It is clear now that the previous HAVA voting rights act of 2002, born out of a repub-controlled House, was passed with a repub touch of shit that encouraged rabidly partisan repub state attorneys general and repub state secretaries of state to attempt to suppress legitimate voter turnout for the partisan repub purpose of suppressing & disenfranchising Democratic votes & Democratic voters, all in the faux name of supposed "voter fraud" prevention.
Thankfully, in 2008 there were enough ethical judges still in place to for the most part turn back the worst of the GOP's partisan 2008 voter suppression & voter disenfranchisement efforts.
We cannot rely on that final firewall, however.
Looking forward, we need a NEW HAVA Voting Rights Act, and it needs to explicitly address the following:
(more below)
We cannot de-elect at the polls every current in-place unethical asshole repub state attorney general and repub state secretary of state who are just the new face of the old jim crow voter suppression activities; therefore, we need to box in these repub state attorneys general and repub state secretaries of state with new federal voting laws so airtight and with federal criminal penalties so serious that they dare not attempt, out of their fear of their own actual imprisonment, their explicit (database exact matching) or implicit (not enough voting machines in select Dem locales) voter suppression/disenfranchisement horseshit anymore.
The new HAVA voting rights act must make it crystal clear that while the prevention of voter fraud is a legitimate & necessary part of any new voting rights act, such voter fraud prevention activities must not occur at the expense of simultaneously suppressing and/or disenfranchising any legitimate voters.
The new HAVA voting rights act must identify that its entire contents must be interpreted to operate under the following paramount umbrella guiding principle, which is that everyone involved in the administration & execution of the voting process should always strive to interpret everything in the new HAVA voting rights act as directing everyone administratively involved in the voting process to always err on the side of having more people vote, not less.
The current HAVA voting rights act apparently does not spell that out, since we are seeing so many GOP attempts to supposedly prevent "voter fraud" (like the GOP attempts to utilize exact database matching) put forth by GOP operatives without any consideration or accountability or quantification as to how many legitimate voters would be disenfranchised due to said supposed voter fraud prevention efforts.
Any voter fraud prevention activities which suppress/disenfranchise more legitimate voters than the amount of fraudulent voters that it catches & prevents, such as what exact database matching would do, and what Katherine Harris's "felon purge list" in 2000 did, must be especially called out for extreme prohibition by law.
The new HAVA voting rights act must not only allow, it must explicitly direct & mandate under penalty of law that every state secretary of state undertake every & all possible means & mechanisms to prevent extraordinarily long voter backup lines from occurring at any polling places under their auspices. No more of this insincere "Oh, well, we have no legal right to help alleviate that problem" cop-out crap.
Said means & mechanisms undertaken to prevent extraordinarily long voter backup lines from occurring must be both proactive/preemptive in nature (to anticipate & prevent the occurrence of long voter backup lines before the fact), as well as remedial (the on-the-spot remedying of any actual occurrences of long voter backup lines with longer polling place open hours, with the on-the-spot reallocation of voting equipment from underutilized polling places to overutilized polling places, etc.)
We also need to have new laws that legally prevent state SoS's and state AG's from simultaneously having major roles in partisan campaigns, that is, no more Katherine Harris's or Ken Blackwells serving as state chairpersons for partisan political campaigns. It is mind-blowing to me that that has never been legally recognized & challenged & prohibited as a notorious & obvious conflict of interest.
We also need to establish uniform national laws making it a serious federal crime with serious criminal punishment consequences for anyone who deliberately attempts to mislead or intimidate voters into not voting, or who otherwise attempts to maliciously intefere with any aspect of the voting process, such as putting out flyers announcing wrong voting days, or putting out flyers announcing that people who show up at the polls to vote will be arrested for any outstanding parking ticket violations they may have, or doing election day phone lines jamming of one's political opponent, etc.
We also need to establish via law more controls around political robo-calls, such as making political robo-calls subject to current do-not-call lists. We need to have serious financial penalties on the books that can be levied against any makers of political robo-calls who do not clearly identify the name & location of the robo-call company AND the political candidate or true partisan political affiliation of the PAC (and not merely some vague name like the "Americans for Freedom" PAC) that is funding the robo-calls. The same applies for phony push-polls. No more robo-calls or push-polls deceptively appearing to be something that they are not or appearing to be from someone that they are not.
Finally, we need to establish in law uniform national minimum-standard paper trail audit procedures for all voters and all voting equipment nationwide. Actually, there are many other new controls & new regulations & new standards that must be codified into law around electronic voting specifically, but that is another HUGE subject for another diary. For example, we must explicitly prevent via law the situation where e-voting central database servers are under the control of private hands (this actually happened in Ohio in 2004); we must have full disclosure of & full governmental supervison/control/review of all e-voting code used (no more "proprietary" black box mystery code), etc.
Have I missed anything here people? Lemme know below!
PS: Last week I saw Debbie Wasserman-Shultz say on Hardball that in the next Congress, Steny Hoyer, who worked on the old HAVA back in 2002 under a repub-controlled House, will formally revisit & improve the current HAVA voting rights act.
The progressive blogosphere must make the passage and enactment/enforcement of a new HAVA Voting Rights Act a major priority oversight focus of theirs.