Multi-Media Vocabulary
Essays
Books
Multi-Media Vocabulary …
Cross-check: A blatant effort at voter suppression by listing all the names of people in different states, with only similar — but NOT identical — names and declaring them the same person. The names are primarily surnames identified specifically with Black, Latina and Asian people. Once on this cross-check list, the people are removed from the voting roles and become ineligible to vote as they are (falsely) assumed to have registered twice to enable double voting (i.e., voter fraud). Examples: Miguel Pedro Santiago in Georgia with Miguel Jesus Santiago in Florida. Different Social Security numbers and other critical identifications also do not match, but are are ignored.
Below is a video interview with Greg Palast explaining cross-check.
The Empire Files: The Hidden Purging of Millions of Votes
Greg Palast Video Interview with Abby Martin, teleSUR
Disenfranchise: To take away someone’s rights, especially his or her right to vote. (See voter suppression below for several common efforts to disenfranchise voters.)
Electoral College: The presidential electors who meet after the citizens vote for president and cast ballots for the president and vice president. Each state is granted the same number of electors as it has senators and representatives combined. These electors, rather than the public, actually elect the president and the vice president. The Founding Fathers assumed that electors would exercise discretion and not necessarily be bound by the popular vote, but the rise of political parties undermined this assumption. Electors are now pledged in advance to vote for the candidate of their party, and nearly always do so. Thus, the vote of the Electoral College is largely a formality.
Note: There have been several attempts to abolish the Electoral College. In the 2000 election and again in 2016, our most recent presidential election, the candidate with the plurality of popular votes lost the electoral vote, a situation that also occurred in the 1876 and 1888 elections.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/electoral-college
Electronic Voting System: Direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines record votes with a ballot display by mechanical or electro-optical means activated by the voter — buttons or touch screen — and processes data with computer software. They record voting data and ballot images in memory. After the election they produce a tabulation of the voting data stored in removable memory components and as a printed copy. The system may also provide a means for transmitting individual ballots or vote totals to a central location. They typically tabulate ballots as they are cast and print the results after the close of polling. Electronic voting machines use optical scanning or other electronic methods to cast and count votes both at polling places and online. DRE machines should have voter-verifiable paper audit trails and software used on DRE machines should be open to public scrutiny to ensure the accuracy of the voting system. Both are necessary because computers can and do malfunction and because voting machines can be deliberately or inadvertently compromised (hacked). At this point however, neither of these checks are in place. In addition, electronic voting machines in the USA are old and out of date for electronic equipment and are prone to both malfunctioning and hacking — both of which can seriously distort results.
Gerrymandering: Manipulating the boundaries of an electoral constituency to favor one party or class. Boundaries are drawn so as to “cage” people of an opposition group into one district preventing them from having any representation in the full range of districts, thereby denying them their true, representative influence in the election.
Understanding Congressional Gerrymandering
Interview with David Daley, Editor of Salon; published by Fresh Air, NPR, June 15, 2016, with Dave Davies.
Hacking: To use one’s skill in computer programming to gain illegal or unauthorized access to a file or network with or without the intention of destroying data or maliciously harming the computer.
Paper Ballots: A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election, and may be a piece of paper used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters. Each voter uses one ballot and ballots are not shared.
Popular Sovereignty: The principle that the people are the source of all governmental power.
Provisional Ballots: A paper ballot used by a voter when there is some problem in establishing a voters eligibility. The ballot will be counted only if election officials determine that the person was in fact entitled to vote. A process often abused in order to disenfranchise legal, eligible voters (see voter suppression).
Ranked Choice Voting/Instant Runoff: Ranked choice voting (RCV) describes voting systems that allow voters to rank candidates in order of preference, and then uses those rankings to elect candidates able to combine strong first choice support with the ability to earn second and third choice support.
RCV is straightforward for voters: rank candidates in order of choice. Voters can rank as many candidates as they want, without fear that ranking others will hurt the chances of their favorite candidate. How the votes are counted depends on whether RCV is used to elect a single office, like a mayor or governor, or if it is used to elect more than one position at once, like for a city council or state legislature or for Congress in a multi-winner district.
Ranked Choice Voting is easy to understand with a simple demonstration:
RCV with single winner votes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5SLQXNpzsk
RCV for multiple winner votes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNxwMdI8OWw
For more in depth information, please refer to Election Integrity: Organizations: FairVote or go to http://www.fairvote.org/rcv#how_rcv_works
Spoiled Ballot Papers: Ballots that have been marked incorrectly and cannot be counted.
Suffrage: The right to vote in elections.
Suffragists: Before 1920, women did not have the right to vote in the US. The suffragist movement fought for these rights, and the people who were part of that movement were suffragists. In America, the individual states determine who may vote. However, the US Constitution states in the 19th Amendment that women shall not be denied the vote based upon their sex.
Voter Suppression: Influencing the outcome of an election by preventing (specific) people to vote. This can come in the form of intimidation, shortening voting hours, reducing early voting, requiring forms of identification that are either impossible to obtain or not readily available, illegally removing people from the voting roles (see cross-check), early closing of polls, provisional ballots, employees threatened with job loss to force employers voting preferences, etc.
Voting Rights Act: An historic civil rights law that was meant to ensure that the right to vote is not denied on account of race or color or ethnic minorities. Signed into law in 1965, the Voting Rights Act permanently bars barriers to political participation by racial and ethnic minorities, prohibiting any election practice that denies the right to vote on account of race, and requiring jurisdictions with a history of discrimination in voting to get federal approval for changes in their election laws before they take effect.
Unfortunately, a 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby vs. Holder crippled one of the most effective protections for the right to vote by rendering ineffective that certain jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination get pre-approval for voting changes. The states of Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Florida Virginia, South Dakota, Iowa, and Indiana wasted no time enacting potentially discriminatory laws. (excerpted from ACLU)
https://www.aclu.org/timelines/history-voting-rights-act
Timeline, videos, maps, commentary, interviews
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Essays …
Election Integrity: A Pro-Voter Agenda
by Myrna Perez
About New Ideas For A New Democracy: This is a moment for fresh thinking — and rethinking — new approaches to reform. The Brennan Center is committed to serving as a source for the next generation of policy innovation. New Ideas for a New Democracy is a Brennan Center series featuring unique ideas to transform our systems of democracy, justice, and the rule of law.
Myrna Pérez is Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, where she leads the Voting Rights and Elections project. She has authored several nationally recognized reports and articles related to voting rights …
Our elections should be secure and free of misconduct. Throughout American history, political actors have tried to bend the rules and tilt the outcomes. The dangers come not so much from voter fraud committed by stray individuals, but from other forms of election fraud engineered by candidates, parties, or their supporters. Fraud, when it exists, has in many cases been orchestrated by political insiders, not individual voters. Even worse, insider fraud has all too frequently been designed to lock out the votes and voices of communities of voters, including poor and minority voters.
Election integrity need not be a euphemism for voter exclusion. Those who care about securing the right to vote and enhancing democracy in America care deeply about ensuring the honesty of elections, and avoiding misconduct. All who are eligible to vote should be able to do so in free and fair elections — but only those eligible to do so. It is vital that we protect voters from the real threats to the integrity of elections. Fortunately, it is possible to protect election integrity without disenfranchising eligible voters. This report proposes solutions that vary in approach. All target fraud risks as they actually exist. None will unduly disenfranchise those who have the right to vote.
The 5 Principles of Integrity in Elections
| February 29, 2016
“… a large percentage of election officials are elected to their offices on a partisan ticket or appointed on partisan basis. This can lead some to believe that these officials will favor one political party over another in their decisions.
Even the best-written laws, regulations, policies, or standards will pale in comparison to the personal ethics of an election administrator and the cultures of the offices they run. It’s imperative that election administrators ask themselves if they and their offices can withstand enormous scrutiny. This mandates trustworthy personnel and clear ethics policies.
Overall, ethics in elections includes five elements: independence, transparency, integrity, competence, and fairness.
Independence: Like other elected officials, some election administrators must raise campaign contributions. In the course of their work, some might be called on to make decisions affecting contributors. Hallmarks of independence include avoiding conflicts of interest and treating all parties fairly by adhering to the law.
Transparency: Candidates and voters have a right to know how an elections office conducts its business. All election business should be transparent, whether it is ballot design or the procuring of voting systems. Emails and other communications should be housed in secure servers with a permanent record kept for quick compliance with open-government requests. Oversight boards should be subject to open-meeting rules, along with requirements for bipartisan representation. And once the polls close, where possible, the counting process should be live streamed.
Integrity: An election office with a high level of integrity limits opportunities for an administrator to act with unchecked discretion. These opportunities include decisions about when and where registration and early voting are conducted and what information (such as pre-election turnout) is given to a candidate or party. An election administrator should never use his or her office to express partisan support or opposition, and also should avoid doing so on personal social media accounts.
Competence: There have been elections where too few paper ballots have been available, polling stations were not practical or accessible, or poll workers were not equipped to meet challenges on Election Day. How an election official serves all precincts, with equitable attention to detail, is a true test of competence.
Fairness: Good communication can mitigate potential issues of unfairness. Election administrators should reach out to stakeholders in the community before making decisions that could be perceived as biased or insensitive. Ask for buy-in, give it the appropriate weight, and then explain how that dialogue affects election-management decisions.
Effective Ways an Election Official Can Support the Above Principles:
- Avoid endorsing or giving money to candidates or organizations that support or oppose ballot issues.
- Maintain high standards in contracting for services, including an open and competitive bidding process.
- Establish a written a code of professional conduct and ethics for employees and volunteers. Appoint an ethics compliance officer trained in rules, laws, and procedures.
- Set up transparent and secure processes so that voting fraud can be prevented, detected, and reported.
- Reach out to the administrator’s or office’s harshest critics to understand and deal effectively with their concerns.
Overall, election administrators not only manage the process of voting but also an office. Leadership sets the tones. The goal is always trust, which is generated by embracing the principles of integrity and making ethical decisions. This is essential, lest voters become disillusioned not only with elections but with democracy itself.”
Books …
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
by Greg Palast
Greg Palast has just released his new movie: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and the sequel of his New York Times bestselling book with the same title.
Palast, who has led investigations of multibillion-dollar frauds in the oil, nuclear, power, and finance industries for governments on three continents, has an academic side: he is the author of Democracy and Regulation, a seminal treatise on energy corporations and government control, commissioned by the United Nations and based on his lectures at Cambridge University and the University of São Paulo.
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: movie and book
http://thebestdemocracymoneycanbuy.com/
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: Comic book: free download
http://www.gregpalast.com/comicbook/
Rolling Stone investigative reporter Greg Palast busted Jeb Bush for stealing the 2000 election by purging Black voters from Florida’s electoral rolls. Now Palast is back to take a deep dive into the Republicans’ dark operation, Crosscheck, the secret purge list that helped steal the 2016 Election.
Crosscheck is controlled by a Trump henchman, Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State who claims his computer program has identified 7.2 million people in 29 states who may have voted twice in the same election — a felony crime. The catch? Most of these “suspects” are minorities — in other words, mainly Democratic voters. Yet the lists and the evidence remain “confidential.”
Palast and friends hunt down and confront Kobach with the evidence of his “lynching by laptop.” Then they are off to find the billionaires behind this voting scam. The search takes Palast from Kansas to the Arctic, the Congo, and to a swanky Hamptons dinner party held by Trump’s sugar daddy, John Paulson, aka “JP The Foreclosure King.”
This real life detective story is told in a film noir style with cartoon animations, secret documents, hidden cameras, and a little help from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit detectives, Ice-T and Richard Belzer, as well as Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson, Willie Nelson, and Ed Asner. Palast and his associates expose the darkest plans of the uber-rich to steal America’s democracy.
The Fight to Vote
by Michael Waldman
Michael Waldman, author of The Second Amendment: A Biography and President of the Brennan Center for Justice, is a leading law scholar and public policy activist. In his new book, The Fight To Vote (Simon & Schuster; Hardcover; Feb 23, 2016), Waldman takes a succinct and comprehensive look at a crucial American struggle: the drive to define and defend government based on “the consent of the governed.” There is no other book like it – a current, readable history of voting rights in the United States. Waldman traces the full story from the Founders’ debates to today’s challenges: a wave of restrictive voting laws, partisan gerrymanders, and the flood of campaign money unleashed by Citizens United
Waldman’s book is a needed reminder that voting rights have never been — and are still not — a guarantee. Waldman emphasizes that the fight to vote has been at the center of American politics since the nation’s founding: “It didn’t start at Selma,” he notes. From the beginning, and at every step along the way, as Americans sought the right to vote, others have fought to stop them. Raucous debates over how to expand democracy have always been a part of American politics. We continue to see the issue come up this year: Hillary Clinton has shown a high-profile embrace of democracy reform, advocating for universal, automatic voter registration; Bernie Sanders rails against Super-PACs and wealthy campaign donors that obstruct popular representation; Donald Trump boasts about his independently financed campaign — but warns about voter fraud.
In The Fight To Vote, Waldman addresses these hot button issues while providing a much needed context of the history behind voting rights and the varied attempts to expand (and limit) those rights over the years. Various groups and individuals have affected election laws in America since the nation was founded. As Waldman writes, “Through their stories, this book focuses on key moments, turning points when controversy eventually yielded a lurch forward — or when the country actually moved backward. I believe we are at such an inflection point today.”
Give Us the Ballot
by Ari Berman
There have been countless books written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America tells this story for the first time.
In this narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the Voting Rights Act and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights from 1965 to the present day. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet fifty years later we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.
Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with key figures in the debate and incisive on-the-ground reporting. He vividly takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights movement to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court.
At this important historical moment, Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.
LNL 