voter suppression

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

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

While many see voting as an implicit right in a representative democracy, decisions in America about who can vote and how are actually controlled by the states and vary greatly from state-to-state, even from county-to-county.

Misinformation and misinterpretation of each state's particular laws—not only by voters, but also by state officials—has the potential to influence the outcome of the election, a problem seen recently as two of the country’s most disenfranchised groups – youth and former felons –have encountered procedural roadblocks to electoral participation.

Large voter registration drives are underway in Virginia, but the Roanoke Times has recently reported on problems that may hinder the participation of Virginia students. According to Kevin Litten of the Roanoke Times on Saturday, allegations of voter intimidation came out of Virginia Tech last week, when Montgomery County Registrar Randy Wertz issued a news release warning students that registering using their college addresses would be changing their permanent addresses. This, according to Wertz, could “affect student’s scholarships or tax filings, and would obligate them to change car registrations and their driver's licenses.”

Litten reports that officials from the Obama campaign, which has been conducting voter registration activities in Virginia, countered that “they had never heard of students' dependency status on their parents' tax forms affected by their voter registration,” and that the “other laws mentioned in the release are rarely enforced or subject to interpretation.” The officials worried that the statements could have a “chilling effect” on voter registration efforts, but Wertz denied that intimidating students was his intention, insisting that “his focus is making sure elections run smoothly and fairly.”

Fair and smooth elections become even more difficult when more voters are involved and the state is ill prepared. Wednesday's Roanoke Times expressed concerns that the influx of newly registered students—assigned to what is already the county's most populated precinct—could create long lines and transportation problems on Election Day.

The precinct, E-1, already has 3,600 active voters; the state is required to split precincts when they exceed 5,000 voters, but officials say it is too late to obtain Justice Department approval for the split if E-1 exceeds capacity before November. To at least help alleviate the waiting period to vote, officials say they are making efforts to hire extra officials to run the polls. But, to make matters worse, the polling place assigned for the precinct is located four miles from campus without connecting public transportation – a potential problem for students without cars.

Whereas young people are subject to roadblocks and intimidation due to unclear regulations and ill-equipped precincts, many former felons remain unaware of their right to vote period.

“A lot of people, especially women, don't know they still count when they come home...they need to know that they can vote and maybe things will change,” said Willeta Hughes in the Michigan Citizen. Hughes “was told in 1998 that she couldn’t go to law school or vote as a result of a concealed weapons charge that led to a felony conviction.”

Hughes is part of a Michigan pilot program to help engage former felons in the voting process and ultimately in their communities. The program, Unlock the Vote, was started by Neila Johnson to help combat misinformation “disseminated from inside the Corrections Department itself” that told many felons, including Johnson's sister, that they had permanently lost their voting rights.

Before 2007, Florida had one of the toughest felon-disenfranchisement laws, which permanently revoked voting rights of all felons unless individually restored by the Clemency Board. Nearly one million ex-felons were not allowed to vote in the last presidential election, according to the Sentencing Project. Last year Governor Charlie Crist changed Florida law to automatically restore the voting rights of nonviolent criminals after release.

“Thousands of ex-convicts have had their rights restored but don't know it, or don't realize they are eligible to register as voters. The state has been unable to notify them because it has lost track of them,” Kaczor wrote. Only 9,000 of those former felons were registered by the end of July, according to an August 27 Orlando Sentinel report.

Last week Crist issued an executive order requiring officials to provide voter registration cards and the ability to track voter registration status online for certain former felons. According to Bill Kaczor of the Associated Press, this long-awaited effort to help former felons restore their civil rights is being seen by many as “a lost opportunity,” as only five weeks remain to register before the Nov. 4 election.

More than 5.3 million felons across the nation are prohibited from voting, and less than one quarter of eligible young voters turned out to vote in the 2006 midterm election. These untapped voting blocs are often silenced thanks to poorly managed state control of election administration, which puts the burden on voters to seek registration.

One way to resolve some of these issues is to continue to inform voters of their rights and have outside parties help them register to vote. However, as state variance in election administration has shown, these steps alone are not enough to address the bias in the electorate and promote full participation in elections.

Another approach, as noted by the Advancement Project in the Washington Daily News this week, would be to make voting a federal, constitutional right. Citing numerous disenfranchisement instances since 2000 due to “bizarre and erratic state customs” - including 12 elderly nuns without voter ID in Indiana, and thousands of rejected voter applicants who didn't check a box on the application in Florida – the group said “it is time to rectify this patchwork of bizarre and erratic state customs. We need to put the right to vote in the Constitution.”

Quick Links:

“In Pursuit of an Affirmative Right to Vote.” Advancement Project. July 2008.

In Other News:

Some New York officials worry about voting access - Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y.-Cliff Perez is legally blind and would like to vote without help this fall. Instead, he will have to count on his wife's assistance with New York's ancient pull lever machines, rather than use brand new $12,000 voting devices designed to give independence to the disabled.

Early absentee voting changes campaign strategies in Montana - Missoulian [Mont.]
HELENA - For nearly 200,000 voters in Montana this fall, Election Day may come early, via absentee ballots - and campaigns are adjusting to this new reality.

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

Bumped. -Craig

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog Voting Matters

By Nathan Henderson-James

Just yesterday we noted the right way to report on charges of voter fraud and the wrong way to go about it. We explained how the news media had been gamed by people with a partisan interest in the outcome of elections to gin up hysteria to engage in voter intimidation and voter disenfranchisement efforts.

Well, the partisans are back at it in Wisconsin, but this time the press is following the lead of Virginia journalists and scrutinizing the claims rather than simply reprinting the press release.

Here’s the backstory. The community organization ACORN has recently completed a voter registration drive in Milwaukee aimed at historically disenfranchised populations like low-income folks and African-Americans. The drive assisted voters complete some 35,000 cards. So far so good.

However, some of ACORN’s canvassers were caught forging cards in order to get paid for not doing the work. Under Wisconsin law all cards filled out, completely or incompletely, fraudulently or not, are required to be turned in. Out of the 35,000 cards, ACORN and Board of Elections officials estimate that about 1500-2000 of them had problems. The bulk of those were simple incompletes, but about 200 or so were clearly attempts by canvassers to defraud both ACORN and the state of Wisconsin by submitting false cards.

The traditional media has actually done a fairly good job reporting the story, going into great detail on how the cards were caught, the quality control procedures used by ACORN, and the context of the numbers involved versus the total number of cards submitted. This reportage has been ably supplemented by bloggers like Cory Liebmann at One Wisconsin Now and Capper at Cognitive Dissonance.

But, of course, this situation has served as an opportunity for conservative partisans to immediately pick up their calls for voter disenfranchisement policies such as voter ID. Such a policy would ironically, or perhaps not so ironically, actually push down the voter participation rates among those folks who most rely on voter registration drives to bring them into the civic participation process.

Here’s choice quote from Pete DiGaudio who writes as The Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger,

“Well, yes, I actually do support voter suppression. I am in favor of suppressing the vote of dead people, nonexistent people, convicted felons, illegal aliens, people voting more than once, et al. Every time one of these people votes, it cancels out my legitimate vote.

A simple thing like photo ID for voting would eliminate these fraudulent voters when they showed up at the polls.”

Project Vote’s report The Politics of Voter Fraud (PDF) has consistently pointed out that there simply isn’t widespread voter fraud in the United States and any fraudulent voting has never been tied to voter registration fraud, which is what has partisans so breathless and hyperbolic.

But the rush to point to a solution like voter ID seems not to be bothered by facts. Like the fact that the so-called fraud every partisan points to is always centered on voter registration cards. Well, voter ID isn’t going to stop canvassers from wanting to get paid for not doing the work and it isn’t going to stop states like Wisconsin from requiring that every card be turned in regardless of its accuracy, completeness, or legitimacy and it’s definitely not going to help elections officials catch bad cards.

The truth is that the laws as written and enforced catch such problems. The mere fact of this story in the media means the system in Milwaukee works the way it is supposed to, catching problem cards. Voter ID, on the other hand stops something called “voter impersonation”, which just doesn’t happen in the Untied States. Of the 24 convictions won by the US Department of Justice between 2002 and 2005 for voter fraud, most of them were for problems with submitting false or illegal absentee ballots. Voter ID laws do nothing to fix this problem. But what they are great at is stopping otherwise eligible voters from casting ballots.

And that’s how it works – raise loud cries of outrage over an illegal act that was caught using the safeguards that were put in place for just that situation, raise questions about the integrity of the entire elections system, and offer a solution that would not stop the identified problem and would, in fact, stop significant numbers of specific groups, generally groups who are already the most disenfranchised, from participating in elections.

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

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns and Nathan Henderson-James

We spend a lot of time in these news updates showing how charges of voter fraud are used to discredit voter participation efforts and prime the pump for voter suppression efforts, such as the passage of voter ID bills, pushing for proof of citizenship, engaging in draconian voter purge efforts, and imposing sever restrictions on voter registration drives. We have also spent a lot of time carefully delineating the politics behind these efforts, starting with our March 2007 report The Politics Of Voter Fraud and continuing on in these diaries to name but two venues.

What is striking about how the process of disenfranchisement and voter suppression works is how much it relies upon the media to repeat and amplify the breathless and hyperbolic accusations of so-called voter fraud against voter registration drives. If journalists were to spend any time at all investigating the sensational claims - often made by people with a direct partisan interest in the outcome of an election - they would find that the accusations are mostly taken out of context, are limited to a few instances, and have never, ever, been proven to have resulted in any fraudulent vote being cast.

Sadly, the history of this issue shows that it has been bereft of this kind of basic journalism, even through the 2006 mid-term elections. This is important because haphazard reporting of partisan claims of voter fraud without checking the facts is how the media helps these voter suppression efforts. These stories not only deter potential voters from getting on the rolls, but, as noted above, inspire bad election reforms aimed at disenfranchising voters, particularly those that are currently underrepresented in the electorate.

A prime example of this kind of lazy journalism in recent weeks comes from Las Vegas where local reporters simply repeated accusations of fraud made by the Clark County clerk against ACORN without even bothering to contact ACORN to see how their drive was being managed.

The group's registration drive has reached one million voters nationwide [Full disclosure – it is run under a Joint Effort Agreement with Project Vote. –ed.] and, according to one article, election officials see “rampant fraud” in the 2,000 – 3,000 cards submitted by the group each week in Las Vegas. This week, the Associated Press reported that the state set up a “voter fraud task force” to look for “election irregularities and instances of questionable voter registration and intimidation,” directly citing issues with voter registration drives. Neither of these Nevada reports provided the facts of voter fraud, what it is and how it relates to the voter registration process. Most importantly, neither reports cite real examples of the intentional casting of an illegal ballot – the real definition of voter fraud – in the state.

However, it may be that the hard work Project Vote and others – including the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, DEMOS, and the Advancement Project - have engaged in over the past few years debunking the voter fraud myth is beginning to change the way journalists approach these stories.

This week, several publications broke this trend by debunking recent Virginia GOP allegations of widespread voter fraud as a result of massive voter registration drives that primarily target youth, low income and minority communities – constituencies that have a long history of being underrepresented on the voting rolls and in the voting booth.

Since the beginning of the year, an unprecedented 147,000 people - “almost half under the age of 25” - registered to vote in Virginia, according to Monday's Washington Post lead editorial. Pointing to a recent incident where three members of the Community Voting Project were arrested for falsifying voter registration cards, Republican Party chairman, Del. Jeffrey Frederick of Prince William County claims widespread voter fraud is a hidden agenda in voter registration drives.

Remarkably, however, this time the press decided to investigate this inflammatory accusation. This charge is “utterly baseless” and is “unsupported by election officials, police or prosecutors,” the Post notes in the editorial. In fact, the Post described the accusation as an exercise in “fear mongering” by Frederick, amplified by his allegations that citizens who register with these drives are also vulnerable to identity theft, a claim that amounts to nothing more than “a classic attempt to suppress votes,” the Post editorialized.

Bob Bauer, at his Web site, www.MoreSoftMoneyHardLaw.com, takes the critique one step further, looking at both the accusations and the Post’s coverage. “And the Post omits mention of another feature of Fredericks' suppression gambit,” wrote the election law attorney. “He also called for an 'investigation,' well understanding that his words would creep into the press on his remarks and filter out into the electorate.”

In a prime example of the kind of journalism that should happen as a matter of course when these kinds of serious allegations are made, a Virginia reporter for the Danville Register & Bee reached out to local registrars to get a real idea of the voter registration process and how unlikely it is to lead to voter fraud.

“'It's not easy to falsely register somebody,' said Pittsylvania County Registrar Jenny Saunders, who explained that in addition to the registrar going over the application for obvious errors (like missed questions), there's a statewide database all applications are checked against.”

Partisans out for political gain perpetuate fear about the integrity of the election system, something that the media often picks up unfiltered. “In fact,” the Post wrote, “it is groundless accusations and cynical fear-mongering such as Mr. Frederick's that are injecting the real venom, and the true threat, into the elections.

Below are some important facts to consider when writing (or reading) reports on voter registration fraud:

Voter Registration Drives Rev up in Presidential Election Years

The fact that young people and minorities are expanding the voting rolls this year does not indicate that something is awry with voter registration drives. Indeed, most large-scale drives target those populations least represented in the electorate. Further, in high interest election years, especially presidential, more people are motivated to help register voters or get registered themselves. Stories about so-called voter fraud should be evaluated in terms of the number of cards thought to be fraudulent versus the total number of cards the registration drive is gathering. In Virginia, a handful of fake cards were found in a drive that could register more than 30,000 people.

Voter Registration Fraud Does Not Lead to Voter Fraud

“We have the checks and balances...to makes sure the wrong person doesn't get registered and the right person does,” said Va. election official, Saunders in the Register & Bee.

Further, professionally-run drives expect almost a third of all applications to be duplicates or incomplete, no matter how well-trained the canvasser or volunteers are. This does not mean they are all illegal. However, the registrar is required to ensure all applications contain accurate information “including whether the applicant is a citizen, their Social Security number, date of birth, full name, valid residence, whether they've been convicted of a felony, or whether they have been determined mentally incapable...If any of that is left off...the application is denied,” according to the Register & Bee. Note: Not all states require Social Security number information to be filled out on a voter registration card. For more information on your state's requirements on registering to vote, visit ProjectVote.org.

Allegations of Voter Fraud are Often Motivated By Partisan Gain

“If you're not winning at the ballot box, try your chances in the registrar's office, or in court,” the Virginia Pilot editorialized. “[That's] [h]ardly democratic.”

Following the success of voter registration drives that have increased registration among low income, minority and young people, almost all claims of rampant voter fraud have come from Republican leaders, despite lack of substantiation of a real problem. The most vicious and corrupt efforts made were part of what has become the US AttorneyGate scandal that subsequently exposed the widespread politicization of the Department of Justice and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. All of that unraveled because former US Attorney David Iglesias refused to make false accusations of voter fraud against ACORN’s 2004 voter registration drive in New Mexico.

The fact is between 2002 and 2005 – when the Department of Justice carried out the most intensive investigation of voter fraud in US history – only 24 people were convicted of illegal voting nationwide. However, partisans still made public allegations and the press, in many instances, ran these claims with out real evidence. Armed with these published anecdotes and buoyed by manufactured public outcry about the possibility of their votes being canceled out by illegal voters, legislators fought to pass laws that disenfranchise certain classes of voters. As a result, states like Indiana and Georgia have implemented some of the most draconian voter ID laws despite the lack of any evidence of actual voter fraud.

Reporters practicing ethical and rigorous journalism should recognize that merely using the “rhetorical hand grenade” of voter fraud - without an explanation of how voter registration and elections are administered or an investigation into the evidence of voter fraud - is the real threat to democracy.

Quick Links:

Minnite, Lorraine. “The Politics of Voter Fraud. ”Project Vote. March 2007.

Voter Registration Guides and Surveys [By State]. Project Vote

In Other News:

A voting penalty after the penalty – Birmingham Press-RegisterAnnette McWashington Pruitt watched her 18-year-old son graduate from high school this May. She proudly tells people that he is going into the Navy, following in the footsteps of his older brother (who is serving in Iraq) and his grandfather (who was in the Air Force).

Voting Rules Create Land of Disenchantment: Advocacy groups are battling New Mexico's strict voter registration laws as election looms – Miller-McCune
Jo Ann Gutierrez-Bejar remembers volunteering for the annual voter registration drive in Albuquerque, N.M. She remembers the camaraderie as the group of usually 30 to 40 volunteers headed out in the morning, clipboards in hand, to knock on doors and register new voters.

Denogean: 97-year-old voter can't prove she's a citizen: On deathbed, father told her to vote Democratic – The Tucson Press
Shirley Freeda Preiss of Surprise is one ticked-off little old lady. And who can blame her? The 97-year-old retired schoolteacher and onetime traveling showgirl has voted in every presidential election since 1932 when she cast a ballot for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But thanks to the state's voter identification requirements, it's looking unlikely that she'll be able to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Watch your (official) language - Stateline.org
Missouri, a key presidential swing state and home to one of the most hotly contested gubernatorial races, will test what some see as voters’ attitudes toward immigrants this November with a ballot measure to make English the only language of state government.

UPDATE: Shakowsky just announced it on the House Floor in the late night session about 30 minutes ago.

At a time when organizations across the country are focused on increasing voter registration, the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) has worked hard to make sure that when those newly registered voters go to the polls, their votes will count.

Today the movement to protect our votes will take a giant leap forward when SAVE teamed up with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Congresswoman Jan Shakowsky of Illinois and Congressman Steve LaTourette of Ohio present the Student VOTER Bill of 2008.

Durbin said on the floor:

"The success of America's experiment in democracy lies in broad participation and deep civic engagement,from the Civil Rights Amendments, to women's suffrage, to the abolition of the poll tax, and finally the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment we have witnessed a steady by difficult march toward a more inclusive nation. To realize the full potential of these great strides, the Student VOTER Act provides a pathway to participation for America's youth."

SAVE has worked non-stop for 4 years as a national non-partisan, non-profit with a mission to increase youth voter participation by removing access barriers and promoting stronger civic education. They constantly lobby Congress and the Senate in efforts to ensure that the right to vote is accessible to young people and that those votes are protected.

"Voter protection is personal to me,"said Director and Founder Matt Segal earlier this summer in an interview. He began SAVE after standing in line for more than 12 hours on election day in 2004 to help encourage his fellow students who stood in the cold and rain just to cast a ballot.

"We held umbrellas, we brought them pizza, we got them excused from class so they wouldn't lose their places in line, we did everything we could to ensure everyone who wanted to vote got to vote. Voting is our right, that should never happen again."

Segal says he applauds Senator Durbin and Representatives Schakowsky and LaTourette for their leadership and attention to student voter turnout and the barriers students face when voting.

"All the while many congressional members pay lip service to the idea of increasing civic engagement, it is refreshing to see these members act, and call on our education institutions to be more proactive in getting student signed up and aware of the laws in their various states and districts."

Young voters face some of the most difficult obstacles when it comes to going to the polls.

The Higher Education Act of 1998 was passed in efforts to increase youth participation in elections by requiring that U.S. colleges and universities make a "good faith effort" to register students to vote. This could easily be done at a student orientation or during class registration. But it isn't.

Durbin continued to say on the Senate floor

"Several obstacles stand in the way of youth voting. Because so many students are first time voters, they often are unfamiliar with how to register. In some states, including my own state of Illinois, first time voters must register in person in order to cast an absentee ballot. For students who attend college outside of their home state or who do not have access to transportation, these requirements can be cumbersome, confusing, and insurmountable."

Many schools forget about that civic duty. When that happens the partisan groups move in to fill the gap, fighting it out between College Republicans and Young Democrats the groups debate and register students off campus and on. But the result is that some students who remain undecided and independent can become alienated by the partisanship.

The bill would amend existing laws that say colleges would have to be like the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is supposed to ask folks if they want to register or re-register to vote when they get their driver's license or public assistance benefits. The new law would make state colleges and universities abide by that rule. So now, new students would be asked if they wanted to register when they sign up for classes, or get a new student ID for example.

The Student VOTER Bill of 2008 seeks to institutionalize the distribution of voting procedure and register more young people. SAVE's bill will apply a much more up to date standard to the existing 1994 "Motor Voter Act." This can help state colleges and universities, and ensure that all students will have their votes counted.

Forty-four million young people (ages 18-29) will be eligible to vote this November and with the help of the House and Senate, we can move forward to stop disenfranchisement this election year.

Bumped. --Mike

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

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Reports and exits polls this entire political season have built a narrative of tremendous, even record-breaking voter participation, pushing us to believe that voter turnout in November will exceed all expectations.

Maybe.

The dirty secret of elections in America is that getting on the rolls, casting a ballot, and having that ballot counted is a complicated system adjudicated and carried out by more than 3,000 counties and towns and regulated by a complex mix of state and federal laws. In order for the expected record-shattering turnout to occur in November, all aspects of the system, from registration procedures to polling place systems to ballot counting procedures all need to work properly. However, those with an interest in suppressing turnout may disrupt the process at any one of those points. The biggest impact comes by preventing people from making it onto the voting rolls in the first place since no one can cast a ballot without being registered.

Unsurprisingly, politicians with partisan interests at heart are pushing states to raise barriers to the democratic process by enforcing laws that restrict voter registration drives and violate the Voting Rights Act. These election-related policies have disproportionately negative impact on young people and minorities – two groups that have historically suffered underrepresentation in the electorate. However, in an encouraging move aimed at lowering these kinds of barriers, the Massachusetts Senate passed a bill that would help enfranchise all voters on Election Day.

Restrictions on Voter Registration Drives
During presidential election years, efforts to register more citizens increase dramatically. However, several states impose various restrictions on voter registration drives, which in turn has a disproportionate impact upon youth and people with disabilities – two communities that commonly register to vote through such drives, according to Ben Adler of the Politico.

The swing state of New Mexico is under the most scrutiny for their drive policy and has recently been sued for unconstitutionally hindering the right to collect voter registrations under a 2005 election reform law.

“The activists contend that because the law creates criminal penalties for failing to meet its requirements – which even supporters acknowledge are stringent – it discourages groups from collecting registrations,” Adler wrote. New Mexico's excessively short 48 hour time frame to turn in a completed application and subsequent misdemeanor charge if the collector is late has reportedly stopped students who “'simply want to get out on campus and register their friends to vote.'” The Federal government recognizes the challenges imposed by short time lines: Under the National Voter Registration Act, state agencies are provided 10 days to turn in new applications.

Violations of the Voting Rights Act
Other voting rights issues that have recently been battled involve violations of the Voting Rights Act.
The U.S. Justice Department recently announced an agreement to protect Latino voters in New Jersey after a complaint was filed involving discrimination in the voting process. Puerto Rican voters in the Penns Grove borough had complained they were subject to racial comments and hostility as well as disproportionately asked for voter ID and turned away at the polls. It was the third lawsuit of this nature this year. The suit also alleged that Spanish-speaking voters were not provided Spanish-language election materials or enough aid from bilingual poll workers, also requirements of the Act. The agreement must still be approved by the court, the Justice Department press release said.

“The right to vote is a fundamental guarantee for all American citizens,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Christopher Christie. “The Division is committed to vigorously enforcing federal civil rights laws during the important election year and commends the county and borough for promptly and constructively resolving the matter.”

Asian voters in Massachusetts were not as successful in getting the state to provide fully sufficient bilingual ballots, according to a column by Adrian Walker of the Boston Globe. Advocates recently attempted to meet with Secretary of State William Galvin to gain his support for a proposed law requiring ballots be translated into Chinese and Vietnamese. The bill passed the Boston City Council earlier this year, but still requires legislative approval in order to ensure elderly Asian residents with limited English skills are not denied the right to vote in November.

“Voting is as American as apple pie,” said Boston City Councilor Sam Yoon. “This is something everyone should want to protect.”

However, Galvin - who the legislature looks to when considering election law - denied the group, as he has for the last year, according to Walker.

Despite swelling interest and rising registration rates among youth and minorities, there are significant and persistent barriers to their increased participation. The identification of these barriers should serve as a wake-up call in each state, pushing them to take steps to address the barriers and equip themselves to handle the influx of new voters this coming Election Day.

Voter Registration Surge and Election Day Chaos
An example of this swelling interest can be seen in one county in Florida where minority voters are beginning to balance their share of the electorate. This year alone in Lee County, Florida, black and Latino voters have increased by as much as 22 percent – more than double the increase among white voters, according to local publication, Fort Meyers News-Press.

“The increase in minority voter registration gives voice to people who haven't always been represented at the table,” the News-Press editorialized. “Whether it's the presence of a nontraditional candidate, the pressing economic conditions, or the war in Iraq, anything that inspires citizens to participate in the political process is beneficial.”

The unprecedented surge of voters expected to turn out in November could pose a major challenge for states, according to Stateline.org. The online news site, run by the Pew Research Center, raised concerns about poor ballot design and even last minute voter registration drives that could swamp understaffed offices, making it more difficult for voters to get on the rolls, let alone cast a ballot.

“People know it's going to be a historically high turnout. Whether they can do anything about it is another question,” said Dan Seligson of electionline.org, a Pew Center on the States project that provides analysis on election reform.

Smart Election Reform
While other states scramble to figure out how to accommodate the influx of voters and advocates ensure voting rights are protected, one state is pushing one of the most effective measures to expand access to democracy for all American citizens – Election Day Registration. On Tuesday, the Massachusetts Senate passed a bill that would allow voters to register and vote on Election Day. The bill, SB 2807 is currently in the House Ways and Means committee. If passed, Massachusetts would join the ranks of eight other EDR states, which have average turnout rates that exceed non-EDR states by as much as 12 percent. Three other states are considering EDR bills: New Jersey, New York and Ohio. To view these bills, visit www.ElectionLegislation.org.

The National Journal is running an important article on new, restrictive voting laws and the effect such laws might have on the youth vote. If anything is going to slow down the amazing spike we're seeing in participation, it's going to be laws like these that either outright disenfranchise new voters, or at the very least erect substantial barriers to participation. Honestly I'm a little worried that 2008 might make Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000 look like the poster-children for universal suffrage.

At a time when young Americans are registering to vote in record numbers, a variety of fresh obstacles threaten their participation. This could create massive Election Day headaches for youth and adult voters alike.

"We're looking at a fairly serious train wreck," says Gary Kalman, who heads the federal legislative office for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).

The problem: A slew of restrictive new election laws take direct aim at the very voters -- the "Millennial" crowd aged 30 and under -- who have helped swell the rolls and crowd primaries in recent months. These include state laws that impose tough new restrictions on voter registration, disqualify voters because of minor database errors and require a photo ID, such as a driver's license, at the polls.

[...]

By some estimates, the younger-than-30 generation now numbers 50 million, a quarter of the voting-age population. Their recent rush to register and turn out is a positive signal that Americans haven't given up on their problem-plagued voting system just yet. There's a risk that these young voters' first attempt to cast ballots could turn into a nightmare -- both for them and for those standing in line behind them.

"From the registration to the polling places to the actual ID, students face enormous hurdles," said Kalman, of U.S. PIRG. "And it's something we're going to have to get over if we want the next generation to be active in politics."