Voting on The Huffington Post

Democrats To Revise Presidential Primary Rules

2009-12-06T08:57:27Z

The presidential primary process is flawed and needs to be fixed, the Democratic National Committee says. A committee has issued recommendations that de-emphasize the importance given to early contests like Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, and the outsized influence of the superdelegates.

These problems clearly manifested themselves in the 2008 election. As states jockey for position, the primary season has been steadily extended -- the 2008 Iowa caucuses took place on January 3, two weeks earlier than in 2004 -- and Michigan and Florida touched off a heated fight within the Democratic party by moving up their primaries.

As House Majority Whip James Clyburn told CNN: "We need to improve a little bit in spite of the fact that we got a great candidate out of the process. It was not very comfortable at various points along the way."

The consequences could have been catastrophic for the Democrats, Chris Good writes at The Atlantic:

If Obama hadn't won the states as convincingly, the story of 2008 for Democrats would be a failed and disastrous nominating process that allowed elite members of the party to choose a candidate, leaving the party torn between Obama-ites and the once-prominent PUMAs, the Clinton folk who didn't much care for the other team, or the way things had played out with the selection process.

Now, with Obama expected to seek a second term in 2012, the DNC is looking to revise the nomination process for 2016. According to its recommendations, the early states would keep their pride of place, but the caucuses and primaries would not be allowed to begin until February. The DNC also recommended grouping states by "region or sub-region" and giving perks to states that abide by the schedule at the national convention. The DNC is also looking at ways to reduce the number of superdelegates.

Republicans Fail To Overturn Order Targeting Voter Intimidation In New Jersey

2009-12-02T22:01:10Z

TRENTON, N.J. — A federal judge in New Jersey has denied a request by the Republican National Committee to dissolve a 27-year-old court order aimed at preventing intimidation of minority voters.

In his ruling Tuesday in Newark, U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise said voter intimidation remains a threat and preventing it outweighs the potential danger of voter fraud.

Deborah Jacobs: Corzine on My Mind

2009-11-16T13:15:27Z

All of America watched New Jersey's gubernatorial election. Some interpreted the result as a referendum on Barack Obama's leadership, but everyone voting in our state understood that the Democrat on the ticket was Jon Corzine, and Corzine alone, not a stand-in for our president.

Corzine's loss was not an acid test, but perhaps it should serve as a cautionary tale. Political lives can be short, and leaders may wake up to find their terms over before that perfect moment arrives to carry out their agenda.

Even in the face of controversy, Corzine implemented important changes. Under his watch, New Jersey abolished the death penalty, installed permanent monitoring over a state police force with a long tradition of entrenched racial profiling, and rejected federal "abstinence only" funds that would have spread half-truths about health and sexuality to some of our most vulnerable youth.

Governor Corzine's accomplishments are impressive, but he had much more left to do: reforming unfair criminal justice policies, securing marriage equality for gay couples, increasing government transparency and legalizing medicinal use of marijuana, just to name a few.

A number of factors hindered Corzine's efforts, some outside of his control -- such as the country's dire economic problems and a devastating car accident early in his term. Other factors reflect his inexperience with state-level politics -- like turnstile staffing (and the attendant lack of focus in policy implementation) and a shortage of moxie in working with our idiosyncratic legislature. These shortcomings undermined his agenda and also diminished enthusiasm among legislative leaders for his reelection bid.

New Jersey's political culture has its quirks -- big decisions are as likely to be made in a diner as they are in the State House. But as in most places, political progress here ultimately depends on building relationships and bringing people along. To the extent Corzine made efforts to collaborate with legislators and community members, they were generally too little, too late.

Trenton will scramble during the upcoming lame duck session to finish what our defeated governor started. From now until January, the legislature will try to pass bills -- like marriage equality -- that it failed to take up until now. The frenzy of lame duck is not ideal for making sound law. Corzine has weeks to seal his legacy, and the Democratic legislature has to push through its most powerful members' agenda items as well, before it faces unknown terrain in the new year with Republican Governor Chris Christie.

Progressive politicians nationwide can learn from Corzine's long, unfinished wish-list: Passion and promises are not enough. From City Hall, to the State House to the West Wing, Corzine's tale offers this takeaway: Take bold action now, because "later" may never arrive.

A year ago, President Obama won the presidency promising to restore the Constitution, on life support after an eight-year assault. His pledge to close Guantanamo Bay was an important step, but the military base still holds detainees deprived of their fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. He also promised to end the Iraq war and repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that has cost thousands of honorable soldiers their careers and deprived the military of their services. Issues like these, which helped Obama win the election in 2008, seem to have fallen by the wayside in 2009.

President Obama holds the hardest job in the world. He wrangles with an economic disaster, a health care fight, a swine flu epidemic and two wars. Like Corzine, he may hope to fulfill his promises after he addresses the current emergencies. But also like our governor, he risks slipping into a state of complacent caution.

The courage to act on a bold vision distinguishes the great leaders who change history from the placeholders.

The fate of Corzine's progressive agenda represents a cautionary tale for progressive Americans as well as progressive politicians. We, too, have a challenging job: to keep our President focused on the electoral promises that inspired Americans to vote him in with a mandate.

Rather than counting on Obama's promises to effect change, we must push social justice to the top of the White House's priorities ourselves. This means holding Obama's feet to the fire while doing our part to strategically ignite change.

Taking a page from our president's community-organizing past, we must work together to create a climate that supports a progressive agenda. We must know our communities, build bridges, and work in coalition with allies outside of our usual circles. Only then can we push our leaders into action.

President Obama has three years to make his dreams our reality. We know he can't do it alone. When our leaders' hearts are in the right place, but their hands aren't getting dirty, we are the ones who must sow the seeds of progress.

Fallon & The Roots Slow Jam Low Voter Turn Out (VIDEO)

2009-11-13T11:58:06Z

Compared to the 2008 election, the midterm elections weren't nearly as exciting. So, to make a low Democratic turnout at the polls a little more stimulating to talk about, Jimmy Fallon and The Roots took it down a notch with a sensual slow jam.

WATCH:

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Mike Lux: The Foolish Strategery of Democrats Who Oppose Health Care Reform

2009-11-10T11:23:11Z

For some perspective on the wisdom of the Democrats who are opposing health care reform, let's go the elections last Tuesday. New polling analysis from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Women's Voices Women's Vote is pretty powerful, and I recommend it to all the Democrats who voted no on the health care bill and every single one of their political consultants: the bottom line, friends, is that everything you do to depress Democratic voter turnout in your district is another nail in your coffin.

Greenberg has put together an overlapping collection of demographic groups that he calls the Rising American Electorate: unmarried women, 18-29-year-olds, African-Americans, Latinos, and other people of color. When you add them all together (taking away overlaps), they are currently 52.1% of the voting age population in this country. These demographic groups all share certain characteristics:

They are all increasing as a % of the adult population, because their growth in the population is outstripping the growth of other demographic groups
They all tend to under-perform in terms of coming out to vote, although how much changes dramatically depending on the election
They all tend heavily Democratic in their voting, as opposed to the rest of the electorate which votes far more Republican
They all tend to have more strongly progressive issue views than the population as a whole
They all average less in income, and have higher unemployment rates, than the population as a whole
They all have higher rates of lacking health insurance than the population as a whole

So let's go back to the VA and NJ numbers. In VA in 2008, the percentage of voters in that Rising American Electorate group was 45%. In the 2009 VA electorate, the RAE % dropped to 36%. In NJ in 2008, the % of the electorate that was in the RAE category was 49%, whereas in 2009 it was only 39%. These RAE voters didn't come out to vote because they were discouraged that Democrats that they had invested their faith in weren't delivering tangible benefits for their lives.

The Democrats in marginal districts who are patting themselves on the back for taking the "safe" vote by voting no on health care reform are fooling themselves, and in a great many cases dooming themselves in the next election. If the part of the electorate that strongly favors you drops by 10% (or more) in the next election, do you really think you can win a competitive race? And does not helping your party and your President deliver health reform help you or hurt you in turning out the Democratic vote? I'll let the geniuses advising these members of Congress to vote no try to explain that one.

The Democrats who oppose health care reform are also hurting themselves in a lot of different ways besides depressing turnout:

They damage the brand of the Democratic Party as an effective party that can get things done
They hurt the approval rating of the President they will need campaigning and raising money for them next year
When Democrats like the President nationally are making the case as why Dems in 2010 deserve re-election, they will use the passage of health care reform as their number one selling point, leaving you on your own to explain why you deserve re-election
They lessen their ability to raise money from all those Democratic activists and interest groups who care about health care
They dampen the enthusiasm of volunteers back home
They dramatically increase the likelihood of primary opposition, in 2010 and beyond (do you think Democrats back home, and the progressives who fund primary campaign challenges, are ever going to forget that you tried to kill health care reform?).

I was in the Clinton White House in 1994 after we lost on health care, and these same demographic groups- young people, Latinos, unmarried women -- turned their back on us. I remember seeing the focus groups, and having the reports back from the doorknockers: these hard-pressed voters who had been so excited about Clinton in 1992 felt like he and the Democrats in Congress had let them down, and they had no enthusiasm for coming out to vote.

I look at Democrats like Altmire and Adler in the House (whose Democrats were won by Obama because of big turnouts by all those RAE voters), or Blanche Lincoln in the Senate who is up for election next year, and really wonder about their political judgment. If Lincoln opposes health care reform, she dramatically increases the odds that someone like Lt. Gov. Bill Halter will challenge her in a primary from the left (and that if he does, he'll get a lot of financial support from people all over the country), which would be a bruising fight costing a lot of money, and she virtually guarantees that less black folks, young people, unmarried women -- i.e. the Democrats in Arkansas -- turn out to vote in the general. I mean, even Walmart is supporting health care reform: how much more political cover do you need, Senator? The political thinking here is stunningly bad.

As a loyal Democrat, I hope these Democrats opposing health care reform come to their sense -- not just for reform's sake, but for their own.

Kate Clinton: Election Day

2009-11-05T18:55:16Z

At 7:30 on election morning, we walked to our local polling place in the elementary school, past the "Vote Aqui" signs, past the bake sale moms, the cellophaned chocolate chip Frisbees and into the voting area. The elderly near-sighted, hard-of-hearing, darling polling ladies found our names. We signed the right spaces, went into the booth and voted. I love yanking that riverboat-sized lever that registers my votes. We walked out. It took about five minutes.

Last year we went to vote at 6 a.m., joined the end of a huge, line snaking down the block, dark morning air dotted with puffs of steam from coffee. Inside the packed, bikram muggy voting area, we were sent from one table to the next, stood in more lines and finally voted for Barack Obama. It took about an hour. It was just getting light as we left.

What a year it has been. No doubt you have your own ups and downs for your personal political highlights reel. When I view my own reel it seems to go into slo-mo on gay issues at first with Rick Warren, DADT and DOMA dallying, but then speeds up with the signing of the Hate Crimes bill and the lifting of the HIV immigration ban. I used the split screen function for economy, environment and education highlights. Obama's got a lot going on. I spliced in a lot of art, music, vegetable garden, and Michelle footage. Lots of Michelle highlights. There's too much quagmire footage.

I'm waiting to hear how my brother Bill did in his re-election bid to his city council in PA and for LGBT news from Kalamazoo, Washington and Maine. The governor's race in NJ is too close to call. Our mayor's audacious bid for a third term seems a done deal.

But mostly I am remembering last Election Day, stomach in knots, approaching-avoiding exit poll news, obsessively cleaning. That night at a friend's house we watched, stunned as Barack Hussein Obama hit the required electoral count and heard the city erupt around us. Today a year after that historic election night, I realize I am happy to be a year into the Obama administration.

Joel Epstein: Seeing Through the Voting Booth

2009-11-05T17:38:09Z

While I generally don't go for alphabet soup, from now on I'll have the OSDV. If you care about your vote being counted and are concerned about the flaws exposed by voting irregularities in the last four national elections, you should too. OSDV or "open source digital voting" refers to voting software for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that is in the public domain (Thank you, Wikipedia!).

OSDV is overdue in this country and a new non-partisan non-profit, the OSDV Foundation and its companion Trust the Vote Project are out to change the way America votes. The Foundation begins from the premise that the nation's voting system should be secure, accurate, auditable and transparent. Moreover, the error rate in today's American voting would be completely unacceptable in the credit card or banking industries. This is why 8 large states (including California, Washington, and Oregon) representing 25 percent of the electorate are already on board with the OSDV Foundation's plan to build an open source solution which safeguards the citizen's most precious right.

Unless your name is Meg Whitman you probably already recognized that voting is not just a right but an important privilege of American democracy. But with only two voting machine companies left in this country, it is the transparency that OSDV will bring to the process that is of paramount importance. In the age of H1N1 as Justice Brandeis wrote, "Sunshine is the best disinfectant." Instead of the classic Diebold black box, the OSDV approach will let us scrutinize the voting process. OSDV is creating a roadmap for getting from our currently unacceptable situation to a future with a transparent, reliable, and auditable voting system.

OSDV holds promise as a solution to the voting irregularities that plagued the 2000 Florida, 2004 Ohio, 2006 midterm, and 2008 Minnesota recounts. While this last one between comedian Al Franken and politically confused anti-Vietnam War Democrat turned pro-war Bush Republican Norm Coleman lasted eight months and was worthy of a whole season on SNL, all four recounts make this country's election process look more like a presidential election in Iran or Afghanistan than in Jefferson's democracy.

Given the team involved in advancing this selfless if daunting project I expect the term OSDV will soon be as widely used as LOL, G2G, IMO and other acronyms baffling to those of us older than 18. Last month I had the pleasure of learning about the OSDV Foundation's important work at a panel discussion hosted by The Hollywood Hill. The event at the home of producer Lawrence Bender (Inglourious Basterds, An Inconvenient Truth, Pulp Fiction, etc., etc., etc.) was a pleasantly focused presentation worthy of the Oscar winner(s) in the room.

After some chit chat and food and drink the evening featured OSDV's Gregory Miller introducing the non-profit Silicon Valley effort which aims to reinvent the way the country votes. As Miller explained, OSDV developers are building an open source voting system that will do for the voter what Oracle and SAP's enterprise business software solutions (Dilbert's Elbonian database) have done for business. Rather than just another star-studded Hollywood reception in Bel Air, the focused geeky seminar featured a hands-on panel that included California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, software designer and entrepreneur Mitch Kapor (Firefox and Lotus), Rock the Vote Executive Director Heather Smith and Los Angeles County voter registrar Dean Logan. LA's involvement is essential in that the County's population exceeds that of several states.

The impressive panel and informed discussion made clear that this is a roll-up-your-sleeves effort, not just another tired non-profit think-tank writing white papers about the need for updating the voting system or pushing for legislative reform.

Think of the OSDV Foundation and Trust the Vote as a digital Public Works Administration project creating freely available open source technology maintained in a public trust. Envision the Grand Coulee Dam and the thousands of bridges, post offices, and other infrastructure projects that the Public Works Administration built at a time, not unlike today, when so many are unemployed and so much remains to be done to restore the foundation upon which this country is built.

Voting today remains right out of the horse and buggy era. But think about how the country's 49 million 18 to 29 year olds, and perhaps millions more, communicate in their everyday lives. For our social media, yesterday's technology is so, well, yesterday. Remember MySpace? But for a right that people around the world regularly die for, American still register to vote by paper via snail mail and vote using flawed, unreliable technology. Today's Twitter -- and Facebook -- savvy voter should not be required to register using a stamped, signed voter registration form. How sensible and efficient is that when the states already have most voters' names, digital signatures, and current addresses though DMV records. The Los Angeles County voter register has one staffer whose job it is to review and repair voter registration forms damaged in the mail. Think of all the low hanging fruit we could be harvesting by allowing OSDV to help make the voter registration process less error prone, automatic and permanent.

To address concerns from all sides of the political spectrum as well as from the Luddite camp about digital voting, OSDV requires that "all efforts and results (guidelines, tools, software, etc.) are conceived, designed, and produced in a transparent, open, collaborative, meritocratic, peer-reviewed and non-proprietary fashion." This of course all begs the question what are we voting for; Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum or here in California the most convoluted, contradictory collection of initiatives one could ever imagine. But let's leave that for another day.

In this age when we are looking to social entrepreneurs to improve the world let's celebrate the open source developers who are working to shine a light on how the country votes. As Richard Stallman, the father of open source software has said, "In the face of a thousand eyes, all bugs become shallow." Through the open source development process a transparent, auditable voting system is not that far off. To help along the process, the equally transparent, non-partisan OSDV Foundation and its Trust the Vote Project are efforts that are worth a closer look.

Sen. Russ Feingold: D.C. Takes Up Same Day Registration, So Should Congress

2009-11-03T11:43:16Z

Today, Virginians will turn out to elect their new governor. Unfortunately, Virginians who are eligible to vote but missed the October 5th registration deadline will not be able to play a role in this important process.

It would be a different story if these Virginians lived in our states, Wisconsin and Minnesota, or any of the seven other states that allow citizens to register and vote on the same day. If they did, merely missing a deadline some 30 days before Election Day -- deadlines that vary widely from state to state -- would not prevent them from exercising their constitutional right to vote.

In 2007, two states, Iowa and North Carolina, adopted Same Day Registration (SDR) proposals. Both states experienced their highest level of voter turnout in decades. Today the DC City Council is scheduled to vote on an omnibus election reform bill that will allow SDR in our nation's capital.

As the Council prepares to vote on this measure, we want to share our experience with Same Day Registration in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Both states have allowed Same Day Registration since the 1970's and since then both states have consistently ranked among the top states in the nation in voter turnout. In fact, in the 2008 election, Minnesota and Wisconsin joined three other SDR states -- Maine, New Hampshire and Iowa -- on the top five list. That's not a coincidence.

Numerous studies by Demos, a non-partisan public policy group, have shown that SDR is especially effective in boosting voter turnout among groups with historically low participation. For this reason, SDR may very well yield a meaningful increase in voting in the District. In 2008, only 60.7 percent of eligible voters in D.C. cast a ballot -- 35 states had higher turnout rates. About 11,000 eligible but unregistered DC residents did not participate in the historic 2008 election. SDR could have made a big difference for many of these citizens.

In addition to increasing voter participation, SDR reduces provisional ballots. When voters who believe they are registered show up at the polls only to find out they are not listed on the voter rolls, they are usually provided a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots are rejected and discarded if it turns out the voter was not properly registered. SDR will allow voters to register on the spot, if they are qualified to vote.

Wisconsin recorded only 211 provisional ballots in the 2008 presidential election compared to 4,575 provisional ballots in Virginia (about half went uncounted) and 14,713 provisional ballots in the District (close to 30% were not counted). Same Day Registration virtually eliminates the need for provisional voting, simplifying and putting certainty back into the process.

Opponents of Same Day Registration argue that SDR will open the floodgates to voter fraud. They are wrong. There is no evidence that SDR harms the integrity of elections in our states. In fact, the opposite is true. In the words of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, "EDR [Election Day Registration] is much more secure because you have the person right in front of you -- not a postcard in the mail.... We have 35 years of experience with this." It is worth noting that in the highly scrutinized 2008 Senate election in Minnesota, there were no allegations of fraud caused by SDR.

Some opponents warn that Same Day Registration could cause administrative problems. But our election officials say otherwise. They run election after election without significant complications related to SDR. SDR both improves participation and eliminates many difficulties experienced at the polls across the nation. It's a win-win for voters and election officials. That is why we have introduced the Same Day Registration Act in Congress to require every state to allow SDR for federal elections.

Today is the DC Council's chance to make it easier for citizens to fulfill their greatest civic duty and make their voices heard. SDR is an important reform that has worked in our states. We commend the DC Council for considering it, and we believe Congress should do the same.

Update:

The DC Council today unanimously passed an election reform bill that includes Same Day Registration. The bill now goes to Mayor Adrian Fenty for his signature and will become law after the standard 30-day congressional review period. We congratulate the Council and the citizens of DC.

Voting Guide For New Yorkers

2009-11-03T09:11:25Z

Election day is finally here!

To find your polling site, you can use the city's handy Poll Site Locator. You can also call 866-VOTE-NYC or 311.

For those of you still unsure who you're voting for, here are several voting guides to help you with your decision.

And for those of you abstaining from voting, here's some justification for you.

Happy Voting!

Sequoia: Voting Machine Company To Release Source Code In Industry First

2009-10-28T11:16:16Z

Sequoia Voting Systems plans to publicly release the source code for its new optical scan voting system, the company announced Tuesday -- a remarkable reversal for a voting machine maker long criticized for resisting public examination of its proprietary systems.

Philip Spooner VIDEO: WWII Veteran Makes Case For Gay Marriage

2009-10-21T20:56:32Z

Philip Spooner is a lifetime Republican, World War II veteran and, to everyone's surprise, a gay marriage supporter. The 86-year-old gave a heartfelt speech in support of gay marriage to Maine's Judiciary Committee back in April, and the video has just now become an internet hit.

Spooner's voice wavers often as he weaves his own life story into the speech, using his experience as a soldier as his main defense for gay marriage. He lists his accomplishments in the war, among them serving in Patton's Third Army and carrying POWs back home, making it clear that he's a true American -- and according to Spooner, there's nothing more American than fighting for equality.

I am here today because of a conversation I had last June when I was voting. A woman at my polling place asked me, "Do you believe in equal, equality for gay and lesbian people?" I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her, "What do you think our boys fought for at Omaha Beach?" I haven't seen much, so much blood and guts, so much suffering, much sacrifice. For what? For freedom and equality. These are the values that give America a great nation, one worth dying for.

WATCH the full speech:

Mark Green: Mandatory Voting? Automatic Registration? How Un-American!

2009-10-19T14:36:15Z

If you have an election where the winner gets four percent of the eligible electorate, is that a functioning democracy? Having just lost such a runoff contest in New York City,
I congratulated the winner for running a skillful campaign according to the rules. But are there better rules?

When there were similarly pathetic turnouts in local school board races 20 years ago, such elections were ridiculed and then abolished. When there are 70-80 percent turnouts in British, French, Swedish and Israeli elections -- or 60 percent in our own 2008 presidential election -- no one questions whether they broadly represent popular will in a functioning democracy. A seven percent turnout, however, risks choosing city-wide officials more in a private selection than a public election.

Instead, let's expand Instant Runoff Voting and automatic registration, and even consider mandatory voting laws:

Instant Runoff Voting. Under IRV, voters rank their choices for an office, 1 or 2 or 3 depending on how many are running. Then after the first and only round of voting, any candidate with a majority of course wins the election, whether primary or general. But if no one has a majority, second and third and choices are automatically allocated until someone gets 50 percent + 1 of all the votes. With the tabulation occurring electronically, a majority winner is guaranteed on election night.

Besides assuring majority rule, IRV saves taxpayers money and cuts the costs of campaigns since there's only one primary and no runoff; reduces negative campaigning because candidates will want to be an acceptable second choice for their opponents' supporters; increases turnout since the electorate needs only to show up to the polls once; avoids winners only working their narrow geographic, racial, religious or organizational niches; and frees people to vote their consciences without the worry of wasting their vote on an admirable though arguable long-shot (a Ralph Nader, a Libertarian) since their ballots will be re-cast for their next choice.

San Francisco has been using IRV since 2004, and recently Aspen, Burlington -- and Australia, Ireland, Great Britain and New Zealand -- have adopted it. It's now been used in 46 American elections in six counties, cities or towns. Analyzing the first IRV election in San Francisco, FairVote, the Center for Voting and Democracy, concluded (PDF) that "winners received significantly more votes than winners in [past] December runoffs (and especially more than winners in conventional plurality elections), more votes were cast in the decisive election and winners received more votes both in real terms and as a percent of the vote than the old 'delayed' runoff system. And that means more voters had a say in who their supervisor [mayor] is."

Automatic Registration. According to recent U.S. Census data, 30 percent of eligible Americans are not registered vote. So instead of hoping that high school graduates will find their way one by one to Boards of Elections to register as all American jurisdictions do, many countries use their census or tax data bases to create a voter registration list or engage in direct mail or even door-to-door registration drives (Germany, France, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Belgium). According to the Brennan Center for Legal Justice's report, Voter Registration Modernization, "Although the United States does not have a residence registry or a national health care system [yet] that provides a list of all eligible voters, states have a variety of databases that compile information about their citizens - databases maintained by motor vehicle departments, income tax authorities, and social service agencies. Many of these lists already include all the information necessary to determine voter eligibility..." With everyone registered and then encouraged to vote by mailings and public service ads, turnouts increase.

Mandatory Voting. When I used to routinely ask applying law students in interviews what they thought of this idea simply to test their ability to think on their feet, about 98 percent would object to it as coercive, big-brotherish, un-American! "But if we accept the days it takes to sit on juries as a condition of citizenship, why not the few minutes it takes to vote?" Um, oh. Indeed, Australia (since 1924) regards it as much a part of their civic obligation as we in America (for the most part) do paying taxes.

Other countries which require voting includes Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Ecuador and Switzerland. While rules vary, in nearly all there's a penalty of some $15, which citizens can avoid paying by providing a legitimate excuse for not voting (religious objections, travel, illness). And voters can still write-in a name or vote for none-of-the-above.

So why bother? Because such a system could help create a habit to use the franchise rather than just cite it on July 4 ... help assure that elected officials more truly reflect their constituents ... and encourage candidates to concentrate on convincing 50 percent of the total vote, not just pulling out four percent of the eligible electorate. Or as a store window sign down my block once actually put it, "Democracy is like sex -- it works best when you participate."

Jarrett Murphy: Searching for Bloomberg Country

2009-10-09T14:57:49Z

Rudy Giuliani was once in a hilarious Saturday Night Live skit where he donned a wig and a housecoat and adopted the pronounced honk of an exaggerated outer borough accent. What made the skit perfect was that Giuliani was gently poking fun at his kind of people: the working class, outer-borough white ethnics who overwhelmingly voted for him in three mayoral elections.

Giuliani's successor, while also a Republican, has been harder to characterize. Compared to the Brooklyn-bred, "Go Yankees!" Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg—a wealthy transplant from Boston—has always seemed like the kind of candidate whose base would sip Perrier rather than Pabst (if you'll forgive me for reducing people to the crudest of stereotypes).

Broadly speaking, that impression is accurate. The support of wealthy elites has been vital to Bloomberg's political career, from the acquiescence of hoity-toity good government types like the Times editorial board toward his mind-blowing campaign spending in 2005 to the cheerleading by the upper crust, including Steve Rattner and Henry Kissinger, for a term limits overhaul last year.

But for all their influence, wealthy people don't actually vote more than the rabble. In fact many of Bloomberg's supporters this year, like Colin Powell and the president of the Dominican Republic, are unlikely to vote for him at all because—what do you know?—they don't live in New York City! So where do Bloomberg's votes come from? If Giuliani's heartland wore housecoats, what does Bloomberg country look like?

An analysis of 2005 general election returns by assembly district reveals an interesting fact: While the mayor prevailed by comfortable margins in many districts and by landslide proportions in several, his most lopsided win was not—as one might expect—on the Upper East Side, New York's wealthiest area and hizzoner's own hood.

He did fabulously well there, in Jonathan Bing's 73rd Assembly district, nabbing 86.6 percent of the vote against Freddy Ferrer. But Bloomberg did a hair better—getting 86.8 percent of the vote—in the 48th assembly district, in Borough Park, Brooklyn, where conservative Democrat Dov Hikind holds the legislative seat.

Detailed election results from 1997 are no longer available online, so we can't compare Bloomberg's heartland to Giuliani's. But we can suspect that there's a substantial and somewhat surprising overlap between the two candidates' bases.

That doesn't, of course, answer the longstanding question about whether the people who vote for Bloomberg love him even half as much as Rudy's supporters loved their man; not that Bloomberg's opponents are nearly as passionate as Rudy's were, either. And who knows if it's relevant to the question of whether, eight years into putting his own stamp on city policies, Bloomberg really deserves as much credit as he gets for being a better mayor than Giuliani.

But what it does suggest is that outer borough whites, who were key to electing Ed Koch three times and Giuliani twice, were crucial to Bloomberg, too, even if this mayor has also attracted significant support from blacks and Latinos.

Where's Bill Thompson country? The two-term comptroller and Democratic nominee hasn't faced a competitive election since the 2001 comptroller primary, when he bested City Councilman Herb Berman after a bitter fight. Thompson's best showing in that contest was in the 56th, a Bed-Stuy assembly district represented by Annette Robinson, a liberal Democrat. Thompson received 82 percent of the vote there.

Yes, the main vein of both Bloomberg and Thompson's past electoral support is in Kings County. But the similarities end there. Hikind's and Robinson's district offices are only about four miles apart as the crow flies, but those four miles cover an expanse of social and political distance.

Judging by the demographic profiles of the community districts that overlap with the bulk of each assembly district, Robinson's is overwhelmingly black and has a median household income of around $31,000. In Hikind's area, the median income is only slightly higher—$38,000—but the population is overwhelmingly white. The 2006 infant mortality rate in Robinson-land was 9.1; in Hikind-ville, it was 1.2. In the 2008 presidential election, 99.2 percent of voters in Robinson's district voted for Barack Obama. Hikind's district went 71 percent for John McCain.

Interestingly, in this year's Democratic mayoral primary, Thompson won 2,020 votes in Hikind's district. That's more than three times as many votes as Ferrer won there in the primary four years ago, when Anthony Weiner and Gifford Miller placed first and second in the district ahead of Ferrer, and turnout was 20 percent higher. Despite being a better racial and religious fit with the district, Weiner's total in 2005 was only 77 votes higher than Thompson's this year.

Is that comparison akin to comparing deck chairs on the Titanic to those on the Andrea Doria?

Or does that mean there's trouble in Bloomberg-burgh?

Button your housecoats and hang on!

Jeff Schweitzer: A Failure of Citizenship and the Health Care Debacle

2009-09-19T17:26:39Z

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Thomas Jefferson penned those words in an early debate on the role of government in education. He went on to say: “Universal education is the most effective means of preserving democracy and good government.”

Nobody would accuse Jefferson of being a Communist, particularly because Marx would not be born for another 40 years. Yet here was one of our Founding Fathers advocating a “government takeover” of education.

Jefferson also advocated a “government takeover” of the military by relieving the militia with “regulars” during time of war. In his first inaugural address, he said somewhat subtly:

“A well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.”

Jefferson was no extreme radical in the cabal of staid Founders; his ideas were mainstream among his brethren. The idea that our central government can and rightfully should “take over” certain critical functions in society is embedded in the very foundation of our country and codified in our Constitution. This should put in context the idea that our government can have at least some role in guaranteeing access to basic health care for all Americans. We are after all the only democracy that does not offer such basic care to all citizens.

But here we run into a terrible problem. The health care debate cannot be understood in historic context because many Americans have never heard of Thomas Jefferson. Extrapolating from state surveys, only 14% of American high school students can name who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Nearly 75% do not know that George Washington was our first president. More than 90% could not pass the exam given to immigrants who wish to become citizens. No wonder that Jay Leno has so much material for his Jay Walking segment. We can say that our educational system has failed when the vast majority of American students do not know enough to pass an exam to qualify as American citizens.

We cannot expect to be ignorant and free, and this reality is manifesting itself clearly in the health care debate. Our health care system is destroying us from within, threatening our economy and our future. Yet with our incredible ignorance of our history, we lose critical perspective and the ability to have a rational discussion of government’s proper role in solving the problem. Any reasonable debate is drowned out with absurd accusations of socialism and Communism and outright fabrications and fear mongering about death panels and a government takeover. Ignorance leads to comments like “keep your government hands of my Medicare.” The debate is not founded in reality, reason or history. Ironically, many of those who claim to defend the Constitution most fiercely have never read the document. That lack of familiarity with our founding document gives rise to the bizarre and false notions that universal health care is Communist or in some way counter to the governing principles of this country.

The “public option” of offering Americans the ability to choose an insurance program backed by the U.S. government is nothing close to a government takeover of health care, and in fact is well within the ideals of government contemplated by our Founding Fathers. But we cannot possibly know that if we do not even know the names of any of our Founding Fathers!

And just as we are ignorant of our history, we ignore basic facts about our health care system. The biggest lie perpetrated by opponents of reform is that the United States has “the best health care system in the world.” We do not, and not by a long shot. People fear “rationing” without recognizing that the worst kind goes on right now. Insurance companies dictate what surgeries, diagnostic tests, preventative care and curative procedures can be done, taking the decision out of the hands of your doctors. For those with no insurance, health care is rationed by wealth. Those who can afford good care get all that is available; those who cannot often die. Close to 25,000 Americans die each year from treatable medical conditions because they lacked access to proper care – that is rationing by any definition.

Even with all of that rationing, our health care system is the most expensive in the world. We spend twice as much per capita as any other wealthy democracy. We devote nearly 17.6% of our GDP to health care compared to the next most expensive systems in Canada and Germany (10.6%) and Switzerland (10.4%).

We are not getting a good return on our investment. We are not healthier and do not receive better health care. Compared to Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, the United States ranks last or next-to-last in the five primary dimensions of a properly functioning health care system: quality, access, efficiency, equity and quality of life. The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not offer universal health care. We are ranked 26^th in infant mortality among industrialized nations. We are ranked 24th in healthy life expectancy. That means the citizens in 23 other countries on average live longer healthier lives than Americans. That hardly makes us the best in the world. Our overall health care system is ranked 37th globally, behind Malta, Colombia and Oman. We have some of the lowest satisfaction with our system, with only 40% approving, compared to 91% in Denmark and 81% in Finland. The United States is the only country in the world that has medical bankruptcies.

This is the “best health care system in the world” that people are defending. This is the system that people fear will be reformed.

Much fear of reform is based on ignorance of our history and the willful ignoring of inconvenient facts that do not conform to political or religious convictions. Any claim that our health care system is the best is factually incorrect, proven wrong across multiple dimensions. But with that basic falsehood as a premise for discussion, the debate gets derailed before a dialogue can even begin. Why reform something that is already the best? With unfounded fears of socialism as a basis for debate, we eschew our history and focus attention away from potential solutions.

So I offer a radical proposal to move forward, recognizing that ignorance is a fundamental constraint to progress. Since one must be a citizen to vote in this country, all voters should be required to demonstrate the same knowledge necessary to become a citizen. All potential voters should be required to correctly answer the same questions as those on the naturalization test prior to registering to vote. There would be no limit on how many times the test could be taken until completed satisfactorily. This test requirement would ensure that every voter has a minimum basic understanding of our form of government and the principles on which the country was founded. The quality of political discourse would almost certainly improve.

Why should the accident of birth confer upon someone the privilege of voting? We are not an aristocracy in which our bloodline determines our fate. Why should voting be any different? Voting should be seen as a privilege rather than as a consequence of where one is born. Voting should be a right earned rather than conferred by fate or the accident of citizenship. Voting should be a right that is gained upon acquiring basic knowledge about the country in which one is voting.

I am not demanding much. Here are some sample questions from the naturalization test:

Name one branch of government.

What is the highest court in the United States?

Why does the flag have thirteen stripes?

Name one author of the Federalist Papers.

What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?

Some may object at this point that my proposal is discriminatory, favoring the wealthy over the poor (and therefore Republicans over Democrats). But that is not the case; those high school surveys prove that ignorance of our history knows no socioeconomic boundaries. Anecdotally, as a trivial aside, note that many of those folks on Jay Walking fall into the category of White middle class. My proposal would in fact level the playing field because anybody, regardless of social status, can easily obtain the naturalization test in multiple languages and study the provided answers. The language debate is a false one; knowledge of our history and government is more important than the language in which it is acquired. The only qualifications for voting would be citizenship and enough motivation to learn the simple outlines of our history and about our form of government, knowledge necessary to make minimally informed decisions. I strongly suspect that an electorate better versed in our history would not be yelling “socialist” and “government takeover” every time the president mentions a public option.

But yes, my proposal does discriminate – against those who do not know enough to qualify as citizens. That is fully consistent with the fact that we currently discriminate between citizens and non-citizens, only allowing the former to vote. Since we comfortably make that distinction, we should apply the knowledge test universally.

We are witnessing a tragic, horrific, pathetic decline in basic education. We are producing a generation unaware of even the most basic truths of our history. Almost half of our students do not even know that the United States borders the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast. The majority cannot name how many branches of government we have. We could not possibly expect a student demonstrating such colossal ignorance to evaluate the subtleties of government’s proper role in providing access to health care. Instead we can expect a knee-jerk reaction, like “socialism!”

Of course many who oppose health care reform are well aware of our history and are familiar with the Constitution; many are highly educated. Well-informed opposition to reform can come from many sources, including legitimate concerns about cost, efficiency and fairness. Open discussion is welcome. These are complex issues with no easy or painless answers. But widespread ignorance is skewing the national debate, preventing us from exploring reasonable solutions.

Ignorance has now become an existential threat. We must take dramatic action to combat the trend. All citizens whether recently naturalized or descendents of Mayflower pilgrims, rich or poor, must demonstrate they know the basics about the United States before being allowed to vote. We cannot expect to be both ignorant and free. And time is running out.

Jim Wallis: What!? Racism Still in America?

2009-09-17T12:32:27Z

Here we go again. Some people raise the issue of race (this time about the ways some other people are talking about or treating the first black president of the United States) and the media goes crazy. "What racism?" many of the pundits cry, "Didn't we just elect this black guy president?" (Implying: "Doesn't that prove that racism is over in America?").

So let's all just take a breath here -- as we always need to do when talking about race in America.

A few simple points:

First, on November 4, 2008, the United States did what only one other country that I know of ever has ever done -- elect a president from a minority race in a country with a different majority race. (Peru is the only other country I can think of to have done that, electing as their president Alberto Fujimori, of Asian ethnicity, in a predominantly Spanish country.) That a still predominantly white U.S. would elect a black man as head of state was stunning to many -- and, I must admit, to me. Frankly, it made me think that the country was better than I thought it was. That historic accomplishment is a sign of great progress and a hope of better things to come for racial equality and justice in the United States.

Second, the majority of Americans, and even of white Americans -- whether they voted for Obama or not -- seemed to feel proud and positive that the nation had finally reached this amazing milestone. Inaugurating Barack Obama on that January 20th Inauguration Day made most Americans feel good about themselves and about their country. The new president's approval rating climbed up to 70 percent in the week after the Inauguration, which obviously meant that even some of those who voted against him were impressed by how he was handling his job at the outset.

Third, there are many people, most of whom voted against Obama, who have basic disagreements with the president on substantive political issues. And to disagree with a black president on policy questions does not mean that you are racist. The people who initially approved of the president's job performance, but now disapprove, did not suddenly turn into racists. And my conservative friends who admire Obama personally but disagree with him politically can hardly be called racists.

But fourth -- and importantly -- there was, and is still, a hard core of racially-motivated white people in this nation who did vote against Obama because he is black, and who virulently oppose him as president because he is black. And that racist core of angry white Americans resides on the extreme political right of U.S. politics. The far-right wing in America has never supported racial equality. Their political representatives voted against both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, and most have never repented of it. And, let's be honest, the loudest voices of right-wing talk radio and cable television appeal directly to that core with subtle and not-so-subtle racial messages, as has the right-wing of the Republican Party for many years.

If you were paying attention, you could see signs of that underlying racism at the most heated town meetings this summer. Of course, not everybody who attended, or even was mad about health care or the government at those meetings, is a racist -- most of those people weren't; but some of them clearly are. There were blatant signs of racism at some of the town meetings and, indeed, many signs that carried overtly racial messages.

I see those racial sub-texts in the intensity of the attacks on Obama -- not in the disagreements per se, but in the viciousness of the rhetoric. Racism is often about disrespect, and many African-American citizens are now feeling that the black president in the White House is being disrespected. I also see it in the supporters of the new "birthers" movement, who stir up doubts about Obama's citizenship. I see it in the furor over the president of the United States speaking to the nation's school children about studying and working hard. And, agree with me or not, I saw it in the disrespect shown toward a black president by a white Congressman from the South, whose less than enthusiastic apologies have now turned him into a fund-raising martyr, cheered on by a defiant rebel yell against the man (or is it "boy"?) in the White House.

We have all witnessed or experienced situations where someone has "played the race card" in inappropriate or unfair ways. And racism is not the cause or explanation of every social problem. Nor are legitimately different points of view obvious signs of racism. And President Barack Obama has not played the race card, expecting only to be treated as a man -- not a "black man"-- and to be judged as a president and not as an "African-American president."

But let's be honest. We all know that racism still exists in America today. We know that there is a hard core of our white fellow citizens who simply will not accept their black or brown brothers and sisters -- especially one in the White House. So while we should not call every disagreement an issue of racism, it is time call out the racism that indeed does still exist -- that wounds our soul as a nation, and that obstructs the promise of the United States.

Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com.

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Michael Markarian: A Double Whammy for Animal Shelters

2009-09-15T14:02:00Z

The economic downturn is having ripple effects in nearly every part of American life, but the impact on animal shelters has been especially acute. Struggling families are relinquishing more dogs and cats to shelters, as they find they can no longer afford the costs of pet care, or they are evicted from their homes and cannot find pet-friendly housing. At the same time, municipal governments are cutting local services, and charitable giving is on the decline, so both public and private shelters have less funding. It's a double whammy for animal shelters -- greater demand but fewer resources.

Animal shelters play a critical role in our communities.

The problem may become more severe in California, as a budget deal between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators will reduce the funding available to hold stray dogs and cats in the state's municipal animal shelters. But some communities are taking a more forward-looking approach and trying to sustain -- rather than cut -- critical services.

In Lincoln County on Oregon's central coast, the county animal shelter is scheduled to close its doors on June 30, 2010, because funding will run out. But this November, voters will decide on a new property tax that would allow animal care and control operations to continue uninterrupted. If approved, Measure 21-134 will provide funding for another five years to support the animal shelter and animal control services in the county.

With tea-party protests around the country, it's hard to imagine voters approving a new tax. But it's even harder to imagine what life would be like with no animal shelter and no animal control services. Without an animal shelter, homeless pets will have no place to go to find new, loving homes. Stray animals will be left to the mercy of the streets, and without animal control services, they will continue to breed and overpopulate. As their numbers grow, disease will become rampant and pose a very real threat to animal health and human health.

In fact, cutting funds for animal care and control is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Without a functioning animal shelter, other costs to the community -- demands on law enforcement, county health officials, and nonprofit rescue groups -- will grow. Measure 21-134 would cost the average Lincoln County property owner less than a nickel a day, while the potential costs of dealing with dog bites or a rabies epidemic would certainly be much greater.

Most people wouldn't imagine living in an area with no school, no hospital, no police, no road maintenance, or no trash collection. An animal shelter, too, is a community institution, and shouldn't be allowed to go under. It's not just a quality of life issue for citizens, but a critical service in a nation that cares about animal welfare -- a nation where we want to see pets cared for and adopted, not suffering and dying on our streets.

Democracy's Digital Revolution

2009-09-14T10:33:02Z

There is no turning back the clock. We now have more public opinion exerting pressure on politics than ever before. The question is how it may be channeled and filtered to create freer, more successful societies, because simply putting things online is no cure-all.

Rob Richie: Diebold's End: Consolidation of Largest Voting Companies Shows Need to Reform Elections

2009-09-04T14:30:29Z

Yesterday the United States' largest voting equipment vendor, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), announced the purchase of Premier Election Solutions, our nation's second largest vendor, and a product of the Diebold Corporation's North American operations. If this sale goes forward, ES&S will control a huge majority of the voting equipment market in the United States. According to Verified Voting, more than 120 million registered voters live in American jurisdictions using one of these two companies' systems. In contrast, the nation's third largest elections vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, provides equipment in jurisdictions with only some 26 million registered voters -- and seems to be on shaky ground, having been sold several times in recent years and still waiting to have its latest optical scan system certified by the federal Election Assistance Commission.

Whether the sale goes through remains a question. Election integrity activists at Black Box Voting have pledged to fight it. ES&S (then called American Information Systems) previously attempted to consolidate the voting industry in 1997 with a purchase of Business Records Corporation (BRC), but the U.S. Department of Justice on anti-trust grounds required that acquisition of BRC to be split between ES&S and Sequoia.

Regardless of its ultimate outcome, this latest potential consolidation in ownership of our voting equipment highlights the broken nature of American election administration. We run democracy on the cheap at the national level, and pay for it with lost votes, untrustworthy software and exorbitant costs for public interest improvements due to companies recouping expenses by abusing their local monopolies.

FairVote has long suggested a full public ownership model, similar to what the state of Oklahoma and nations abroad have done. We should keep pursuing this "public option," but also consider additional ways to gain control of the election process and foster better, more reliable equipment. Some groups are seeking to hold vendors legally accountable for past failures to uphold election integrity. Looking forward, one straightforward step would address a glaring problem: the process of certifying equipment. To open up the market to more competitors and secure certain basic rights of transparency and quality control, the public should pay for the costs of certification.

Better certification processes for voting equipment of course are absolutely essential, as underscored by how more rigorous certification processes in recent years have exposed major problems with proposed equipment. Election results also keep demonstrating how systems already certified for our most important elections can have serious flaws. For example, the Humboldt County (CA) Election Transparency Project discovered that a Premier/Diebold optical scan paper ballot system dropped 197 ballots in 2008, while a FairVote analysis this year found that the same system dropped 0.4% of ballots in an election in Aspen (CO).

But each new revelation and each new good idea for updating certification standards at the federal level and state level makes it harder for companies to comply, in turn stretching out the timeline for certification and greatly increasing companies' costs. Paying for companies' costs of certification would cost taxpayer dollars, of course, and should have some reasonable limits. But these upfront costs promise to pay big dividends for our democracy in the long-term. It would allow new companies to get a competitive product on the market before they know for sure they will be able to sell it - resolving the catch-22 that today makes it so difficult for any new company to compete with the dominant companies. It also would make it easier to justify ongoing updates to the voting standards, rather than essentially adding new "unfunded mandates" on the vendors who either go out of business or, more typically, give up after barely getting started. The quality of voting equipment and software should also rise as companies would be required to do more than just "get by," and county and state governments would pay less for better equipment and upgrades - right now they typically face excessive fees for equipment, ongoing services and upgrades from vendors trying to recoup their certification costs and able to take advantage of their near monopoly of the industry.

In exchange for paying for the certification process, the public also should secure greater rights of transparency and general ownership of the process. For example, New York State's latest contracts for new equipment include a sensible provision that any additional contracts for services and new features involving the equipment will be open to competitive bidding rather than the jurisdiction having to accept the vendor's monopoly power. Taxpayers also should require much greater access to the software code, if not full open source software, and a requirement for "modular" components that would make it easier to piece together separately certified systems for an election rather than rely on just one company for election services.

Exclusive focus on pre-election certification will never be sufficient , as we must also focus on post-election verification and audits. By verifying all election counts, the certification process would become part of a "belt and suspenders" approach. With the latest optical scan paper ballot systems having the capacity to create redundant records of every ballot, these records can be made publicly available, as they are in cities from San Francisco (CA) to Burlington (VT). When coupled with manual audits and appropriate privacy safeguards, they will allow the public to verify vote tallies and immediately identify errors.

The bottom line is that the existing regime is broken. Let's stop outsourcing democracy and make sure that citizens are in control.

Diebold Sells US Voting Machine Unit

2009-09-03T13:51:20Z

NORTH CANTON, Ohio — ATM maker Diebold Inc. has sold its much-criticized U.S. voting-machine business to its bigger competitor, Election Systems & Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb.

Diebold, based in North Canton, announced the sale of its Allen, Texas-based subsidiary Premier Election Solutions Inc. on Thursday and said it will get $5 million plus payments representing 70 percent of collections of the unit's accounts receivable as of Aug. 31.

Kavita N. Ramdas: More Troops Alone Won't Help Afghan Women

2009-08-26T19:36:09Z

Five years ago, I was in Kabul visiting Afghan women's groups, including the Afghan Institute of Learning, which had once operated underground schools for girls under the Taliban. The energy of Afghan women and girls was infectious -- I answered questions about Shahrukh Khan, joined them in Bollywood songs and listened as they discussed voting in the upcoming 2004 elections.

That summer seems like a dream to me now. In 2009, the mood is grim. Women have been forced out of polling stations; suicide bombings and acid attacks against girls, once unknown in Afghanistan, are now commonplace. Although women are close to 60 percent of the population and 35 percent of the 15 million registered voters, fewer have likely voted this year, given the violence that is endemic across Afghanistan.

After five years, $30 billion in aid, and the presence of 150,000 foreign troops, Afghanistan is less, not more secure, especially for Afghan women. It seems high time to demand that the international community review the effectiveness of what, so far, has been a largely military approach to Afghanistan's many challenges.

While I am encouraged by the Obama administration's recent shift in strategy towards an increased role for US troops in the protection of Afghan civilians, it begs the broader question of whether top-down military interventions imposed by the global North are the best means for securing a lasting peace in Afghanistan, or for that matter in any foreign country. Unless we are willing to question whether violence can truly ever be effective in bringing an end to violence, it is unlikely that this election will change anything in Afghanistan. It will not bestow legitimacy on Karzai, nor is it likely to bring greater security and safety to ordinary Afghans.

Even in the West, few believe any longer in the rhetoric that foreign troops are in Afghanistan primarily to rescue Afghan women from their oppressive culture and their tribal menfolk. For Afghans the narrative collapses under the harsh reality that in the past year attacks by pro-government or NATO forces kill one in three civilians. This is compounded by the violence inflicted by the Taliban and other armed groups on ordinary Afghans. This reality has left villages and towns with countless orphaned and maimed children and widows. Afghans have long memories. They remember that the Taliban were nurtured by Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, but they also resent the British imposed the Durand Line, which separates one people, the Pashtuns, across two nation states. They know that Al Qaeda emerged out of a network of non-Afghans who were recruited, armed and trained by US Special Forces and the CIA to fight alongside Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet army. And, they will remind you that it was not until the terrible attacks of 9/11 that anyone in the West cared about improving the lot of Afghan women or sought to engage in nation building.

As President of a foundation advancing the rights of women in over 160 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, I know too much about the suffering women endure in conflict zones. (See article at the Global Fund for Women website). Women and children are disproportionately represented among civilian casualties and make up the majority of the world's refugees. And, as always, where there are soldiers, women's bodies will be bought and sold to fulfill needs or simply used and destroyed at gunpoint.

Afghan women have had enough. They are tired of broken promises and of living in a land overrun by foreigners and armed militias. Women parliamentarians like Malalai Joya write, "the longer foreign troops stay in Afghanistan..., the worse the eventual civil war." They laugh outright at the argument that further militarization of their society will bring them peace and security. They track the rise in insurgent violence with a parallel increase in foreign military troops.

Today few of them talk about transformation as they did in 2004, when bright-eyed teachers dreamed of re-planting orchards in the Panjshir valley. Even the bravest and most resolute women -- teachers, journalists, activists, elected officials who withstood years of Taliban rule -- speak wearily and warily of survival. "We want our daughters to get to school safely and we hope women candidates stay alive through these elections".

What I hear from women on the ground in Afghanistan is that their nation has far too many missiles, aircraft, and automatic weapons and far too few medical clinics, schools, and libraries. Women building peace in Afghanistan agree with President Obama on the need for a temporary stabilizing military presence in this volatile situation -- but not without a clear timetable for withdrawal and a defined plan to invest in Afghanistan's civil and social infrastructure. What is most urgently needed now are not more military troops, but troops of trained Afghan midwives, doctors, horticulturalists, scientists, engineers, teachers, and entrepreneurs. Although many Afghan women will be stopped from voting in these elections, their voices are not silent and their advice should be heeded.

This article by Kavita N. Ramdas is also featured on Commondreams.org

Ellen Snortland: Women's Equality Day -- Thank you President Jimmy Carter

2009-08-26T19:02:38Z

Please join me in a movement to have August 26 declared a national voting holiday. The date is important because it commemorates the day women finally won the vote in the US: August 26, 1920. Besides, there are no holidays in August, no other holidays celebrate peaceful non-violent social change, and we have nary a holiday that celebrates the non-maternal accomplishments of women. Hey, I'm not against Mother's Day... it's just that not all of us are mothers. And isn't having a day every year devoted to registering new voters a long overdue idea?

And for the more materialistic among us, August needs a reason to buy cards and gifts. Holidays help the economy, right?

In any event, the best gift human rights activists could possibly think of just came from President Jimmy Carter in his very public and moral stand against misogyny that is rooted in religion. In what must have been an excruciating personal decision, Carter has severed ties with the Southern Baptists over their systemic discrimination against women and girls. For a copy of the full text, please see his Op-Ed that was recently published in the UK Observer.

For the many women and men who have worked tirelessly for women's rights internationally and domestically, this has been a particularly important week. It was kicked off by the stunning and vital special issue of the Sunday New York Times Magazine dedicated to saving the world's women, that included Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's centerpiece article called "The Women's Crusade."

Another piece in the same issue is highly important. Entitled "The Power of the Purse," by Lisa Belkin, it highlights the work of philanthropists Helen LaKelly Hunt and her sister Swanee Hunt in their mission and vision to get other wealthy women onboard with financing women's liberation. Shockingly, the philanthropic pie has been very meager when it comes to human rights for women and girls. The Hunt duo has shifted millions of dollars through their initiative, Women Moving Millions (W.M.M.) and have had a huge impact already in the few years they've been in action. Helen LaKelly Hunt was inspired by her study of the suffrage movement. Women did not fund women in getting the vote. She's personally shifting women's own gender bias when it comes to deep purses.

We do need a voting holiday. Let the suffragists become an icon for peaceful non-violent social change. Consider them: a whole core of very human, very vulnerable, non-voting women worked tirelessly to get the vote for all women, knowing full well they may never get to vote themselves. They knew human rights for women started with the vote. They demonstrated the notion that the generous, wise human being is the kind of person who will plant a tree, even if they know they'll never enjoy its shade or its fruit.

The suffragists also demonstrated for the first time on the planet that force (a.k.a violence), is not the only way to get things done. The women who won the vote for us -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Stone, Matilda J. Gage, Carrie Chapman Catt and others... their names should fill memorial walls -- may have given their lives, but they did it without literally shedding their or anyone else's blood to do it. Not one shot was fired to enfranchise half of the population. Gandhi watched as a young lawyer in South Africa and got many of his ideas of civil disobedience and non-violent change from watching the gals.

There were male suffragists too, bless their human-rights hearts. By the way, the term "suffragette" is an example of turn-of-the-century media "spin." There were enough men involved in the women's rights movement that the anti-vote males in the media used "suffragette" to humiliate men who were "suffragists," diminishing the term by putting an "ette" on the end.

Meanwhile, get a copy of HBO's Iron Jawed Angels -- Netflix and Amazon both carry it -- and check out the courage of the foremothers whose shoulders we stand on. In a tribute to "times do change," I pitched a Movie of the Week idea to Lorimar Television around 25 years ago, about the fight it took to get women the vote. I was told it was too boring; not enough people care about women's history. This makes the HBO movie even more relevant, although there's still been no major motion picture about the most dramatic, non-violent move to create democracy on the face of this planet. Maybe the climate is finally shifting.

Until we accomplish making August 26 a national holiday, make it a point to do SOMETHING. Make a donation to The Hunger Project, an organization which has focused on women and girls for many years. Subscribe or re-subscribe to Ms. Magazine. Register to vote, or register someone else. Bake a cake, twitter a remembrance to women and girls, burn a bra. Who cares... on this date, just remember and honor the suffragists any way you can.

Diane Tucker: Freed Academic Haleh Esfandiari: 'Iranians Want Evolution, Not Revolution'

2009-08-26T13:48:07Z

Renowned journalist and academic Haleh Esfandiari used to fly from Washington, D.C., to Tehran every Christmas to visit her elderly mother. This pleasant routine changed dramatically in 2007 when Esfandiari was arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, with a little help from the United States. The soft-spoken intellectual (and grandmother of two) spent months in Evin Prison, sleeping on the floor and enduring harrowing interrogations, until an international outcry hastened her release.

Yesterday I spoke with Esfandiari at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she is the director of the Middle East Program.

At 67 years of age, you were put in solitary confinement in a Tehran prison. The physical stress was horrendous. I'm curious about the mental stress -- was your age a plus or a minus?

Haleh Esfandiari: It was a plus, because whenever I thought about my wonderful life and family and friends, I knew I had already experienced everything a person could wish for. I had a wonderful childhood in Iran. I enjoyed going to college in Austria. I was successful, I think, in my career. So I thought, "If worse comes to worse, and I am sentenced to life in prison...so what? I have had a beautiful life."

Even so, sometimes you daydreamed about being rescued by your husband, Shaul. When he accompanied the rest of your family on a vacation to Kennebunkport without you, did you feel abandoned?

I begged my family to go to Maine. We had planned this vacation together. I told them that if they really loved me, they would honor my wish. My husband, who is Jewish, couldn't come to Iran anyway. The authorities would have arrested him at the airport, and made a showcase out of both of us.

Tell me about the day you received a single white rose in prison.

One morning, one of the female guards walked into my cell, still wearing her veil. From underneath the veil, she pulled out a white rose and silently handed it to me. I was fighting back tears.

You're fighting back tears now.

Yes, just remembering her moving gesture....it really was amazing. I love flowers. I put the rose in a paper cup along with a leaf I had found on the prison grounds. When the rose faded, I placed it between the pages of the one book I had in my cell.

Iranian women once enjoyed so much more freedom than they do today, it's no wonder they poured into the streets to protest the election results. But weren't these women taking a huge risk?

When the Islamic Revolution took place 30 years ago, the new government suspended the Family Protection Law -- the pillar of women's rights. This law covered the age of marriage, the right to seek a divorce, the right to work, and so on. When it was suspended, men once again could take as many wives as they wanted, could take away the children in case of divorce, could stop women from leaving the house. At that moment -- the moment their rights were taken away -- Iranian women started protesting, and they have been a major force ever since. The movement culminated three years ago with the launch of the One Million Signatures Campaign. Some of the campaigners had been jailed, but not deterred.

More than 100 post-election protesters have been arrested for plotting to overthrow the regime -- the same bogus charge you faced. In your case, a tsunami of high-level international support hastened your release. Without global intervention, what will happen to these jailed demonstrators?

I'm very worried about them. I'm especially concerned about Kian Tajbakhsh, the Iranian-American who was in jail with me two years ago. Kian was freed a month after I was, but he opted to stay in Iran. For some reason the authorities have decided to go after him again. As far as I know, Kian has kept a low profile. They must be rehashing old charges, which is a worrisome development.

A number of the more than 100 people who are being put on trial are elite members of the Islamic Republic. They don't want to overthrow the regime, only to open up the system. I hope there will be serious international condemnation of this show trial. I hope the European Union will protest as a bloc.

Many Iranian expatriates would love to speak out against the mass trial, but they're afraid of endangering family and friends back home.

They can convey their fears, unhappiness, and concerns to their congressmen. Luckily, Iranians have representatives in Congress so our voices can be heard. At least, we hope our voices are heard.

In your beautifully written memoir, you said that two decades of authoritarian rule have turned a generation of students into outright revolutionaries. How convinced are you that the Green Wave is home grown, and not the work of foreign agents?

I'm 100 percent convinced the Green movement is home grown. First of all, it was an accidental movement. Mousavi was campaigning in the provinces when a young man came and put a green shawl around his neck. Mousavi thought the effect was beautiful, so he started wearing green, then his wife started wearing green, pretty soon everyone was wearing green. I truly don't believe this was a color revolution like the rose revolution of Georgia, or the orange revolution of Ukraine. This was a grassroots movement for one purpose only when it started -- to support Mousavi and get him elected the next president of Iran.

Yes, the Bush Administration allocated millions of dollars to promote democracy in Iran, but that effort failed. The people of Iran were upset about the money because they wanted change from within.

Students in Iran are surprisingly quiet right now.

They're scared. A mass trial will do that.

Every two or three years, there has been a wave of protests like this in Iran. But this time I think there has been a fundamental change. I don't know how the government is going to gain back its credibility. I'm stunned by the mass trial, which will hurt the regime more than they think it will.

In prison you wrote a children's book to keep from losing your mind. Tell me about the plot.

I wrote the book in my head, because I had no paper in my cell. It's the story of a fairy princess who was born in a castle, where she lives a beautiful life. Then one day she becomes lost in the woods, and stumbles upon many different animals. In the story, I describe her encounter with each animal. Her mother is a fairy, too, and a wonderful woman who watches over the princess throughout her journey. The story ends when the princess arrives back at the castle, bringing all of the animals with her. She puts them in a boat that looks a little like Noah's Ark, which she floats on a lake near the castle.

It was very soothing for me to write this story, because I could imagine telling it to my two granddaughters one day. This mental image kept me going.

After everything you've been through, do you still love Iran?

Yes, I love the mountains...the sea...the blue sky. I love my Iranian family. I love the Iranian people. Every country has good and evil people -- it's impossible to get through life without stumbling over evil people.

I wrote a book about my experience because I believe I would not have been arrested -- and the demonstrators would not be facing trial -- if the United States and Iran had diplomatic relations. It will be difficult to start this process now, because of recent developments. The Ahmadinejad regime does not have legitimacy inside Iran and as a result, they may feel too weak and vulnerable to sit at the negotiating table at this time.

Haleh at age six, wearing her first piece of "real" jewelry -- a brooch from her mother.

* * *

Haleh Esfandiari's memoir of her months spent in solitary confinement in Tehran's Evin Prison is called My Prison, My Home. It will be published on September 1st.

Diane Tucker's other posts on the situation in Iran can be read here, here, here, here, and here.

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Sybil Adelman Sage: Do We Really Need to Vote?

2009-08-05T09:50:28Z

Democracy is catching on internationally, albeit with an added component to the electoral process. There's the traditional campaigning, the day at the polls, the tabulating, but the announcement of the winner is now accompanied by a massive protest.

While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was being sworn in as president of Iran Wednesday, hundreds or perhaps thousands of protesters battled with riot police in what was the largest protest in the country in a generation.

Ahmadinejad's response was, "It is not important who voted for whom. What we need is national greatness." An effective cost-saving measure might be to eliminate the voting as it appears to be irrelevant and misleading.

Moldova Elections: Communists Lose

2009-07-30T15:27:17Z

Moldova's pro-Western opposition parties have defeated the Communist Party in repeat parliamentary elections.

With most of the votes tabulated, the Communist Party has lost the majority it held for eight years in parliament, winning about 45 percent of the vote.

The Liberal Democrat Party followed the Communists with 16.39 percent of the vote, and the Democratic Party had 12.61 percent and Our Moldova Alliance 7.37 percent, the CEC reported.

The elections have become representative of whether Moldovo aligns with the European Union or Moscow.

The opposition parties have planned to form a coalition government which will give them 53 seats of the 101 seats in parliament. That, however, won't be enough to choose a president. The Communists, with 48 seats in the legislature, can block the pro-Western forces from making that decision. Fears have risen that this will take the country into a prolonged political crisis.

This election was held four months after the Communist Party first claimed victory in a parliamentary election last April that resulted in violent riots, damaged property and the opposition claiming that the election was rigged.

As per the constitution, parliament was dissolved and new elections were set last month by outgoing President Vladimir Voronin after the Communists failed to elect a successor to Voronin, the leader of the Communists who had served the maximum two years in office.

According to the NY Times most of Moldova's young, desperate for change, voted against the Communists. While they found their support amongst older and more rural population of the country that aligns with Russia.

In his eight years in power Mr. Voronin has been buoyed by an older generation nostalgic for the stability of Moldova's Soviet past. In those years he has hewed closest to Russia, which maintains a contingent of troops in Moldova's breakaway Transdniester region and supplies the majority of Moldova's energy. Moscow also recently promised Moldova a $500 million loan.

Like Iran, thousands of tech-savvy youth used Twitter to express their dissatisfaction with the situation in Europe's poorest and most unstable country, that was once a part of Romania, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

The Twitter Revolution made the difference," says Sam Greene, deputy director of the Moscow Carnegie Center. "One of the key lessons here is that in this modern information world, it's very difficult to rig an election. Even in Europe's poorest country people have access to all sorts of unofficial sources of news and information.

However, Greene told the Monitor that he thinks a solution will be found:

"Moldova is one of the more competitive political environments in the former Soviet Union, it's got a basically democratic system, and I wouldn't underestimate the potential for pragmatism."

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