If California has had a "very good reputation for nonpartisanship and professionalization," wouldn't that suggest that, "more nonpartisan professionalized election administration systems" are unlikely to make a difference?
I doubt that the problem has as much to do with who administers elections than with the disposition of partisans to want to claim election fraud. "Nonpartisan, professional" is another way of describing a person who can be legitimately attacked by whichever side loses. Heck, we have already seen partisans attacking election officials of their own party. And we have the relatively new phenomenon of major party leaders and candidates stoking, rather than calming, the fears of the most crackpot conspiracy theorists.
I think that partisanship is working to create the appearance that our elections are substantially and regularly unreliable and rife with fraud; and this appearance, which is far different from the reality, leads to hasty and unwise laws. Again, I can't help but notice the similarity with campaign finance laws - once appearances become more important than reality, we have a prescription for bad public policy and disregard for the rights of the public.
I would not be at all surprised if nonpartisan election administration increases distrust of the electoral process, just as public perception of corruption in office has correspondingly grown with the imposition of an increasingly complicated web of "ethics" rules, lobbying restrictions, and campaign finance laws.
Brad Smith
________________________________
From: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu on behalf of Rick Hasen
Sent: Sat 6/10/2006 2:04 PM
To: Michael McDonald
Cc: election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Subject: Re: Mehlman pushes storyline that Democrats commit vote fraud
It is worth pointing out that some on the left too are looking to use the Bilbray-Busby race as proof of fraud (or potential fraud) in the electoral process:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002924.htm
This pattern of partisans trying to raise questions about the fairness of the electoral process is something I expect to continue until we see more moves toward creating more nonpartisan professionalized election administration systems. It is especially troubling in this instance because local election administration in California has, at least until recently, had a very good reputation for nonpartisanship and professionalization.
Rick
Michael McDonald wrote:
I thought this would be of interest:
In the wake of the Busby defeat in California's 50th district, Republican
chair Ken Mehlman pushed the storyline on Hardball that Busby encouraged
illegal immigrants to vote in the special election, and tied the claim to
Democrat Gregoire's victory in the Washington recount case.
For a transcript see: http://mediamatters.org/items/200606090002 (for the
conservatives on the list, my apologies for linking to a left-leaning web
site.)
A few points here:
1. A fair reading of Busby's controversial comment that "you don't need
papers to vote" is that she mispoke and corrected herself in the next
sentence to say that you don't have to be a citizen to volunteer for a
campaign. From my vantage of teaching a campaigns class in Washington DC at
a school with many foreign nationals, I have known non-citizen students who
worked on Democratic and Republican campaigns. I'll be curious to hear the
opinion of those on the list if the campaign activity represents an illegal
political donation from a foreign national. Was Busby promoting illegal
activity?
2. To my knowledge, there is no evidence that any fradulent votes were cast
in the California special election. There is, to my knowledge, no
investigation underway to determine if Busby's campaign orchestrated the
casting of fradulent votes. Perhaps someone knows something different?
3. With regards to the Washinton recount case, there were inleigible felons
and a husband of a deceased women who testified that their illegal votes
went to Rossi, the Republican candidate. There is no evidence that
Gregoire's campaign knowlingly solicited illegal votes.
I'm sure we can all see where this is leading: we need photo identification
at the polls to prevent Democrats from stealing elections using illegal
immigrants. I'm sure that we're going to hear more of this as the election
approaches. Chris Matthews can be expected to promote this kind of
rhetoric, but I am disappointed that Charile Cook (the third guest on the
show, and typical of the cable talk shows, he was apparently there to
provide "balance" to Mehlman) didn't interject a more reasoned response.
------------
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Assistant Professor, George Mason University
Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution
Mailing address:
(o) 703-993-4191 George Mason University
(f) 703-993-1399 Dept. of Public and International Affairs
mmcdon@gmu.edu 4400 University Drive - 3F4
http://elections.gmu.edu Fairfax, VA 22030-4444