NewsTrust - Election Reform - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

The real reason Obama is not making much progress

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - So far, Obama has tried to co-opt the corporations into his agenda by ensuring they will profit from any changes, but this inevitably waters down the proposals, often to the point of uselessness. The Cap and Trade legislation before Congress, for example, will barely limit carbon emissions at all because it has been gutted to please the polluters.

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Tom Coburn picks on political science

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Daniel W. Drezner - Oct. 08 (Comment) - OK, dear readers, I want you to close your eyes and imagine a world in which your entire knowledge of political behavior emanated only from CNN, pollsters, pundits, historians, candidates, and political parties.

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The Trial of John Roberts

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jeffrey Rosen - Sep. 13 (Opinion) - A campaign finance case in the Supreme Court could tell us if Chief Justice Roberts will be remembered as the next John Marshall or Earl Warren.

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A Threat to Fair Elections

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Sep. 08 (Editorial) - The Supreme Court has upheld the limitations on corporate campaign expenditures in the past. If they open the floodgates now, corporations will have a huge say in who wins federal elections.

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Why do we allow the US to act like a failed state on climate change

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Jun. 26 (Opinion) - There are mind-boggling concessions to the biofuels industry, including a promise not to investigate its wider environmental impacts. There's a provision to allow industry to use 2bn tonnes of carbon offsets a year, which include highly unstable carbon sinks like crop residues left in the soil (another concession won by the powerful farm lobby). These offsets are so generous that if all of them are used, US industry will have to make no carbon cuts at all until 2026.

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No Country for Close Calls

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nate Silver, Andrew Gelman - Apr. 18 (Opinion) - Contests as close as these — not to mention Florida’s electoral adventures in 2000 — have led to an impression that the margin between Democrats and Republicans is pretty narrow. That is why when Barack Obama defeated John McCain by 7.3 points last November, historically a fairly average margin, the victory was widely hailed as a landslide.

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Voting technology facts fight conspiracy theories

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Examiner.com - By Jan Tyler - Mar. 13 (Opinion) - Election technology should be studied by unbiased scientists, whose voter registrations shoud be disclosed. Instead of reverting to paper ballot systems, legislators and officials should focus on finding modern technology to administer elections. Otherwise, our elections will be vulnerable, not to imaginary techological glitches, but to human nature.

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Voter ID: $1.5 million spent on 30 indictments?

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Austin American-Statesman - By CHuck Lindell - Mar. 10 (Opinion) - Opponents: Attorney General Greg Abbott has spent $1.5 million investigating election fraud, finding very little. The cost is closer to $690,000 to prosecute 30 election code cases since 2006 — a number that will grow because seven cases are still pending, according to figures from Abbott’s office.

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Online voting system would require scrutiny

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

theolympian.com - Feb. 15 (Editorial) - The federal government, as part of the Help America Vote Act, was assigned the task of creating a safe and secure Internet voting system. After creation of a system that used secure military lines and encrypted ballots, technical experts were called in to review the proposed system check for vulnerabilities. In 2004, after the technology experts filed their report, the federal government canceled the pilot voting project. And since that time, very little government effort has been expended to create a fail-safe Internet voting system.

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Restore voting rights to ex-felons

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Gil Kerlikowske, John Lovick - Feb. 13 (Opinion) - Good law enforcement involves not only preventing and solving crimes but also helping those who have been released from prison return to society as law-abiding citizens.

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Franken-Coleman trial: Really, no kidding, Thursday is going to be a critical day

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

minnpost.com - By Jay Weiner - Feb. 11 (Opinion) - Here’s the tally in legal briefs both sides filed late today. Tuesday the judges asked the two campaigns their opinions on whether 19 discrete and some even esoteric categories of ballots should be counted. From signatures, to date of arrival, to the legality of witnesses, to wrong addresses...lots of little, itty-bitty things that, it seems, the law requires. The Coleman side told the judges in their documents today that 16 of the judges 19 categories should be counted. The Franken side said that two of the 19 categories should be counted.

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How Should We Get Big-Money Influence Out of Congressional Elections?

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Lawrence Lessig - Jan. 04 (Opinion) - progress will be stifled on every big issue until we solve the threshold problem: big-money interests having disproportional clout in our public debates. Later this month, I and others will announce a large grassroots campaign aimed at channeling the amazing desire for change that Americans are feeling right now into tangible and fundamental reform of our political system.

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Will Al Franken or Norm Coleman be able to claim to be "the people's choice"?

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Balkinization - By Sandy Levinson - Dec. 28 (Opinion) - There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents states from adopting voting systems that would do a better job of meeting democratic criteria. It's also the case, incidentally, that several of the Democratic wins in 2006 featured non-majority winners who might have been helped by the presence of third-party candidates who deprived Republicans of likely votes. This might have been the case in Montana, and Sen. Webb in Virginia, too, might have been helped by the third-party candidate. So there's nothing partisan in my critique of the voting system that Minnesota, like almost all other states, has adopted.

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For this we had a revolution?

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Balkinization - By Sandy Levinson - Dec. 18 (Comment) - I must also say, as a partisan Democrat, that I genuinely wonder whether Ms. Kennedy, whatever her strengths might be, would necessarily prevail over Peter King or some other well-financed Republican in 2010, who might well find a constituency to agree with another of Kristoff's comments, that Gov. Patterson is "said to be drawn to appointing Caroline Kennedy to the senate because she would be a good fund-raiser who could be reelected in 2010 and would cast a glow around him and his issues. But we don’t want a plutocracy, we want a democracy."

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For senate, Caroline or Carolyn?

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Dec. 17 (Opinion) - Caroline Kennedy strikes me as a very impressive woman with all the right priorities, such as education. But I also find it unseemly and undemocratic that she seems to have vaulted to the top of the Senate list by virtue of who her dad was. Seeing which way the wind is blowing, Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post has already endorsed her. Isn’t that sexist? Isn’t that the kind of system we rebelled against in 1776?

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GOP rush to change voting rules is ruse

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

daytondailynews.com - Nov. 29 (Editorial) - Elections are supposed to be political. The administration of them, however, should be resolutely nonpartisan. Rushing piecemeal bills through just so Republicans can say they fixed something is overstating the problem and overreacting.

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Voter Registration Should Be Automatic

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Hartford Courant - By Robyn Blumner - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - The problems arose because our old system of state-by-state registration rules — some of which appear designed for a mail system via pony express — is outmoded and frankly retains vestiges of our racist past. We need to follow the lead of at least 24 other countries and adopt a system of automatic and permanent voter registration.

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Go slow on early voting

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - Nov. 03 (Editorial) - Despite its many advantages, early voting has caused a few caution flags to be raised. For one, the opportunity for such votes to be lost, ignored, or altered is increased. While such slip-ups or fraud may not change an election, even the appearance of it is a danger. On Election Day, there are far more poll watchers to keep things honest.

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"My Lord, I feel something is happening"

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Jonathan Alford - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - PITTSBURGH, Pa. -- I am sitting at a call table at a Barack Obama campaign office with churchgoing black ladies. We are in East Liberty, a black neighborhood in Pittsburgh. The office sits on the same block as the county assistance center and a liquor store. Out on the street, old men are drinking out of paper bags and young kids are hanging out on the corner, watching a steady stream of volunteers with clipboards and Obama signs pour in and out of the office. I am a 53-year-old white piano player and postal carrier from Oakland, Calif. I knocked on doors four years ago for John Kerry in swing-state Pennsylvania and just had to come back for Obama. This time, though, something feels different. The hubris of Bush and the neocons has brought about an inevitable backlash, and the ideological glue of the conservative movement has begun to melt. Evangelicals are beginning to embrace environmental and social issues and a few more working-class whites are coming back to the Democratic fold. Politics feels like it is on the verge on being reinvented.

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"I Didn’t Know I Could Vote"

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Kos - By Paul Loeb - Nov. 03 (Advocacy) - I just came back from eight hours canvassing swing exurban neighborhoods 20 miles south of Seattle. Walking two precincts, I left materials on about a hundred doors, spoke to a dozen or so people who’d already voted, and told a handful how to turn in their absentee ballots. It was easy to feel that my efforts were nice but redundant. Then I knocked on a nondescript house and a man in his late forties answered the door. He had chains tattooed on his wrists, and looked liked he'd been through hard times, maybe jail. "I’d vote for Obama and the Democrats," he said. "But I haven’t been voting. I didn’t know I could vote."

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Ending the 'Voter Fraud' Debate

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Joel Barkin, Christian Smith-Socaris - Nov. 02 (Opinion) - With no evidence coming to light so far to back up these attacks, and virtually no evidence of voter fraud in general, many have rightly criticized these attacks for what they are: strident attempts to give cover for an ongoing campaign of voter suppression. With the boogeyman of voter fraud at their back, conservatives have been mounting campaigns to purge the voting rolls and block voter registration in states across the country.

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The Success of Early Voting - NYTimes.com

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Oct. 29 (Editorial) - But the truth is that early voting actually makes it harder for the forces of disenfranchisement to stop eligible voters from casting ballots. If election officials try to require voters to present ID when it is not required by law, early voting gives voters a chance to simply return the next day. Dirty tricks are also harder to pull off. If political operatives want to jam get-out-the-vote telephone lines, as they did on Election Day in New Hampshire in 2002, it would be harder to do if people voted over two weeks. Early voting also reduces the burden on election systems that are often stretched near to the breaking point.

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Election Protection

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - “Sequoia is one of the big-four voting-machine companies. Of course, they have failed in state after state.” Friedman also reports on “vote flipping,” a problem with electronic, touch-screen voting machines. “It’s West Virginia, it’s Tennessee, it’s Texas, Missouri, Nevada ... people go in and vote for a Democratic straight-party ticket or for Barack Obama, and the vote flips to a Republican or some other candidate.” The companies claim the machines can be calibrated to work properly. Friedman disagrees: “These machines need to be pulled out, because even when they work, the problem is that there is absolutely no way to ever verify that any vote ever cast on a touch-screen machine like this has been recorded as per the voter’s intent.”

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Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Greg Palast: - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - Jailed GOP activist Jack Abramoff and his fellow convict, Congressman Bob Ney, wrote the most sinister provisions of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which Congress passed in 2002 creating a series of diabolically cunning new voting impediments. HAVA, for example, allows state voting officials to purge tens of thousands of voters from the polls using algorithms and voter ID requirements that disproportionately disenfranchise black, Hispanic and minority voters, and other Democratic demographics including senior citizens and young people.

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The Vote Grab: Voter purge could swing result to McCain

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Peter Tatchell - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - In the first few days of early voting in Florida, 5,000 voters have already been rejected, mostly because of typos and bureaucratic blunders in the spelling of their names. Non-match discrepancies could result in hundreds of thousands of US citizens - perhaps millions - losing their right to vote. Even those who are allowed to remain on the register may be required to vote using a provisional ballot, which may or may not be counted.

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