John Bonifaz, a national leader on election reform and voting rights, has a Voters' Bill of Rights as the keystone of his platform in his campaign for secretary of state of Massachusetts (disclosure: I'm his campaign blogger).  The Voters' Bill of Rights highlights concepts, then fleshes them out with specific proposals or ideas.  I think that makes it a more effective communication tool, and a great starting point for a national agenda.

Here are the 10 points on the Voters' Bill of Rights:

1. Count Every Vote
   
2. Make voting easier
   
3. End the big money dominance of our electoral process
   
4. Expand voter choice
   
5. Ensure access for new citizens and language minorities
   
6. Level the playing field for challengers
   
7. Ensure non-partisan election administration
   
8. Make government more accessible to all of us
   
9. Re-authorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965
   
10. Amend the US Constitution to ensure an affirmative right to vote
    

Each point comes with a paragraph or two outlining the policies that would make it happen, such as public financing, paper ballots, election day on a weekend or holiday, etc.  Read the whole thing.

This hits the right notes.  The exit poll stuff has been pretty well demolished, but the other aspects of voter suppression are mostly real.  The point isn't what difference it might have made, but what we are going to do about the problem in the fall election, and in the coming Congress.  Getting a say in the election machinery at the county level is very important; raising the issues and getting some sort of oversight in Ohio, for example, is key.  

I particularly enjoyed your piece about what you went through to become a committeeperson.  That was great reading, and a great example to others.  That is exactly what is needed.

I think paper trails are a half-measure. After all, there was a verifiable paper trail in Florida in 2000 and look what happened. I propose paper ballots that are counted by hand in public. No ballot should ever be counted by a machine again.

I like the idea of some sort of Right to Vote Constitutional Amendment as well.

1. Sample more voters nationwide. With over 100 million voters voting, we should not be confident in any poll that has less than 100,000 voters surveyed, including at least 1,000 in every state and more in swing states.
   
2. Sample more voters at each precinct. The 2004 exits were somewhat off in states like Ohio because they were way off in just a few precincts. Pollsters should sample at least 100 voters from each location. Anything less can lead to huge errors when these small samples are extrapolated out. One of the current problems is that the impression of exit polls being single, large, and statistically significant is misleading: they are really hundreds of small, statistically insignificant polls lumped together.
   
3. Sample more precincts. Another way to prevent a few mis-polled precincts from tainting the entire poll is to poll far more precincts, and to toss out results from the precincts that give results most radically different from the previous election year. In any given election, certain precincts WILL be mis-polled. But by throwing out the outliers and having enough remaining precincts to give a result, the overall poll will be more trustworthy.
   
4. Use turnout as well as responses to predict the outcome. NCEC data shows that precincts tend not to change radically from one election to the next in terms of partisan leaning. By choosing 100 or 200 indicator precincts in a state, and checking the final tally of voters voting in those precincts (not HOW they voted, but the total number of voters), one could predict the outcome if not absolutely, at least in relation to the previous election.  
   

It's my panel.  We don't have anyone on the panel who specifically addresses this; my fear when I planned this panel, quite frankly, was in being overwhelmed by the "nothing else matters if the elections are rigged" attitude that you've flagged previously.

But we're talking about public financing, Internet/elections and IRV/proportional representation, and I have a feeling all the panels, esp. Mr. Novoselic, might have some thoughts on this one.

The Republicans have employed the same tactics to disenfranchise voters for the past quarter century, and none of the steps suggested would put a stop to any of them.

What would?  IMHO:

* Allow election day registration.  If a voter is surrepitiously purged from the voter file by a Republican operative, or if a new registration didn't take, they can re-register on election day and cast a ballot.

* End felon disenfranchisement.  The Republican Party exploits laws that deprive felons of the right to vote to scare others away from the poll.  Repeal those laws and nullify the threat.

* Count ballots cast at the wrong precinct.  If a voter casts a ballot in the wrong precinct, rather than invalidate the entire ballot, count all those races in which the voter is qualified to vote.

* End partisan challenges to voter registrations.  I have no idea where this policy came from, but I can't imagine any reason why we would permit a Republican Party operative to challenge a Democratic voter's registration at the polls on election day - or vice versa.  It just doesn't seem right.

Fact is, until these come to pass, The Republican Party will continue to employ every tactic they did in Ohio, with similar success, just as they have for years.

The Republican Party rewrites election law to improve their chances at the polls.  Why do you think they've been so high on voter id?  Because it disenfranchises Democratic voters.  The least that the Democratic Party can do is rewrite election law to make it more difficult for the Republican Party to disenfranchise voters.  

It should be a no-brainer: look at the tactics that Republicans use to disenfranchise voters and CHANGE THE LAW TO RENDER THEM INEFFECTIVE.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles .php?artno=1197

Step 6: Once the voter has settled on an option, he must push the square labeled "Vote" to register his decision. Upon pressing "Vote," a sound will be emitted, telling the people at the voting table that the voter has finished the process. At this point, a physical record of the vote is printed out.

Mujica explains, "The physical vote is a paper that records all of the data of the event: CNE, 2004 Referendum. It also has a code for the voting center location, the table, and the volume (electoral notebook). It has a security code, which is very important to avoid falsification. This is all printed on security paper along with the question, and the voter's response."

Step 7: The voter takes the paper and- confirms that the question and the vote registered are correct. He folds the paper in half to guarantee privacy, returns to the voting table, and puts the paper ballot in the ballot box in front of the table members and witnesses.

Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack's Heartland PAC launched the VOTES Declaration, a clear set of principles for conducting elections and for supporting secretary of state candidates who will uphold these principles.

To restore public confidence that voting is a right not a privilege I believe:

VERIFIABLE: Every vote cast must be counted by a system that is auditable with a verifiable paper trail.
OBJECTIVE: Every election official must conduct their responsibilities openly and objectively to restore public confidence.
TOUGH: Every law to prevent voter intimidation and fraud must be vigorously enforced.
EQUAL: Every citizen must have equal access to locations, adequate machines and well-trained election judges.
SECURE: Every voting machine must be secured during all aspects of voting to protect the integrity of the count.

Governor Vilsack is asking people to sign onto the VOTES Declaration. The signatures will be sent to state elections officials.

Lauren Miller
http://www.heartlandpac.org

I'm sorry but I disagree with part of your analysis. While the voter supression on the front end was egregious, and a complete reform of election process is needed to prevent this stuff from happening again, the rural county vote-stealing is vortually certain and was where we know the election was stolen. There just isn't any other explanation for the well-researched anomalies that we in Ohio have known about for a while. In fact, although I knew pretty much everything in the Rolling Stone article already, RFK added information about the rural vote flipping which pretty much for me marked it as undeniably true. I understand it's scary to admit to this, but to create a system where it can't happen, we have to do this. And it happened.

As for the exit polls, no one has yet explained to me why polls that were always so correct and are still always deadly accurate in other countries, have suddenly gone so off the rails in recent years. What methodology change dovetailed with this sudden inaccuracy that has not been changed in other countries from Germany to Lithuania? Still haven't seen it. The "shy voters" explanation, pulled out of their asses, was thoroughly debunked by RFK and defies every psychological study ever done which shows that people are publically more afraid to express an unpopular opinion than a popular one and more likely to go along with power than to defy it. I'm open to further explanation on the exit polls but so far, it hasn't been forthcoming.

Ultimately it doesn't matter. The Ohio election WAS stolen in a handful of rural counties where Blackwell had trusted operatives, and this just needs to be stopped in the future. And today word comes of another potentially suppressive move from Kathy Harris Blackwell's office, with more onerous registration restrictions. He needs to be stopped, stopped, stopped. www.tedstrickland.com. Help us elect his opponent and end his poltical career.

No matter what proportion of Manjoo's critique is correct, Rolling Stone was correct to get the issue out there in the open again.  Maybe they can embarrass their MSM cousins to get off their butts and do some reporting -- possibly even a catalog of RFK Jr.'s errors.  Anything is better than chanting RNC blast-faxes.

• Ranking/Rating ballot - no more spoilers, vote your conscience, no worry of 'throwing your vote away'
• Voting Machines - untrust worthy and a waste of money. it'd be cheaper to count by hand.
• Campaign Finance - dirty money. clean money
• Fair Districts - Non-partisan. Anti-gerrymandered. Based on simple rules.
• Ballot Access - Just getting on the ballot can be hard.
• Right to Vote - No intimidation. No misinformation. Guarantee the ability to vote of people who are supposed to be able to vote.
• Legislative Telecommuting - Keep your representatives at home in their districts.
• Proportional Representation - Ideological rather than geographical distribution. A 5% party gets 5% of the seats.

Thanks Chris for your excellent admonition about making fair elections a priority.

I was in Ohio to help with the 2004 election fraud lawsuit.  I was amazed at the creativity of the Republicans--I didn't think they had the imagination to come up with so many ways to steal the vote, but they did. The critical issue is how we prevent that from happening again, as Chris points out.

The 2006  Maui County Dem Convention had some ideas how to make an election fair. In addition to encouraging voting by mail, we should require a paper trail and an automatic 3% hand recount. All elections should be conducted on Saturday and Sunday, with the polls all across the country opening and closing at the same time.  This would prevent western voters from being discouraged from voting by hearing the results from the East coast before they vote. Weekend voting would allow most people to go to the polls without the pressure of job or school kids to pick up getting in the way.
Publicly funded exit polls should be conducted by non-partisan organizations.

A weekend vote, coupled with a vote by mail system which Oregan is using successfully, would go along way to making voting easy for all.  With voting by mail, there is an automatic paper trail. Poll watchers could physically watch the opening and counting of the absentee ballots.

We need uniform federal voting standards which over-ride state rules requiring drivers license ids and the like. Signature scanning devices could insure that the person who votes is the same person who was registered to vote.

Unless we create fair and honest elections, nothing else we do to support candidates counts an iota.  This is the critical issue the Democratic Party must address this year. Unless we want Florida and Ohio to be stolen again in 2006 and 2008, we have to put fair elections at the top of the agenda.