With polls showing Kerry beating Bush nationally and, more importantly, leading in many of the battleground states that were supposed to favor Bush, we're commonly seeing electoral projections based upon current data of Kerry winning with
327 electoral votes. These projections, and the general good news for Kerry, have led some to crow about an impending landslide, some to warn about the dangers of triumphalism, and still others to fret that Bushco will find a way to steal the election.
We all know the dangers presented by paperless voting machines, and many of us fear the effects of a suspiciously-timed terrorist attack or warning. I want to focus on the dangers presented by attempts to remove registered voters from voting rolls or to prevent them from voting. More specifically, I want to initiate a discussion about what we--and others--can do to discover, prevent, and/or undo these attempts.
Obviously, several groups are already hard at work on this effort. Jebco, under pressure from groups who uncovered the absurd racial biases of Florida list of felons, has scrapped the list. Others have discovered the fact that tens of thousands of Ohio voters have been removed from voting rolls. My question is this: How can we best take this work nationally, or perhaps more to the point, how can we enact it locally?
There seem to me several ways of going about the work, the most obvious being to start with boards of elections. We need to know the following:
- Have there been or are there currently any efforts to remove registered voters from official lists?
- If so, have these efforts already been implemented (i.e., have voters been removed)?
- If not, when will they be implemented and by whom?
- Is there public access to the lists of those to be removed?
- Have there been any changes in voting laws (e.g., are IDs required?)?
- If so, what are these laws, and how will they be enforced?
Now it may be that the Kerry Campaign's team of election lawyers is already hard at work pursuing this information, but I believe there is still work to be done by the grassroots. For instance, not every voter purge is nefarious: I believe that states routinely "clean up" their voter rolls by removing the deceased, those who have moved away, current felons, etc. If/when Kerry's team of lawyers or other groups gain access to these lists, it seems to me that they need to be checked. Before and during the Democratic primaries, many of us volunteered our time by canvassing voters, either in person or by phone, and it seems to me that a similar effort is called for here: the voters on these lists (or at least a representative sample) should be canvassed to determine whether or not their inclusion on the lists is appropriate. In some cases, as with allegedly deceased voters, there may be other databases available that would enable cross-checking, rather than canvassing by phone.
I would expect that, if the Kerry Campaign requested volunteers for this work, it would be deluged with offers of help. Imagine, for instance, if Kerry called for such volunteers during his speech at the convention. And it seems to me to be a potential PR bonanza as well. If, for instance, voters on one of these lists get a call from a Kerry volunteer who explains that the Kerry Campaign is working to ensure that your vote will be counted on Election Day, I would think that most of the voters would be pleased by the effort and grateful to the Kerry campaign.
Similar efforts could be enacted on behalf of newly registered voters, although I don't know whether or not all states allow public access to this information.
The goal of ensuring that registered voters can vote on November 2 could also be sought in reverse--by starting with the voters. For instance, the Kerry Campaign could create a Web tool for voters to find out conclusively whether or not they are registered. (A dedicated phone line could also be created to help those without easy Internet access.) Such a tool could be publicized especially in communities that have reason to suspect or fear disenfranchisement (e.g., neighborhoods in Florida with high concentrations of African Americans).
More generally, volunteers could go door to door, passing out information on how registered voters can ensure that they are on voting rolls. These volunteers could also pass out registration forms for the unregistered, information on what voters must bring to the polls (e.g., IDs or not), and a Kerry Campaign number to call if they find that they have for any reason been removed from voting rolls.
The more you think about this sort of effort, the more comes to mind. For instance, Campus Democrats at schools across the country could kick off the Fall semester with big absentee voting drives (for students from battleground states) or simply with voter-registration drives.
There's enough work here for any Kossian who is getting antsy about what the Repugs might be up to. What do you think?