A Rigged Report on U.S. Voting?

[rodeodance]

Source: wpost

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/29/AR2007082901928.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

A Rigged Report on U.S. Voting?

By Tova Andrea Wang
Thursday, August 30, 2007; Page A21

After the 2000 Florida election debacle, Congress established a body called the Election Assistance Commission to improve voting and democracy in this country. Two years ago, the commission approached me about doing a project that would take a preliminary look at voter fraud and intimidation and make recommendations for further research on the issues.

Because my approach to election issues tends to be more closely aligned with Democrats, I was paired with a Republican co-author. To further remove any taint of partisanship, my co-author and I convened a bipartisan working group to help us. We spent a year doing research and consulting with leaders in the field to produce a draft report. What happened next seems inexplicable. After submitting the draft in July 2006, we were barred by the commission's staff from having anything more to do with it.
What was the problem? In all the time we were doing our research and drafting the report, neither the staff nor the commissioners, who were continually advised of our activities and the substance of our work, raised any concerns about the direction we were going or the research findings.

Yet, after sitting on the draft for six months, the EAC publicly released a report -- citing it as based on work by me and my co-author -- that completely stood our own work on its head................


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/29/AR2007082901928.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[bemildred]

1. Gosh, who could have predicted that Congress would want to fudge the voting system? nt

[acmavm]

2. No surprises here...

<snip>

We have learned that several Republican officials, including a state official, a former political appointee at the Justice Department and current Federal Election Commission member (Hans Von Spakovsky), and a Capitol Hill staffer complained about our project, particularly about my role in it. Officials at Justice were actively involved in the report throughout the process and even exerted some degree of editorial control over the new report. And it is evident from the commission's "document dump" that its Republican general counsel assumed primary control over the rewriting of the report.

Even without a smoking gun showing political motives in the handling of the draft, the results are disappointing. This is not the way an institution created to promote democracy should function. A government entity that seeks democratic progress should be transparent. It should not be in the business of suppressing information or ideas. Such an institution must be thoroughly insulated from political interference from outside operatives or other parts of the executive branch.

[tanyev]

9. Because Republicans think bi-partisanship means that they can say whatever they want,

and everyone else has to agree with them.

[Kelvin Mace]

3. Her first mistake

was agreeing to keep the report proceedings "confidential".

[AtomicKitten]

4. Enough.

[L. Coyote]

5. Check out the long list of her publications. These just on elections:

http://www.tcf.org/about.asp?pgid=staff&staffid=23
And each article is linked:

Publications on Election Reform

Frontloading the Primaries: African Americans No Longer Marginalized
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 6/22/2007

The Century Forum: Frontloading the Primaries
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 5/2/2007

Frontloading the Primaries: A Silver Lining—Latinos Get a Vote
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 4/11/2007

The Presidential Primary System’s Democracy Problems
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 3/13/2007

Fraud, Reform, and Political Power: Controlling the Vote, From Nineteenth-Century America to Present-Day Georgia
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/30/2006

Improving Voter Participation
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 6/30/2006

Playing Games with Democracy
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/20/2004

Crashing the Parties: The Problem of Ballot Access
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 9/20/2004

African Americans, Voting Machines, and Spoiled Ballots A Challenge to Election Reform
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 9/15/2004

Understanding the Debate Over Electronic Voting Machines
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 5/26/2004

Reforming the Voter Registration System
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 7/23/2002


Articles on Election Reform

Gay Voters Poised for Greater Influence in Elections
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 8/14/2007

Florida Gets It Wrong (Again)
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 5/16/2007

Vote Fraud and the U.S. Attorneys Purge
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 3/13/2007

The Best and Worst in Election Reform, 2006
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 12/26/2006

Where’s the Voter Fraud?
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 12/4/2006

Fixing The 2008 Election
Tova Andrea Wang, Jonah H. Goldman, The Century Foundation, 11/14/2006

A Post Mortem on the Voting Process
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 11/9/2006

Tova Wang Blogs Live From Election Protection Headquarters
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 11/7/2006

Problems to Watch for on Election Day
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 11/6/2006

Voter ID Deja Vu
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/30/2006

Voter Confusion
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/25/2006

Blocking The 2006 Vote
Tova Andrea Wang, TomPaine.com, 10/17/2006

More Voter ID Judiciousness
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 9/20/2006

A Voting Rights Victory—in Florida, of all Places
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 8/29/2006

Ahead of the Curve on Voting Reform
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 6/21/2006

New Roadblocks To the Ballot Box
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 6/14/2006

Rumble in the Desert
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 6/1/2006

Who Are “We”?
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 5/24/2006

How Do You Say Hanging Chad in Italian?
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 4/12/2006

More Post-Katrina Malfeasance
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 2/13/2006

The Worst and Best in Election Reform, 2005 (Because There Was More Bad than Good)
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 12/27/2005

Warning Bell in Ohio
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 12/6/2005

Strengthening the Voting Rights Act
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 11/22/2005

Photo ID Requirement Compromises Voter Rights
Tova Andrea Wang, Jonah H. Goldman, The Press-Enterprise, 11/6/2005

Carter-Baker Report: Some Bad Fixes for the Wrong Problems
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 9/19/2005

ID and Voting Rights
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 8/29/2005

Voter ID and Fraud: Prove It
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 7/28/2005

Waiting for Democracy
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 6/24/2005

Mailing It In
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 4/21/2005

Some Small Steps for Democracy
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 4/1/2005

Election 2004: A Report Card
Tova Andrea Wang, The American Prospect, 1/1/2005

More Trials and Tribulations for Ohio
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 12/30/2004

High Stakes in Nevada
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 11/1/2004

Michigan Mischief
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/29/2004

Missouri Miseries
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/27/2004

Eyes on the Buckeyes
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/26/2004

Election Law, Voting Rights, and the 2004 Election
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/22/2004

Soldiering Voters
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/8/2004

Electronic Voting: The 2004 Election and Beyond
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 9/27/2004

Voter ID Issues Need Resolution Before Election
Tova Andrea Wang, The Journal News, 9/26/2004

Laboratories of Democracy
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 9/23/2004

Political Incorrectness on Campus
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 9/15/2004

Throwing Voters A Curve Ball
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 8/25/2004

Identity Politics
Tova Andrea Wang, The Nation, 8/16/2004

New York Stalls on Election Reform
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 7/15/2004

Challenging Albany: Election Reform
Tova Andrea Wang, The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, 7/13/2004

Will Everyone's Vote Get Counted?
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 4/26/2004

Return of the Chads?
Thad Hall, Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 2/5/2004

New York City's Campaign Finance Solution
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 11/17/2003

To HAVA and HAVA Not
Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 10/28/2003

Give Us ATM-Like Voting Machines
Tova Andrea Wang, New York Daily News, 6/30/2003

The City's Bad Voting Machines are History
Tova Andrea Wang, New York Newsday, 11/13/2002

How a Voting Mess Returned to Florida
Tova Andrea Wang, New York Times, 9/13/2002

[Raster]

6. I have railed against the lousy state of electoral affairs FOR YEARS.

If Congress truly had wanted to "fix" the electoral infrastructure, they could have done so years ago. Congress' electoral apathy stems from the fact they want citizen involvement in democracy only as token votes to rubber stamp their elections and lend legitimacy to the process. Once Congress has our vote, they want us out of the process. Is it not painfully obvious that Congress has higher allegiance than to the American people? It is time to consider a more direct form of democracy, one that does not require a middleman--or woman--of dubious intentions and questionable character.

Wake up America!:kick:

[truedelphi]

13. Sadly I concur. There is perhaps no more awful statement

than your words "Is it not painfully obvious that Congress has higher allegiance than to the American people?"

The awfulness lies not only in this statement BUT IN THE FACT THAT IT IS TRUE.

Or as an aide to Di Feinstein (D, CA) said to me about ten years ago "And what corporation did you say that your call represents??"

When I said that I merely a citizen and a constituent, I was put on hold for a long time.

[ooglymoogly]

7. A big kick and nom for a brave lady...nt

[Cobalt-60]

8. Please tell me you saved a copy

Tell me by seeing to it that the unaltered report flows across the internet.

[BrainGlutton]

12. Here's the original draft of the report (pdf file):

http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/EAC_VoterFraud_DraftReport.pdf

[Fly by night]

10. A rigged report to go with rigged elections. There's a certain 21st century symmetry there.

[Senator]

11. K&R