MN-SEN recount lies in the Wall Street Journal

one detail (0.00 / 0)

Excellent analysis, but just one detail, to avoid throwing aspersions: the acronym EFF has generally stood for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. eff.com, .net, and .org all point to their site. I just want to mention it before this conservative front group gets confused with the EFF.

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by: ericf @ Wed Dec 31, 2008 at 13:00:40 PM CST

Thanks! (0.00 / 0)

Good point.  I'll make that change.

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by: The Big E @ Wed Dec 31, 2008 at 14:07:09 PM CST

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In the Pacific NW, we call them EFFWA... (0.00 / 0)

They're always blasting misinformation out there. They've been attacking King County Elections in WA for years, although their main objective isn't to cement Republican control of elections and canvassing boards, it's to destroy the Washington Education Association. They file a lawsuit against WEA at every opportunity. They have also sent literature to WEA members at their home addresses urging them to quit the union.

Washington State is also sadly home to two other well funded right wing think tanks- the Discovery Institute and Washington Policy Center. For years, they've had the edge in infrastructure. We at the Northwest Progressive Institute are working to change that. It'll take time, but we're making progress :)

Some friends of NPI run a blog called EFFin' Unsound that sometimes debunks EFFWA's propaganda. It's worth a read.

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by: nwprogressive @ Sun Jan 04, 2009 at 02:35:05 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Looking Ahead.... (0.00 / 0)

There is considerable value in knocking down some of these partisian flack pieces as they show up -- and as the campaign to de-legitimatize a Franken Outcome builds, but we really need to be about learning from this election, and some of its details, and getting ready to be participants in the forthcoming legislative review and possible changes in law and process.  Very close elections -- particularly state wide ones, give us an X-ray view of what we do well, and what needs corrective attention.  

For the last decade or so it has been near impossible to propose many changes or improvements in our election system, With our own version of Kathleen Harris (Mary K) in the SoS office, playing games trying to force Attorney General Hatch to bring lawsuits in opposition to settled state election law, and the fascinating saga of Mary K's phone calls to the Department of Justice and Karl Rove's phone in the White House, and then the appearance of Tom Heffelfinger on Harriet's Miers preliminary list of USAG's who should be fired, (TH quit before that could happen), but he had done a couple of things to offend Miss Mary, namely refuse to take a case that would have disadvantaged Native Americans voting rights, and a refusal to challenge one part of the Minnesota Register at the Polls law, as it applied to Students deciding to vote from Residence Halls or other College Residences. The Phone Calls from Miss Mary to DC from the MN SoS office, pretty much line up with details that emerged when we were trying to discover all the documents related to firing the USAG's, so a safe assumption that Mary K's problems with TH may have been the topic of the day.  Those who wrote the Help America Vote Law (Republican Congress (chief author, Bob Ney, working along with Jack Abramoff, who was buying certain clauses in the Help America Vote Law.) Rove's office at the WH, along with Gonzales) knew full well that by putting a little grant money into state election systems, it might just be possible to throw most election law into Federal Jurisdiction. (so we could have Florida style law, I guess.)

Anyhow, that is all background to what is my main point here -- for the past decade or so the wise advocate in Minnesota would not wish to open up our election laws for fear that the forces of evil would control the process.  (You never want to open up settled law in a negative environment.)  But things have changed, and the window for some advocacy is now cracked open, and we need to see what can be done, and what needs to be done.  

The Humphrey Institute had a day long forum recently, and MPR broadcast about an hour of what was a seven hour program.  What I heard was good -- more to the point, the key Minnesota Legislators who would lead any changes were there listening.  I suggest this might be a good starting point.

One of our major issues -- and one which certainly has shown up in the Coleman-Franken race -- is our need to evaluate whether we want to move toward "early voting" which we have rather done on the sly, by allowing more people without strict reasons why they cannot appear at the polls, to use the absentee system to cast early votes.  One reason we have so many wrongly rejected absentee ballots this year is simply because we kinda grafted early voting on to the absentee system, without thinking it through.  

In many ways, I am prejudice against "early voting" -- and my reasons for opposition are spelled Grundseth and Wellstone.  Early voting takes away your vote or choice on election day should a sex scandal or a plane crash eliminate one of the principle candidates.  (I think both R and DFL Minnesotans can agree on this equation.) And since it is more likely than not that "base" voters make up their minds early and firmly -- early voting risks making many of your base votes useless.  As "early voting" is done in many states, early ballots are not recoverable, they are already in the ballot box.  I am not all that certain I want to see Minnesota go strongly in this direction, particularly because I still tear up just thinking about late October, 2002.

But "early voting" as distinct from absentee voting (classic absentee voters are those out of state on election day, those too disabled or ill to go to the polls, etc.,) is now on the table for consideration, largely because it minimizes the number of voters that need to be served at the polls, it shortens waiting lines, and many advocates say it is a money saver.  States that have adopted it have also merged precincts so as to save money on election workers and equipment.  Parties and Campaigns rather like it because they can bank votes early, and then focus strategy on less regular voters and independents in the last weeks of a campaign.  These are practical and valid arguments, but I would suggest it slides over something that should be uppermost in mind, Equal Protection.  

In Minnesota, those who vote at the polls, and put their ballot into the scanner themselves, are protected because our rules require "overvote" protection to be turned on.  If you vote for two candidates for one office, the scanner rejects your ballot, and you have the opportunity to get a new ballot and eliminate the error.  Early Voters don't put their ballots into a scanner themselves -- thus no equal protection. Early Voters (as we are seeing now) are much more likely to have ballots disqualified because signatures don't match -- I am not aware that we match any signatures for those who vote at the polls. In otherwords under the mantra of "Equal Protection" -- which is actually Federal as well as State Law, I don't believe the migration we have done toward "early voting" offers equal protection, and should we move to make it official, with its own set of rules and all -- we have to consider how to do equal protection and make it real.  

I believe we would be much more able to meet the equal protection standard if we lengthened the time when normal polls are open.  For instance, if we made election day most of the weekend before Election Tuesday, plus much of Election Monday -- and offered say a 48 hour window for voting in precinct -- I think most of the equal protection issues fall away.  Yes -- you would have to double team your election workers, and you would probably have to prohibit campaign advertising aside from plain jane get out the vote ads.  But you could lengthen so as to capture the shift workers, the workers who must travel, in fact most of the "early voters" -- and achieve equal protection.  

We could also eliminate the Grundseth/Wellstone issue if we could agree to a small change.  We allow parties to substitute a candidate till is it 7 days or 5 days?? prior to elections.  Why not just word the ballot differently. In 2002 it would have read, Paul Wellstone or DFL Nominee -- and thus early Wellstone votes executed before the substitution would have counted.  Ditto for the Carlson change-out from Grundseth.  Early voters could be advised that in event of physical or moral croaking of their candidate, their vote transfers to the party replacement.  (We already do this on Military and Overseas ballots, where voting "Democrat" in the 5th district would translate to an Ellison vote if the voter uses the generic military Federal ballot.)  

I don't know what her schedule will be, but Phyllis Kahn chairs the Government Operations Committee in the MN House -- she chaired it back when we did our last big revision of our election systems in the late 80's -- and it will be through her committee that any changes will move.  I am certain she already has staff on the issue, and that eventually there will be hearings, but before that point we ought to be seriously discussing what changes might be useful to address -- and what concerns need to be front and center. In real detail, what constitutes "Progressive" in Elections Systems and Law????      

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by: Sara @ Wed Dec 31, 2008 at 15:02:26 PM CST