- 'An End to the Southern Strategy, But No Post-Racial America' says David Love
- "A Question of Place": An essay on the power of community
- Just Equally Speaking….
- Eagles owe Philadelphia the 8 million it needs to keep libraries open
- who would like to see Verizon offer cable TV in Phila?
- Council Committee Passed the Freeze
- Carol Campbell Passes Away
- My first trip to the public library
- Fight digital exclusion
- What if half of Philadelphia didn't have roads?
Kerry Calls For Expanded Voting In Nevada Caucuses, Blasts Historic Right-Wing Opposition
Submitted by RepMarkBCohen on Wed, 01/16/2008 - 10:43pm.
Recently, we had a heated controversy here over my view that the Pennsylvania primary discriminates against Pennsylvanians, by being held after many candidates are eliminated from contention and usually after each party has already selected its nominee. I said I would like to see more voting rights for Pennsylvanians than currently exist.
2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry has recently weighed in over a similar controversy in Nevada, about whether Nevada's pathbreaking workplace voting sites in Las Vegas should be banned in the aftermath of the active Culinary Workers Union endorsement of Barack Obama. To the best of my knowledge, workplace voting is something that does not exist anywhere in the country outside of Nevada at this time. Kerry clearly also clearly favors voting rights expansion.
Kerry posted his remarks today on the TPM Special Guests Blog, at http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2008/jan/16/let_the_people_vot....
"For too many years," Kerry writes,"American politics has been divided between two types of people: those who want more people to vote, and those who want fewer people to vote....
"Well, it's troubling to me that now we see another kind of effort to keep people from voting in Nevada. But this time, it's not the Republicans trying to limit the vote, it's a fight within our own party.
"Every Democratic Presidential campaign should condemn this effort in a heartbeat. This is just plain and simple a matter of principle not politics; the Party that marched alongside Dr. King and stood up with President Kennedy to open up the schoolhouse doors in Alabama needs to be the Party of enfranchisement not disinfranchisement in Nevada this Saturday. Some convictions are too important to be bent and broken to try and tip a few votes this way or that."
Kerry then discusses the technical details of the issue, notes that the pro-Obama Culinary Workers work on Saturday and could not otherwise vote when the caucuses will be held, and concludes:
"Here is the bottom line. I understand people gut it out to win on election day. But certain tactics make victory phyrrhic--empty--hollow--and not worth winning if you lose what really counts in the process. And you know what, if the Culinary Workers had backed someone besides my choice in this race--Barack Obama--I'd still say its right for every candidate to make sure these workers get to vote.
"Whether its scrubbing African-Americans from voting rolls, challenging the registrations of people with Hispanic surnames, or not providing enough voting machines in the neighborhoods of working families, the right wing has spent years denying people the right to vote in the pursuit of raw political gain. All this time, Democrats have stood up for the rights of all people to cast their votes. We need to remain that kind of party--voter suppression is wrong, all the time, anywhere.
"Open the caucus sites, and let people vote."
Voting rights expansion has become one of the key core values of the Democratic Party, in Washington, D.C., in Harrisburg, and in many other places. It is today one of the issues which lead a good number of people to define themselves as a Democrat.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
So, then...
Marc,
The issue with Nevada is that they are trying to disenfranchise people who work, so cannot caucus.
So, then, presuming you agree, why don't you introduce something like vote by mail? Wouldn't that let a lot more people with busy lives participate?
We Already Have Extensive Absentee Voting Allowed
We already have extensive absentee voting allowed for all senior citizens, for people who are ill or disabled, and for people who travel outside their home county or municipality on election day.
I have voted in the past for universal absentee ballots for any reason. It is probably a good idea to push more aggressively, but there are so few people who take advantage of absentee voting now that it is clearly not a great aid to turnout to increase the eligibility for it from somewhere around half the population to the entire population.
I would favor experimenting with a mail ballot sent to all voters early in the process for the 2012 Presidential primaries so that we could have a Presidential primary without voting machines and polling place costs early in the process.
Mail ballots though create far greater opportunities for fraud than do polling places, and new safeguards would have to be developed that preserve election integrity wihout making it difficult for people to vote.
Primary-by-mail
I really like the idea of a vote-by-mail primary, especially for the Presidential nomination. Is there much history of fraud in Presidential primaries? (Generals, of course, and local primaries, sure.) At any rate, it doesn't seem like a dealbreaker.
Of course, you can't really caucus-by-mail, unless some sort of virtual caucus or instant runoff system were allowed.
Mark, vote by mail and our
Mark, vote by mail and our system of absentee voting are not the same thing. Oregon has vote by mail, and it has fraud checks, and came in with 87% turnout in 2004. Saying absentee use shows vote by mail will not be effective is pretty goofy.
You are really into experimenting for the Presidential election in four years. If you are concerned about more people voting, why not start sooner?
don't get me started
ah, something I actually do for a living. A number of states have vote-by-mail systems in the form of no-excuse absentee balloting. This is a good website to learn more.
In California, it's expected that over 60% of voters in the 08 general election will vote using absentee ballots.
We could really use this here in Philadelphia.
Here's an email I sent last month to Rep. Babette Josephs, who is the chair of our state rules committee (and could make this happen):
Mark, you should really get on top of this and talk to Babette too.
Did you get a response
from Babette?
A whole package of voting reforms including these ideas, and ideas you, Marc Stier, and others put forward a while ago, such as advertising elections and putting dates and voting places on utilitiy bills, would get some attention in Harrisburg.
It might be a good way of getting people to forget about Bonusgate. And, if it passed the House, would give Democrats running against Republican State Senators some ammunition. (I assume the Republican Senate would vote these ideas down.)
Of course, if our Democratic leadership in the Senate could recruit some good candidates, that would help too. So would non-partisan redistricting.
It Takes A Constitutional Amendment
It takes a constitutional amendment to end the restrictions in the Pennsylvania constitution which bar universal absentee ballots or mail ballots, and passage of such an amendment takes at least three years.
I am not sure that we can get an amendment passed in time to impact the 2012 election, but doing so is a worthwhile goal if the Senate keeps dragging its feet on moving the primary up. Of course, the Senate and the voters would have to join the House in approving the constitutional amendment.
Mark- Really?
Can you point me to that case law?
Article VII, Section 14 Deals With Absentee Voting
Article VII, Section 14 of the Pennsylvania Constitution deals with absentee voting.
It limits absentee voting to those who meet the tests of being absent from their city, borough, incorporated town, township or other "general purpose unit of government" for reasons of duties, occupation, or business; or have illness,or physical disability, or a county job with duties that prevents them from voting.
Federal law trumps the Pennsylvania Constitution. The federal government has provided that all people 65 or over shall be allowed to vote by absentee ballot. Perhaps we could have mail voting for all people 65 or over but I would question the political sense of that, and others more worried than I about the potential of abuse would question why we want to have a higher percentage of the ballots cast by people with reading problems due to the aging process.
I am aware that the terminology of voting by mail is different from the terminology of absentee balloting. But I think it is a losing argument before the legislature and the court of public opinion, let alone the judiciary, to argue that a specific section of the constitution dealing with how people vote without going to the polls is irrelevant to a new process for accomplishing the same thing.
That is a new wrinkle on Constitutional Law
Mark, that is a strange reading of Constitutional law. The Federal Constitution, PA Constitution and liberal democracies in general restrict what the government can do in limiting our rights; they do not restrict the government from extending additional rights.
In other words, the section of the Constitution does not limit what absentee ballots can be be cast. It sets a floor for what must be allowed.
I searched, and could not find not one piece of case law to back you up. In fact, absentee voting has already been extended to people who go on vacation. And, when it was challenged by voters who said absentee voting should not have been extended to them, it was upheld in both State and Federal courts.
See Kaufman v. Osser, 441 Pa. 150, 271 A.2d 236:, which:
I Wish Constitutions Did Not Restrict Government
A key purpose of the Pennsylvania Constitution is to restrict the powers of government. That is why the provisions are so incredibly detailed, and why the Pennsylvania Constitution, like most or all other state constitutions, is far longer in length than the federal constitution.
We have federal courts that are over 85% Republican. They do not rush to declare state constitutions in violations of the federal constitution.
The clear trend of the state supreme court has been to extend an ever more literal reading to the Pennsylvania constitution. This trend has been manifest in the court's striking down a variety of statutes for failing to be enacted in accordance with the detailed provisions in the state constitution, declaring that the Ethics Act and the Election Code must be strictly interpreted with the result of kicking more and more candidates off the ballot, and various other decisions.
A recent example of the Supreme Court's using the words of the Constitution to strike down a statute creating more rights was the case invalidating the section of the hate crimes law covering hate crimes against gays; they blamed the Senate for amending the bill inappropriately.
An older example of using the Pennsylvania Constitution to take away rights is the Supreme Court's striking down the Philadelphia City Charter's recall provision for public officials because it was not authorized in the state constitution.
One of the oldest examples of all of using the constitution to take away rights was the provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution banning blacks from voting that lasted until a Reconstruction-era amendment to the federal constitution invalidated it.
The modern Supreme Court has declined to rule that the Pennsylvania Constitution requires adequate educational expenditures for each child.
The idea that constitutions do not restrict government from granting additional rights has also met resistance in the federal courts, which have struck down various affirmative action plans, various school integration plans, and most infamously, the Florida election recount in 2000 for the Bush/Gore election.
My favorite Supreme Court Justice, Penn graduate William Brennan, could have written that constitutions do not prevent the granting of new rights in one or more of his dissenting decisions, but that is not the law of the land today at either the state or federal level.
Mark,
Mark,
Again, a case has been heard by both the PA Supreme Court and Federal Court on an extension of absentee voting, and a challenge to it was rejected.
Second, of course government can extend protections to people, despite the conservative march towards killing good laws. Why are people pushing for ENDA? Because the government can prescribe additional protections. Despite the terrible SCOTUS, we are no longer in the Lochner era, right?
Third, yes, affirmative action, etc. has been targeted by the conservative supreme court, but you are misconstruing why they are overturned. Why? Because they have decided that it is, in a sense, discrimination, and that given the history of race in our country, any law that deals with race is reviewed under strict scrutiny. Vote by mail would receive no such scrutiny.
We Are Moving In The Direction of the Lochner Era
We are moving in the direction of the Lochner Era. I am not happy about that, but that is the way we are going. The trend on judicial appointments is not good. But you can help reverse that trend, now and in the future.
To get a bill through the Pennsylvania legislature is not an easy task, especially if the Constitution appears to ban it.
If you want to author or co-author a letter signed by law professors and other constitutional authorities agreeing with your position that universal voting by mail is allowed by the Pennsylvania Constitution, that would be a first step towards persuading legislators that the Pennsylvania Constitution does not ban mail voting for all Pennsylvania voters.
I certainly will be glad to distribute such a letter to relevant legislative decision-makers.
The legislature next meets on January 28, 2008, and I would welcome having such a letter from Penn law professors and any other constitutional authorities you can find at that time, or at a later time if a January 28, 2008 deadline is not meetable. The issue here is the Pennsylvania Constitution section I referenced above, Article VII, Secion 14, not whether mail voting would violate the 14th amendment; it clearly would not.
"I Wish Constitutions Did Not Restrict Government"
Isn't that the point of a constitution in democracies--to prevent goverment from overreaching onto our rights???
I mean, you can not like the precedent being set by the SCOTUS right now, but, at the very least, it is comforting that government powers are in check (at least in theory).
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
I swear to god I am not trying to start anything
but in my opinion the dominant thrust of the recent Court precedent is not even so much to restrict government, but to foreclose access to the courts for people seeking to enforce whatever legal rights (to not be discriminated against at work, to vote, to not have the state mixed up with the church, and on and on).
God, I hate them.
Anyway the main thrust of this conversation is pretty nonsensical.
Dan's right that in most cases the constitution sets a floor, and protections and rights and programs can be added. I don't see that the existing constitutional language is hostile to such an addition. Sure, with a politicized court, maybe sometimes you run into trouble. But all this worrying is manufacturing a constitutional conflict that doesn't much exist.
Help Dan Write A Statement For Law Professors To Sign
Jennifer, I am not interested in discussing for the sake of discussing.
Blogs and interactive websites about politics are not recognized as legal authorities.
A statement by law professors would be a start--a small start, but a real start--in convincing legislators and interest groups that the Pennsylvania constitution does not take away the right of the legislature to extend balloting to those who do not come to the polls.
The last time the Pennsylvania legislature extended absentee ballot voting rights we passed a constitutional amendment to do so. That is because we felt that doing so was necessary.
If it is not necessary, we need legal authority to say that.
Please help begin the process of generating legal authority for the views that you and Dan have on this issue.
Limits of Governmental Power Are Not Neutral
The limits of governmental power are not neutral; they benefit one side another. In the case of the long discredited ban on voting by blacks in Pennsylvania, they obviously limited the rights of African-American citizens. In the case of Article VII, Section 14, they strongly appear on the their face to limit the power of those who would like to vote without showing up at the polls.
Limits on the ability of the legislature to grant property tax relief to homeowners clearly adversely affect homeowners. Limits on the ability of the legislature to enact a progressive income tax clearly benefit high-income Pennsylvanians at the expense of moderate income Pennsylvanians. Limits on the ability of the legislature to fund non-public schools benefit believers in separation of church and state and public education at the expense of those who prefer religious education.
Limiting the powers of government are just as much a contested battleground as expanding the powers of government. Both advantage some positions, and disadvantage other positions.
Hate Crimes Law digression
My understanding of the court decision invalidating PA's extension of hate crime protections to gays, women and the disabled was based on the legislation it was attached to, a bill about agricultural sabotage. The decision, triggered by alwsuit for Michael Marcavage's REpent America group, was based on finding the two different bills as being too disparate in their intent, that the extension of hate-crimes law was deemed too unrelated to the agricultural bill it was attached to as an amendment.
As I understand it you Rep. Cohen could reintroduce the same legislation as its own bill and it would be perfectly Constitutional. I had heard in fact that Babbette jospehs was looking at reintroducing it, though perhaps you might know some more about that.
It was not an "extension of rights" issue in other words - it was simply an issue of how the legislation was put together.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/11423086.html
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
A Procedural Way of Stopping Extension of Gay Rights
The Court found a procedural way of invalidating a law aimed at stopping hateful threatening acts against gays.
Of course the law can and will be re-introduced. But it will not be passed a second time without a lot of hard work that will inevitably take away from other efforts.
But that the Supreme Court found a technical way to kill a very good bill for gays hardly speaks well of its likelihood of of issuing a broad interpretation of a constitutional provision whose obvious facial meaning is that one can only vote without showing up at the polls under certain limited circumstances.
Of course I agree it was a
Of course I agree it was a horrible decision particularly since as a legislator you know full well there are hundreds of pieces of legislation that pass every year similarly Frankenstein-ed together - this bill "amended" to that bill - that the PA Supreme Court never goes out of its way to overturn. If it wasn't about protecting gays and lesbians the joining of disparate bills would have been a non-issue.
It seemed however that you were suggesting that the court's decision was based on an across-the-board Constitutional philosophy, rather that in this instance the court decided to be legislative nit-pickers (I wonder why) when so many other piece of similar amendments never get challenged.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Maybe the PA Primary will be relevant after all
or so says an article in the patriot-news today
http://www.pennlive.com/columns/patriotnews/lieberman/index.ssf?/base/co...
Right now that is more likely for the Republicans than the Democrats. But my guess is that Super Tuesday won't be the end of it for the Democrats because Barack and Hillary will each win a substantial number of states and delegates that day.
As for mail voting, here is my concern:
Are we progressive better off if voting is a more individual or more collective experience? When people have to come to a polling place, we are takign part in a collective activity. We are all responding to the circumstances obtaining tha tday. There is an opportunity for activists and organizations to get people out to vote on a single day and through a single effort. And there is an opportunity for their fellow citizens to have one more chance to talk with them.
We lose some of that if we vote by mail. Of course, unions have been organizing vote by mail elections for years. So it is not impossible to do a campaign that tries to persuade people and get them out to vote for a mail election. Still some sense of commonality might be lost if we vote by mail.
On the other hand, more people might vote.
Who specifically might be advantaged and disadvantaged if we had vote by mail? Well, to start with, the ward structure would be a big loser. Most committee people don't knock on doors. Their influence comes at the polls in ways fair and foul. They would lose a lot of that influence if we vote by mail. (Perhaps that is why people who have the support of the ward structure, like Mark Cohen, won't support this.)
Organizations that can put a lot of people on the ground are advantaged: labor unions in particular.
Organizations that can motivate people by direct mail and, especially, email campaigns are advantaged: Right now email is more important for progressives than conservatives but that could quickly change. This also means that more work might be done motivating middle class people to vote than working class people.
On the other hand, if lots more people vote, that would probably mean that the percentage of working class and poor people in the electorate will go up. This is definitely a good thing from a progressive perspective.
Fraud won't go away but will change in character. What Local 98 did for Jack Kelly will become more common.
I'd like to see the research on the effect of mail ballots on voting rates. (Was the 87% turnout in 04 87% of registered voters or 87% of voting age population? What was the turnout rate in Oregon in 2000?) If turnout really goes up a lot then, all things considered, I'd probably be willing to mail ballots a try.
As far as I'm concerned, you ended the debate right here
If it can be shown that mail voting would increase the numbers of poor and working class who vote, is there anything else left to debate?
that's where the fun stops
that unfortunately is not not something that can be proven. the reality is that simply having these laws on the books does not increase turnout really at all. however, as is pointed out above, it does make groond work easier for a lot of groups: so, if you have the capacity to do doors and phones and mail, you can increase turn-out. i will write more soon, i promise.
OK, but like you say, it has the potential to increase turnout
And that is the only way we can get out of this circle-jerk between Republicans and Dems who want to emulate Republicans to capture the "swing vote."
No doubt, conservatives might be better at realizing the potential of increase in turnout due to mail voting - but that's where you come in, Ray.
And what's the alternative? Hillary Clinton?
The Communal Voting Booth
The thing is, voting by yourself in a sequestered, private booth is already a pretty individualized experience. There is a charm in chatting with the poll workers, and (sometimes) the people working outside, and the occasional neighbor, but it's not any more so than going to the post office. I've never had a substantial conversation about politics (and hardly anything else) at a polling place. It's nothing like a caucus, a community meeting, etc., or like a committeeperson or canvasser knocking on your door to speak with you and make their case.
On the other hand, vote-by-mail could make voting a more deliberative experience, which could potentially benefit progressives very much. Candidates might be more inclined to get more information about themselves (and/or their opponents) to voters, and voters could compare names on ballots with those from progressive orgs in addition to newspapers and ward ballots. If candidates would depend on information rather than ballot position, I think we'd be much better off.
Often, the opposite case is made -- vote-by-mail disturbs the private sanctity of the voting booth, husbands can bully their wives, etc. But on the positive side, there is no reason why vote-by-mail is necessarily more private/individual than a booth. Far from it.
Besides, if I know myself, I'll have my ballot filled out and sitting on my table until election day. Let them keep the polling places open on election day, for voters who never received their ballots (or lost them) and voters who haven't gotten their ballots in the mail. You can take a walk and save yourself a stamp.
Ah yes the idyllic
Ah yes the idyllic quaintness of the communal voting experience of Philadelphia.
Re: Fraud and the Kelly election
What protections are there in place against fraud and gaming the system by operatives "voting" for the elderly, infirm and institutionalized like what allegedly happened in the Kelly case? I imagine there are protections that could be set up, I'm just curious if Ray knows any specific ones already in place in other states.
Its always a balance, increasing enfranchisement but protecting against fraud.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
lots of answers
your questions about voter fraud and the question above about a loss of community via vote by mail are very common. check out the website i linked to above or any of these sites for tons of answers:
www.mydd.com/story/2006/4/26/101538/711
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/us/04voting.html
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40032-2004Dec31.html
in short, OR has a crazy signature verification system that is supposedly fraud-proof (not even a little fraud gets through). beyond which of course, paper vote by mail is much safer than unreliable electronic machines.
i have been planning to write more about this at length, so maybe i will finally get it together this week.
also, remember, VBM and/or no-excuse absentee voting would allow anyone to vote by mail without being away from home or elderly or infirm.
I'm very interested in the
I'm very interested in the concept. It would be great for backyard barbeque campaigning and a death knell for those perpetual squabbles over who dumped who from their "official" ballot. It would increase participation but also mean a more democratic Democratic party.
Still I would love details about how signature verification in OR works in closely contested elections. Those links gave a good general background but did not go into a ton of details on this one point and the devil is in the details.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Disgusted by teachers' union's actions in Nevada
As a member of AFT, I am disgusted by my union’s attempt to make it more difficult for the culinary workers of Nevada to participate in the political process.
Teachers have much more control of their time than most unionized workers and by virtue of income and education have greater opportunities to participate in politics.
Since many of the culinary workers (unlike teachers) have to work on weekends, the Democrats of Nevada decided to have caucus sites on the Las Vegas Strip to allow the culinary workers to participate. Everyone involved in local Nevada politics was apparently on board with the arrangements; however, when the culinary workers endorsed Obama, the pro-Clinton teachers' union went to court to try to prevent Dem. party from holding the the Vegas Strip caucus sites.
Although Clinton says she had nothing to do with this attempt to disenfranchise the culinary workers, I find it hard to believe that the teachers’ union would have taken this action without consulting the Clinton campaign.
So although I am (still) a Clinton supporter, I am disgusted by this and very disappointed in her campaign’s willingness to adopt a “by any means necessary” strategy.