Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » elections

Election Lessons on the Hudson

jstuart — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:17:58 +0000

New Orleans It’s a small sample, but the Virginia bellwether and the deeply blue state New Jersey went hard Republican and in Jersey tossed a Democratic governor looking for a second shot. Across the river, New York City voters surprised the chattering political classes by almost moving Mayor Bloomberg to his next career as a philanthropist and out of his current posting as a semi-politician. A couple of thoughts crossed my mind.

Voter slaps at Corzine and Bloomberg have a populist anti-Wall Street and decidedly, “money-can’t-buy-my-vote” cast to them for two rich guys willing to spend whatever it takes, particularly the record setting $90M outlay by Mayor Bloomberg in his very close race.
Unions need to listen to their members more and to political pros and consultants less. It’s embarrassing to know that two huge NYC political players, SEIU and UFT/AFT, took a walk on this election. Their members didn’t. Controller Thompson, the challenger, romped with African-Americans and voters making less than $100,000 both of which are heavily represented by those two unions. Had they not been twiddling thumbs on the sidelines, this race would have been even closer and might have sent a message against big money politics that could reverberate around the country.

The Working Families Party of New York is once again a HUGE winner this election! WFP was vocal from the first blush against the 3^rd term effort and said so unabashedly. They refused Bloomberg access to their line, despite persistent pressure. Not having the WFP doing turnout hurt the Mayor, and having them do turnout for Thompson dramatically helped him bring the race close. Big, WOW, here with props for Danny Cantor and all of the WFP team!

What are the progressive forces going to do without the GOTV and registration work in the community which ACORN has indicated it is unlikely to play in 2010 and beyond? It was wild to read the pre-election right turnout scare tactics using ACORN as the boogieman. A DC spokesperson for ACORN said they were not even involved anywhere in this race in New Jersey, and despite all of the strum and dang, ACORN had no base or operations in the NY-23^rd race. Turnout was low and decidedly down among minorities and youth. The more one reads and studies this rightwing ideological attack the smarter and more effective it seems, if its main purpose was to help level the playing field by successfully pushing one of the players off the field.

And, yes, none of this was about Obama, but all politics is local and the President will get the message. According to the New York Times, Bloomberg was effective in putting the President and his people to the sidelines with a head fake and some bluster, and Thompson’s work as the standard bearer for the Democrats could seen a different storyline with real White House help rather the shrinking back, timidity that came with riding the donkey in New York. What’s up with that?!?

If I were in one of the President’s men, I would be getting an apology together (and maybe offering my resignation!), because this is a huge wakeup call from the base, and it needs to be heard clearly without putting more sugar in this sad cup of coffee.

Voter Registration Reform

jstuart — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:00:14 +0000

Takoma Park I have long advocated an automatic registration system as a step forward in democracy in America. A couple of days ago there may have been some movement in this direction from a new bipartisan effort called the Committee to Modernize Voter Registration. According to a squib I saw on this new formation, the co-chairs are Trevor Potter, former counsel to McCain’s campaign in 2000 and 2008 and Marc Elias, the former GC for Kerry-Edwards in 2004 and more recently the lead attorney on the lengthy Al Franken challenges in Minnesota.

They come at the problem from the perspective of moving from a paper world to a more modern technological means in tune with modern society. However they get there is fine with me as long as we get there. The key to me is that we start, like other world democracies, to automatically register citizens rather than making them run through a registration maze and end up disenfranchised.

According to the Weekly Standard…

“Elias and Potter are emphatic that their initiative is not a federal takeover of state-run elections. Rather, federal data — like the selective service list, or immigration lists, or social security lists — will be resources that states could use to automatically register eligible voters. Then, voters can opt-out of the system if they do not wish to be registered — “the presumption is you’re in, not out,” says Elias.”

I don’t know that I understand the whole idea of “opting” out of being a registered voter any more than I could understand how one could opt out of the tax system or citizenship. Seems like to me that if you are a citizen, then you are a registered voter and that the “opting” out comes, as it does now, with the exercise of the franchise. I think voting ought to be mandatory, too, but we can argue about that later. Let’s at least finally give EVERYONE the right to vote automatically, and we are in way better shape than we are in America now.

Democracy When?

jstuart — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:52:42 +0000

Baltimore There was a good news article in the Times indicating that the African-American vote almost caught up and in some categories exceeded other groups in voting participation in the 2008 election for President. For all of the brickbats being thrown at the great efforts to register and turnout new voters there’s really only one thing to say at this point: SHUT UP!

The unfinished job emerged as glaringly in the facts and figures embedded in the piece by Sam Roberts. The need for a system that automatically registers citizens as voters and demands more accessible, if not mandatory, voting as other countries practice is also starkly apparent.

Look at these two points from the Census Bureau’s survey and join me in worrying about them because of the severe challenge they pose to any semblance of democracy in America:

“Of the 206 million citizens 18 and older, 71 percent were registered to vote. Among those who were registered, 90 percent voted in 2008.”

Wow! 90% participation of registered voters – that’s unbelievable! But, only 71% registered? That’s shamefully embarrassing and shouting for change.

And for the 10% that did not vote:

“Over all, 18 percent of nonvoters said they were too busy, 15 percent said they were prevented because of an illness or disability and 13 percent each said they were not interested or did not like the candidates or issues.”

Too busy, I bet is another way of saying, “I was working,” and we could deal with that, too.

If we really wanted to make this work, it would not be too hard to fix. Makes me wonder, why we don’t step up and fix this thing, rather than ranting and raving, moaning and groaning.

Election Goes Digital in Honolulu

jstuart — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:39:03 +0000

Ocean Springs A neighborhood commission saved $100,000 by allowing for encrypted voting for a neighborhood board election in Honolulu. The voting was from homes and offices. All reports indicated smooth sailing. Laws there forbid anything less than eyeball to eyeball identification in city and state elections. Change is coming though despite the high walls of the digital divide.

The next step needs to adding publically access computer access terminals (CAT) (ok, I’m making this up as I go along, but it makes sense, eh?). These could be hosted and maintained at schools, public libraries (where these still exist) and other public locations, as well as anywhere they private and individual interests are willing to host and maintain a voting CAT (much in

the same way that folks allow their garages and back rooms to be used for precinct voting now.) Some of this would not be hard. Our local library on Alvar Street in Bywater rebuilt after Katrina came with almost a dozen computer terminals compared to the one or two before the storm in 2005.

Even the eyeball-to-eyeball barrier should start dropping. Eligible voters could get a “voting email” with a personalized and encrypted password that they only knew and could access. What do I know? Point being that there is a way to handle all of this security. Banks obviously are all over it. The Honolulu people talking to the Associated Press claimed that this little vote in the hood was even more secure than what financial institutions use for on-line banking.

It’s time for some brainstorming so the path breaking step in Honolulu picks up traction and moves forward with some speed. More voting (i.e. democracy) is a good thing!

Public Editor Facts

jstuart — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:26:52 +0000

Stephanie Strom

New Orleans Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of the august New York Times weighed in on the conservative blogosphere obsession with ACORN in Sunday’s paper after what he called several weeks of investigation. He was trying to figure out whether or not the editors of the Times killed a Stephanie Strom attack piece as the wackos have alleged because it would be a “game changer” in last November’s election. He concluded that the charge was “nonsense.”

Will that change anything out there among the wing nuts? No way! Conspiracy theories are mother’s milk to these endless tirades, so doubtlessly the beat will hammer endlessly on until some new mystical magic tour leads them along another direction.

Hoyt tries, as is the style on the public editor beat, tried to dismantle all of this house of cards, joker by joker. I’m sure he didn’t like some of the pieces he was working with here since Stephanie Strom was the Times reporter at the heart of this tale, and she’s a slippery piece of work in what I would have thought was one of the most boring beats at the paper: non-profits. In any cutback this has be one of the first jobs to disappear, I would think.

Having talked to Stephanie Strom of the New York Times a couple of times last year, I cannot say that I am a fan of hers, but that’s life in the media “flesh eating machine,” as Herbert Marcuse remarked in an appropriate comment made in fact in the New York Times many decades ago. I also find it incredible how a new McCarthyism has grown among nonprofits who attempt to suppress people and repress work because they are afraid that Strom will write something in the Times and then have her suppositions also take another life into the even rawer world of the blogosphere. The stories, I could tell!

But, Hoyt went to the heart of all of this. First, that the alleged big deal…something about funder lists from the Obama campaign being given to fundraisers for ACORN and Project Vote…being public information, so who cares if, when, or whether they had it, as well as the fact that they couldn’t substantiate the transfer from the campaign to ACORN anyway. Second, he goes to the incredibility of Strom and the right’s source, Anita Moncrief, anyway as a disgruntled former employee who was fired for misusing an organizational credit card for personal expenses. He dances a little over Strom’s tactics in playing Moncrief as simply grist for the reportorial mill, but whatever.

The facts are still the facts, and at least it is refreshing to see the Times at least put a little elbow grease into cleaning up its own oil spill out there, rather than leaving it continually to Media Matters to try and straighten it up to its vastly smaller audience. Maybe someday all of this will make a difference if not this decade, then perhaps in the next.

Voting Rights for Indian Poor

jstuart — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:18:43 +0000

New Orleans Recently in Delhi all of us as organizers of ACORN India greeted the news that the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) was allowing the urban poor without home addresses to register for voting cards with great excitement. Dharmendra Kumar, Hina Sheikh, and Prachee Sinha all attended a meeting while I was in India to see what it would take to break the logjam of the 100,000 who had tried to register so that they could finally vote.

As organizers we knew the ramifications of this first-time experiment are huge. If it worked in Delhi, the nation’s capital, then we could begin campaigns in Mumbai, Bangalore, and elsewhere to try to force the same provisions to be enacted.

The impediment historically has been that without a fixed address that could be verified by the election commissioners, an individual could not vote. This effectively disenfranchised millions of the urban poor in India who were living as slum dwellers, pavement dwellers, and transient labor from place to place.

But this breakthrough could also represent more than a significant step forward in creating a voice for the urban poor and a progress in civic engagement. Winning rights for the homeless to vote in India also opens the door to a base level of citizen wealth for the urban poor in the country.

Simply put without a voting card which represents a formal identification, it is virtually impossible for a poor individual in India to obtain a ratio card. Getting a ration card means that finally a citizen can access what exists as a survival net in India (to call it a safety net would be absurd) since they can obtain minimal allotments of food and cooking fuel.

If we can get our arms wrapped around it, ACORN India sees this as a huge potential campaign that could benefit tens of millions in this huge country.

An article in the Indian press this week gives some sense of what it all means as the first poor, 500 citizens have pushed through to enfranchisement and gotten to exercise the vote.
New Delhi, May 7 (IANS) ‘I voted!’ said an excited 70-year-old Prithvi Chand after he cast his vote at the Ramnagar polling booth in Paharganj in central Delhi. ‘I just hope that change will happen for the good and that our issues would be highlighted by the politicians.
Our ally, Action Aid, hit the nail on the head in the same piece: “Parvinder Singh, communication manager, Action Aid, an NGO that works to end poverty, said: ‘The homeless people have no takers when it comes to political parties.”Without a permanent address, one cannot have a government issued identity card or voter card. This allows the candidates to neglect homeless people from their electoral considerations,’ he said.”

Some people find it hard to believe which underscores the fight in front of us: “Zile Singh, who begs at Moti Bagh flyover, said that he has never voted and he doesn’t think he ever will. ‘I don’t have a home. No permanent place to stay. How will I get a voter card? It’s just a dream.”Even If I get the card, what will happen? My life will not change. I will still live on the street,’ he said.”