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Disenfranchised In Nevada
An anonymous reader writes "If you are a Democrat and you decided to register to vote in Nevada through non-official channels, you may have gotten disenfranchised by a private voter registration company. In this news article, it appears that employees of 'Voters Outreach of America' have been busy tearing up registration forms, specifically those from Democrats. The article indicates that hundreds to thousands of voter registrations may have been trashed.
Unfortunately, the deadline to register to vote in Nevada has already passed."
Why is this not on the Front Page?
The http://www.americavotes.org group is NOT the same organization as is referred to in the story. i've done some digging with whois and google and this much is very clear. The organization in the story is probably just using their name.
This is an outrage, regardless of the party responsible, but the fact is that Republicans have been far more active in voter suppression.
I'm reminded of a recent New York Times article that examined the lies of both campaigns. Both Kerry and Bush are guilty of lying, but Bush's lies were more frequent, and therefore took more space in the article, leaving Republicans pissed and accusing the article of having a left leaning.
If you can find a case of such egregious registration fraud being committed by Democrats, let us know, okay?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If you would look at the link, billhobbs.com isn't creating the news stories, only archiving them. The sources that you claim aren't reliable include:
The Denver Post
The Palm Beach Post
The Jacksonville Sun
The Mercury
Denver's 9 News
Still think that voter registration fraud is only limited to a couple of republicans tearing up voter registration cards?
-BrentAs a Canadian, I am getting the impression that in Nevada when you register to vote, you have to declare a party affiliation. Is this true? If so, this is quite alien to me.
Furthermore the last time I voted (I did not pre-register), all I did was show up to the voting location in my area, provide several pieces of ID confirming my identity and my current address (driver's licence, pay stub, etc) and I get a ballot. I vote. End of story.
Nowhere, I mean NOWHERE, do I EVER have to declare any party affiliation that I may have. If my vote is supposedly anonymous and confidential, it strikes me as just plain crazy to have to give a party affiliation when you register to vote. Simply ludicrous if this is the case.
As a side effect, this would mean they could do so by their own rules rather than having the states impose their own (Democrats allowed to vote in Republican primaries and vice-versa, etc)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
well
1)HAVA requires all first time registrants to show id. (i dont really agree with this, but it's the law) this should be in effect for all 50 states by nov 2. or at least the states that dont want to pass up on the millions of dollars that HAVA compliance promises.
2) some states already have election day registration. so they must have some system.
3) voting (or attempting) with someone elses name is a felony. so it's not the aclu you have to worry about. do it too often and you'll wind up on that list yourself.
statewide voter registration databases are coming. they too are required HAVA. it's not that hard to have a blacklist of names. if you go to vote and turnout to be blacklisted then you'd vote by affidavit ballot and the burden would be on you to go before a judge and prove you are allowed to vote. ianal, but i work for lawyers who do exactly that.
i dont think people are going to use election fraud as a method of invading someones privacy when the internet is so handy.
but you are right, things are tremendously screwed up.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
If you wish to wait until election day like most people do (instead of casting an absentee ballot at the local post office), you go to the designated polling place with your voter card and a photo ID, take a ballot with your candidate's/party's name on it (we normally have around ten different parties of which 5-6 or so make it into the parliament), put it in an envelope behind a screen, seal it and give it to the voting official who puts it in a strongbox while two of his colleagues (these are all local guys from different parties) watch. They then strike your name off the voter list and you're done. It's all very serious and very proper. Counting is done in parallell - again with three officials present at all times. We normally get the first solid results within hours after the last polling place closes with some of the absentee and overseas ballots being counted up to a week later.
If you want to vote in a different polling place, that's fine. If you want to vote from overseas - no problem. One person, one vote. No problems, no cheating, no confusion and we consistently get turnouts in the 80-90% range for our parliament elections.
To a Swede, it's inconcievable that the USA, one of the proudest democracies in the world, is unable to hold a general election that stands up to any kind of standard regarding voter integrity... Register for voting? 4711 different voting methods? Insane. You might as well use a pair of crooked dice to select the President.
There has to be a federal database of every citizen in the US, right? Use it for some good for once. Automatically remove all under-aged and other criteria you may want (taking away the opportunity for Jeb Bush to get rid of a bunch of left-wing hippie voters) and send voter cards to the rest. If you wish you can include ballots for all parties that got more than 1% in the last election in that letter and let the rest of the ballots be available at the polling place. Do not register party affiliation anywhere. Do not pass Go. Do not let anyone except a federally appointed multi-partisan voting commission interfere with this process, at any level at all.
It's just basic checks and balances, it's not like it's rocket science.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I don't think that the parties are obligated to participate in the primary process. They could go back to the old system of local caucuses and state/national conventions. The advantage of the primary is that the election is organized and paid for by the state. I believe primaries were viewed as a political reform, making the nomination process more democratic.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I find it funny that people are complaing about a private company tearing up the registrations of Democrats, but when Democrats in swing states register to vote 39 times and openly brags about it in the media, nobody says anything about it.
In other Nevada Republican democracide news (section "2.0"), the former director of the Nevada Republican Party tried to throw out 17,000 Democratic voter registrations in Clark County. He admitted that he is "looking to take Democrats off the voter rolls". The "1.0" section boils down the suit that will test the evidence and eyewitness testimony to Sproul's cruder dirty work - so similar to reports of his work in Oregon. Both operations are directly financed by the Republican Party.
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make install -not war