No matter which candidate you support for the democratic nomination, can we all agree that the process by which we nominate our candidate needs reform? Many Kossacks have written great diaries this primary cycle about how problems in several states have disenfranchised countless voters.
The root of most problems traces back to state laws and to state and local officials. For example, state officials determine whether their state will foot the bill for a primary. If not, the party typically resorts to a caucus, which by its very nature disenfranchises many people.
The long lines in Arizona on election night trace back to a county official who decided to cut polling places in Maricopa from the usual 200 to about 60. New voter ID laws in Wisconsin and North Carolina — enacted by republican administrations — caused long lines, confusion, and chaos in both states’ primaries.
According to a press release from the election watchdog group Democracy North Carolina, problems included understaffing and poorly trained poll workers, "incorrect and inconsistent application" of the new voter ID law, a failure to provide provisional ballots to eligible voters, and last-minute polling place changes at high-traffic sites like N.C. Central University in Durham.
As a result of these and other problems, there were also long lines with wait times of three hours or more to vote. One polling site in Durham didn't work through its line of voters until 10:30 p.m.
www.southernstudies.org/…
Voter ID laws are designed to make it harder for minority voters, elderly people, and students to vote, as occurred during the Wisconsin primary:
Dennis Hatten [a 53-year-old African American man] voted in Wisconsin yesterday, but it wasn’t easy for him, or thousands of other voters. Hatten spent months trying to get a voter ID and then had to make multiple trips to the polls to vote. Meanwhile, students waited hours to cast a ballot at Marquette, in addition to long waits at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. Others left the polls because of the long lines or didn’t get to vote because of the voter-ID law.
Nancy Anderson of Green Bay, who is disabled and in a wheelchair, and was not able to make it to the DMV to get a photo ID and then to the polls on Election Day in time to vote. [L]ongtime voters like 89-year-old Ruthelle Frank...cannot afford or obtain the underlying documents to get a valid voter ID.
Recently, the newly elected republican governor of Kentucky reversed a decision by his democratic predecessor to restore voting rights to former felons. In the past, republican secretaries of state in Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere ordered massive purges of their voting rolls and have taken other actions designed to disenfranchise democratic voters.
It is not just republican-led states where voters are being disenfranchised. The upcoming New York primary will exclude a large number of voters from participation:
More than 3 million people — about 27 percent of the state’s voters — were registered outside the Republican and Democratic parties as of April.
To vote in the April primary, these people would have had to change their party affiliation by October 9, 2015—at least 6 months earlier. Deputy director of public information at the NY State Board of Elections spoke with ThinkProgress about the law:
Many voters have already expressed frustration and confusion about the change-of-party deadline, Connolly said. He said he’s been getting “dozens” of voter complaints about this every day — far more than usual.
“A lot of people have called and complained and criticized us for not doing more to publicize this deadline,” he said. “But there’s only so much we can do with the resources we have. The public information office is literally two people.”
Can most of us agree that this deadline is unreasonably early? It disenfranchises people who discover through the primary process that they want to support someone from a party to which they do not currently belong. Although the state has an interest in preventing large numbers of voters belonging to one party from crossing over to influence the outcome of the other party’s primary, crossover voting is unlikely to change outcomes in a state with as many voters as New York. Instead, New York’s policy is more likely to shut out good-faith voters from influencing outcomes, and that is a problem.
Connolly said most of the complaints he has received are from Sanders’ supporters, and their confusion has led to numerous fraud accusations. Connolly said every allegation he investigated was due to voter error, not fraud. This points to another problem with the current rules: they decrease voter confidence in the system, thereby depressing voter participation. While Connolly appreciates callers’ concerns, he said they are yelling at the wrong person. His office does not make the rules—it just follows them.
Susan Lerner, executive director at Common Cause in New York, said she has been yelling at the state legislature for years to fix problems like New York’s unusually early deadline for switching party affiliation. In the past, a few New York legislators introduced bills to address this and other election issues, but they have generally failed to pass.
The frustration in Lerner’s voice was palpable. She seemed defeated — she doubted that the growing popularity of independent candidates like Sanders and Trump would motivate people to lobby for more accessible elections in New York. But, she said, if people really do want to change the laws, they have to call their legislators — not the board of elections.
“If people actually started to complain to people who could change it, maybe that would work,” she said. “Embarrassing the legislators by having outraged voters actually calling their legislators, rather than the board of elections, might actually start to make a difference.”
It’s too late to do something about the law for this primary election, but if you live in New York, contact your legislators and demand they fix this problem before the next election. Otherwise, once again, millions of voters will find themselves unable to participate in their state’s primary.
We must work together to fight voter suppression wherever it is happening. We need to pressure our legislatures to make common-sense reforms that encourage voting instead of discourage it. We need to vote in state and local elections, without fail, to elect individuals committed to voting reforms. We need to pay attention to who is running for secretary of state, an individual who can do a lot behind the scenes to disenfranchise people or to make voting easier. This is one revolution I hope we will all join.