Welcome to the latest edition in our war on voting series. This is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades.
In response to a Monday crash of an online voter registration portal that affected a large but unknown number of Virginians, U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton ruled Thursday to extend the registration deadline in the Old Dominion until midnight Friday. Although both Democrats and Republicans welcomed the decision, state officials and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law had asked for the deadline to be extended until Monday. Judge Hilton said a five-day extension seemed needlessly long. This extension covers registration online, in person and by mail.
The Attorney General’s Office and a lawyer for the plaintiffs said a longer extension would reduce the chances of another website crash and additional court proceedings.
“The thinking is we’ll provide ample time so it will spread the burden on the network over the weekend and into Monday,” said John A. Freedman, an attorney with law firm Arnold & Porter LLP, which helped bring the case.
Judge Hilton said if there was another computer crash, the court would deal with it.
The original registration deadline was Monday, October 17. But Virginia Department of Elections officials said the online registration website crashed because of an unexpected traffic surge and voting promotions by Facebook and Google. After the crash, people who tried to register before the deadline encountered a “File not found” error message.
The move to online voter registration has been a bipartisan affair in several states where Republicans are in full or partial control, including Virginia, perhaps partly because Republicans figure that people with access and the skill to navigate registration websites won’t skew heavily Democratic. Twenty-six states now offer online registration as compared with two eight years ago. But in other states, for example, Texas and Florida, which are both under Republican control, there has been resistance.
The House of Delegates Republican Speaker William J. Howell, complained that “The entire episode was unfortunate, predictable and avoidable,” he said, adding that “Local registrars attempted to warn the McAuliffe administration this was going to happen, and the General Assembly’s Privileges and Elections Committees attempted to bring these issues to light at a joint hearing last week. In both cases the Department of Elections brushed aside legitimate concerns instead of taking the prompt action that was needed.”
• Back in September, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court order saying that a purge of Ohio voters by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted based on lack of voting activity violated the National Voting Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Husted responded with a list of procedures to remedy the situation.
On Wednesday, a district judge issued an order that mostly follows Husted’s proposals that will allow most purged voters to cast ballots in the November election if they meet certain conditions:
Despite the imperfect circumstances now faced by the parties and Ohio voters purged under Ohio’s Supplemental Process, it is the Court’s hope that the remedies detailed in this Opinion and Order will successfully restore the rights of many Ohio voters prior to the upcoming election.
• In response to calls by the Republican presidential nominee for “Trump Election Observers” to monitor the polls, the Brennan Center for Justice issued a fact sheet in August that’s worth a read by anyone concerned with how such poll watchers conduct themselves. Authors Wendy R. Weiser and Adam Gitlin explain in their introduction to The Dangers of “Ballot Security” Operations and Voter Intimidation:
Every eligible citizen has the right to vote free of intimidation and discrimination — regardless of political affiliation, race, disability, sexual orientation, or gender. Deploying non-official, private actors to challenge voters’ eligibility can lead to illegal intimidation, discrimination, or disruptions, and undermine confidence in our election system. This analysis outlines the threat, explains what is and is not allowed under the law, and highlights what can be done to protect against harmful activity in November.
• Meanwhile, civil rights activists plan to watch the watchers:
Donald Trump supporters who plan to stake out polling sites on Election Day may find their own activities tracked closely by thousands of civil-rights activists who are mounting a nationwide effort to prevent problems at the polls. [...]
"When Trump says, 'Go and watch certain areas of Philadelphia,' that's either intentionally reckless or it's a thinly veiled call to engage in racial profiling," said Dale Ho, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union's voting rights project. "Whether people will heed it, I don't know."
• Republican leaders are, in fact, trying to distance themselves from Trump’s call for monitors. They fear that it could mean an eight-year extension of a consent decree barring the Republican National Committee from engaging in such action. In an article in The Wall Street Journal:
RNC general counsel John Ryder wrote to members on Wednesday to “remind you of the restrictions placed on the RNC by the consent decree.” […]
RNC members often also serve as officers in state or local Republican parties, and are often active in their personal capacity in politics. Mr. Ryder warned that they are advised not to engage in those measures even when acting independently of their job with the party.
“You are encouraged not to engage in ‘ballot security’ activities even in your personal, state party or campaign capacity. If you elect to do so, please be aware that the RNC in no way sanctions your activity,” Mr. Ryder wrote.
Rick Hasen, the proprietor of the Election Law Blog, wrote Thursday that it may already be too late as he is sure that Democrats are “collecting the evidence they need to in order to go back into court to extend this another 8 years.”
• Heather Digby Parton at Salon points out “It’s the Republicans who rig elections, Donald: The GOP history of voter suppression goes way back”:
In the 1980s, there were consent decrees in place all over the country as various local arms of the GOP got caught violating federal election laws by trying to suppress minority votes. In the wake of Jesse Jackson’s highly successful voter registration drives, Republicans instigated a campaign to purge voter rolls in African-American communities throughout the South and urban areas. They professionalized and nationalized their operation by recruiting lawyers and training them in the election laws of different jurisdictions so they could more efficiently challenge Democratic votes.
• Ari Berman at The Nation writes that “Trump’s rigged election lies distract from the real threat to American democracy”:
The real danger to American democracy stems from GOP efforts to make it harder to vote. New voting restrictions—like voter-ID laws, cuts to early voting and barriers to voter registration—that are in place in 14 states for the first time in 2016 will make it harder for millions of eligible voters to cast a ballot. And voters are lacking crucial protections because this is the first presidential election in 50 years without the full provisions of the Voting Rights Act.