LWVMP Commentary: The Right to Vote
The Monterey Peninsula and Salinas Valley Leagues co-sponsored a town hall meeting with the Monterey School of Law and the ACLU on "Voter Protection and Election Law" on August 2, 2007. The panel included Lazar Palnick, Assemblyman John Laird, Ewalker Janes, Bill Monning, and LWVMP president Janet Brennan. (Bill is a League member but was not representing LWVMP at the event.)
Janet Brennan made the following remarks on behalf of the League:
Right to Vote
The right of every citizen to vote has been a basic League principle since its founding. Since the 1920s, the League has worked to secure the rights of all citizens to vote, including those of women. Since 1970 the League has lobbied extensively for amendments to the Voting Rights Act, monitored compliance with the Act, worked against congressional efforts to repeal the minority language provisions, and worked to pass the "motor-voter" bill and Help America Vote Act.
Based on experience with HAVA, the League currently supports key elements of Senator Feinstein's "Ballot Integrity Act of 2007". Specifically, the League supports protections for voter registration drives; poll worker training; equitable allocation of polling place resources; protections against erroneous purges of voters; and requirements to count provisional ballots of eligible voters.
"Vote Caging"
The League's support for protections against erroneous purges of voters brings to mind the current controversy regarding "vote caging". This has been brought to the public's attention through Congressional hearings on the firings of the eight deputy attorney generals.
When I first heard the report on vote caging on NPR, I had trouble understanding the issue. Subsequently, I learned that vote caging is an illegal procedure to suppress minority voters by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they are living at (because they are, say, at college or at war).
According to some accounts, this process was used in Florida and Ohio during the 2004 election. Future Congressional hearings may further illuminate this practice.
Photo ID
Recent Congressional efforts to impose photo ID requirements for voting was successfully opposed by the League, which believes that such requirements undermine voter participation by eligible Americans.
These requirements disproportionately affect those who are unlikely to have current ID: the elderly, young, people of color, rural voters, individuals with disabilities, and frequent movers. A recent report found that 25% of adult African-Americans, 15% of adults with incomes below $35,000 a year, and 18% of seniors over the age of 65 do not have government-issued photo ID.
Electronic Voting
Turning to the issues of electronic voting, in an effort to assure that voters can trust the mechanisms on which they vote, the League supports only voting systems that employ a voter-verifiable paper ballot. However, testimony by the LWVUS President at a recent Congressional hearing included the following questions, "Can any paper record other than a paper ballot be relied on? Can the electronic counting of paper ballots be tampered with?"
Fortunately, these and other questions are being aggressively pursued by California's Secretary of State. Additionally, Senator Feinstein has just announced hearings on electronic voting security.
Electoral College
On another electoral note, the League advocates the abolition of the Electoral College and the direct election of the President by popular vote as being essential to representative government. This has been our position since 1970. This issue takes center stage every 4 years, particularly when a president is elected through the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.
Another anomaly of representative government in the US is the denial of the right to vote for citizens of the District of Columbia. DC has no representation in the U.S. Senate and only a nonvoting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives. A basic principle of democracy is at stake. U.S. citizens living in the capital of the free world deserve to have full voting representation in the bodies that make their laws, tax them and call them to war.
Timely Elections
Moving closer to home, the Leagues of Women Voters of the Monterey Peninsula and Salinas Valley supported the Community General Plan Initiative. The right of voters to vote on this citizens' petition was delayed for over a year through actions by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and other groups. It took a California Appellate Court decision clarifying the intent of the minority language provisions of the Voting Rights Act for the Board to acquiesce to the rights of citizens to petition their government.
On a similar note, the California League recently urged the Legislature to vote to have Los Angeles County election officials take over the recall election targeting four City Council members in the City of Lynwood. The unanimous vote for AB 1587 by the Senate and Assembly came after a Superior Court judge's ruling that the election will take place Sept. 25, 2007. This swift action was taken because the Lynwood City Council had resisted the recall election.
Local and National Campaign Finance Reform
The Monterey Peninsula League has also worked on campaign finance reform at the local level. The City of Pacific Grove is the one city in Monterey County that has adopted a local campaign finance ordinance. At the national level, the League is working to pass the new McCain-Feingold-Durbin Free Air Time legislation, which will require television and radio broadcast stations to provide free airtime to candidates and political parties for political debates before elections.
Voter Education
Finally, a key element of protecting the right to vote is encouraging participation in the political process. The League works to accomplish this through such programs as "Smart-Voter"; voter registration drives; publishing Pros & Cons on ballot measures; and holding candidates forums.
League's interest
In conclusion, through a dual process of advocacy and voter education, the League at all levels of government - national, state and local - works to make the election process more effective and more inclusive. However, in a country that aggressively attempts to export democracy abroad, it is telling that we must work so hard to protect it at home.
