Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

Last week, we wrote about how some reporters have stopped playing into the hands of voter suppression operatives and suddenly acted like journalists by actually investigating partisan claims of voter fraud in relation to voter registration drives. Until the Virginia press corps showed how it should be done, this kind of every-day feat of journalism had been as rare as voter fraud itself.  But, if this is August of an election year, then this must be voter suppression season.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog Voting Matters

By Nathan Henderson-James

Just yesterday we noted the right way to report on charges of voter fraud and the wrong way to go about it. We explained how the news media had been gamed by people with a partisan interest in the outcome of elections to gin up hysteria to engage in voter intimidation and voter disenfranchisement efforts.

Well, the partisans are back at it in Wisconsin, but this time the press is following the lead of Virginia journalists and scrutinizing the claims rather than simply reprinting the press release.

Here's the backstory. The community organization ACORN has recently completed a voter registration drive in Milwaukee aimed at historically disenfranchised populations like low-income folks and African-Americans. The drive assisted voters complete some 35,000 cards. So far so good.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's Voting Matters Blog

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In 2000, Florida's disastrous effort to purge former felons from voter rolls resulted in the disenfranchisement of hundreds if not thousands of legitimate voters and clearly influenced the outcome of the presidential contest in that state. History may repeat itself this November with states taking potentially reckless and unlawful measures to clean voter rolls before Election Day.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's Voting Matters Blog

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In 2000, Florida's disastrous effort to purge former felons from voter rolls resulted in the disenfranchisement of hundreds if not thousands of legitimate voters and clearly influenced the outcome of the presidential contest in that state. History may repeat itself this November with states taking potentially reckless and unlawful measures to clean voter rolls before Election Day.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Despite growing political interest among Americans, this November millions of people who "live, work and raise families in our communities" will be denied the right to elect our next president  as a result of a past felony conviction. Felon disenfranchisement has raised concerns among advocates and legislators that such laws further perpetuate disparities not only in the electorate, but also in society.

Funny I can't help but think of how shocked we dems were when Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but lost the election due to delegate allotment.  These things happen every once in a while and demonstrate the utter sham of representative democracies.  These elaborate facades filled with the superrich and  designed to control the will of the people or direct democracies.

Now it's 2008. Once again a slight majority of the people supported one candidate, but the system so designed to recode the errors, changed the results.

Does the end (disenfranchisement  of voters in two states,character assassinations, misogyny, ignoring popular vote) justify the means?

Today's outcome at the Rules and Bylaws meeting was completely predicatable, but outrageous nonetheless.

Democracy used to mean something in this country. Counting votes fairly, having results that were fair representations of the votes cast, making sure that an election process was unimpeachable used to be foundations of our republic. Those precepts were cast off at the RBC meeting today.

The committee could have counted the votes from Michigan and Florida. They could have rejected them. Either of these options would have been legitimate, even if one was less preferable than the other. I have a problem with half seating of delegations, but that was by far the lesser of the errors that came out of this sham of a meeting today.

Assigning delegates to someone who received no votes (of his own volition) is an assault of every basic tenet of democracy as we know it in this country. It is a violation of the rights of voters. It diminishes the already too-complicated process into a free-for-all. It has all the appearance of the DNC working (further) to assure their desired outcome. It is in no way the way that politics should work in this nation. I am appalled, outraged, and disgusted in a way that I have not been in a long time.

Would Obama have won if Michigan and Florida had counted the first time? We'll never know. Momentum is a strange and coveted thing in politics. The facts are the facts. But the process still matters. This makes a mockery of the entire deal. This "resolution" forever places an asterik next to Obama's nomination. The DNC intervention on his behalf is a nefarious enterprise which I reject. I will continue to support Democrats, but not the DNC. Not with my money, not with input, not in any way- ever. I am voting with my feet, and my feet are walking away.

I will never again carry water for these people with my conservative friends and family.  

To me, this caps off an the entire nominating process nicely. It has been an edifying experience. I thought that the "party boss" mentality has kind of gone away sometime post-1940. But they still lurk. The smoke-filled room still exists- smoking is banned indoors now- but it is still there.

What happened today is not Barack Obama's fault. I don't fault him. But I refuse to acknowledge any argument that these delegates from Michigan rightfully belong to him in any way. He chose to get zero votes in Michigan. For him to get even one delegate is totally illegitimate. If some of the uncommitted delegates drifted his way, fine. But to have a governing body officially allocate delegates to him even after he removed his name from the ballot in that state is both theoretically and practically illegitimate.  

The only silver lining is that it cements Clinton's status as the popular vote winner. But that is small consolation. But, alas, this is about more than Clinton v. Obama for me, anyway. Today is the day that I totally lost confidence in the Democratic National Committee, and their leadership of this once-great party.

The question of whether or not the Florida and Michigan compromises are fair will resonate between now and the end of the campaign.

It's a difficult question to answer, since the nature of the primaries themselves muddle the question. How many people would have voted if they knew it was going to count? Does the vote accurately reflect the will of the people in those states? Is the compromise fair to the voters, the candidates and the other 48 states?

A simple, but imperfect, answer is to look at the number of votes cast in the primaries versus the number of delegates that have been alloted. Blue represents Obama, magenta represents Clinton, light blue circles show the compromises. I left the Obama and Clinton dots at 0 in MI/FL (where they were before) so people could track which compromise point was for each candidate.

The black line represents the best fit for all primaries (both candidates), with a fairly decent fit (R-squared is .85 out of 1). For the sake of display, I cut off the far primaries (California, for instance), but the fit was generally pretty close out there as well.