Re: provisional ballot in wrong polling place? WELL DUH!

[Ralph Shnelvar <ralphs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Bob:

On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 07:04:56 -0600 , you wrote:

>Has it occurred to anyone that the history behind granting liberal access to
>provisional ballots stemmed from the widespread disenfranchisement
>experienced by so many voters in 2000 when counties arbitrarily changed
>voting precinct locations and engaged in wholesale poll scrubbing that
>removed voters from the list of registered voters, which voters had no
>reason to suspect would happen until they were confronted with these actions
>as they went to vote?  

Yes, it has occurred to me.

>
>Part of HAVA's provisions for provisional ballots was to address these very
>issues of people losing their votes due to these types of shenanigans, and
>allowing voters every chance to at least cast a vote until the veracity of
>their claim as a rightful voter could be determined in the 12 days
>post-election that the law provides.  It is not unreasonable for people to
>show up at the wrong precinct since voting locations do change, since people
>do move and miss deadlines to change their location to vote, and since many
>voter registrations or changes to registrations may languish unattended in
>these halcyon days of huge voter registration drives.  It would not surprise
>me that thousands of newly-registered voters will show up to vote and the
>poll books will not reflect that they are registered, and they may indeed
>become disenfranchised if they are not offered a provisional ballot until
>the system can catch up with the many challenges being placed upon it.  The
>fact that the CO Div. of Motor Vehicles' computers went down recently (where
>many people register to vote), and the county clerks are contemplating
>hiring night shifts to help process the thousands of new voter
>registrations, compounds the stresses being placed upon all systems to try
>to handle the crush of people who wish to vote in this election.  
>
>History has been so full of instances where barriers are placed in front of
>people trying to cast their vote - Poll taxes, grandfather clauses (you can
>only vote if your grandfather voted), ex-felon rules, new ID regulations --
>that the HAVA rules on provisional ballots were intended as a partial remedy
>to increase confidence that people would be given a chance to cast a vote,
>and to remove as many barriers as possible.

Bob, you know I respect you.  But I believe that on this "liberal" issue
that you are wrong.

There are two flaws to your argument; but first let me start out where you
are right.

Yes, there are enormous shenanigans by the powers-that-be.  We see that in
Boulder and at the State level.

Having said that, the greater threat to democracy is ballot box coercion and
ballot box stuffing.

Disenfranchisement by the underhanded methods used in the Florida election
has a useful side-benefit: it can get people angry to do something about it.
Ballot box stuffing and coercion are beyond the realm of the possible to
correct by the average citizen's group.   Ballot box stuffing and coercion
has a far more corrosive effect on the body politic since it sends the
message that ALL votes are suspect rather than the (relative handful) of
voters who were disenfranchised.  Yes, it may throw an election, but at
least the process is still intact.

I'm with Pete.  The cost to society of demanding that voters pay attention
to their votes (Are you registered?  Where is your current polling place?)
is much smaller than the much worse message of
   	Please feel free to vote, anywhere
	because the election is rigged, anyway.


Now having (I hope, politely) ripped into you on this issue, Bob, let me
extend an olive branch.

On October 7th I will be speaking in Longmont at the Times-Call forum on
issues and candidates.

I'd like to invite you guys to take my table so that you can lay out
literature.  I already asked the Times-Call if you guys can talk.  I pitched
it strongly saying that voting integrity has a higher priority than issues
or candidates.  Alas, they refused since their focus is issues and
candidates.  But they were quite willing to have you guys there in the
public area to hand out literature.

Last, Bob, Pete, and Al, I want to talk to you about a strategic issue.
Please call me.

Ralph Shnelvar
303-546-6125

>Bob McGrath, Director
>Coloradoans for Voting Integrity
>355 Teller Ste 200
>Lakewood, CO 80226
>Tel. 303.231.1031
>http://www.cfvi.org
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Pete Klammer [mailto:pklammer@xxxxxxxxxxx]
>Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 12:04 AM
>To: 'Joe Pezzillo'; reindeer@xxxxxxxxxx
>Cc: cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx; 'Mcgrath,
>Bob___PAIC_Mkt'
>Subject: RE: provisional ballot in wrong polling place? WELL DUH!
>
>
>I don't see how provisional ballot rules should be interpreted to grant any
>voter some right to vote in someone else's precinct.  This is a recipe for
>laziness, sloppiness, error, and deteriorated election quality.
>
>If the voter goes to his proper polling location for the precinct he belongs
>to, and the Election Division books have the voter's precinct wrong, then
>the full provisional ballot should be voted and counted.  I haven't heard or
>read anyone suggest this shouldn't or won't be the case (other than the
>aforesaid rumormongering that implied it).
>
>You may be mistakenly thinking of absentee balloting, in which anyone can
>vote anywhere, any time.  I understand the fondness for such lush
>convenience but I have no sympathy for it.  What some see as the comparable
>fault of the provisional ballot, I see as a virtue.