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."

Comments

!FP?

[temojen]

Why is this not on the Front Page?

Re:!FP?

[temojen]

Sorry, I'm from Canada, where we have sane election laws.

You have to mark your affiliation on your registration??? WTF?!

Who thought that was a good idea???

Re:!FP?

[Daetrin]

What a strawman argument.

This isn't just a normal filler news report, it contains information that people may be able to take action on and should do so if possible. The deadline to register may have passed in Nevada, but the group has also been active in Oregon and who knows where else, and in some of those locations people still may have time to correct the problem.

Every year they run short on flu shots and every year there are news stories about where you can go to still get shots. Every year there are new outbreaks of west nile virus and every year there are news stories about what signs to watch for and who you should call if you see dead birds lying about. Every few months or years some area has accidental contamination of their water supply and the news runs stories on what areas are affected and for how long.

It doesn't matter how often or regularly such events happen, if there is a specific case going on at the moment the news has a responsibility to try and inform those people who might be affected so they can take appropriate action.

Re:!FP?

[jamie]

Because it is entirely unsubstantiated. All we know is two guys claimed it happened.

That is incorrect. As the article makes clear, the physical evidence that the "two guys" provided backs up their story.

You may not be convinced, but don't overstate your case. The article may not be proven yet, but it is clearly substantiated.

Re:!FP?

[kalidasa]

You have to mark your affiliation on your registration??? WTF?! Who thought that was a good idea???

Historically, it was necessary to determine which primaries you were eligible to vote in: Democrats voted in Democratic primaries, Republicans in Republican primaries. A lot of states (like my own) have since gone to a system where you can register as "unenrolled," then select any (in theory; in practice, either) primary ballot at the primary. Taking a primary ballot effectively registers you in that party. What you then must do is re-register as "unenrolled" to retain your ability to select either primary ballot; but conveniently, there are registration cards at the polling places (only during primaries, and only for those who are already registered and want to change their enrollment). Nevertheless, a lot of people do still put their affiliations on their registrations, and it is possible that many states still require you to list an affiliation on your registration in order to vote in a primary.

Re:!FP?

[Colazar]

This only became the case recently in CA, which had had a "blanket primary" (no political party declared, you can vote for anyone you want in the primaries, and the top vote-getter of each party advanced to the final election) until the Democratic and Republican parties took it to the Supreme Court and had it declared unConstitutional on the grounds that it violated their rights to freedom of assembly.

WA state had also had a blanket primary for a lot longer (70 years) and that just got invalidated in the last year.

Personally, I can agree with the reasoning of the court (only members of a group should be allowed to pick that groups representatives), but I think that it caused a bad policy decision. The advantage of a blanket primary is that it keeps you enfranchised on both the state and local level if you live in a Republican region of an overwhelmingly Democratic state (or vice versa). If the local Republicans always win, and the statewide Democrats always win, then having to pick a ballot by party automatically cuts you out of having a say in one set of those races.

Also, the studies that I saw that looked at "malicious cross-over voting" (Democrats voting for the kookiest Republican, so that the Republican would be sure to lose in the general election) concluded that when that happened, it was far out-weighed by voters crossing over to vote for what they thought was the opposite, the more centrist, least-objectionable candidate. (Which I think was the real problem that the national parties had with the blanket primaries--it tended to produce candidates who were less beholden to the party, and less partisan.)

BTW, I think anyone who crosses over to get the opposite party to nominate a crackpot, in order to help out their "real" party is playing with fire, anyway. Once someone makes it to the general election, anything can happen.

Here in WA, everyone was so disgusted with having to only take primary ballots from one party that there is an initiative to change the system to the Louisiana-style primary system, where everyone running for an office is on the same primary ballot, and the top two votegetters advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. From what I can tell, it stands a very good chance of passing. (Personally, I think it would work better than the "declaring your party" primary we have now, and not as well as the blanket primary. But we shall see.)

Re:!FP?

[CrimsonAvenger]

(Which I think was the real problem that the national parties had with the blanket primaries--it tended to produce candidates who were less beholden to the party, and less partisan.)

Interesting idea. Louisiana has an open primary - top two vote getters, no matter their party, go on to runoff. Unless one vote-getter in primary gets majority, in which case there is no need for a runoff. It guarantees that the winner of any election has a majority vote, at least.

The downside is that the top two candidates tend to be...interesting. And not necessarily in a good way. Which is why we had David Duke (KKK, Nazi) running against Edwin Edwards (unconvicted, then, but well known to be as crooked as a dog's hind leg - in jail now) for Governor four elections back. "Vote for the Crook, it's important" was a popular bumper sticker during that particular election.

And, yes, the Crook won.

Re:!FP?

[zCyl]

Which is why we had David Duke (KKK, Nazi) running against Edwin Edwards (unconvicted, then, but well known to be as crooked as a dog's hind leg - in jail now) for Governor four elections back. "Vote for the Crook, it's important" was a popular bumper sticker during that particular election.

Gah... That's precisely why you need Approval Voting for an election like that, so you choose the candidates who are most liked, and not the candidates whose votes are least split.

Standards?

[ConceptJunkie]

There has got to be a way to standardize the election process in this country to help prevent this kind of fraud, or all the nonsense coming from the various kinds of voting machines.

How hard can it be to come up with a simple, standard solution. Why does every jurisdiction have to do things in so many different ways. We have California, who has done everything they can but offer free beer to get illegal immigrants to vote. We have Florida that uses all those weird voting machines (which ironically don't see to be a problem in other states). We have millions being spent on electronic voting that's about as secure as Al Sharpton at a KKK meeting.

I have no doubt that these things are largely caused by crooked individuals and not some vast conspiracy on the part of the political parties involved (regardless of the shameless fear-mongering to the contrary).

I would think the richest and most powerful country in the world could do better.

Re:Standards?

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Of course there is. Just haul your lazy ass down to the county courthouse, ask for the elections department and register there.

So would you fill out a credit card application that someone on the street shoved in your face? I'm thinking that it's just silliness that people trusted someone to do the right thing here...

Re:Standards?

[hamburger lady]

I have no doubt that these things are largely caused by crooked individuals and not some vast conspiracy on the part of the political parties involved

seeing as how the guy who runs the company behind these shenanigans is funded by the RNC (and is the ex-head of a state republican committee), i'd look at the situation a little deeper.

Re:Standards?

[richie2000]

In Sweden, all citizens eligible to vote are automatically registered to vote. It's a non-issue. We're all registered. We get voter cards in the mail about a month before the election.

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.

Non-party affiliated registration

[chitownIrish]

... is the answer. The requirement that you declare a party affiliation seems only to be a way of locking in the two-party system.

Re:Non-party affiliated registration

[dman123]

Your post proves my point.

http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12552 0&cid=10515199

It's nothing personal. I just don't know why politicians or legislatures can ethically keep these restrictions.

Re:Non-party affiliated registration

[squiggleslash]

Perhaps it's time the parties started organizing their own elections, rather than requiring the states (and presumably taxpayers) to do so on their behalf.

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)

Different America Votes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Thankfully not here...

[dman123]

I live in a state where there we do not register for a party affiliation, have open primaries, and can register the same day at the voting site. It is still amazing to me that consituents of states that do not have these three rights (yes, I said rights, not privledges) do not rise up and demand for it to be this way. The only reason I can imagine is that voters in Nevada and others have not had the experience of how easy it is to vote with these artificial burdens removed.

treason

[girth]

I don't care which side is involved, this is one of the most unamerican things you can do. This should be treated as treason.

This is another area where there needs to be a paper trail. These companies should be bonded and some sort of receipt should be issued to the voter that would allow one to either vote or allow them to file a protest and cast a vote after the fact. Any company found in fraud (anything above a normal error level) would loose their bond plus face criminal charges.

Re:Republicans comdemn this

[escher]

I condemn all voter fraud and I think all of it should make the news, front page, big fucking headline. Daily.

Maybe that will pound reality just a tad more into the skulls of idiot populace of this nation.

Irony

[chitownIrish]

Dude, your website says:

"Paid for by BUSH-CHENEY '04, Inc"

Oh, the irony.

More than one America votes?

[georgewad]

There's a comment on this blog that suggests that there are more than one, I'm guessing the one you cite isn't the one in Nevada).
Portland Communique also mentions that they're seeing something similar in Portland.

apparently oregon too

[joey_knisch]

http://www2.kval.com/x30530.xml?ParentPageID=x2649 &ContentID=x47627&Layout=kval.xsl&AdGroupID=x30530 Same company. This time in oregon. I hope these people pay for their crimes.

Re:List of this groups backers. MAJOR GOP SUPPORTE

[rev_sanchez]

A GOP funded organization stole the name from the real America Votes to help perpetuate this fraud. Aside from disenfranchising dozens? hundreds? thousands? of Democrats I think one of the biggest tragedies is that the real, non-partisan America Votes will be hurt by this. I don't blame you for being confused, that was the point.

link 1

link 2

Text:
(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at Democrats. The focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.

The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.

It's going to take a while to sort all of this out, but the immediate concern for voters is to make sure you really are registered.

Call the Clark County Election Department at 455-VOTE orclick here to see if you are registered.

The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

Re:List of this groups backers. MAJOR GOP SUPPORTE

[jamie]

No, that's "America Votes." The Republican-headed effort to register Republicans and disenfranchise Democrats is called Project America Votes. The linked news story was confused, and you are confused, because the GOP-headed organization was misrepresenting itself as a nationally-known, reputable voter registration organization. Needless to say, the organization in question is not too happy about it, and is "in the process of pursuing all of [its] legal options."

Just when you thought the story couldn't get any scummier...

election day voter registration

[putch]

this wouldn't be an issue (or much less of one) if we'd scrap all of the hoops you need to jump through to vote. the time for election day voter registration is here. it's the fucking 21st century already. i can have pretty much any consumer item in the world (except duk nukem forever) shipped to me tommorrow, over the internet, but i have to mail in my form 25 days before the election? and 60! before a primary?

HAVA is going to require every state to maintain a centralized voter reg database. with such a system on-demand voting could mean:

1) no more voter reg deadlines. show up give them your name and you vote
2) vote from any poll site. can't make it back to your home before 9? just vote at the most convenient site. a voting kiosk will display the proper ballot for your election district
3) no over-voting. everyone gets one vote, no voting in two districts. in ny it is possible, though illegal, to register in many different counties, since they all keep their own records and dont share (at least not well enough).

See a pattern?

[rritterson]

(Disclaimer: I lean left)

-Democratic forms get tossed in the trash, but not Republican forms...
-It's Texas Republicans who are Gerrymandering in their redistricting efforts...
-Sinclair wishes to put an obviously anti Kerry Docuganda on TV...
-Flordia 2000 -- Black voters are disenfranchised by the thousands. Guess which way they lean?

Try as I might, I can only think of one example of such behavior from Democrats: Micheal Moore. However, Sinclair's decision eclipses Fahrenheit because Sony didn't tell all of it's theaters to pre-empt I,Robot to show Fahrenheit.

Now, I'm willing to concede I'm biased and that I just don't notice the deciept and trickery the left puts on. Can anyone reply to my post with a corresponding list of things Dems have done?

(No, rhetoric doesn't count- *every* candidate is full of hyperbolic BS)

Re:See a pattern?

[Sevn]

As a admitted capitalist, there is a MAJOR difference between F/911 and the other shamelessly political movies. F/911 made over 100 million dollars. It's a definite profit maker. There isn't anything that counters it that will generate even 10 percent of that massive haul. I think some people forget that. I know disney never will.

Re:See a pattern?

[Sevn]

No offense, but that guy's site screams chickenhawk. Have an actual news source? I'm trying to find a link to the craziness in Pennsylvania with ACORN that's been going on but I'm having so many problems finding a legitimate news source that I'm starting to think it was made up.

Re:See a pattern?

[keraneuology]

Let's see... the Democrats have repeatedly invaded GOP campaign offices, breaking the arm of a campaign worker (October 7), terrorized a worker in Canton, Ohio by burglarizing an occupied building forcing the worker to barricade herself in an office for safety (October 10), burned swastikas into the lawn of a Bush supporter in Wisconsin (September 30), and fired a weapon into Bush campaign offices in Huntington, West Virginia (while campaign staff were watching Bush's acceptance speech), Knoxville, Tennessee (October 4).

In Milwaukee, Kerry supporters forcibly occupied a GOP campaign HQ and disrupted all operations using a bullhorn.

In Cleveland the NAACP's National Voter Fund and "ACT Ohio" are under investigation for voter registration fraud prompting the local prosecutor to state "We've seen voter fraud before, but never on this level. I grew up in Chicago and this looks like the politics of Mayor Daley in the '50s and '60s."

Pro-democrat voter registration fraud in Racine, WI

Michigan

Florida

Denver and Minnesota are also locations of suspected fraud.

Want more?

Re:See a pattern?

[overunderunderdone]

Can anyone reply to my post with a corresponding list of things Dems have done?

Sure:
-Republican forms get tossed in the trash but not Republican forms...
- Democratic registration for completely fictional people...
- Fraudulent, forged Democratic registrations as well dumping a full years worth of paperwork on the registrars lap in the last minute to ensure they weren't looked at and INTENTIONALLY putting down false information for Republicans or simply not turning them in.

- Texas Democrats who Gerrymandered in their redistricting efforts... (The recent successful Republican effort was tit for tat revenge for the 1990 redistricting that The Almanac for American Politics called "The most partisan redistricting in the '90 cycle in the nation." and "the shrewdest gerrymander" of it's time. A gerrymander that resulted in a house delegation that was 17 to 15 Democratic despite 56% of the voters at the polls voting for a Republican congressman.

- CBS (as partisan as Sinclair or Fox) doing it's traditional 60 Minutes week-before-the-election hit piece early this year using obvious forgeries and giving the Kerry campaign advanced notice so they could exploit it with their operation "Fortunate Son"

-Florida 1998 -- Massive voter fraud uncovered that eventually leads to the election being overturned. The efforts during the next cycle (2000) all efforts to prevent fraud demagogued as "disenfranchising black voters" by the EXACT same people who had perpetuated the fraud.

Ummm...

[temojen]

Why should the state be involved in a party's internal nomination? Isn't that what party conventions are for?

Re:Ummm...

[Detritus]

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.

Re:Republicans comdemn this

[Daniel Dvorkin]

If you can find a case of such egregious registration fraud being committed by Democrats, let us know, okay?

Re:List of this groups backers. MAJOR GOP SUPPORTE

[spacecowboy420]

You are 100% correct. These are all liberal supporters of http://www.americavotes.org/

The devil is in the details. This is an ENTIRELY different organization, "Voters Outreach of America" has been misrepresenting itself as "America Votes" to accomplish it's goals. The article doesn't point out this fact, but others do, here's ONE:
Portland Communique

you have to register for a party?

[dl248]

As 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.

Some other cases of voter registration fraud

[RotJ]

Via name_withheld from SensibleErection:
Colorado
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Florida
Tennessee
Michigan
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Re:Republicans comdemn this

[tburke]

Hmmm, your Dem examples are:

• One guy was 15 minutes late filing voter reg forms in FL
• a legal fight over requiring ID for provisional ballots
• 25 forms where the address MIGHT be invalid, in a county with 500k registered voters
• A county commissioner claiming fraud because he is unable to cope with the flood of new registrants
• A legitimate complaint about duplicate registrations in Denver

One out of five isn't so bad, I guess. But I am not sure how some duplicate registrations in Denver are even in the same league as an RNC funded company with a misleading name shredding hundreds or thousands of Democratic voter registration forms in Nevada and possibly Oregon, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

How ironic.

[jbn-o]

In 2000, thousands of would-be Democratic Party voters in Florida were kept from voting by what was called "scrubbing" the voter rolls (Greg Palast's book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" discusses this in detail). In subsequent years, the Democrats did virtually nothing to help these voters regain their voting rights; the plight of these citizens was not made an issue when Democrat Janet Reno ran in Florida in 2002. Democratic Party senators did not sign a Congressional Black Caucus letter brought to the floor, thus preventing any discussion of the Florida disenfranchisement (this was featured in the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11"). It would have only taken one senator to sign that letter, but not even Democratic Party Sen. Lieberman (who was running for office at the time) would sign the CBC's letter.

I hope that when people read this story they feel sorry for disenfranchised citizens, not a political party that doesn't work to help all Americans retain their right to vote. This is not a reason to vote Republican nor is it a reason to vote Democrat. It's a reason to question the motivations of both major American political parties.

Re:Voting more important, can't use retail sales .

[putch]

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.

Re:A curious lack of recall...

[tamrood]

Are you kidding? He had a temp job in a temporary operation at a temporary location, that was run by criminals pretending to be someone else. In my late teens I had plenty of jobs where I was never told the name of the guy next to me, or the lady who set my task list. The day this story broke, the office space rented by these sleazeballs was occupied by someone else, and they had skipped out on the rent. That he can't name his boss makes him no less credible.

Oh the hypocrisy...

[mrbrown1602]

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.

I've registered voters as a GOP volunteer...

[JimMarch(equalccw)]

...in California and what I was always told was that if they're registering as something other than Republican, we don't take the form - but we DO give it to 'em either blank or filled out there by them, and show them how to fold it and mail it.

That way we can't be accused of anything like this.

Now granted, something less than 100% will drop the thing in a mailbox, even though it's postage paid by the California Secretary of State. But that ain't our fault.

(I'm a Libertarian-leaning Republican, member of the Republican Liberty Caucus.)

Re:Naive paranoia?

[Doc Ruby]

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.