Alternet has a good article discussing the 10 most egregious issues surrounding voting in recent elections in the U.S. Summarizing the top-10 list:
1. Voter ID measures in several states, particularly Georgia, requiring voters to show government issued ID. Fun stat: “University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor John Pawasarat has found that fewer than a quarter of 18-to-24 year-old black men in that state have valid driver’s licenses, the most common state-issued ID.”
(While mandatory ID schemes annoy me, I can’t help but notice that proof of identity and proof of citizenship are required to work in this country. Perhaps there needs to be acceptance of the same level of proof-of-identity, augmented with Iraqi/Afghani-style indelible finger ink if fraud is feared.)
2. Mistallying of votes by new voting machines. (”…[A] voting machine in Ohio managed to add 4,000 extra votes for Bush.”)
3. Long lines at under-equipped precincts. (”[M]ore than 2,500 voters in the city of Columbus found themselves crammed into a single precinct in 2004, even though the state’s guidelines call for no more than 1,400 - apparently because officials assumed that in a poor neighborhood, turnout would be low.)
4. Incompetence on the part of election authorities. (”In primary elections this spring, so many poll workers [in Cuyahoga County, Ohio] failed to show up for work that numerous polling places opened more than an hour late, some because they didn’t have extension cords or three-prong adapters.”)
5. Trickery. (”In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2004, fliers… were distributed in black neighborhoods, warning residents that ‘if anyone in your family has ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation, you can’t vote in the presidential election,’ and that ‘if you violate any of these laws you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you.’”)
6. Gerrymandering. (The carving up of Democratic Travis County (Austin) Texas by three Republican districts is mentioned.)
7. Incorrectly identifying felons. (See the over-scrubbing of Florida voter rolls in 2000 and 2004.)
8. Racial biases. (At-large municipal districts and intimidation/harassment of Native Americans coming in from reservation land to vote in non-reservation towns.)
I’m to disagree with the idea of at-large districts being inherently unfair when minority representation is sought. The unfairness arises only when voters are casting multiple votes - e.g., casting six votes to fill six at-large seats. If voters are limited to one vote, the problem disappears.
I should note also that my town, Windsor, CT has this problem. The town council is made up of nine at-large members. Voters are allowed to vote for five individuals. The major parties are allowed to have only five people on the ballot. Thus, the results are almost preordained.
9. Student disenfranchisement. (”[I]n Williamsburg, Virginia, William and Mary students were denied permission to register merely for acknowledging that they were going home on vacation” in spite of a 1979 SCOTUS ruling that students are permitted to register to vote in the communities where they go to school.)
10. Voter non-registration (e.g., partisan vote registration drives “losing” registration forms; and Florida legislation making it too risky for nonpartisan groups such as the League of Women Voters from running registration drives).