voters are better able to understand the process. Streamlining the ballot by eliminating unnecessary and uninformative text will make it easier to read.

Additional enhancements: Identifying and acting on additional reforms that may require a constitutional amendment should also be reviewed. For example, the current and ongoing efforts of the legislature to pass an amendment allowing for no-excuse absentee voting would also give voters additional flexibility and options on Election Day.

"We have to judge the Legislature by the results," said Citizens Union Executive Director Dick Dadey of why getting reforms passed in Albany is so difficult. "And the results are, we still have all these obstacles. I think, to be honest, there's not an incentive. The more people who can participate in our elections, the greater chance that we can control the outcome."

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Federal judges disallow Dallas County's use of voting machines

A three-judge panel has ruled that Dallas County election officials violated federal law when they did not inform the Department of Justice about changes in the way straight-party votes are counted on electronic voting machines.

The judges determined that the county did not get proper approval from the Department of Justice to use the county's current machines. They granted an injunction requested by the Texas Democratic Party to halt use of the machines in Dallas until they get Justice Department clearance.

The Texas Democratic Party sued Dallas County, claiming that election officials here failed to notify Justice Department officials about "emphasis" votes that don't get counted when people vote straight-party on electronic machines.

Use the above link to read the entire article by JASON TRAHAN and CHRISTY HOPPE / The Dallas Morning News.

Michael H. Drucker
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The Ground Game

The 2008 election may well be determined by some of the legal and election administration skirmishes going on now in several key states. Those in the know may be surprised by not acknowledging the other presidential candidates in this years race. Barr, Nader, McKinney and others could take over 10% of the vote and really swing a state. But which way?

Pennsylvania: In 2004, Democrats successfully kept Ralph Nader off the presidential ballot, fearing he would draw votes away from John Kerry. Kerry beat Bush in Pennsylvania by only two percentage points; Nader's presence on the ballot could well have cost Kerry the state. Nader will be on the ballot again this time in Pennsylvania, but Republicans are now fighting to keep former Republican and current Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr off the ballot. There hasn't been any polling of Pennsylvania since late August, and the polling then showed an Obama lead among registered voters and little support for Barr. But the race could have tightened up since then, and the presence of Barr (and Nader) on the ballot could make a difference.

Virginia: Virginia is neck and neck this year, to the surprise of Democrats and Republicans alike. At this point, Democrats appear to have an advantage, thanks to an aggressive voter registration effort by the Obama campaign, which has been especially successful in registering young voters. Republicans have responded to the surge in voter registration by raising the tried-and-true boogeyman of voter fraud. In addition, some local registrars in Virginia have been incorrectly—though perhaps innocently—telling college students who legally register to vote in their college towns that by doing so they "could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax return … and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents' car and health insurance." Which candidate wins Virginia could well depend on which campaign is able to turn out its voters.

Ohio: Ohio, too, is very close. Democrats hope to take advantage of a new Ohio law that provides a five-day window in late September and early October for residents to register to vote and to vote absentee at the same time. Republicans say the practice encourages voter fraud. Democrats, meanwhile, are complaining about a new "vote caging" effort and worrying about whether residents who are forced to move because of foreclosure won't be able to cast valid ballots. Remember that a small shift in Ohio votes in 2004 would have handed the presidency to John Kerry.

Colorado: The 2006 midterms in Denver were a true election meltdown. Officials promise that things will be better this time around, but there's been a major battle over the secretary of state's decision to decertify, then recertify, some touch-screen and optical-scan voting machines. The Internet publication Election Law, which tracks election litigation the way a weatherman tracks an approaching hurricane, concludes that because of issues related to voting machines and other factors, if "election integrity groups or political parties see their fortunes resting with Colorado's 9 electoral votes, litigation there will be likely."

New Mexico: A battleground state, New Mexico was the site of allegations of voter fraud and election administration incompetence in 2004. God help us all if the presidential election comes down to the counting of provisional ballots here. An astonishing 12 percent of all votes cast in the primary between Obama and Clinton were provisional ballots, and it took a long time to get them counted. And election-law experts Ned Foley and Tova Wang have warned that "state laws are incredibly vague and incomplete with regard to casting and counting provisional ballots." No doubt armies of lawyers are standing by for deployment in New Mexico if the election is as close this year as it was in 2004, when Bush won by 5,988 votes.

Florida: Any list of battleground states and potential problems would be incomplete without a discussion of Florida. After the 2000 election, political battles in the state have turned to voter registration. Left-leaning voting rights groups have threatened to sue Florida for failing to make enough efforts to register low-income voters. Meanwhile, the state has issued new rules that may be deterring independent groups like the League of Women Voters from registering voters. Once the registration period is over, we can go back to worrying about whether Florida (with many counties having moved to their second or third voting system since 2000) can actually count the votes fairly and accurately—especially with 13 candidates to appear on the Florida presidential ballot and thousands of new voters.

What problems do you see in your state?

Michael H. Drucker
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Voter Registration by Students

The widespread practice of students’ registering to vote at their college address has set off a fracas in Virginia, a battleground state in the presidential election.

Student-registration controversies have been a recurring problem since 1971, when the 26st Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 from 21, and despite a 1979 ruling by the United States Supreme Court that students have the right to register at their college address, many states still do not follow the ruling.

Use the above link to read the entire article.

Michael H. Drucker
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Independents Win Legal Victory

Independents just won a significant legal victory in Idaho.

Last month, CUIP, our Idaho affiliate, and 12 independent voters petitioned the Federal Court to become co-defendants in a lawsuit filed by the Republican Party against the State of Idaho. The Republicans are attempting to force the state to close the primaries to independent voters, and we petitioned to become directly involved as defendants in the suit.

This morning at 9:30 AM, the judge ruled—over the strenuous objections of the Republicans’ attorneys that CUIP and independent voters could join the suit as defendants.

It’s a legal precedent, the first time that independents have directly intervened in an election case that impacts on our voting rights.

It’s an important win for independent minded voters.

Use the above link to read the entire article.

Michael H. Drucker
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State Fusion Issues

On August 11, two ballot-qualified parties in Oregon filed a lawsuit in state court, alleging that the actual text of the Oregon election law does permit two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate. The plaintiffs include the Working Families Party and the Independent Party. The WFP wants to cross-endorse Peter Buckley, a Democratic nominee for the state house. The Independent Party wants to cross-endorse Joel Haugen, a Republican nominee for U.S. House, First District.

"In Oregon there is a distinction between “endorse” (a term with no legal significance) and “nomination” by a political party. Nomination has legal significance and gives both the candidate and the party certain rights under statute, all in furtherance of the great cognate rights of expression and assembly.

The IPO has nominated state and local candidates, and cross-nominated Jeff Merkley, D challenger to Sen. Gordon Smith, and the D candidate for State Treasurer, in addition to the R candidate in the 1st CD. Working Families cross-nominated an Oregon House candidate. All the candidates have formally accepted each of the major and minor party nominations.

OR law regulating the design of ballots requires that a candidate’s name may appear only once on the ballot, and then sets out a series of “rules” for which party name(s) shall appear with the candidate on the ballot. The Secretary of State contends that in cross-nominations, only the name of the major party may appear, without exception. We disagree.

Thus, this is not a case about “fusion” voting in the sense of allocating a separate ballot line to each nominating party, but a claim that the law requires that the names of both nominating parties appear with the candidate’s name. This is fusion-lite, or whatever, but would nevertheless provide truthful, accurate information about the candidate and the official actions of the minor parties."

On August 12, the South Carolina Secretary of State, and the South Carolina Election Commission, jointly agreed that if two different parties jointly nominate the same presidential candidate and the same slate of presidential elector candidates, that the state will add the votes together (from both parties) to determine the candidate’s vote total.

This may seem as though it should have been obvious all along. The other fusion states certainly considered it obvious, but South Carolina had been equivocating this year, about that point.

Michael H. Drucker
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CA Conflicting Election Laws

Thanks to Richard Winger from Ballot Access News:

"On July 14, the California Secretary of State released the official totals from the June 3 primary, including all write-in totals. In the 15th State Senate district, no Democrat was on the ballot. Dennis Morris, a Democratic attorney in Pismo Beach, had filed as a write-in for the Democratic primary when he learned that no other Democrat was running. He polled 2,096 write-ins. The Republican incumbent, Senator Abel Maldonado, had also filed to have his write-ins counted in the Democratic primary, but Maldonado only received 533 write-ins.

Under California Election Code section 8605, no one may receive the nomination of a party by write-in votes, unless he or she receives a number of write-ins equal to 1% of the vote for that office in the last general election. So, even though Morris’ write-in total is very impressive, he cannot be considered nominated; he needed 3,689 write-ins to meet that standard. Since the California Constitution, since 2004, has said, “A political party shall not be denied the ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate who received, at the primary election, the highest vote among that party’s candidates”, Morris intends to bring a lawsuit, alleging that sec. 8605 violates the California Constitution."

Michael H. Drucker
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