Outdated, Arcane Laws Disenfranchising Voters in Seattle

The Obama campaign headquarters in Seattle is located on a steep narrow one-way street in a redeveloping neighborhood a few blocks from the REI store. When I come to volunteer, I pass through the entry way crowded with voters buying Obama signs and step into the main volunteer center. It is a large room filled with desks, volunteers, and legislative district coordinators. These are some of the people responsible for the hundred of thousands of votes newly registered in Washington state. Their tables are filled with phones, computers, scanners, chunks of old food, an occasional coffee cup and stacks of paper. I pass the volunteers making buttons and shredding sensitive documents, and head down the narrow hallway, past the tiny kitchen (no sink) filled with donated food, and make my way past the warren of offices belonging exclusively to the paid campaign staff: communications, finance and voter protection. I turn in at this last door.

The Director of Voter Protection is Kramer Phillips. He has the face of a Renaissance angel with tousled dark blond hair and a string-bean physique that is clothed in preppy attire: white shirt and tie and loafers. He sits hunched over his laptop. To his left is a TV, tuned to MSNBC. On the desk, a bottle of Alaskan Amber (unopened) keeps company with How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond. Kramer has worked on several elections over the past six years, written a thesis
about Universal Voter Registration and drafted two model state initiatives for the same reform. He's twenty two.

Along with several other older volunteers, my first job, was to call the twenty-two hundred voters whose absentee ballots were discarded from the August 2008 primary election due to signature concerns. Kramer discovered that the Secretary of State didn't have the list. Each county kept their own information stored in their own particular way. Some counties had computerized lists, while others had to compile the list just for our request. Such information is available under the freedom of information act to anyone interested enough to ask. Pierce County had just tossed the "bad" ballots into a box and someone had to photo copy each one and then send the stack of photocopies to Kramer.

When the separate county lists were amalgamated into numerous pages, seven of us including Kramer met in the Democratic State headquarters over the course of four evenings to call the voters. Our lead volunteer, and head of the Grasssroots Washington Democrats, Deb Saxon, had worked closely with Kramer to pick suitable volunteers to make these sensitive calls and rewarded us in advance with elegant and extensive hors d'oeuvres to keep us going between 6 and 8:30pm, the hours deemed best to reach voters at home. We had a script to read, but often we never got that far. People hung up based on the caller i.d. that read Democratic Party. Perhaps they thought we were asking for money, or maybe they were just Republicans.

Calling a voter who has taken the time to cast a ballot announcing that vote was thrown out is a delicate operation. In the calls I made I met with gratitude, disbelief, drunkenness (with a promise to vote for Obama," don't you worry!"), language barriers and two startling admissions. One woman realized that putting her absentee ballot in the envelope with her husband's voter number on it effectively eliminated both their votes. Several parents of absent college students admitted they had (illegally) signed the ballot for their child. Signatures are a personal thing. One elderly woman pointed out that her signature had changed since she registered thirty years before; a twenty-something admitted she liked to sign her name differently every time. In this state you can call the elections office and arrange to have your official voter's signature be matched with your your driver's license. When you go to vote, you just check your license and sign exactly the same way.

Kramer said the signature issue was a form of voter harassment or "systematic disenfranchisement". In thirty-two other democracies around the world, people vote using just their national identity number (equivalent to our social security number) and a simple form of identification such as a drivers license. There is no need for voters to initiate registration or create matching signatures. If you change your address in Denmark for example, this information is entered into a national system that is used for creating the voter rolls. Kramer pointed out that requiring matching signatures puts the burden of proof on the citizen, who allegedly has the "right" to vote. In addition, I could see from the amount of time involved that tax-payer dollars are wasted to pay state employees to check those signatures.

Washington's law requires the Secretary of State to notify the person who has been disenfranchised due to signature issues. Part of our job on the phone was to determine if this had in fact happened. In most cases it appeared the law had been followed, yet, frequently the card arrived the day before the voters had to call and rectify the situation in order for their votes to count. Numerous people reported the card looked unimportant and was cast aside. Few voters realized that the same problem would reoccur in the next election unless action was taken by them. Kramer pointed out that once again the burden was placed on the citizen to prove something, to do something, often something inconvenient, in order to restore the "right" to vote. This was systematic disenfranchisment.

While volunteers were making these twenty-two hundred phone calls, Kramer was on the phone to the Secretary of State asking for more public information, the list of voters state wide who had been placed on the "inactive" list. "Inactive" in Washington state is a broad and strange designation. If a person fails to vote in two consecutive federal elections or if a piece of election mail is returned to the sender (Secretary of State) as non-deliverable, that person will be deemed inactive. There are lots of reasons that mail is non-deliverable, generally it is because a person has moved or died.

But what about the people who for whatever reason didn't vote in two consecutive federal elections? By being marked inactive they would not be automatically mailed an absentee ballot. No problem, you say, because they can vote at the polls on election day. Not so. In Washington, where the counties run the elections and make the voting rules, voting is entirely by mail (i.e absentee ballot) with the exception of King County which includes Seattle. Thus being on the inactive list disenfranchises an untold number of voters statewide. Kramer and Deb Saxon, head of the Grassroots (Volunteer) Democrats of Washington agreed they couldn't let this happen.

When the inactive list finally arrived from the Secretary of State it came in a large four inch loose leaf binder. The pages were single spaced lists of names, by county. There were ten thousand names.

Systematic disenfranchisement is widespread in the United States compared to other democratic countries. Working with Kramer is Myong Groen, a Danish born young woman who explained that in Europe among the countries of the European Union voting is far simple. Everyone has a national number and on voting day they appear at the polls, show their identification and use their number to automatically receive a ballot to vote. In fact, Myong explained, if a French citizen is working in Denmark, the Frenchmen/woman can vote in Danish municipal and local elections, despite being a "foreigner".

I had come to work in voter protection expecting that we would be looking for "dirty tricks' and Republican "bad guys". Instead I found we were fighting an old system. "Where did this all start?" I asked Kramer, (the sixty-year-old asking the youngster). Before he answered, I recalled studying about the fight during the Constitutional Convention between the northern and southern states over whether the right to vote should be predicated on owning property. (Interestingly enough Australia also had to deal with this property issue and voting rights, as a former member of the British Commonwealth.) "Was it the old fight over property?" I followed up. He nodded and smiled as a proud professor does when a student begins grasp the subject.

"The greater the burden (on the citizen), the less likely to participate in the process," Kramer told me. I was beginning to agree with him wholeheartedly. Signature rejection and inactive status are the two biggest ways that the government systematically disenfranchises the citizens. When the system actively disenfranchises citizens, I could see how simultaneously it creates opportunities for dirty tricks occur on a partisan level. And it burdens the taxpayers
with the cost of rectifying both the systemic and the partisan problems.

I had some concerns earlier about trying to call all of the ten thousand voters. After talking with Kramer, Myong and Deb I knew it was the right thing to do. But I've become convinced that our voting procedures need serious improvement if we are to enter the twenty-first century as a competent, first-rate democracy.

Comments

[Venise Alstergren]

Patty Cogen: The major reform to your voting system is to make voting compulsory. In my country, Australia, voting is compulsory. With the result that everyone has to go to the polling booth. Once there-despite some people being annoyed and voting informally, or by using the donkey vote-most people think, Oh well now that I'm here, I might as well vote. As a result we have one of the highest, most articulate, and deeply concerned about politics, voter base in the world.
In America, to your once great country's everlasting debit, you keep re-electing the Republican candidates.And on what percentage of the vote? 30-40%?
This is no way to decide your future. Time and time again the Republicans are re-elected. Does this mean your red-necks are breeding more than the liberal voters? Unlikely. Does it mean they are more energetic about going to the polling booths? It is not for me to decide. But for heaven's sake! Are you going to let the only hope for your future, (Barack Obama) slip through the net. Through apathy? Shame, shame.

[Jules1]

Go here to check if you are in the system of your state. Pass it on to everyone you know, there is secret purging going on ,

http://www.votersunite.org/info/RegInfo.asp

purging
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-brendan-demelle/unearthed-the-news-withou_b_131683.html

[dreamingofabluekansas]

i just recently moved from Kansas and have tried to register 3 times in Seattle, in the past 6 weeks - at a farmer's market, by mailing it in and finally after several phone calls to the office and upon their recommendation, I faxed in a registeration form. i was told that the they needed to have all the registrations done by Friday OCT 3. called today OCT 6 and I'm still not in the system. i was told they are 20K behind and are trying desperately to get the absentee voter reg done before the 15th and that i'm probably covered -- and I should wait 2 weeks - which would be the 20th and too late to register even in person in Renton.

i asked if i could help them input the new registrations and they said they were hiring, or accepting volunteers. King County Elections is open until 430PM M-F, but I was told they are staying open until 6PM and, they could use the help on the weekends.

i called King Co. Dems to tell them this -- but in case, you want to help with the effort, please get down there ASAP.

I am hoping to get this straightened out because i don't think i could forgive myself i i didn't get to cast my ballot for Obama. If you have suggestions - pls let me know.

[Jules1]

Didn't they tell you that you could register on line? Sorry, hope you get in the system.........

[demfriend]

Unfortunately as humans we tend to "put off today what we can do whenever". It appears that with every election cycle the problems associated with being allowed to vote as well as those of us who are dilgent and change every piece of paper we have to to vote. We have seen multiple complaints being made across the country and many of them shocking and saddening but most of all a lot comes from the laws outdated or ignorance of the laws. We are a fluid society with many people moving state to state and withint the same state and the voting issue isn't one thought about until the election process starts again the next cycle. With rampant foreclosures and just movement people get lost/forget and al of the excuses we know well. But the underlying evil is those who use these issues plus more to sway/swing votes their way. This isn't right and it will not be corrected in my lifetime I havve no doubt as even computers cannot fix the human. It would be wonderful to do as other countries who have simplified the process and has never though to take from ther citizens the right to vote but we US of A humans have states who love to control and a Congress who lets them.

[WilliamL]

Please.

I lived in Seattle off and on for close to 15 years and have vote reg. since I was 18 in more than one state, including boats.

Voters, citizens, need to recognize there is a fundamental level of responsibility in maintaining your voter registration in the same way one must maintain, say, vehicle insurence, registration, drivers I.D., forward ones mail.

Voter education needs to include this approach when it comes to these issues. The voter also needs to recognize, and yes they need to be told, people have given their lives for the right to vote-women's sufferage, civil rights, and yes even combat opperations in say, Europe more than once.

Voters need to be active and maintain their registration. The less hand holding by state officials wd. enable them to focus on other work.

I might also suggest that this writer consider using bullets as this novela was rediculously long and cd. have simply made a list of the issues/concern/grievances with the situation so as not to burden the reader with descriptions of a campaign office and other irrelevant information.

Right on.

[PioneerKing]

Absentee ballots are a real problem with ensuring they are counted.

Most states do not allow for campaign or party monitors to ensure that the process is done in accordance with state laws and that there ballots are properly counted and recorded.

Some states only count the absentee ballots in certain instances -- when there is a tie or the vote is close.

It is a shame that America's electoral process is worse than many a third world country.

[dagnome27]

I completely agree that our rights are being infringed - between dirty tricks to disenfranchise legitimate voters (like Ohio), and electronic voting machines to change or misdirect the legitimate votes of those who can't be discouraged or disenfranchised (like Florida), our vital elections are being systematically stripped of their legitimacy, and our Democratic way is being jeopardized.

[Laserbeam]

I live about five-ten minutes north of Seattle. My Obama car magnet was stolen right off my car last week. I then learned there was a rash of vandalism regarding only pro-Obama merchandise, such as car magnets, yard signs, bumper stickers, etc.

I noticed a conservative business-woman at the Park'N'Ride the other day glaring at me. I then noticed she had several bumperstickers: Bush/Cheney, Dino Rossi, a Chrisitian radio station, and, of course, "Support our Troops". I smiled at her and refrained from asking if the support our troops magnet had been made in China, as most of them seem to be.

Why are Republicans so mean-spirited? Why do they hate America so much?

[NoMoFearNoMoHate]

It's in their nature. You can't be a Republican without a healthy dose of hypocrisy, including the central, un-American value of wanting to shove your personal values down everyone else's throat!

[Ldyandrea]

I've heard from a few people I know online that have had their cars vandalized, their pro-Obama stickers stolen/shredded, and even their yard signs destroyed. Oddly enough, you don't see this kind of behavior coming from the democratic partisans. Even more oddly, it's amazing to me that it seems to be solely the Democratic role to ensure voter protection, while the Republicans seem bent on undermining it every chance they get.

[birdie2]

Dino Rossi has been out fanning the flames since he lost in 2004 with alot of Swift Boat money behind him

[obamabiden2008]

I live in Seattle too and had my Obama bumpersticker removed from my car. Luckily no vandalism.

[littlepuffycloud]

I've had an Obama sign in my yard since last October and it's still there...I admit I did move it away from the street and closer to the house, but we live on a cul-de-sac with neighbors who know each other. We've had bumper stickers on both cars since last October too..I've had several people in parking lots ask where they too can get bumper stickers. I get honks and thumbs up almost every time I drive. Had only 1 negative...a bald man in a giant truck behind me giving me thumbs down. I guess it could have been much worse.

WAKE UP AMERICA!!

[joyf1]

This article was good to read since I moved to San Juan Island last year. I've already voted in the primary but I'll sure be on the lookout in case I get any communications from the state concerning my signature, etc.

[canadagood]

Sounds amazing to me. Here in Canada if I change address at post office, for drivers license or on tax return, then my name is moved to poll list in new location. Even then I can turn up on voting day, show some ID and take an oath to vote in new location.