Posts by Steven Rosenfeld

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).

Forget the Media Driven Drama, Guess Whose Vote Will Nominate Obama?
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on August 27, 2008 at 1:06 PM.

Hillary Clinton will cast the vote by the New York delegation that will put Barack Obama over the threshold needed to become the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nominee, according to party staffers working at the podium.

The delegates have been asked to be in their seats at 3 PM, local time, to start the official nominating process a half hour later. That means the actual voting by state delegations will probably begin somewhere around 4 PM, convention staffers said.

The convention chair will ask various states for their votes, but before the total reaches the 2,117 delegates needed to secure the nomination, the chair will call on the New York delegation, where the state's junior Senator, Hillary Clinton, will announce to the hall how her state is voting -- delivering the nomination to Obama, party staffers said.

The move will be an emotional finale to Clinton's historic presidential campaign. Former president Bill Clinton is scheduled to address the convention later tonight.

Ohio Secretary of State Predicts Cleaner Vote in 2008 than 2004
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on August 26, 2008 at 4:26 PM.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, predicted a record turnout of 80 percent of registered voters in the November election, at a press briefing where she also outlined the steps she has taken to make Ohio's voting system less prone to the problems experienced in 2004.

"This year you will see a big difference in Ohio from what you have seen in the past," she said at an Electionline.org forum in Denver at the Democratic Convention. "We had a bigger (administrative and legal) infrastructure in place for the March primary."

For November, Brunner said there will be better poll worker training with a focus in the state's new voter ID laws and using provisional ballots. She also said that she recently issued a directive limiting how partisan voter challenges can be conducted -- they can question poll workers but cannot challenge voters.

Brunner said that many of the reforms she has instituted since assuming office in 2006 have professionalized election administration in Ohio. She said new hiring standards prompted many people appointed to county election boards as political patronage jobs to retire.

"It has been a breath of fresh air," she said.

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Psst... Want to Know What Dem Insiders Are Being Told?
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on August 25, 2008 at 4:22 PM.

Democratic Party leaders say they are better prepared for the November election than their party has been in years. At a gathering for donors Sunday, DNC Chairman Howard Dean explained the party's new bullishness.

Dean said Democrats now have the same data resources as the Republican Party, something that has not been the case for 15 years. The party has 250 million names in a database, where the party can predict with 85 percent accuracy how those people will vote. A subset of that are the 35 million people who voted for Democrats in 2008's primaries and caucuses.

Dean predicted the party would win seats in Congress in some former Republican-majority states, saying Democratic candidates were ahead in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, South Carolina and New Mexico.

"You helped us put in place the business plan to win elections," Dean said. "This is the party that is going to win a lot of elections."

Don Siegelman Calls on House to Hold Karl Rove in Contempt
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on August 25, 2008 at 10:07 AM.

Editor's note: Former Alabama Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman has been fighting to clear his name after being convicted of bribery for appointing a campaign supporter to a non-paying position on a state board -- a practice that is commonplace in American politics. Siegelman believes Karl Rove, the president's former political strategist, was behind his prosecution by U.S. attorneys, just as Alabama Republicans stole his 2002 governor's race by revising the vote count in one county and sealing access to the ballots for a recount. Seigelman spoke about why Rove must be held accountable for failing to testify before Congress at an election integrity panel at the Denver Press Club on Sunday. The panel was a briefing for reporters attending the Democratic Convention. Here is an excerpt.

I am from Alabama. I know something about how votes are suppressed. I know how those in power seek to control elections.

The spirit of the civil rights movement was not deterred by police dogs. The spirit of the civil rights movement was not beaten back by billy clubs, or dampened by the water cannon. The spirit of that movement was built upon the belief that every person should have the right to vote, and that those votes should be counted.

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Welcome to Denver: Cheers, Jeers and Hillary Rodham Clinton
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on August 24, 2008 at 12:38 PM.

Welcome to Denver, where political rumors travel faster than car and foot traffic because of the mega-police presence and ubiquitous orange traffic cone, and where on Joe Biden's first day in the vice-presidential sunshine rabid right-wingers and recalcitrant Hillary Clinton supporters snipped at the edges of the unfolding great Obama fest.

First, the reaction to Biden. Most delegates and party people heading to a Saturday evening reception for the media said they were were pleased. Not euphoric. Not cloud nine. Not thinking Biden would be a silver bullet into the dark heart of John McCain's I'm-the-toughest campaign. Most were not aware of Biden's support for going into Iraq, or when asked about that, said, 'Well that was then ...'

As one woman who was selling hand-painted wooden campaign buttons at the entrance to the media reception -- at an amusement park -- said, "People back home (Pennsylvania) are excited for Biden because he has a lot of experience in foreign affairs. He is a no-nonsense, sincere, intelligent, go-get-em senators. It's a great addition to the ticket."

The only grumbles among this very loyal Democratic crowd -- who all had credentials to get into official events, which is not the case for most progressives -- came from Hillary supporters. One fellow, from Colorado, said, "She was the most popular choice among delegates polled -- I'm not impressed." But he didn't give his name; citing party loyalty.

Perhaps more disturbing, another early Obama supporter and delegate said she had been approached by two Georgia delegates who were upset by a simmering but mysterious vote-Hillary ploy. They said the women in their delegation had been receiving e-mails urging them to vote for Hillary on the first ballot, when the convention formally selects the presidential nominee. Whether this is part of a bigger HRC plan or a last-ditch effort by supporters of a vanquished candidate, remains to be seen.

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At Netroots, Pelosi Ducks Impeachment; Gore Calls for National Grassroots Movement
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on July 19, 2008 at 10:20 AM.

Karl Rove should be put in the jail cell at the U.S. Capitol for defying a congressional subpeona to testify before Judiciary Committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told a national bloggers conference on Saturday morning, but she did not directly answer questions on why the House has not pursued impeachment charges against the president.

Meanwhile, former Vice President Al Gore, who made a surprise appearance at the "Ask The Speaker" session at the Netroots Nation conference, urged those in attendance to help him create a national grassroots movement to counter corporate interests and others ignoring the global climate crisis.

Gore said the best way for the country to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy was not to push car companies to build different vehicles, but rather to rebuild the country's electricity infrastructure so the U.S. Relied on 100 percent renewable sources in a decade.

"The easiest and cheapest way to shift over to a new energy is to start with electricity," Gore said. "Cars will follow. A new national grid is the centerpiece of this agenda. We have to switch our electricity generation system to get 100 percent from renewable sources."

"We can do it, but I need your help," Gore said, urging the bloggers to encourage people to join his new organization, wecansolveit.org. The group has 1.3 million members, but Gore said it needs 10 million members to counter corporate and political opposition to real change - even if a Democratic president and Congress is elected in the fall.

"I need your help," Gore said. "You speak to and connect with so many millions of people. I ask for you help to build that group of people. You will not see this organization getting partisan or turning to some other agenda. We will not back down."

ARREST KARL ROVE

The organizers of Netroots Nation created an "Ask the Speaker" website where people voted on the questions they most wanted to ask Pelosi. Impeachment topped the list. Pelosi did not reply directly, but instead said the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) would be pursuing a contempt of Congress resolution against Rove, just as it had with other White House staffers who did not testify when ordered to do so by House committees.

"Now the committee is considering contempt for Karl Rove," she said. "That will be up for the committee to decide. Mr. Conyers says I am in charge and I accept that."

When another questioner asked if Rove should be in the Capitol's jail, Pelosi replied, "That's where he belongs. As Mr. Conyers says, 'leave it up to me.'"

Pelosi also defended the recently-passed FISA bill, which deals with how the federal government can monitor the personal communications of U.S. Citizens when fighting terrorism. She said the House's version of the recently passed bill did not grant retroactive immunity for telecom companies that helped the government spy on what some believe is millions of Americans. But she said House Democrats could do little when 17 Democratic senators sided with their Republican colleagues and supported a version of the bill that gave telecom companies retroactive immunity.

She said the bill that was passed, the product of a conference committee, included the immunity but also for the first time brought oversight of the FISA law to two House committees and the Inspector General's office, which she said was some progress.

"I'll never understand how Dem 17 senators voted with the GOP on FISA," Pelosi said. "I have serious sadness over two things in the congress. One is that they sent us the (Senate) FISA bill and that we could not overcome 60 votes in the Senate to end the war in Iraq."

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Fight Over the VA's Ban on Voter Registration Heads to Court
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on July 18, 2008 at 4:23 PM.

The state of Connecticut may file a federal lawsuit to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to allow voter registration drives, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said Friday.

"Time is of the essence," she said. "We have 109 days left before the election. The (Connecticut) Attorney General and I are looking at possible legal action. It is fair to say that is very likely."

Bysiewicz' comments came a day after she was notified by U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake that the VA would not permit voter registration drives at its campuses and was imposing new restrictions on who could contact veterans at VA facilities to help them register to vote.

"It is a disguised no," Bysiewicz said, referring to the VA's new policy that only "Voluntary Service" officers at VA facilities would be allowed to register the former soldiers. "It is legal mumbo-jumbo that appears to grant something but really takes away everything."

Anytime a person moves they must update their voter registration. This includes former soldiers who are receiving care at VA facilities.

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Coalition Plans to Register 500,000 Recent Immigrants to Vote
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on July 10, 2008 at 6:00 PM.

Washington, DC -- A national coalition of immigrant rights groups, ethnic organizations, and community and leadership organizations Thursday announced a plan to register half-a-million new voters from the ranks of recent immigrants for the 2008 election.

The We Are America Alliance will work in 13 states to register voters and conduct get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day, participants said. The effort is targeting people age 25 and under, new citizens and eligible but infrequent voters. These voters historically have been overlooked by campaigns and susceptible to being disenfranchised.

The We Are America Alliance partner organizations have fought for the rights of immigrants in their respective communities, but this year they are coming together to make voter engagement their number one priority, said Holli Holiday, WAAA Executive Director.

"We will be touching over 1 million immigrant voters going into the fall election and encouraging them to vote come November," said Erica Bernal, senior director of civic engagement for the national Association of Latino Elected Officials Education Fund. "We will spend over $10 million turning out the immigrant vote. This is unprecedented."

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Electronic voting without software?
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on July 9, 2008 at 2:00 PM.

Avi Rubin, one of the country's foremost computer voting experts, said electronic voting systems do not have to rely on the unpredictable and unverifiable software used today.

In a July 9 interview with InterGovWorld.com, the computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University said it was possible to build another generation of electronic voting machines that can be "software independent."

"The National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] identified what I think is a breakthrough property in an e-voting machine, which is the idea of making it software-independent," he said. "That means designing voting systems where a software failure does not have any possible impact on the accuracy and integrity of the election. This isn't my idea. This is NIST. They published a paper where they identified that, and I said that is the killer property that you want."

Rubin then explained how this kind of computerized voting machine would work.

You design it very, very differently. You have redundant components.

Let me give you an example of a system that is software-independent. You have a system where voters use a touch screen to make their selections and the touch-screen machine, when they're done, prints out a paper ballot that they look at and has all the candidate choices that they made. The voter then takes the completed, printed ballot, and they put it into a scanner. The scanner tallies the ballots up and keeps counts of all the votes. Now if the software on that system fails, they wouldn't get a printed-out ballot that they could then accept and approve.

After the election is over, you pick a bunch of scanners randomly, and you audit them. You count the papers, and you compare the totals that the scanners ran, or you have a different independent scanner that you run the ballots through to see if you get the same answers.

In any stage of the process, a flaw in the software will either be caught and corrected, or it will prevent you from proceeding, in which case you can get the ballots pulled up some other way.

Now let's compare that to an existing direct-recording electronic (DRE) touch-screen machine, where the voter comes in and marks his or her choices and they are stored on a magnetic card on the inside of the machine, and at the end of the day, the voting officials get the card and it has all the tallies. Any flaw in the software could change all the tallies or record the votes incorrectly, and there would be no checks and balances against that because there is no paper record of the actual choices made by the voters.

Rubin also said the landscape facing voters in 2008 is much improved since 2000, where confusion over various kinds of ballots in Florida led to a recount that was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court, which awarded the presidency to George W. Bush.

"Things are improving," he said. "We're definitely much better than we were in 2004, when we had 37 states that were using fully electronic voting that was poorly designed, without paper ballot backups...

"The problem in 2004 was that very few of the systems were software-independent because they relied on the software to keep and store vote tallies. In my opinion, most systems that use optical scanning of paper ballots, whether they are generated by computer or by hand, are likely to have that property. But you could conceive of designing it so badly that it didn't have it."

[ED: Avi Rubin is pictured above]

Connecticut Fights Veterans Affairs on Voter Registration
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on July 2, 2008 at 8:26 PM.

The Department of Veteran Affairs' ban on voter registration drives was defied by Connecticut's Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal this week, when they went to a VA medical center and registered voters.

"There was nobody here to do this last year," Martin Onieal, 92, a World War II veteran and a resident of the VA center since 2007, told the New Haven Register.

Bysiewicz conducted an impromptu registration session outside the VA facility after her office failed to get written permission to go into the VA centers and was denied access in a subsequent phone call, the paper said.

During most of the Bush Administration, the VA has not allowed voter registration groups into its facilities to help former soldier to register and to vote. This spring, after pressure from several U.S. senators and public criticism, the VA announced a new policy saying it would help vets register and allow registration drives. However, several weeks later, it reversed the decision on the registration drives, saying it would interfere with the agency's medical mission and encourage "partisan" activities.

"I believe that there is a concerted effort going on to suppress voter registration," Bysiewicz, told the New Haven paper. She also cited a ban issued for Indian reservations, because they are on federal property.

"To ban voter registration drives is a slap in the face to veterans like Mr. Onieal, who have served and sacrificed greatly for our country and for the basic freedoms that we have here," said Bysiewicz.

Curiously, the paper reported that VA officials in Connecticut were not averse to the Secretary of State's actions, even though that would conflict with the federal agency's new policy.

In a prepared statement issued on her website, Bysiewicz expanded on her criticism and called for the federal Election Assistance Commission to investigate.

"The practice and policy of banning voter registration drives at veterans facilities is an slap in the face to the people that have served, put their lives on the line and scarified the most for our fundamental freedoms. It is simply wrong" she said. "It defies logic that this administration would even consider disenfranchising tens of thousands of veterans who have served our country and now require care. At a minimum we should make it easier for our veterans to register to vote."

Obama Says No To Public Financing
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on June 19, 2008 at 7:51 AM.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama (D-IL) has rejected using $80 million in public funds for the fall campaign.

Obama said in a statement released today that he supports public financing, but not the current system for presidential candidates where independent groups can spend unlimited millions while candidates who take the public funds are bound by spending limits.

In 2004, Sen. John Kerry, (D-MA), that year’s democratic nominee, accepted public financing but ran out of money after the primaries and before the party’s convention, after which the public funds become available. That shortfall allowed the GOP to portray Kerry in unfavorable lights to voters while Kerry was unable to respond with his own television commercials.

Obama’s decision will surely be controversial.

Here are his remarks:

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Election Activists Win Three Key Battles
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on May 16, 2008 at 4:56 PM.

Voting rights activists won three big battles this week.

The Missouri state Legislature adjourned without taking up a controversial voter ID bill. The Department of Justice settled a lawsuit with Arizona that will force the state to offer welfare recipients the opportunity to register to vote. And Hans von Spakovsky, the White House's controversial nominee to the Federal Election Commission, withdrew his nomination.

The Missouri voter ID bill would have required voters show a government-issue photo ID to vote and would have required new registrants to produce proof of citizenship to complete their voter registration. Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat, estimated more than 200,000 people could have been disenfranchised by the citizenship requirement.

The voter ID proposal, which was intended to take effect before the November election, was extremely controversial. According to voting rights activists monitoring the Missouri Legislature's final day, the criticism of the bill pressured Republican sponsors and legislative leaders to not bring up the proposal before the Missouri Legislature adjourned on Friday.

Missourians for Fair Elections reports over 4,200 calls were made to lawmakers in the past two weeks urging them to not back this legislation.

Arizona

In Arizona, which is the only state to require proof of citizenship from state residents seeking to register to vote, that requirement has lead to the rejection of 37,000 new applications since 2004, when the law took effect.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was settling a lawsuit with Arizona to bring the state into compliance with a federal law that requires certain state agencies offer public aid recipients the opportunity to register to vote.

This past January, Project Vote and Demos, two voter advocacy groups, sent a letter to Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer notifying her that Arizona was not in compliance with the public agency provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The letter said voter registration at the state's welfare had declined 70 percent over the past 12 years.

"This agreement ends the need for litigation and means Arizona will bring voter registration to the state's low-income communities," said Michael Slater, deputy director of Project Vote.

Washington, DC

Finally, the decision by Republican lawyer Hans von Spakovsky to withdrew his name for consideration for an appointment to the Federal Election Commission was also seen as a victory for voting rights activists. He had been one of the administration's most outspoken voices to newly regulate various aspects of voting, such as more stringent voter ID laws.

Von Spakovsky had served as a FEC commissioner after a recess appointment but could not gain Senate confirmation. Before his temporary FEC post, he was a lawyer at the Justice Department where he changed its voting rights enforcement priorities from defending minority voting rights to ensuring only people with current ID and other credentials could vote.

Clinton Camp: “There Are No Rules”
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on May 7, 2008 at 9:14 AM.

Anyone who thought Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) might reconsider her presidential bid after her big loss in North Carolina and narrow victory in Indiana on Tuesday are mistaken.

In fact, in a conference call with the national media on Wednesday morning, the campaign’s top strategist, Geoff Garin, and top spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said the fight would almost surely last past the final primaries and be taken up by the Democratic National Committee’s standing committees, starting with the Rules and Bylaws Committee on May 31.

“There really are no rules,” Garin said, when asked about the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida – two states stripped of delegates for holding early primaries – and about any scenario where the campaign is behind in the delegate count won in the primaries and caucuses, or the popular vote total. “You make a conscious decision of what is in the interest of the country.”

“The DNC will engage in an adjudicary process to seat the delegates,” Wolfson said, referring to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC), and then the Credentials Committee, which under the DNC rules hears appeals of RBC decisions.

Wolfson also said the number of delegates needed to win the nomination was not 2,025, as both the Clinton camp and campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) have said in previous conference calls with the media earlier in 2008.

“That is not the operative number,” Wolfson said. “The number is 2,209.”

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PA: High Turnout, Some Machine Problems
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on April 22, 2008 at 1:38 PM.

Good weather and intense interest appear to be producing a high turnout in Pennsylvania's presidential primary Tuesday. However, there were reports of long lines and delays of more than an hour before voting in African-American neighborhoods in Philadelphia as a result of voting machine failures, according to the 1-866-MY-VOTE-1 hotline.

The voter hotline taking calls from across Pennsylvania reported there were problems with electronic voting machines freezing at the start of voting, as well as people not finding their names on voter rolls at precincts, voter hotline officials said.

By midday, callers to the 1-866-MY-VOTE-1 hotline had made 850 calls, according to Harry Cook of InfoVoter Technologies, which screen the requests for help and forward callers to local election officials to help them. The calls came from 710 polling locations across the state, although most were from Philadelphia and then Pittsburgh, the two largest cities.

Of those calls, 150 people left complaints that were recorded and forwarded to local election officials. Shortly after 7 AM, when polls were slated to open, there were a handful of complaints of precincts that failed to do so. In the next few hours, there were complaints of electronic voting machine failures in several precincts leaving voters without any machines to vote on.

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Surprise: Election Reforms Politicized
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on April 15, 2008 at 3:38 PM.

Two developments on Tuesday underscore how election reforms are becoming increasingly politicized in a presidential election year.

In the first instance, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Tuesday criticized the Department of Veterans Affairs for not helping wounded ex-soldiers living in VA facilities to register to vote. The new VA Secretary, General James Peake has said that voter registration is a "partisan distraction" that would detract VA staff from their mission of caring for sick ex-soldiers.

Obama called on the VA to help wounded vets register to vote and urged a full accounting of our wounded, injured and medically evacuated troops when discussing the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While all of the Democratic presidential candidates have decried the treatment of vets from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only Obama has spoken on the VA's efforts to suppress the voting rights of wounded former soldiers.

"You cannot lead this country into war, and then fail to care for those who have served, and for their families," Obama said. "It starts with protecting the fundamental rights of our troops. They have fought across the world so that others have the right to vote, but here at home, the Bush Administration has refused to help wounded warriors register. There is nothing patriotic about denying wounded troops the ability to vote. It's time for the VA to do the right thing. It's time to reverse this shameful decision."

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, which has been urging the VA to help injured vets with voter registration, praised Obama's remarks.

"Registering voters and encouraging them to participate in our democracy is a non-partisan issue – every citizen aged 18 or older should be strongly encouraged to vote, especially our service members and veterans who have defended our Constitution," he said. "Again, we urge VA to reconsider their ill-advised policy of preventing voter registration drives at VA hospitals filled with our wounded, injured, ill, and disabled veterans."

In the second instance, the Bush Administration and House Republicans led to the likely defeat of an election reform bill, HR 5036, sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) that would have helped many counties and states buy voting machines with a paper trail before the fall presidential election. The bill, which also would pay for audits to check the accuracy of vote counts, was the first election integrity vote to come before the House in years.

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