Author: mopress

By Greg Moses

As the fifty states work toward a federally mandated deadline to centralize their voter registration databases by Jan. 1 we ask why has there been so little critical attention given to these historic projects? The answer begins with a quote from a 2002 report by electionline:

Political parties and campaigns are primary beneficiaries of statewide registration databases. Almost every state that produces a statewide list also sells that list.

If political managers are already lining up to purchase clean lists from the new databases, then we have a pretty good structural hypothesis to explain why these databases are really going up, and why there is so little evidence that usual political players have anything to say by way of criticism about these projects.

In Great Britain, political parties are building hi-tek databases after the example of Republican Party USA, merging private databanks to make voter lists with “credit history, consumer-lifestyle surveys and purchasing habits.”

The 2002 electionline review of statewide voter registration has an air of inevitability about it. Statewide registrations are justified in order to prevent some “qualified” voter from being turned away because of poorly kept records.

A sidebar in the electionline report indicates however that Civil Rights voices worry, because centralized voter rolls make questionable purges of “qualified” voters more likely. Greg Palast’s “story of the year” in 2000 reported on Florida’s contract cleansing of 173,000 names from that state’s voter rolls. In Ohio 28,000 voters were purged in Lucas County alone during the summer of 2004.

In the justification of centralized voter rolls, we have the classic ingredients of ideology, the explanation that inverts reality. Let’s centralize voter rolls to ensure that “qualified” voters are well kept says ideology. But centralized voter rolls actually increase the likelihood that “qualified” voters can be more powerfully purged.

The fear of losing your right to vote is played up by ideology in order to install a system that promises to allay that fear, while the actual results are more likely to see the fear fulfilled.

Behind every ideological inversion lies an interest, and as we see the interest in this case is widely held among parties and campaign consultants who as a class are masters of ideology in the first place. From a political management point of view, eliminating “deadwood” from voter rolls is equivalent to eliminating bad contacts from campaign expenses.

From this point of view, it is really too neat to note that a “retail man” with experience as a car dealer and power-fundraiser has become the “gonna get it done” guy for the Texas database. Although we should note in fairness to the whole man that all our research on the project has been facilitated by his office, at his office, and he never fails to shake a hand.

But returning to the main question, the logical path to a red-blooded American ideology always bypasses, sidelines, and side-bars Civil Rights experience.

Here is the complaint of a Civil Rights voice that appears in a sidebar of the electionline report:

Some experts argue that national efforts to create statewide voter registration databases would exacerbate problems like those that arose from
Florida’s 2000 purge. In particular, the purging process has raised concerns. “We, the voting public, must have some control over who can purge names from the statewide databases,” said Penda Hair of the Washington-based Advancement Project.

Failure to care very much about Civil Rights experience is one symptom of what Palast calls our “apartheid democracy, in which wealthy white votes almost always count, but minorities are often purged or challenged or simply not recorded.”

And this apartheid democracy is enabled by a special brand of racist ideology which conjures fear about “dirty” voter rolls the better to “clean” them for good. When the road to American suffrage is viewed from within Civil Rights experience, the ruts of these paths are clear and continuous. Where there are powerful ways for technology to be used in apartheid fashion, they will be.

One answer to the coming predicament is to enact safeguard provisions such as those contained in an election-reform bill sponsored by John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich) that would require states to produce federal reports of purged voters prior to elections. Purged voters should also receive notice by mail. And public notice should be required prior to any batch operation on a voter database. A process of public review should be put in place. If there is a federal mandate for centralized voter rolls, there should be federal safeguards.

Finally a note of pure philosophy: even the Conyers solution (which we support) falls short of Penda Hair’s call for voter control over voter lists. A self-managing electorate? Is that something Americans would dare to think about? In the presence of ideas like that, doesn’t ideology warn us to be very afraid?

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electionline report: pdf format: march 2002

By Greg Moses

OffTheKuff

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” used to be a simple test for figuring out whether there ought to be a law. In the case of laws to require photo ID for voting, there is nothing broken and nothing that needs fixing. So why, in state after state, are Republicans fixing things that don’t need fixing while ignoring so many other things that do?

“You have to show ID to rent a video at Blockbuster,” said Texas sponsor of the photo ID bill Mary Denny to the AP. “That’s something simple and not nearly as sacred to us as casting our vote.”

Denny yesterday sounded just like a top Republican attorney from Atlanta last month who told the Texas Civil Rights Review that “photo IDs are required to rent movies.” Unless something different happens in Texas, this photo ID bill will pass on party-line votes just like it did in Georgia and in several other states where Republicans dominate the legislatures.

Republicans heading up these efforts do not claim that there is an ID problem among current voters. That’s not what’s broken. Rather, they say the problem is that voters are failing to behave like corporate customers and they say it like it’s a problem that needs fixing. They say it like we should be ashamed of ourselves for not behaving more like Blockbuster customers when it comes time to exercise our sacred right to vote.

Our best guess for why this is really happening? It is part of the Republican strategy to better manage the voting pool. As election analysts repeat time and again, the more voters in the pool there are, the more likely Democrats are to win, because try as they might, Democrats can’t shake the image of being the party most helpful to most people. So in the game of percentages, why wouldn’t the Republican Party want to keep the voting pool from growing?

And for Democrats who still think struggle is imperative, the game of percentages works exactly the other way. The more welcoming the voting process becomes, the more likely Democratic victory will be.

You might think that the Democratic calculation would get a groundswell of support from American citizens jealous to guard their inalienable rights to vote. You know, keep the government off our backs, and that kind of thing. But there are head games at play here that for some people make even the simple percentages very difficult to see.

In order to get inside the head game of this voter ID issue, first you have to put on your suit and climb into your Escalade. From this vantage point you can drive around from place to place, cutting across lanes, flashing your debit card, and showing off your drivers license in a world that not only makes way for you today, but which has a history of placing people like you right in the center of the history-making circle. In the portraits of USA presidents, you can kinda see yourself smiling back.

And this is the circle of experience that has always been at the center of voting in the USA. No Civil Rights struggle, no suffrage movement, no fifteenth or nineteenth amendment was required to constitutionalize their vote. The constitution has always been by, for, and about them. They can even go to Blockbuster and not get ripped off!

On the other hand, when I’m standing in line at my local video store (because I do not go to Blockbuster) none of the Escalade class are to be seen. When photo IDs are checked, the company is paying me no compliment, because the company simply wants to know where to find me later in case they want to collect some property or cash.

So how is this photo ID movement imposed by corporations upon working consumers supposed to serve as some kind of guide to the proper exercise of voting rights? I’m trying to think: what am I taking away from the voting booth that they might want to come and take back from me later?

Arguments about the photo ID movement tend to focus on existing voters. As with people driving Escalades, people who are already used to voting will probably not be much affected by the photo ID movement. But here it is crucial to remember that in America, most people are not used to voting. That’s right, democracy as we know it so far in America turns most people off and keeps most people away. This is the actual history of the matter even prior to the photo ID movement now underway.

Obviously, it should go without saying, new voters are not used to voting at all. And as we pointed out earlier, if Democrats are going to increase their chances of victory, they have to increase the likelihood that new voters will show up. But deeper than this, and something that even some Democrats don’t seem to get, if America wants to keep up a history of democracy then more and more people will have to feel encouraged to vote.

So in order to get inside the head game of this voter ID movement now we have to get out of our suit, our Escalade, and place ourselves in the position of someone marginal to the center, asking themselves, do they want to come in? What the photo ID movement says to these newcomers is that they first have something to prove.

It’s not enough that they live here, work here, and are subject to the acts of state that they live under. No, these things alone do not qualify them to voice their crucial opinion about the rulers who will reign above their heads. Because as the Escalade class is here to testify, American Democracy has never been about welcoming newcomers into THIS circle.

In the head game of voting rights, moderate Democrats offer the worst of trips. They are inside the circle and cannot suppose anymore what they must fight for in order to aggressively expand the circle for others. They think Democrats have already achieved a democracy worth fighting for. So they say things like, “I don’t see the problem with this” because basically for the moderate Democrat, living under Republican rule is good as the rest.

So we encourage the moderate Democrat to ask, how does the example of Blockbuster help to guide us in a matter so sacred as the human right to vote? If we are not capable of laughing out loud at the suggestion that Blockbuster should be our example of democracy then how far below the sacred have we sunk?

Actually it turns out, there’s something broke here that’s been broke for quite a while. But like the service manager at a dishonest car shop, Republicans are pointing to the wrong thing. What’s broke is that the desire to welcome new people into the American voting tent has once again been overcome by small minded suspicions about who they are and what they might do with their power amongst us. What’s broke is that we say we believe the revolutionary dream of American democracy, but we do not.

Our Shero, Karen Richards
You Hang In There, You Hear?

By Greg Moses

OffTheKuff / GritsForBreakfast

With the power of a new voter database coming online next year, will Texas be able to delete tens of thousands of voters with a few keystrokes of political will? Not if Karen Richards gets her way.

As director of voter registration in Texas, Richards has been asked to evaluate thousands of “business functions” that will be part of the new voter registration system, and her comments read like the barks of a guard dog every time the technology gets close to enabling an automated purge.

The frequency of her warnings against automated purges suggests that worries about the technology itself are not unfounded. Why would she have to repeat herself so often if the technology were not ready to swoop through voter lists? Considering the power of these databases nationwide, the Richards principles would make a fine template for federal law.

Time after time, Richards repeats her twin principles: (1) “only a user may explicitly cancel a voter in Texas” and (2) “events should not automatically change a voter’s status.”

Richards is meticulous in her logic. The eRegistry system made by election purveyor Hart InterCivic will match voter records against records of felons and deceased. But even if a felon record matches a voter, Richards argues that there can be no “certainty” of a match, because the possibility remains that identity theft may be involved. Says Richards, the computer may make all the matches it wants to “as long as flagging does not mean actually canceling the voter record.”

Or take the case of a registered voter who is contacted for jury duty and marks as an excuse for not showing up that she or he is not a citizen. eReigstry will see to it that the information gets tracked back to the voter database where the voter will be marked non-citizen and ineligible to vote. Say Richards once again: there should be no automatic deleting of voters for any reason.

If the database flags a record on the basis of some internal information flow, someone should look things over. But the Richards principles are clear and consistent. Do not have the computer delete any voter for any reason by automatic means. Or in language that we might call Richards rule number three: when it comes to correlating any information that would affect a voter’s status, the computer “should not attach anything more than an event to investigate.”

And Richards has commitments beyond the purge question. When a new voter is added says Richards, “a new voter card should automatically be created.” Sometimes comments from software vendor Hart InterCivic seem strangely nonresponsive. For example, when Richards insists that voter registrations should be created “automatically,” the Hart rep assures her that the user will have an “opportunity” to create such a card. But an “opportunity” is not “automatic.”

Or when Hart suggests that a “business function” will allow a voter to be registered and assigned a precinct without a complete or verifiable address, Richards says the function should be disabled. “Leaves room for error for voters not to receive certificates or appear on voter list,” writes Richards. Richards to Hart: disable that event.

With all these “business functions” to read and think about, we are beginning to understand the significance of March complaints from state staff that they felt overwhelmed by the flow of paperwork coming at them from Hart. These are not the kinds of evaluations that should go rushed.

Some of the technical questions about which ID numbers will be used are resolved in the comments between Hart and state election officials. Texas has a distinct preference for drivers license numbers as an indexing scheme, and computer tests showed that the TDL numbers were more efficient than SSN for searching voter records

Also, our hypothesis about the real value of the voter lists as campaign and party contact tools gets a shot from eRegistry “business functions” that will accept home phone numbers and email addresses. As Richards points out, the phone number collection should be disabled since Texas law prevents counties from taking the information. But the Hart response is telling: We can disable it until such time as Texas wants it back, as other states have found these contact data helpful. No doubt.

On the possibility of name prefixes we had to laugh out loud. Name prefixes can be enabled by the Hart system, but Richards sees no good reason for them. Perhaps, maybe a Mr. or Ms. could be used for printing letters, to which the Hart rep replies in writing, okay we’ll consider enabling Mr. and Mrs. The first time this happens, Hart gets off the hook, but the second time it happens, Richards writes, “why is the Hart answer talking about Mr/Mrs references?” LOL! Ms. Richards, you hang in there, you hear!

The many detailed world
of the Texas voter database project

Richards’ evaluation of eRegistry business functions have been carefully documented and preserved as part of User Acceptance Criteria or UAC that were completed during late March. In the meticulous tables of functions and comments found in a four-inch stack of UAC documents, the reader gets a sense of the detail demanded by Bob Futrell, the state’s project manager for the Texas Election Administration Management system or TEAM project.

For instance we know that the database to be delivered from IBM to Texas early next year will scan the 88,000 records of Hays County in .5 seconds to check for a duplicate drivers license number before committing a new voter to the database; that voter registration certificates for mass mailing will be created at a rate ot 83.8 per second; and that it will take ten minutes to create an official voting list for a county of 1.6 million voters.

These are just a few of the details that Futrell required IBM to find out about the existing Texas database so that when the lead contractor delivers the new system next year it will be perform at least as well as the existing Texas Voter Registration System (TVRS).

And these details in turn are only the top few sheets of paper that begin to outline all the “business functions” that the state will expect before it says yes to the computerized system now being developed by IBM and Hart InterCivic. In official project terms the UAC doc is marked as Deliverable 32 (D.32) and was turned in at the end of March.

The paperwork on these computer events still has to go through four more transformations as “business functions” listed in D.32 get refined into “how to requirements” or Detailed Requirement Specs (D.10) each of which will be assigned a unique ID or URID in the Requirements Traceability Matrix (D.11) before being committed to a User Acceptance Test Plan (D.19) that will finally be checked off as “passed” in what might be called the mother of all report cards, the Acceptance Test Results (D.21).

So if you have any question at all about what this new system will or won’t do, all you have to do is get yourself crosseyed over this stack of docs known as the UAC. In the UAC we find a collection of spreadsheets, the left columns of which have rows of business functions followed by columns of comments on each business function made by a few of the players in the database project, most notably the head of voter registration for Texas, Karen Richards.

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Note: this is part of a series of articles by the Texas Civil Rights Review about a statewide voter database and election management system being developed by Texas to meet federal mandates under the Help American Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).

As readers of this series already know, we cannot pass over the
opportunity to point out that the state has a pretty good voter registration system in place (TVRS or Texas Voter Registration System). The website for the Secretary of State says over 120 counties are online with the system, but a source at the office told us all but 90 (of 254 total) counties will be hooked up live to the new database when it comes online next year. Why the old system could not be upgraded to meet federal standards is a question we like to keep open.

By Greg Moses

What is Texas competing for when it produces stories like this for international consumption?

By Natalie Gott (AP) Texas could become the only state to bar gays from becoming foster parents under legislation passed Wednesday by the House.

We find it astonishing that the sponsor of the foster care amendment — Rep. Robert Talton of Pasadena — would actually look for one more way to stink up his district. But fhew! Folks are smelling this one coast to coast.

By contrast, consider what a New York Times editorial says about Connecticut:

In the past 15 years, Connecticut has protected gays and lesbians under hate-crime, employment and housing laws, and allowed unmarried couples to raise adopted children. Just as civil union was the next logical step, so may the term marriage be finally extended someday.

The new Connecticut law establishing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples was signed by a Republican Governor who shows signs of belonging to a party worthy of Lincoln.

As we argued in our earlier commentary against the Bill to Constitutionalize Homophobia in Texas state-sponsored homophobia is a dumb thing to advertise if state leaders are serious about attracting and retaining top talent in a competitive world.

But more than this, our homophobic pandering of the 21st Century feels a whole lot like the civil-rights baiting of the 20th. And this means that Texas has failed to tend to vital questions of social health.

Responsibility for this lack of maturity must be widely shared in cowardly leadership across institutions of education, media, and church. For more of our cautionary analysis of these visceral traditions see Texas Templates of Imbalanced Power.

Like a sick puppy at an international fair, Texas homophobia places worst in show. Not only is it embarrassing, but there’s something quasi-criminal in the motive of a groomer who trots out the spectacle on a leash.