There is substantial and serious voter suppression at the retail level in non-urban communities. If that’s where you vote, here is how it works and how Progressives can counter it—a Democratic election judge’s experience in 2004
Unless Nate Silver’s 538 and the other poll readers have it absolutely wrong, Progressives will gain a narrow victory in a closely contested election cycle -- if voters’ choices really matter, Perhaps Obama will win with a point or two nationally with 1-3 points in several “firewall” swing states. However – and this is big -- we know that red state Regressives retain their Southern Segregationist voter suppression DNA from the 50’s, and I want to provide some Election Day tips we can use to prevent them from depriving people of their right to vote so that they can return us to the 20’s.
Just consider this scenario: 1) Repubs suppress the Democratic vote 2% in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and most of the other states with regressive voter suppression laws, 2) Repubs intimidate the vote 1% in Democratic-leaning precincts with phony voter ID and voter fraud scares coupled with “True The Vote” partisan intimidation, and 3) Repub election judges slow down voting lines and disenfranchise or falsely direct Democratic voters.
Not only can Romney win, Repub regressive down-ballot Tea Party whack-jobs will be able to continue to fuck up our country.
We all see the pictures of voter suppression in minority urban cities in Florida and Ohio splashed on our screens right now. But less well-understood is that there is also widespread suppression of the rural vote. One of the most common is the disenfranchisement of students: Thousands of rural communities have college towns full of youthful voters, much-feared by the locals -- middle-aged whites who see “outsiders” changing their communities and traditional low information voters (and other frightened) folks who are easily demagogued. In this replay of the dispute between Town and Gown, it’s the locals who actively control local election mechanics to insure that only the “right” people continue to control their local communities, safe from the unpredictable voting patterns of transient students.
My point is this: You don’t have to be an urban dweller to ensure eligible voters can exercise their voting rights. You should also be on guard in more rural communities – and follow over the jump for what you can do:
1) If you can, provide food, water, umbrellas, and social support to voters lined up to vote outside their polling place—you might even change some hearts and minds of a few undecided.
2) Know your polling place camera laws (don’t trust Repub signage); make sure you take your cell phone with you.
3) Have cell numbers for the Democratic County chair, the Obama election monitor, and the police.
4) Call the Obama election lawyers, call the media, and call the police.Here is a link to a diary that provides contact information to OFA offices in the battleground states:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
5) Be particular observant of “slow down” activities by Rethug volunteers as well as harassment over untrue claims concerning identification requirements.
6) We need to document disruption by Repub thugs like “True the Vote” and stealth misinformation or threats directed at voters by the Romney crew of external Repub poll disruption, post it—inform media and election monitors. (Where video is legal inside polling places, video folks who disrupt voting—even if it pisses them off. If video is illegal, keep in mind that some folks commit felonies to disrupt voting while you risk a misdemeanor to document voter fraud—you face an ethical decision. Given what our Southern brothers and sisters historically put on the line to vote, doesn’t risking a misdemeanor seem an easy call?)
7) Grow some balls (at least metaphoric gonads) and call the voter-suppression bastards out.
8) Do what you can to influence election judges. If you are one, try using moral suasion to reach agreement before the polling place opens. If it's handled right, Election judges can establish a culture of cooperative “we are here to let voters vote”! But they have to get their shit together regarding their election rules. And judges (or at least Democratic judges) need to be proactive and demanding in their efforts to make each precinct work. Threats of obstructing justice should be considered as a last resort when Repub judges employ systematic slowdown of voting lines to suppress the vote.
9) After the election is over, use your videos and testaments to demand change. These non-democratic thugs are committing felonies. They should be fined AND jailed! Demand that the Obama administration and Attorney General prosecute these felons. The Republicans claim to fear voter fraud—so let’s truly be bipartisan and throw those industrial vote-stealing felons in the federal pens. Reward ethical state and local election officials; punish the vote suppressors—they have betrayed our democracy and deserve contempt. Let’s consider national rules and even national voter id for national elections. There is no reason for the Southern client welfare states to impose their old Jim Crow repression tactics on our federal elections.
For those who might be interested, here is how I learned about this kind of rural voter suppression:
In 2003, I was hired to teach at Western Illinois University—. The county Democratic chairperson in Macomb Illinois (a rural town of 20,000 folks with a university of about 12,000 students about 150 miles north of Saint Louis, MO) asked me to be an election judge saying “Joe, we need a strong Democrat to make sure that our Democratic students get to vote.” I told him “John, I didn’t get my ass shot at in Vietnam so just DEMOCRATS could vote; it would be for ALL voters.” John agreed he had misspoke.
Later, during my 4 hour election judge training, I was blown away with how complicated Illinois rules of voter identification, residence date requirements, and provisional voting alternatives were—it looked worse than a decision matrix for a DARPA research project—and I’ve got a PhD in research methods.
As it happened, I was also supervising a graduate research project for the campaign manager of a local State’s Attorney candidate and teaching an undergraduate research methods course. I got the undergrads to do exit polling at four selected polling sites that included: 1) the student polling location, 2) downtown Macomb, and 3) two rural polling sites.
On November 2004, the election judges got up about 4 am so that we could open the polls by 6 am. We handled 3 precincts and most of the university voters. There were 6 officials for each precinct: a) a greeter to see each voters’ name and ID, b) one judge to find the voter in the electoral roll, c) two officials (one from each party) to agree that the voter/id matched the voter roll/address, d) a person to hand out ballots, and e) a person to insure that the count of ballots and paper-trail of voters tally. The absolute minimum number of judges to vote a precinct was 2—one from each party, a completely unsustainable situation.
Before voting started, my Republican counterpart (a nice, sincere 75 year guy) and I agreed that our job was to help folks vote and not squabble over how “tightly” signatures matched (they vary greatly over time, especially as voters age). The other Democratic election judge, Judy, was the university’s assistant provost. Judy took over as our precinct trouble-shooter; she determined if voters were in the correct precinct, eligible for a provisional ballot, or perhaps unregistered according to the county records.
Of the 18 election judges, Judy, I, and perhaps one other person did NOT have white hair. Hair color is non-trivial information! Think—how do we maintain the rural political status quo? And how do we continue to hold all the cards in the ongoing university town-gown disputes?
Western Illinois University is a party school. Party and drink constitute a 24/7 mission for all too many students. Thus, our polling place was moderately busy before work hours began with the non-student trade. Then it was deserted until about 1pm until all hell broke loose. We became inundated with student voters by 2 pm. Our precinct kept the lines down to less than 100 or 30 minute max wait.
The other two precincts, although they had no more voters on their rolls, gradually built up lines exceeding 250 voters and wait times exceeding 3 hours. They “accomplished” this suppression by stopping the voting process each time there was any question that a voter could possibly vote provisionally, or perhaps not match perfectly with the voting rolls. While we used up all our provisional ballots (and had to get more), the other two precincts each used about 5-10 provisional ballots. These two precincts’ default decision was to deny student voters their eligibility to vote. After the polls closed at 8pm, Judy and I tried to help the other precincts process voters by helping them “work” their problems—but the other election judges adamantly declined our assistance or our suggestions to not stop their line while they dealt with any problematic voter. So, one of the six election judges would deal with the “problematic voter” while the other five judges did nothing and up to 250 voters waited.
This untenable situation was exacerbated by three factors.
• At least 200 third-party voter registration forms were never turned in—this insured pissed off and confused nonvoters who deterred other students from continuing to wait in the long lines.
• Most of the students were first time voters and did not understand the voting process. Additionally, those who had been registered by third parties had to show “proper id” that had their current campus address.
• Many election judges believed that university students really were supposed to “vote in Chicago where they lived” rather than in Macomb. Several had said that during their earlier election judge training.
By mid-afternoon, 1) it started to rain and cooled to 40 degrees, 2) we had more than 500 voters in lines that extended for a block, 3) older local residents came to the polls and hassled the students. The temperature exceeded 90 degrees inside and as students who had waited hours to vote were told that they were not been registered, tempers flared. I periodically walked down the voter lines asking folks to “chill out.” Fortunately some student voters in the lines knew me as their professor and they helped me dial down the students’ anger. Aside from muttered a “fuck-you” or two by disenfranchised voters after they had waited hours to vote and been turned away, the students were wonderful. And John, the Democratic county chair who had recruited me, brought pizza for the students who were waiting to vote outside in the rain.
Someone called the police. Although the problems were outside, a young testosterone-laden cop came into the polling place and wanted to know “where the hell were those students who were making all the trouble.” I confronted him with mixed results but at least deflected him from acting until his supervisor got inside the polls. After all the drama inside and outside the polls, the voting actually stopped about 11pm and it was 12:30 by the time we reconciled the numbers of ballots with the tallied voters. By 1:30 am, my Republican friend and I turned in the three ballot boxes to the county courthouse and then I returned home just in time to see that Kerry had lost Ohio and the presidential election.
After teaching Wednesday classes and talking with my students, I decided to describe the travesty I had witnessed on Tuesday. I wrote a letter to the County Clerk, Chief of Police, President and Provost of my university that described the untenable voting situation, voter suppression, and police confrontation at the polling place. My students—graduate and undergraduate—got empirical data that demonstrated the impacts of our students’ votes (and lack of votes) on local and national candidates within the county. We used precinct rolls, voting rates, and our empirical data to demonstrate the impacts of voter suppression.
Result? Senator Kerry would have carried the county, a Democratic congressional candidate would have also won, but the grad student’s candidate lost “fair and square,” albeit in a much closer race than the official results showed. According to our calculations, at least 1,500 voters (mostly students) had been disenfranchised or deterred from voting after they had already showed up to vote.
About a year later, the Republican County Clerk retired and was formally replaced by her assistant in 2006, a person who had been very responsive to my letter (and possibly pressure from university officials). The new County Clerk facilitated on-campus student voter registration for each September orientation. She was also instrumental in creating an on on-campus voting location expressly for students that, ironically, went unused by students who deserted the 2006 non-presidential election.