Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

At Unrig online, talk of voting at home to save lives

YouTube
YouTube

Griffiths is a contributor to Independent Voter News.

The coronavirus pandemic has put a strain on American life and the democratic process. Voters want a meaningful say in the 2020 elections, but they don't want to risk their health to exercise their constitutionally protected right to vote.

In response, the vote-at-home movement has gained significant traction as reformers and election officials consider the best methods and practices to keep voters safe while protecting their civil rights.

What vote-at-home brings to the broad conversation on improving the democratic process was the topic of the first of a six-part, virtual Unrig Summit series, hosted this week by RepresentUs, to keep voters connected to the movements to transform the American political process.


"In the face of this pandemic, there is an urgent need for all states to adopt vote-at-home systems to ensure the safety of voters and poll workers. We have to ensure we have full and fair elections this year and beyond," the group's founder, Josh Silver, said as Thursday's discussion began.

The U.S. political process was already struggling before the Covid-19 crisis, he noted, and a root cause is the "wonky" election law nook that rigs the system for those with the most power.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

More than 600 people tuned in online to hear from former Republican national chairman and Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold of Colorado and GOP Secretary of State Kim Wyman of Washington.

"It is important at this point in time that we have unfettered and uninhibited access to the ballot box," said Steele, now chairman of the US Vote Foundation, which provides state-specific voter services and information.

All all 50 states offer some absentee voting. However, the burden of getting such a ballot can be extremely tough depending on the state. There are, however, 33 states with "no excuse" absentee voting and five with all-mail voting systems. Colorado and Washington are on that list and have the highest turnout rates of all the states.

"It is important that whether someone is from a small town like me, with more elk than people, or a big city, rich or poor, young or old, that they get a voice in our democracy," said Griswold. "Bottom line is, if you make elections accessible, people will vote."

Some participants had questions about the security of vote-at-home. No elections system is 100 percent secure and it is important for states to build the necessary controls to prevent fraud, Wyman said. For instance, her state has a system to compare signatures and flag duplicate or when someone uses another person's name to vote.

She said most of the problems — provisional ballots wrongly added to the count, mainly — happen at a polling place as a result of errors by minimally trained, overworked poll workers. So improving their training is the answer.

Griswold also noted her state uses certified paper ballots and the best available auditing system, two controls she said can't be hacked and give voters greater confidence in election security.

Ensuring every voter may vote from home by November is "completely feasible," she said, because most states have an infrastructure that can be bolstered — if there's help from the federal government.

The $2 trillion economic rescue package signed a week ago allocated $400 million in elections assistance, nowhere near the $2 billion the Brennan Center for Justice said would be needed and the $4 billion some lawmakers wanted.

Silver closed out the roundtable discussion with a call to action, saying it is on everyone watching the roundtable discussion to be "part of the solution in some ways," and called on people already involved to up their game.

RepresentUs has partnered with other organizations to push for more states to adopt systems modeled closely after the five states that now offer all-mail voting. The organization also offers resources for voters interested in getting involved in the movement, including a "take action" page with information they need to get started.

"One thing is certain," said Silver. "We must overhaul our elections and campaign finance laws in order to get better representation in government, stop this vicious cycle of partisan extremism and gridlock, and reverse the corruption and authoritarianism that are infecting this great democratic experiment of ours."


Unrig Roundtable: Why Vote at Home Matters Nowwww.youtube.com


Visit IVN.us for more coverage from Independent Voter News.


Read More

Half-Baked Alaska

A photo of multiple checked boxes.

Getty Images / Thanakorn Lappattaranan

Half-Baked Alaska

This past year’s elections saw a number of state ballot initiatives of great national interest, which proposed the adoption of two “unusual” election systems for state and federal offices. Pairing open nonpartisan primaries with a general election using ranked choice voting, these reforms were rejected by the citizens of Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. The citizens of Alaska, however, who were the first to adopt this dual system in 2020, narrowly confirmed their choice after an attempt to repeal it in November.

Ranked choice voting, used in Alaska’s general elections, allows voters to rank their candidate choices on their ballot and then has multiple rounds of voting until one candidate emerges with a majority of the final vote and is declared the winner. This more representative result is guaranteed because in each round the weakest candidate is dropped, and the votes of that candidate’s supporters automatically transfer to their next highest choice. Alaska thereby became the second state after Maine to use ranked choice voting for its state and federal elections, and both have had great success in their use.

Keep ReadingShow less
Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

The United States Supreme Court.

Getty Images / Rudy Sulgan

Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

Fourteen years ago, after the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the popular blanket primary system, Californians voted to replace the deeply unpopular closed primary that replaced it with a top-two system. Since then, Democratic Party insiders, Republican Party insiders, minor political parties, and many national reform and good government groups, have tried (and failed) to deep-six the system because the public overwhelmingly supports it (over 60% every year it’s polled).

Now, three minor political parties, who opposed the reform from the start and have unsuccessfully sued previously, are once again trying to overturn it. The Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party have teamed up to file a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Their brief repeats the same argument that the courts have previously rejected—that the top-two system discriminates against parties and deprives voters of choice by not guaranteeing every party a place on the November ballot.

Keep ReadingShow less
Supreme Court
Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Gerrymandering and voting rights under review by Supreme Court again

On Dec. 13, The Fulcrum identified the worst examples of congressional gerrymandering currently in use.

In that news report, David Meyers wrote:

Keep ReadingShow less
Rear view diverse voters waiting for polling place to open
SDI Productions/Getty Images

Open primary advocates must embrace the historic principles of change

This was a big year for the open primaries movement. Seven state-level campaigns and one municipal. Millions of voters declaring their support for open primaries. New leaders emerging across the country. Primary elections for the first time at the center of the national reform debate.

But with six out of eight campaigns failing at the ballot box, it’s also an important moment of reflection.

Keep ReadingShow less