So what have you done today to prevent voter disenfranchisement?
Full disclosure - I'm a former employee of Elections Canada and a volunteer for the New Democratic Party of Canada and Alberta.
Up here in Canada we take our voting seriously and we've got a variety of checks and balances in place to make sure the votes are counted fairly and the only people voting are the ones who are supposed to be voting. We've had very few cases of voter fraud due to the hard work of Elections Canada. In addition, Elections Canada assists the Parties by getting out the voter rolls early and in the hands of the Party. The Party volunteers then for make sure people can vote either by getting them on the rolls if they aren't there already, then making sure people action get to the polls by driving them there if necessary.
As an employee of Elections Canada, I've gone door-to-door enumerating voters. The strangest experience I had was one guy basically ordering me off the property saying he was going to make damn sure only he was going to vote even though I could see other adults through the windows. Fearing violence, I turned the matter over to my supervisors.
I've also worked elections days as a scrutineer, making sure my Party's votes get in and nobody votes who shouldn't be. Last election I did have to raise a stink about a valid voter who was trying to vote in the wrong place. Other than that, I've never seen a huge problem. We don't have to worry about machines because we use paper ballots.
I've also worked as a get-out-the-vote driver where there have been issues relating to identification. In Canada you need some sort of government-issued ID or alternatively if you can get someone to come with you who does have valid ID and you have some sort of proof a resident (a utility bill will do) and everybody swears a statement, you can vote. This year we did have somebody come in with insufficient ID and got all upset, stormed out and refused to come back. Last time around, I drove an old lady with what seemed to be proper ID, but wasn't accepted (I think it was expired) and she refused to go back and fetch a neighbour because she was insulted - both emotional reactions.
My son lost his ID awhile ago. He claims it was stolen on the bus but his story was full of holes. Getting him new ID was an incredible hassle. His birth certificate was deity knows where and getting a new one is time-consuming hassle in itself, he didn't have a passport and we eventually had to jump through a whole bunch of hoops that took about a week and a fair chunk of change.
I think a lot of people are in a sense of denial about the upcoming elections. I don't think they understand that their ID may not be acceptable. I don't think the understand the hassle it takes to get proper ID in terms of time, expense and paperwork. It could be up to six months. This is August. Your elections are in November. You don't have six months.
This is doubly so in those States where the rules have changed. Political junkies like us will have noticed but it will likely completely have escaped Joe-Blow-who-only-reads-the-sports-section. He's going to be in a rude surprise on elections day and there isn't going to be a damn thing he can do about it, because few States have Canada's relatively benign "get your neighbour to vouch for you" loophole.
So it's well and good for the PACs to be spending big bucks bashing Romney and praising Obama but it isn't going to do a damn bit of good if your voters can't vote. They need to be bashing people over and over with the message, "make sure you've got proper ID and make sure everybody you know has proper ID. Do it now so you've got time to get your shit together or else Romney wins".
If the PACs won't do it, then it's going to have to happen at the grass roots level, and it should be noisy enough that I should be able to hear it up here in Canada (I've got plenty of US cable channels) and I'm not getting a whisper.
So what's going on?
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