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A legal fight over the fate of thousands of names on Wisconsin's rolls is now likely to linger beyond November. Here, Milwaukeeans waiting to vote in the Covid-troubled April primary.
One Midwest win for each side in the voter purge wars
Jul 02 2020
The partisan fight over how to maintain voter registration lists has delivered one victory for each side this week — both in Midwestern states central to the November election.
The top court in Wisconsin decided against fast-tracking a decision about removing from the rolls more than 100,000 people with potentially out of date registrations — a delay that benefits the cause of voting rights advocates. But in neighboring Michigan, a conservative group claimed victory and dropped its lawsuit against Detroit after the city took a group of dead people and duplicate names off the rolls.
The cases capture a debate that pitches those (mostly Democrats) who believe aggressive attempts to remove, or "purge," names from voter rolls are an attempt at voter suppression against those (mostly Republicans) who believe poorly maintained voter lists clogged with the names of the mortally or physically departed provide an opportunity for fraud.
<p>The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request to expedite a case that initially involved the proposed removal of more than 230,000 names from the rolls.<br/></p><p>Instead, the court said it would hear oral arguments in late September. The schedule makes it highly unlikely the court will rule before Election Day, when the state's 10 electoral votes could play a central role in the presidential contest.</p><p>Since the legal dispute began, about 100,000 of the voters facing potential removal have updated their information — still leaving in dispute 4 percent of the people on the rolls statewide.</p><p>Election rules in Wisconsin prohibit any change to the voter rolls within 30 days of an election, making it nearly impossible to remove any names before Nov. 3 even if the court rules that way.</p><p>In addition, a newly elected and progressive Supreme Court justice takes the bench in August, narrowing conservative control of the court.</p><p>The original suit was filed in November by a conservative think tank and law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, claiming the elections commission was ignoring state law requiring the removal of people who don't answer a mailing sent to those who appear to have moved.</p><p>A trial court judge ordered the rosters culled but an appeals court unanimously overturned the judge in February.</p><p>In the Detroit case, the conservative. Indianapolis-based Public Interest Legal Foundation, which had sued city election officials in federal court in December, dropped its lawsuit on Tuesday after noting that officials had taken action to remove some of the out-of-date registrations.</p><p>The foundation claimed in its suit to have identified more than 2,500 dead people who remained registered to vote.</p><p>More than half had been dead more than a decade, nearly 900 have been dead more than 15 years and one was found with a birth date listed as 1823.</p><p>In addition, foundation researchers discovered what appeared to be duplicate and triplicate registrations for individuals, using different addresses.</p><p>The group repeatedly brought its findings to the attention of Detroit election officials but says the city did not take any steps to clean up the voting rolls.</p><p>Detroit election officials said the recent updates to voter rolls were largely the result of regular maintenance but conceded they had looked into a few specific claims in the lawsuit.</p><p>It turns out the listing for the voter with a birth date of 1823 caused by a typo.</p>
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A pivotal batch of mail votes went missing. Fraud!? Town is so sorry.
Jul 02 2020
At a time when the hard-to-find intersection of mailed ballots and election fraud has become one of President Trump's obsessions, 202 envelopes in a town clerk's vault in central Massachusetts may get an unexpected amount of attention.
The ballots were from a local election last week in Grafton, where the people appeared to decide — by just 98 votes — to raise municipal taxes by $4 million to improve schools and local services.
The potential consequences of what's inside the envelopes are as mathematically apparent as the recent presidential polling in many swing states. (Tax hike opponents would have to account for three of every four uncounted votes, a deficit tough but not impossible to reverse.) The reason the votes weren't counted are much less clear, providing only minimal support for a presidential outburst on Twitter.
<p>But nobody in power is yet crying foul in the town of 14,000 — where enormous metal parts for aircraft used to be forged, but now the economy relies on a clock museum and veterinary school.</p><p>Town Administrator Timothy McInerney said Tuesday that a sealed box containing 202 uncounted absentee ballots had been discovered by accident in a town hall vault on Tuesday by the assistant town clerk. The town is now asking a state court judge to decide what should happen next.</p><p>Town Clerk Kandy Lavallee told the town council she is "deeply regretful" but that fear of Covid-19 exposure from voting in person made the volume of early ballots overwhelming. </p><p>She said she'd done an exhaustive search and found no more sealed ballot boxes — and that she'd detail soon precisely how fully 6 percent of all the ballots cast in the election were able to disappear for a week after the polls closed.</p><p>"We take this very seriously. We lost 200 ballots,″ the town administrator added, and everyone at city hall is working "head on" to make sure the mistake never happens again</p>
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Registration lists are under attack. We have a moral obligation to protect them.
Jul 01 2020
Adruini is president of the Susquehanna Valley Ethical Society, a branch of the American Ethical Union, a humanist organization that emphasizes "deed before creed," the view that people can be moral and ethical independent of a belief in God.
<p>There is a routine every election cycle. As the date of the vote nears, I go online and check my voter registration status. For the past 45 years — when I've voted in Mifflinburg, a town of 3,500 in rural central Pennsylvania — I have taken this precaution not because I think I did anything wrong, but because I follow the news.</p><p>Last year, counties in California began purging <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/20/calif_begins_removing_5_million_inactive_voters_on_its_rolls__140602.html" target="_blank">5 million voters</a> from their rolls following a lawsuit from the conservative group Judicial Watch. It was one of numerous such efforts in recent years and, as we get close to four months from a critical presidential election in November, the group has turned its sights to my home state, suing to remove <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/05/28/pennsylvania-voter-rolls-purge-judicial-watch/" target="_blank">800,000 voters</a>. </p><p>Judicial Watch claims the three bellwether suburban Philadelphia counties in question — Delaware, Chester and Bucks — removed only 17 inactive voters in 2017 and 2018. Bucks County official <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/clout/president-donald-trump-judicial-watch-voter-rolls-election-fraud-20200508.html" target="_blank">say that's not true</a> and that they removed 14,050 in 2018 alone. With all three having more registered Democrats than Republicans, this looks like a move more concerned with voter suppression than fraud.</p><p>The right to vote is a fundamental human right. As the president of a non-theistic congregation of ethics, I take that to heart. Attempts to limit or add barriers to the free exercise of that right can erode citizen confidence that their elected officials can represent and act upon the will of the people. When voices are silenced, our democracy perishes. </p><p>I am grateful that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar seems ready to fight, but we as citizens must do whatever we can to protect the right to vote anywhere it is under attack.</p><p>To be sure, ensuring the safety and security of our elections is of paramount importance — and individuals who are erroneously registered should be removed. But too often, purges are used as a partisan weapon. Groups like Judicial Watch claim that when voters are removed, it's because they are either dead or no longer living in the state. Yet, in just the past three years, <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/many-eligible-georgia-voters-were-canceled-nation-largest-purge/jRlixHpVs0I9wVQYdDjxvM/" target="_blank">870,000 people</a> in Georgia have registered to vote again after being purged. If these voters were dead or lived somewhere else, how did they manage to get back on the rolls? </p><p>Delaware, Chester and Bucks are all majority-white counties. But, historically, people of color are the most frequent target of voter suppression. And that doesn't just include voter purges. There's a reason why states with high populations of Black people have tried to implement voter ID laws:<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf" target="_blank"> 25 percent of Black Americans</a> do not have a government-issued proof of identification. We shouldn't be stripping Black people of one of their basic rights, especially during a time of racial reckoning.</p><p>Fighting back against suppression starts with knowledge. In most cases, voters who are purged are not notified until it's too late. Campaigns like <a href="http://centerforcommonground.org/main/index.php/campaigns/reclaim-our-vote" target="_blank">Reclaim Our Vote</a> work to notify eligible voters in states with a history of suppression that they may have been removed. My congregation, and others under the umbrella of the <a href="https://aeu.org/" target="_blank">American Ethical Union</a>, are working with ROV to send postcards to people in six states where voters may have been purged. Last year, more than one in five postcards sent to residents of North Carolina's 3rd congressional district by ROV resulted in voter registrations.</p><p>I would encourage anyone concerned about this issue <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/forms/reclaim-our-vote-signup" target="_blank">to volunteer</a> through that group's website.</p><p>Yet perhaps the most important thing you can do is speak out against the misinformation that keeps our citizens complacent. Know someone concerned about voter fraud? Let them know that even one of the nation's preeminent conservative think tanks, t<a href="https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=All&year=&case_type=All&fraud_type=24497&_ga=2.12574644.1414507925.1587563897-525623535.1584719379&page=0" target="_blank">he Heritage Foundation</a>, found that no election results were overturned in the states that currently vote primarily by mail. </p><p>Do they think the voter purges occurring across the country are legitimate? Let them know that many voters who are removed go on to register again, discrediting the argument they were inaccurately listed as eligible.</p><p>Knowledge is power and the more people know the truth, the more voices we have to combat voter suppression.</p><div></div><p>Regardless of the outcome of the suit in Pennsylvania, I will continue to check my registration status before elections. Your rights may not be under attack but countless others are. I urge all Pennsylvanians and Americans to speak out for their rights.</p>
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The suit claims voter rolls in 17 counties are not being properly maintained. Above, a March primary polling place in Warren, Mich.
GOP activist sues 17 Michigan counties with 'abnormally high' registration
Jun 10 2020
A Republican official in Michigan has filed a lawsuit alleging 17 counties across the battleground state are violating federal law by not removing ineligible people from the voter rolls.
The suit is similar to claims filed in several states by the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation, which maintain that voter manifests in plenty of closely contested areas are clogged with the names of far too many who have died, moved away, gone to prison or are no longer eligible for other reasons to cast ballots.
These lawsuits are at the heart of a mostly partisan debate pitting Republicans, who see maintenance of these government records as essential to preventing election fraud, against Democrats, who deride such efforts as purges of eligible voters in the pursuit of Election Say advantage.
<p>Tony Daunt, the executive director of the conservative Michigan Freedom Fund as well as a board member of the Clinton County GOP near Lansing, filed the federal lawsuit Tuesday against Jocelyn Benson, Michigan's Democratic secretary of state, and Johnathan Brater, director of the Bureau of Elections.</p>
<p>His complaint targets the "abnormally high" registration levels in one out of every five counties in the state — including three in the densely populated suburbs of Detroit: Washtenaw, Livingston and Oakland, the second most populous county in the state.</p>
<p>The lawsuit says the number of people on the voting rolls in Leelanau County (Traverse City) is more than the estimated adult population. For all the other counties, it says, the number of names on the rosters exceed 90 percent of the estimated voting age population.</p>
<p>The suit states that the average around the country is for 67 percent of the voting age population to be registered.</p>
<p>Daunt argues that this is proof that the counties are not following state and federal laws requiring that election officials have a plan for removing the names of people who are no longer eligible and to follow that plan.</p>
<p>The suit argues that not removing ineligible voters from the rolls creates fear that some of these people will vote illegally and generally undermines confidence in the integrity of elections.</p>
<p>Benson's office said the statistics cited were deeply flawed, that the state's motor voter system is highly accurate and that the suit makes "no attempt to distinguish between active and inactive registration, and asserts the false notion that voter registration rates should be low."</p>
<p>The Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a similar suit against Detroit election officials last December. A trial has been set for a year from now — meaning the matter will not be settled until long after the presidential election, where Michigan's 16 electoral votes will be central to the outcome. President Trump carried the state four years ago by 11,000 votes, a margin of less than two-tenths of 1 percent. The Democratic nominee had won in the state the previous seven times.</p>
<p>Lawsuits filed by the group in Indiana and Ohio have led to successful settlements requiring regular maintenance of voter rolls.</p><p>Incidents of in-person voter fraud nationwide remain extremely rare, and Trump's now-disbanded voting integrity commission failed to uncover any significant evidence of misconduct.</p>
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