It's a Mess-issippi

If you're like me and have Google alerts for "voters" and "election" (because of course, why wouldn't you?) you've probably heard a lot about the Mississippi Republican primary. It's in my Google alerts about every other day and just when I think it's over, it's not. On the off chance you are not like me in the Google alerts regard, let me walk you through it.

State Senator and Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel decided to challenge incumbent Republican Senator (and Joe Liberman look alike contest winner) Thad Cochran who has represented Mississippi since Night Fever was number two on the music charts. It was a particularly nasty fight during which McDaniel's supporters somewhat inexplicably broke into a nursing home to photograph Cochran's ailing wife. McDaniel tea partied so hard that he actually narrowly beat Cochran in votes cast in the June 3rd primary. But because a third party candidate gained 1.5% of the vote, neither Cochran nor McDaniel earned a majority of votes, and both candidates continued on to a June 24th runoff.

At this point, the Cochran campaign kicked it into high gear because a) Cochran came very close to being ousted outright in the primary and b) usually when things go to a runoff incumbent candidates are boned. One of Cochran's key strategies for the runoff was courting African Americans and Democrats (but it's Mississippi, so I repeat myself) by reminding them of the resources he's brought to the state. This was a clear contrast with McDaniel who is racist and favors abolishing federal funding for education. Democrats heard Cochran's message and thought, "It's unlikely that a Dem is going to win this seat anyway, let's go with the guy who's not crazy." Cochran won the runoff by 7,667 votes thanks in large part to African American voters.

Mississippi does not have party registration, which means that any voter who did not cast a ballot in the Democratic primary was eligible to vote in the runoff. This allows traditional Democratic voters to vote in the Republican primary and visa versa, which in fact McDaniel did in 2003. However, sorest of all possible losers, Chris McDaniel is claiming that voters who had voted in the Democratic primary also voted in the runoff and is asking for a redo due to "irregularities" which is what Tea Partiers call it when black people vote in Mississippi.

So that's where we're at. I will let you know what happens with this potential meta-redo (three-do? Inception style redo within a redo?) but my guess is that it's not happening. Currently there is a court case led by Texas voting "rights" group True the Vote to compel the release of June 24th voter information.

Can't wait to go down to Mississippi myself in a couple of weeks. Should be a blast!

Campaign Love and Mine,

Nancy

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Presidential Commission on Election Administration Talks About the REAL Problems With Election Technology

The findings are so important and affirming that I am just going to let Nate Persily, Research Director for the Commission, speak for himself.

The principal recommendations of the commission are:

1) modernization of the registration process through expansion of online voter registration and state collaboration in improving the accuracy of voter lists
2)improving access through expansion of pre-Election Day voting, and selection of suitable, well-equipped polling place facilities, such as schools
3) endorsement of tools to assure efficient management of polling places, hosted at the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project and available through the commission’s Web site;
4)reforms of the standard-setting and certification process for new voting technology to address soon-to-be antiquated voting machines and to encourage innovation and the adoption of widely available off-the-shelf technologies.

The issue of long polling place lines is an illustrative example. Media reports on long lines focus on battleground states, and usually the most populous counties within those states. National surveys, such as those conducted by Charles Stewart, have identified “problem states” where respondents report long wait times. What we need, however, are nationwide wait time data at the polling place level. As anyone who has visited Disney World with a child can attest, calculating wait times does not involve 21st century technology. But until we have every polling place in America using their stop watches for similar purposes, we will not have a clear picture of the location of the line problem and its multifarious causes.

The same can be said for any number of issues, such as the failure to count provisional, absentee and military ballots, accessibility of polling places, and perhaps the easiest and most important, the performance of voting technology. The lack of a nationwide data infrastructure hinders the kind of institutionalized learning and feedback loops that will allow our system of election administration to learn from itself. If the report of the Presidential Commission can push election officials to take even this minor, clearly nonpartisan step, it will have made a substantial, long lasting contribution to improving the voting experience.

Unrelatedly, I have been watching Scandal and House of Cards this weekend as soooo many people begged me to. I'm not gonna say they're not addictive, but we're got enough voting drama right here in real life.















Unrelatedly, I have started watching House of Cards and Scandal, so

Today in Voter Supression: Well, Duh.

Political scientists at Cambridge University have concluded that laws supposedly aimed at preventing voter fraud (for example voter ID, and bans on same day registration) are actually partisan, specifically Republican, efforts at voter suppression.

In an effort to bring empirical clarity and epistemological standards to what has been a deeply-charged, partisan, and frequently anecdotal debate, we use multiple specialized regression approaches to examine factors associated with both the proposal and adoption of restrictive voter access legislation from 2006-2011. Our results indicate that proposal and passage are highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs...

Rather, we argue that the Republican Party has engaged in strategic demobilization efforts in response to changing demographics, shifting electoral fortunes, and an internal rightward ideological drift among the party faithful.We situate the most recent round of electoral reforms--far from historically unique--among other measures trumpeted as protecting electoral legitimacy while intended to exclude the marginalized for a particular political party's advantage.

Devotees will note my disdain of political science for complicating and restating that which is obvious to everyone who works on campaigns and then passing it off as new findings, but there you go voter fraud liars, in addition to lying about voter fraud and climate change, you can now also lie about the findings of this study.

This is What Voter Fraud Actually Looks Like

Via The Voting News

Prosecutors are investigating allegations of voter fraud in Little Armenia, part of a Los Angeles City Council district where two candidates are waging a bitter battle for an open seat. According to a spokeswoman for L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, prosecutors are trying to determine whether backers of one candidate illegally filled out mail-in ballots for dozens of voters in the Armenian enclave in East Hollywood. The May 21 election will decide who succeeds Eric Garcetti, who is running for mayor. In a complaint sent to Lacey’s office, an attorney for candidate John Choi accused backers of Choi’s opponent, Mitch O’Farrell, of “widespread voter fraud and illegal electioneering activities.”

The complaint alleges that O’Farrell campaign workers filled out voters’ ballots for their candidate while telling them they were voting for Sam Kbushyan, a candidate of Armenian descent who ran and lost during the primary election.

Kbushyan and many of his former campaign volunteers are now working on behalf of O’Farrell.

The O’Farrell campaign rebuts the allegations, saying it was Choi workers who filled out and took ballots from voters. “These are Choi people who are doing this,” O’Farrell spokeswoman Renee Nahum said.

Nahum said the campaign plans to file its own complaint with the district attorney that will include testimony from voters who said they gave their ballots to Choi campaign workers who claimed that they were representing Kbushyan.

Happy New Year from Putin!

"Honest presidential elections in 2012," Putin told reporters in Moscow today, when asked what he can offer to Russians as a New Year's gift. The premier said he was ready for dialogue with the country's opposition groups, though they need to articulate a coherent platform.

Even though he claims that the December 4th elections weren't rigged. Pro-tip, Puty Put, generally when someone offers us a gift, it's something they don't think we already have. Let's call a bear a bear.

С Новым годом!
-Nancy

In Post-Soviet Russia, elections hold YOU

The director of internationally funded election monitoring organization, Golos (voice), has been detained in Moscow, on the eve of Russia's parliamentary election.

As my host mother in St.Petersburg brilliantly pointed out, "Voting for president in Russia like voting for the weather." Meaning you can vote, but good luck with that having an impact.

I'm not disputing that tomorrow's election will be transparently corrupt, but if Russia sent people to monitor OUR elections we'd be all "You're kidding, right?" It's corrupt. We know its corrupt. They know its corrupt. They know we know. Leave it alone.

Congolese citizens take voter protection into their own hands.

"Dear Ballot Box, I hope you will tell me a story with a happy ending on December 6. It is the one I wrote."

This article is a must read for people interested in first or post-conflict elections, or anyone who is considering not voting in 2012.
People die for the right to vote and have their vote counted, whereas so many Americans take it for granted.

2012 E-Voting Machines are Super-hackable

Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois says Salon.com


I found the video pretty boring, but if you're the "take it apart and see for myself" type, you might find it appealing.

In case you don't want to watch the boring video or read the less boring article, let me break it down for you. They are not talking about cyber attacks, although they imply those are possible as well. They are talking about physical attacks on the machine, basically rewiring it to run by remote control, which they call a "man in the middle" attack. That is in a way scarier, because you don't need highly specialized knowledge to pull it off. Apparently it's pretty easy (they keep referring to being able to do it with an 8th grade education, but I must have skipped that day) and very cheap and if it happened, there would be no physical evidence to arouse suspicion.

Test team member, John Warner explains, "The really nice thing about this attack, the man-in-the-middle, is that there's no soldering or destruction of the circuit board of any kind. You can remove this attack and leave no forensic evidence that we've been there...Gaining access to the inside of the Diebold [that's the brand of voting machine] touch-screen is as simple as picking the rudimentary lock, or using a standard hotel minibar key, as all of the machines use the same easily copied key, available at most office supply stores."

This is why I tell people it will be years before we have national at home ivoting. We can't guarantee security when we have the physical machines.

Now granted, we assume that the machines will be stored in a place with trustworthy personnel (...or you know, underpaid disgruntled board of elections workers). And more reasonably we realize that for this type of hack to have any sort of widespread effect, there would have to be a national or statewide conspiracy to physically tamper with machines. Sure one super corrupt County Party Chair might be able to rig an election (a problem in and of itself), but I would put it past even the least scrupulous of national parities to be able to pull off that kind of coordinated attack. You would really need cyber hacking for that. (I mean what? I was home all evening! I want an attorney!) Still, when it comes to the integrity of our voting systems are we really okay with "it's probably fine?"

So, while I don't find it overly concerning, I do find it dumb that we made voting machines that a zealous intern could hack into. So does the team at Argonne National. Team leader Roger Johnston explains:

"The machines themselves need to be designed better, with the idea that people may be trying to get into them. If you're just thinking about the fact that someone can try to get in, you can design the seals better, for example. Don't do things like use a standard blank key for every machine. Spend an extra four bucks and get a better lock. You don't have to have state of the art security, but you can do some things where it takes at least a little bit of skill to get in."

Why don't Republicans focus on this if they're so concerned about election fraud?

Rhode Island Couple Charged with Voter Fraud

I've never actually heard of a case on this level before. Although I am sure this isn't the first.

"Agnes Mancini, 67, a former secretary for the Johnston Board of Canvassers, and her husband, Anthony, 68, turned themselves in to state police headquarters in Scituate Wednesday. Both were charged with fraudulent voting. State police detective commander Capt. James O. Demers said the Mancinis voted in the 2010 mayoral election in Johnston despite the fact that they lived at 69 Orchard Meadows Drive in Smithfield...The couple never voted in Smithfield, he said. Instead, they used the 1193 Hartford Ave. address of their business, Mancini Service Station, to vote in Johnston, he said."

The couple could face up to up to ten years in jail each and a fine of up to $5000.

Bravo to the police for taking this matter seriously, although I can't help but feel bad for the couple. People do this all the time and rarely, rarely get caught. In fact, how did the police even find out you wonder?

Apparently police got a tip and investigated. Who was this tipper? What kind of clever, disgruntled and politically engaged person just happened upon this situation? I mean, I take voting very seriously, but even I don't think I would have turned them in. I'd love to know more about this person including where he was the night of the 2008 Iowa caucus.