Unstuffing the Ballot Box

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'What we learned after Florida and Ohio is that election protection needs to be 24/7 and aware of all aspects of the threat to voting rights,' says Mark Ritchie, who coordinated the wildly successful November 2 Campaign, a consortium of nonprofit groups that registered 5 million voters in 2004. 'We're seeing more and more networks of state-based groups that are fighting for good legislation and getting the public involved.'

Citizen voices have been remarkably effective at turning back some of the worst abuses and advancing the best reforms. Because states and localities administer elections (as Florida proved), the voter-rights movements have sprung up in nearly every state. Good lists of issues and groups in your state can be found at www.electionline.org and www.voteraction.org.

In Minnesota, the Voting Rights Coalition-which yoked traditional volunteer groups such as the League of Women Voters to progressive-action groups-got model legislation passed in 2005 to block voter-intimidation efforts. The bill outlaws tactics such as importing out-of-state challengers to harass voters at polling places and requires challengers to have personal knowledge that an individual isn't eligible. It also allows employees at nursing homes, shelters for battered women and the homeless, and other licensed residential facilities to vouch for residents, allowing them to vote.

In New Mexico, two citizen groups-Verified Voting in New Mexico and United Voters of New Mexico-upended voter-suppression efforts by backing a strong new state law in 2005 that requires voter-verified paper trails. In place of photo-based standards that make society's most vulnerable jump through another logistical hoop, the New Mexico paradigm allows voters to state their name and give the last four digits of their Social Security number, or show as identification a utility bill, a bank statement, a tribal ID, a government check, or an address-bearing paycheck.

Even in the most hidebound states, a single inspired voter has made a difference. David Dill is a Stanford computer science professor who according to the Seattle Weekly (March 10, 2004) 'became interested in computer voting when the state of Georgia had technical problems with its new voting machines in 2002. When Dill discovered his own county, Santa Clara in California, was about to start using electronic voting machines without paper output, he swung into action.' Dill started an online petition calling for paper trails; the nation's top computer geeks hit on it, and he eventually formed Verified Voting (www.verifiedvoting.org), which has exposed programming pitfalls and mobilized citizen lobbyists to fight the reckless purchase of paperless voting equipment. Even though Ohio proved itself a 2004 quagmire, abuses probably would have been worse if Verified Voting action alerts had not prompted 31 counties to delay or reject paper-free systems for use in that year's election.

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