[EL] secret ballot

Tue Dec 27 08:47:48 PST 2011

Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.

Collecting such data is very complicated, as I have seen monitoring well
over 100 elections with DOJ attorneys and federal observers, i.e. persons
with expertise as opposed to volunteers.  It takes considerable time to pin
down the nature and source of a registration problem, for example, and even
then the voter may give inaccurate information.  Meanwhile, voters wait in
line.
Poll workers already have a pretty full plate.  Many already are
overwhelmed by the frequent changes in election law and the disputes over
the proper interpretation of the law.  Piling more duties on election
officials is liable to interfere with the smooth operation of the polls and
the data the poll workers produce would be questionable at best.
It would help for more election procedures -- provisional ballot standards,
etc. - to be uniform natioanwide, so that voters (and public spirited
citizens willing to serve as poll workers) who move to a new state would
know what to expect.
For those interested in monitoring elecitons in a way that obtains useful
information fr research or litigation, I have a distressingly
practical article at 61 baylor l rev 50, or thereabouts.

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Flavio Komuves <fkomuves at optonline.net>wrote:

> This is a sensible proposal for all states.  I think such information
> should be collected for every voter who approaches to vote and is turned
> away for any reason other than because their voting district is elsewhere
> in the same room (e.g., a school gym that serves multiple precincts).  This
> would capture not just people turned away due to identification issues, but
> those turned away because their registration has not been input, or has
> been deleted, or is turned away because a poll worker feigns the inability
> to find their name in the registration books, or because of accessibility
> failures, or any of a myriad of reasons.  It also makes remedies (whether
> in the nature of a recount, a civil proceeding, discharge of poll workers
> for inefficiency or ignorance of provisional ballot laws, or a criminal
> prosecution) much easier to pursue.  Advocates in NJ have been urging the
> creation of such a list, for a number of years, without success.
>
> Flavio Komuves
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 9:42 AM, Dan Johnson wrote:
>
>  I wish poll workers (election judges in Illinois) were required to
> document incidents when citizens ask whether they may vote but are turned
> away due to registration or identification barriers imposed by the
> government. I witness it every election cycle when i am working a precinct
> for my candidates, but there is no data collection to systematically
> document it.
>
> On Tuesday, December 27, 2011,  < *JBoppjr at aol.com*> wrote:
> > A big lie repeated over and over again does not become true:
> >
> > "we should also realize that in the U.S., the secret ballot was widely
> used, as the voter identification measures currently are, to disfranchise
> poor, uneducated people,
> > especially African-Americans in the South."
> >
> > When put to the test, the Plaintiffs in Indiana could not come up with
> one person who was disenfranchised.  No not one.  Jim Bopp
> >
> > In a message dated 12/26/2011 5:23:32 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, *
> kousser at hss.caltech.edu*writes:
> >
> >    In relation to Mark Scarberry's post, we should also realize that in
> > the U.S., the secret ballot was widely used, as the voter identification
> > measures currently are, to disfranchise poor, uneducated people,
> > especially African-Americans in the South.  By disfranchising
> > African-Americans, it also greatly diminished the vote of the party to
> > which they overwhelmingly adhered at the time, the Republicans, and
> > partisan and racial purposes, then as now, could not be easily
> > disentangled.  As the (Democratic) Little Rock Arkansas Gazette wrote
> > after the first election (1892) in which the secret ballot was used in
> > that state:
> >
> >    The Australian ballot works like a charm:
> >    It makes them think and scratch.
> >    And when a negro [sic] gets a ballot,
> >    He has certainly met his match.
> >
> >    That was two years after the longest Senate filibuster in history up
> > to that time had defeated the second strongest voting rights act that
> > Congress considered before 1965, the Lodge Fair Elections Bill.  (The
> > strongest, in most respects, was the Enforcement Act of 1875, also
> > defeated by a filibuster.)  If the Supreme Court were to strip voters of
> > the protection of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case,
> > a potential South Carolina voter id case, the Kinston or Alabama or
> > Arizona or even Texas cases, then future election "reforms" might more
> > overtly target their racial and partisan objects, as the secret ballot
> > did more than a century ago.
> > Morgan
> >
> > --
> > Prof. of History and Social Science, Caltech
> > surface mail:  228-77 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125-7700
> > phone 626-395-4080, fax 626-405-9841
> > home page:<  *http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~kousser/Kousser.html*<http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~kousser/Kousser.html>>
>
> >    . . . without the clarity that makes doubt productive, historians
> will never be able to fulfill their highest moral responsibility, to build
> a better world . . .
> >                        -- from "The New Postmodern Southern Political
> History"
> >    Perfection . . . in any institution is a dangerous myth; there is
> only the repeated correction of imperfections.  As long as there is
> discrimination, there will always be more work to do.
> >                         -- from "The Strange, Ironic Career of Section 5
> of the Voting Rights Act"
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Law-election mailing list
> > *Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu*
> > *http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election*<http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election>
> >
>
> --
> Dan Johnson
>
> Attorney at Law
> 111 West Washington, Suite 1920
> Chicago, Illinois 60602
>
> 312.867.5377 (office)
> 312.933.4890 (mobile)
> 312.794.7064 (fax)
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> *http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election*<http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election>
>   <http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20111227/4f6dd5d7/attachment.html>