Posts by Steven Rosenfeld

UPDATED: GOP Sheriff in SW Ohio Shadows New Voters
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on October 10, 2008 at 10:33 AM.

Update:

Voting rights advocates won an important battle in southern Ohio on Friday after a team of lawyers informed a local sheriff and county prosecutor that their attempt to interview new student voters about their voter registration credentials was "unlawful intimidation" under the Voting Rights Act and National Voter Registration Act.

"Recently, the Greene County Sheriff, Gene Fischer, made a public records request of the Greene County Board of Elections for new voter registration forms filed between September 30, 2008 and October 6, 2008," Greene County Prosecutor Stephen K. Haller said in a statement issued Friday. "This morning I learned that Sheriff Fischer has withdrawn his request for public records of new voter registrations."

Fischer, a Republican, told reporters in Ohio that he was launching an investigation into concerns about college students who took advantage of a week-long window in Ohio this fall where they could register to vote and then submit an in-person absentee ballot.

"If the information and quotations attributed to you and your representatives in this article are correct, you have launched this investigation without any evidence or credible allegation that any such voter has voted illegally," said the election protection coalition letter. "Your investigation instead appears to be based merely on unsubstantiated 'concerns' expressed in telephone calls by members of the public who appear to object to registration and voting by students in the community, unaccompanied by any specific allegation of actual fraud or other illegal conduct committed by any specific voter."

The letters, signed by the ACLU Voting Rights Project, ACLU of Ohio, Demos, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Project Vote and several Ohio law school professors, said the Greene County officials' investigation violated the "unlawful intimidation" clause of the Voting Rights Act and a similar provision in the National Voter Registration Act that prohibits anyone from interfering with legal voting.

For decades, law enforcement officers with partisan affiliations have used the power of their office to intimidate voters who they believe are likely to vote for candidates from an opposing party. This voter suppression tactic, whose roots date back to the pre-segregation era South, apparently has surfaced in southwestern Ohio. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, writing for FreePress.org, offer this report.

The usual drumbeat claiming massive voter fraud has become ceaseless at Fox "News" and other right wing media mouthpieces.

As expected, the assault centers in Ohio, which once again could decide the presidency, but has manifested throughout the nation:

1) A Republican sheriff in Greene County, Ohio, has demanded social security and other records from 302 local voters whose ballots he apparently wants to negate. Sheriff Gene Fischer has requested registration cards and address forms for all Greene County residents who voted in a special session established in Ohio allowing new voters to register and vote on the same day. The process was challenged in court by the GOP. The Ohio Supreme Court turned down that challenge, and allowed the same-day voting to proceed. But now Fischer claims telephone calls complaining about the potential for voter fraud have prompted him to go after the information.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

GOP Backs Off Montana Voter Challenges
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on October 8, 2008 at 3:03 PM.

The Montana Republican Party, which just last week notified local election officials in a handful largely Democratic counties that it intended to challenge the registrations of nearly 6,000 voters, has withdrawn that action.

According to press reports from the big sky state, the Montana Republican Party announced on Tuesday it would no longer pursue the challenges, which potentially would have forced targeted individuals to produce additional documentation of their legal address when voting.

The Montana GOP had selected individuals who were likely Democratic voters in university towns and on Native American reservations, local political analysts said. Reaction from election officials and editorial writers was uniformly negative, saying the threatened challenges were a ruse to discourage likely Democrats from voting.

Versions of this tactic are playing out across the country as GOP officials, either party leaders or office holders, are seeking to verify the validity of new voter registrations by saying they must match information for these same individuals in other government databases, such drivers' licenses or Social Security numbers. These demands come against a backdrop of reports saying Democrats have been more successful than Republicans in registering new voters in 2008.

Most notably, in Wisconsin, the Attorney General, a Republican, is pushing his state's election officials to screen registrations with the Social Security database. This past Monday, the Social Security Administration issued a press release asking six states -- Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Nevada and Ohio -- to "review their procedures" to ensure voters were not mistakenly removed from voter rolls before the November election.

The problem with this name matching standard is two-fold: some government databases, notably Social Security records, are known to have errors -- which could result in legal voter registrations being rejected through no fault of the voter. Second, data-entry errors, such as typos involving people's names, can also lead to rejected voter registrations. Here, too, voters often have little recourse to correct mistakes by public agencies or government contractors who prepare and manage these databases.

Obama Backs a Bailout, But Calls for More FDIC Insurance
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on September 30, 2008 at 5:56 AM.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama issued a statement early Tuesday saying why a Wall Street bailout was needed, but suggested that any new legislation include an increase in the federal insurance for bank deposits from $100,000 to $250,000.

Here is Obama's statement in full:

"Yesterday, within the course of a few hours, the failure to pass the economic rescue plan in Washington led to the single largest decline of the stock market in two decades.

"While I, like others, am outraged that the reign of irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has created the current crisis, I also know that continued inaction in the face of the gathering storm in our financial markets would be catastrophic for our economy and our families.

"At this moment, when the jobs, retirement savings, and economic security of all Americans hang in the balance, it is imperative that all of us – Democrats and Republicans alike – come together to meet this crisis.

"The bill rejected yesterday was a marked improvement over the original blank check proposed by the Bush Administration. It included restraints on CEO pay, protections for homeowners, strict oversight as to how the money is spent, and an assurance that taxpayers will recover their money once the economy recovers. Given the progress we have made, I believe we are unlikely to succeed if we start from scratch or reopen negotiations about the core elements of the agreement. But in order to pass this plan, we must do more.

"One step we could take to potentially broaden support for the legislation and shore up our economy would be to expand federal deposit insurance for families and small businesses across America who have invested their money in our banks.

"The majority of American families should rest assured that the deposits they have in our banks are safe. Thanks to measures put in place during the Great Depression, deposits of up to $100,000 are guaranteed by the federal government.

"While that guarantee is more than adequate for most families, it is insufficient for many small businesses that maintain bank accounts to meet their payroll, buy their supplies, and invest in expanding and creating jobs. The current insurance limit of $100,000 was set 28 years ago and has not been adjusted for inflation.

"That is why today, I am proposing that we also raise the FDIC limit to $250,000 as part of the economic rescue package – a step that would boost small businesses, make our banking system more secure, and help restore public confidence in our financial system.

"I will be talking to leaders and members of Congress later today to offer this idea and urge them to act without delay to pass a rescue plan,” said Barack Obama.

Ohio Supreme Courts Rejects GOP Early Voting Challenge
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on September 29, 2008 at 10:46 AM.

The Ohio Supreme Court just issued a ruling that should help early voting efforts in this Midwestern battleground state -- including those by the Obama campaign.

Last week, the Ohio Republican Party sued Ohio's Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, because she directed boards of election allow people who register to vote between Oct 1st and Oct 5th to then follow up and vote. The Republicans argued that new voters should wait 30 days before receiving a ballot.

The suit was very important to Democrats, because they see this five-day early voting window as a way to register new voters and then have them vote for Obama. There are numerous planned efforts to bring thousands of voters to early voting centers starting Tuesday.

The Ohio Supreme Court, which denied the Ohio GOP's request for a writ of mandamus, said:

"We hold that respondent, secretary of state, correctly instructed boards of elections that an otherwise qualified citizen must be registered to vote for 30 days as of the date of the election at which the citizen offers to vote in order to be a qualified elector entitled to apply for and vote an absentee ballot at the election, and the citizen need not be registered for 30 days before applying for, receiving, or completing an absentee ballot for the election. Therefore, because relators cannot establish either a clear legal right to the requested extraordinary relief or a clear legal duty on the part of the secretary of state to provide it, we deny the writ."

New GOP Video Blames Dems for Wall St. Collapse
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on September 28, 2008 at 8:00 AM.

A popular YouTube video blames congressional Democrats and Barrack Obama for the Wall Street meltdown, saying they backed the Community Reinvestment Act that the video alleges forced banks to make sub-prime loans. Moreover, the video says John McCain sought to regulate the mortgage monster years ago.

As of Sunday morning, the video had 560,000 hits.

The CRA sought to ensure banks loan money to sectors of society shunned by traditional lenders. However, the banks affected by this legislation -- community banks and neighborhood lenders -- were not the corporate investments banks that led Wall Street's frenzy of irresponsible lending and packaging those loans into new securities sold to investors.

The video also handily omits is that everyone who had a stake in the housing bubble -- banks, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, appraisers -- all went crazy pushing these loans and home sales to make fortunes, and Wall Street treated these loans as hot potatoes - handing them off as soon as possible to other lenders, or hiding them in securities that were packaged to mask problem loans.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Dems say Alabama SOS Won't Share New Voter Rolls
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on September 25, 2008 at 3:00 PM.

Alabama Secretary of State, Beth Chapman, a Republican, is refusing to give the Alabama Democratic Party a copy of the state's updated voter lists unless the Democrats pay $28,000, the Associated Press reported.

Chapman said her office is only required to provide the lists free of charge once a year and already did so during the 2008 primary election.

In response, state Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham said Democrats will file a lawsuit by Friday to get the lists. Chapman told the AP that "partisanship" was not a factor in her decision; however Turnham suggested that her actions could be intended to "stifle voter turnout."

Updated voter rolls are the basis of numerous campaign and election activities, from contacting voter rolls to redrawing precinct boundaries. Not providing the lists to a major party is tantamount to tilting the electoral playing field to the other party's advantage.

Perhaps more ominously, Turner also said this week that some county election officials have not been able to process a surge in new voter registration applications.

"This is serious. This is a political emergency," Turnham told the Birmingham News. "It's September and many have not received voter registration cards telling them their polling place."

Turnham called on Chapman to provide additional workers in counties that are experiencing problems such as Jefferson, Montgomery, Lee, Wilcox and Autauga.

"She is the chief election officer in Alabama and is responsible for all these offices and is supposed to be a champion of finding voter fraud, but the great voter fraud here, ladies and gentleman, is the fact that a state political party and tens of thousands of voters that are now registering to vote or attempting to vote are potentially having their right ... stifled by the chief elections officer," Turnham told the paper.

Chapman said she had not heard about this problem.

"We are about solving problems, not talking about them," Chapman said. "If the Democrat Party knows of these problems, they need to notify us. They have not and they are the ones doing voters a disservice."

With political rhetoric, don't expect these issues to be resolved soon. As both sides know, limiting who can and cannot vote has everything to do with who wins on Election Day.

Ohio to Allow Minor Parties to Observe Vote Count in November
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on September 17, 2008 at 2:28 PM.

Minor political parties will have the same rights as Democrats and Republicans to be polling place observers and to monitor the vote count at Ohio's 88 county Boards of Election on November 4th, under a new policy announced Wednesday by Ohio's Secretary of State, Democrat Jennifer Brunner.

"Yes, that is true," said Kevin Kidder, media relations coordinator for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. "Minor parties have been granted the same rights as major parties."

The new policy, which was part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by the Green Party over access to the 2008 ballot for its presidential candidate, former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney, will enable the Ohio Green Party to station election protection observers at precincts and at county tabulation centers, said the party's Ohio attorney, Robert Fitrakis of Columbus.

"Minor parties will now have the right of major parties to allow us to be observers in every polling place, inside boards of elections, inside counting rooms," Fitrakis said. "I have been negotiating this to settle a suit to put McKinney on the ballot … I argued we should have all the rights of the (major parties in the) existing (Ohio) statute until the Legislature writes a new statute."

Fitrakis said election protection activists who helped to document 2004's election problems are still politically active and were willing to help the Green Party to observe voting and vote tabulation on Nov. 4 -- particularly in counties where the official 2004 results contained problematic vote totals, such as more than 10,000 people voting to re-elect the president and voting in favor of gay marriage in the state's Bible Belt. Those and other official but politically implausible vote counts have been cited by election integrity activists who question the president's 2004 margin of victory in the state.

In 2004, the Green and Libertarian Parties paid for a recount of Ohio's presidential election, claiming there was voter suppression in the state's cities and fraudulent vote counts in rural areas, most notably in three southeastern counties near Cincinnati. In one of those counties, Warren County, local officials declared a "homeland security" emergency and banned the public and media from observing vote counts. A sizeable portion of George W. Bush's victory margin came from these counties.

Fed Bails out Wall St. Insurer with $85 Billion "Loan"
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on September 16, 2008 at 11:00 PM.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced Tuesday night that it would "loan" up to $85 billion to American International Group, an insurer of arcane investments on Wall Street. It made the announcement after unsuccessfully trying to find a private buyer for the past several days, various financial news services reported.

The Federal Reserve action, which would give the government -- taxpayers -- a nearly 80 percent stake in AIG, would be repaid as the firm is broken up and sold in the next 24 months, the Federal Reserve said in a short press release.

"The interests of taxpayers are protected by key terms of the loan," the agency said. "The loan is collateralized by all the assets of AIG, and of its primary non-regulated subsidiaries. These assets include the stock of substantially all of the regulated subsidiaries. The loan is expected to be repaid from the proceeds of the sale of the firm's assets. The U.S. government will receive a 79.9 percent equity interest in AIG and has the right to veto the payment of dividends to common and preferred shareholders."

The reaction in Congress, where leaders were briefed on the bailout early Tuesday, was of begrudging acceptance, according to news services. Key Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called the $85 billion figure a "staggering sum," while Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), the House Financial Services Committee Chairman, said the bailout showed the private sector needed to be regulated.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

VA Voter Suppression Continues
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on September 15, 2008 at 12:41 PM.

Just because victory is declared in Washington does not make it so.

One week ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced a new policy to allow voter registration drives on VA campuses, responding to pressure by lawmakers and the media that the VA was suppressing the vote of wounded former soldiers. That new policy was greeted with 'mission accomplished' press statements by members of Congress who have been pushing the VA to change its policy for several years.

But on Monday, as the Senate Rules and Administration Committee held a hearing in Washington on a bill to ensure veterans living at VA facilities could be helped with voter registration, a legal motion was being filed in federal court in California alleging the VA was still blocking efforts to register voters in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Following last week's announcement of VA's new voter registration policy, a VA facility in San Francisco blocked a non-profit group, Veterans for Peace, from registering voters, the legal motion said. The filing said the VA was seeking to require Veterans for Peace members to go through the process of screening VA volunteers, a process that would delay registration efforts. In contrast, the VA does not require screening for most other visitors.

"The VA has disenfranchised veterans and interfered with the freedom of political parties and nonpartisan groups to associate with their members and with other citizens who reside on VA campuses," the motion said. "This Court should prohibit further interference with voter registration at any VA campus for the imminent federal election."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

House Hearing on 2004's Lessons Sheds No New Light on Flawed Election
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on July 24, 2008 at 4:45 PM.

A House hearing today on the lessons of the 2004 presidential election broke no new ground before adjourning for a vote.

Republican ex-election officials from Ohio and their counterparts of the he House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties said the 2004 election, most notably in Ohio, was well-run, and said the real problem was fraudulent voter registrations. One GOP-friendly witness called for the Department of Justice to investigate ACORN, the low-income advocacy group, raising a rash of long-ago debunked accusations of partisan electioneering.

On the Democratic side, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers asked Ohio's former Republican Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, what was his reaction to the extensive outcry of unfair election practices that were documented in books, movies and sworn testimony from members of the public, including Republicans. Blackwell answered that he ran a "good but not perfect election" and dismissed the efforts of grassroots election integrity activists who documented his partisan management of the election.

"There are a lot of people with the imagination akin to (the author) Jonathan Swift," he said. "Just because someone makes a film or makes a charges doesn't make there are facts to it."

The testimony was due to resume later in the day when former Justice Department attorney Hans von Spakovsky was due to appear. In his role at the DOJ, he shifted the department's traditional focus of defending voting rights to a policy of policing voter roles to guard against mostly non-existent voter fraud. The result was a DOJ Voting Section that selectively enforced the nation's voting laws for most of the Bush admionistration.

Voting Rights Groups Step Up Criticism on VA Voting Policy
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on July 22, 2008 at 6:30 AM.

Four influential voting rights groups Monday called for the Department of Veterans Affairs to change its voter registration policy so injured former soldiers living at VA facilities would pro-actively be helped with registering to vote and voting, instead of the current VA policy where the burden falls on vets to seek assistance.

“As a former secretary of state, I know how important it is for our veterans to be able to participate in our democracy,” said Miles Rapoport, president of Demos, one of the groups and a former Secretary of State of Connecticut. “I urge (Secretary of Veterans Affairs) James Peake to stop blocking voter registration by our vets.”

“It seems incomprehensible for me that VA does not want to assist veterans to register. It is despicable,” said Jim Dickson, vice-president of American Association of Persons with Disabilities (AAPD). “I am trying hard to not express how angry I am.”

Many injured former soldiers, like members of the public at large, do not know that they have to update their voter registration credentials whenever they move -- such as relocating to a VA campus or hospital. The four groups -- AAPD, Common Cause, Demos and the League of Women Voters -- want the VA to be like motor vehicle departments, where the public is routinely asked and helped with voter registration.

Under previous administrations, many VA facilities routinely helped patients to register and to vote, according to congressional staffers familiar with the issue's history.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

House GOPers Defeat Back-up Paper Ballot Bill
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld on July 16, 2008 at 1:26 PM.

A bill that would have reimbursed local governments for printing back-up paper ballots for the 2008 presidential election died in the House Tuesday, when Republicans blocked suspending the rules to bring up the legislation.

The bill, which would have provided $75 million to pay for the ballots, was sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D‑CA). It required a two-thirds vote to pass. The vote of 248-170 fell short of that.

The measure was an attempt to reimburse localities that pre-printed paper ballots in case electronic voting machines failed on Election Day. The White House opposed the bill.

The bill was similar to a proposal, which also died earlier this year, by Rep. Rush Holt, (D-NJ) that also would have paid for back-up paper ballots.

Holt praised the House Administration Committee for bringing up the bill, which did not appear to have the full support of the House's Democratic leadership.

"Increasing the availability of paper ballots... is only one of the steps that we must take in order to address the documented problems faced by voters and by election officials," Holt said. "During each election in recent years cynicism has grown among voters."

More than one-quarter of the country will be using paperless electronic voting machines in 40,000 precincts across 14 states in November.

New Mexico Voter List Mystery Deepens
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on February 8, 2008 at 5:31 PM.

The mystery of what went wrong in New Mexico’s Super Tuesday Democratic Caucus deepened on Friday. Party officials on background said they absolutely were given a bad voter list from the Secretary of State – whose spokesman, in turn, defended the database prepared by ES&S, one of the nation’s large private election vendors.

Meanwhile, election experts watching the New Mexico debacle, where the Democratic Party underestimated voter turnout, consolidated precincts – causing confusion and long lines - and is now verifying and counting 17,000 provisional ballots, are not sure if those conditions alone, or a bad voter list, or both, was to blame for the nation’s highest rate of issuing provisional ballots in years.

Either way, the ongoing story is a cautionary tale for what not to do in November’s presidential election.

First, the voter list controversy: A New Mexico Democratic Party official involved in running the caucus reached out on Friday morning hoping to dispel “misinformation” about Tuesday’s vote. The official, who absolutely was in a position to know what happened, said the party used a voter database provided by the Secretary of State. Democrats assumed that list was fine until about an hour before the voting started Tuesday, when some county officials called and said their names were missing.

Apparently, those missing names, the official said, lead to many voters receiving provisional ballots, which is the fail-safe means of having people vote by later verifying their registration information before counting their ballot. The party is now calling county clerks across New Mexico and asking them to pull voter registration cards – one at a time – to verify the provisional ballots. The party made mistakes in running the caucus, the official said, but that paled in comparison to using a voter list with missing names.

“I have a CD of your list – and it’s a bad list, buddy,” was their comment.

Next, the repeated denial from the Secretary of State’s office: James Flores, the spokesman for New Mexico Secretary of State Mary Herrera, a Democrat, was quick to dismiss any criticism of his office’s voter registration data. When told of the comment by the state party official, he said, “That’s somebody’s opinion. Anyone can say that and start a firestorm.” Stepping back, Flores agreed that one New Mexico county’s voters indeed was missing from the statewide list prepared by ES&S (Election Systems and Software). But that significant omission was discovered and fixed, he said.

“If that was a bad list the county clerks would be inundating us with phone calls,” Flores said, “but we haven’t gotten any calls.”

When told of that reply, the party official said, “Of course, they’re going to say that!”

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

New Mexico's Missing Ballot Boxes
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on February 7, 2008 at 5:22 AM.

Heath Haussamen, a New Mexico political columnist and blogger, has reported a developing story that suggests overzealous Democratic Party officials -- who may be Clinton supporters -- took home four ballot boxes after Super Tuesday's caucuses that were not counted in the Election Night results.

This is significant because with 98 percent of precincts reporting, there is only a 200-vote spread between Clinton, who leads, and Obama. There also are some 17,000 provisional ballots that have to be verified and counted before the results are official.

Haussamen writes, "The New Mexico Democratic Party caucus may be tainted by three ballot boxes that spent the night in the home of the Rio Arriba County party chair or the homes of other local election officials instead of being reported to the state party.

"Those ballots still haven’t been counted, but they have been retrieved by the state party.

"Several sources told me the ballot boxes spent the night at the home of Rio Arriba County Democratic Party Chair Theresa Martinez, whose state-lawmaker husband, Sen. Richard Martinez, endorsed Hillary Clinton. But Richard Martinez told Santa Fe New Mexican reporter Kate Nash that the boxes actually spent the night in the homes of three polling-place managers. He gave Nash no explanation for why the results from those ballots weren’t reported to the state party last night and why they were instead kept overnight in officials’ homes.

“The site managers locked them and they kept them and they took them to my wife this morning,” Nash quoted Richard Martinez as saying.

"State party officials and Theresa Martinez have not returned my calls seeking comment."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Super Tuesday Voting Already Raising Serious Concerns
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on February 5, 2008 at 2:25 PM.

Super Tuesday's voting is just underway and questions already are being raised about last-minute negative campaign tactics in Massachusetts, long lines and voting machine shortages in Georgia and the Democratic ballot layout in vote-rich Los Angeles.

A Bay State blog is reporting that Hillary Clinton's campaign has resurrected a controversial mailing used in the New Hampshire Primary that accused Barack Obama of not sufficiently supporting abortion rights while in the Illinois Senate. Pro-choice activists in Illinois and New Hampshire were fast to respond to this same accusation during the nation's first primary, saying Obama's record of voting "present" but not "yes" on some bills was a strategic move, and called him on of their best pro-choice advocates.

In Georgia, the state's largest newspaper, the Altlanta Journal-Constitution has a page on their website where voters can comment on their voting experience. By 1 PM EST, scores of comments were logged. While some people were pleased with voting on electronic machines, others reported long lines and shortages of voting machines.

One comment said, "The lengthy delay was caused by having only two machines from which actual ballots could be dispensed to voters. This meant that only two poll workers were dispensing all the ballots. By the time I left Westlake (High School) there were between one hundred and two hundred largely frustrated voters waiting in line. Most of these voters, for reasons unclear to me, had not been allowed to enter the gymnasium. Patience in abundance seems the order of the day. Inevitably, the lengthy delays will cause some voters to leave and suppress the actual vote total. With a large turnout of voters predicted, this lack of preparedness to accommodate them seems unconscionable.

Meanwhile, Loyala University Law Professor Rick Hasen, who runs an influential blog, electionlawblog.org, has reported that the ballot being used in Los Angeles, California's largest county, required voters who have declined to state their party preference to fill in "an extra bubble... in order for their presidential votes to count."

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