Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

We recently wrote about the Department of Veterans Affairs decision to open its facilities to voter registration drives after months of urging by voting rights groups and elected officials. This week, however, "VA voter suppression continues," as AlterNet's Steven Rosenfeld wrote Tuesday, with voter registration efforts being blocked in California and the VA general counsel criticizing the pending Veterans Voting Support Act (S. 3308), which would bolster federal protection of voter registration opportunities for all wounded veterans. With just three weeks left to register voters in most states, advocates say now is the time to support voter registration efforts in VA facilities and, most importantly, it needs to be explicitly protected from now on through federal law.

"Credibility of VA on this issue is very low right now," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. during a hearing on the Veterans Voting Support Act on Monday, according to Rick Maze of the Army Times. VA general counsel Paul Hutter says that the VA is being "proactive" in working with election officials and nonprofit groups to facilitate voter registration, but that "VA still believes that some limits are needed."

These limits were enforced this week at a San Francisco VA facility when the nonprofit group Veterans for Peace was blocked from helping register voters in time for the 2008 presidential election. According to Rosenfeld, the group filed a legal motion in California federal court Monday, claiming that VA was trying to require Veterans for Peace members to go through the same screening process that VA volunteers must go through - a process that would delay registration efforts. "In contrast, the VA does not require screening for most other visitors," Rosenfeld says.

Citing testimony from the Senate Rules and Administration hearing on S. 3308, the motion notes that of the 5.5 million patients in VA facilities, volunteers registered only 350 patients and 64 outpatients. "Those statistics show the VA's internal process of screening volunteers who are then approved to register voters has had the effect of suppressing the vote of injured veterans in 2008," writes  Rosenfeld.

As VA voter registration is administered solely at the whim of the VA itself, advocates warn that, without a federal mandate to provide voter registration and information to the nation's wounded veterans, their right to vote could easily be lost. "VA can easily reverse course, again, and issue another policy banning voting assistance," or could "easily fail to implement their new policy," says Veterans for Common Sense executive director and S. 3308 supporter, Paul Sullivan.

Hutter claims a broad interpretation of the proposed law would open VA facilities as a voter registration agency to the public, potentially disrupting VA facilities and invading privacy of patients. Feinstein says that the intent of the bill is not to serve the public and that she is willing to make amendments.

"However, she did not see disruption as a major problem," Maze writes, "because setting up a voter registration drive could be as simple as putting a table in the lobby of a hospital or clinic."

In a recent New York Times report announcing the new VA policy, writer Ian Urbina quotes Sen. Feinstein: "Given the sacrifices that the men and women who have fought in our armed services have made, providing easy access to voter registration services is the very least we can do."

The companion bill to S. 3308, H.R. 6625 passed the House by voice vote on Wednesday.

Quick Links:

S 3308: Veterans Voting Support Act

Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

H.R. 6625: Veterans Voting Support Act

Rep. Robert A. Brady, D-Penn.

Veterans for Peace

Veterans for Common Sense

In Other News:

Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands - Wired
Electronic voting machines have been the focus of much controversy the last few years. But another election technology has received little scrutiny yet could create numerous problems and disenfranchise thousands of voters in November, election experts say.

Ohio Republicans Use Lawsuit To Fight for State's Crucial Votes - Wall Street Journal
The Ohio Republican Party spearheaded a lawsuit Friday over a directive from the office of Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner that would allow some early voters to register and vote on the same day.

Democrats accuse state GOP of hypocrisy - Wisconsin State Journal
Democratic Party Chairman Joe Wineke said Monday it was hypocritical for Republicans to defend mistakes in their mailing databases while pursuing a lawsuit over the state's flawed voter registration system.

ACLU: Mississippi felons denied voting rights - Associated Press
JACKSON - Convicted felons in Mississippi are denied their constitutional right to vote in presidential elections, the American Civil Liberties Union alleges in a federal lawsuit filed Friday.

Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote's Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).

Cross-posted to Project Vote's blog Voting Matters.

By Nathan Henderson-James

Today Wired Magazine published an in-depth look at potential Election Day problems associated with voter registration data matching, list maintenance, provisional ballots, and shadowy interstate compacts through which member states cross-check their voter registration lists and purge supposedly duplicated voters. Titled "Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands", the piece, written by Kim Zetter, starts this way,

Electronic voting machines have been the focus of much controversy the last few years. But another election technology has received little scrutiny yet could create numerous problems and disenfranchise thousands of voters in November, election experts say.

This year marks the first time that new, statewide, centralized voter-registration databases will be used in a federal election in a number of states.

The article presents an in-depth discussion of the potential problems associated with the creation of the centralized databases and their potential to disenfranchise thousands of newly and currently registered voters in state after state.  

But election experts say the real concern is how states are conducting database matches of new voters under HAVA.

The law requires each voter to have a unique identifier. Since 2004, new registration applicants have had to provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number to register (voters who don't have them are assigned a unique number by the state). States are required to try to authenticate the numbers with motor vehicle records and the Social Security Administration database.

But databases are prone to errors such as misspellings and transposed numbers, and applicants are prone to make mistakes or write illegibly on applications. The Social Security Administration has acknowledged that matches between its database and voter-registration records have yielded a 28.5 percent error rate.

Disturbingly, despite these kinds of error rates, several states have joined secretive interstate compacts that allow them to share their registration databases with each other and purge voters who supposedly show up on more than one list.

[Project Vote Executive Director Michael] Slater cites another troubling trend emerging with the implementation of statewide databases.

Several states have begun comparing databases for duplicate records of existing voters, then purging voters they believe have moved and registered in another state. The problem, Slater says, is the methods used can yield false positives, and officials are deleting voters without contacting them to verify that they've moved, or waiting for two federal election cycles to pass, which are requirements under the National Voter Rights Acts of 1993.

In 2006, Kentucky's attorney general successfully sued his state's board of elections after officials compared their list to ones from South Carolina and Tennessee and purged about 8,000 voters who appeared to have registered in those states at a later date than their registration in Kentucky and were presumed to have moved.

Project Vote is investigating Kansas, Louisiana and South Dakota for similar activity. Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska have also been comparing lists.

"That is a trend that will accelerate, but there are inadequate safeguards, and I think it's very, very dangerous," Slater says.

For more information, Project Vote has created materials on database matching, maintaining voting rolls, provisional ballots, and voter ID requirements.

Cross-posted to Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters.

By Nathan Henderson-James

Last week the Vetarans Administration, bowing to months of pressure from voting rights groups like Project Vote and the Brennan Center and elected officials such as U. S. Senator Diane Feinstein, revised its rules concerning voter registration drives to allow such activities if certain conditions were met.

As reported by Steve Rosenfeld at Alternet, the announcement allows groups onto some VA properties to assist veterans in registering to vote.

 

"The Department will welcome state and local election officials and non-partisan groups to its hospitals and outpatient clinics to assist VA officials in registering voters," the VA said in a Sept. 8 news release. "Such assistance, however, must be coordinated by those facilities in order to avoid disruptions in patient care."

 Questions remain, however, about the ability of the VA to implement this rule change in time to help veterans register in time for the November elections. Again, here's Rosenfeld.

 

But voting rights advocates said the new VA policy, while moving in the right direction, was announced so near to the close of voter registration for this November -- which in half the states is four weeks away -- that it may have little impact this fall. During the past four months, when many of 2008's voter registration drives occurred, the VA has banned voter registration efforts by non-profit groups and local or state election officials.

According to Ian Urbina writing in the New York Times, over "100,000 people reside for a month or longer at V.A. facilities nationally, a number that has grown as soldiers return wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." He also quotes Sen. Feinstein,

 

"Given the sacrifices that the men and women who have fought in our armed services have made, providing easy access to voter registration services is the very least we can do," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who introduced legislation in July to reverse the V.A. ban. Ms. Feinstein added that she would soon hold hearings on the issue.

 

Last Friday five advocacy groups sent a letter to Sen. Feinstein in support of her proposed legislation.

Nathan Henderson-James is the Director of Project Vote's Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).