The Brennan Center for Justice held a briefing today at the Press Club identifying what they see as the three main problems they're expecting with regards to voter disenfranchisement this year:
Voter Registration: According to a Harvard/MIT study, three million voters in 2008 were disenfranchised by voter registration problems. There's also been what panelists described as a "dramatic drop" in voter registration efforts this cycle, in part because of legal restrictions on voter registration passed in the wake of controversy groups like ACORN. Some states are also still using flawed "no-match" registration requirements, which prevent eligible voters from casting ballots if their data doesn't perfectly match what's contained in the motor vehicle or social security database. The result is that eligible voters are disenfranchised because of varied name spellings, hyphenated names, or mere typos. States should be purging ineligible voters, panelists said, but they shouldn't be using ineffective tools that disenfranchise more eligible voters than ineligible ones to do so.
"Ballot Security" Operations: Partisan groups that try to disenfranchise the other side's voters at the polls, as well as voter suppression operatives acting under color of fighting "voter fraud."
"There's nothing intrinsically wrong with preventing voter fraud, however small a problem that is," said the Brennan Center's Wendy Weister, but such groups "often use tactics that suppress legitimate votes." Voter suppression operatives do something called "caging" in which they send unforwardable mail to voter's registration addresses, and if the mail comes back they challenge these voters at the polls. Obviously, with the nation being rocked by a wave of foreclosures, these sorts of dirty tricks have a higher probability of disenfranchising eligible voters.
As Republican Senate Candidate Mark Kirk helpfully reminded us yesterday, these operations tend to target minority voters. Weiser noted that fraudulent ballots being cast are less likely than being struck by lightning. Nevertheless, conservatives in Wisconsin were caught putting together a voter caging effort.
Voting Machine problems: According to the panelists, there have been a number of improvements that have been made to voting machines, but some problems with machines potentially dropping votes persist. The panel pointed to the New York State Primary Election, where there were some problems with state mandated voting machines.
A perfect example of how voting-rights issues could tip the balance in tight elections is Nevada, where 6 percent of properties had foreclosure filings. Lose your home? Plan to express your frustration at the ballot box? Might not happen. The state also has a no-match system that requires a person's registration be a letter-for-letter match or the registration is flagged, which increases the potential for disenfranchisement based on simple human error. Considering that polling numbers show Harry Reid and Sharron Angle within the margin of error, a small number of votes could be the tipping point.
The panel also commented on the performance of the Civil Rights Division in voting matters under Attorney General Eric Holder. "The Civil Rights Division is not actively pushing states to take steps that disenfranchise eligible voters," said The Brennan Center's Michael Waldman, noting that under the last administration, the division pushed states to knock people off the rolls for things like typos in databases. Waldman added that he'd seen "an improvement" with the way the division now enforces voting-rights laws.
