I have to run do some errands -- I'll be back in a couple of hours. But anyone else around should start making plans without me.
I guess jaundice had to set in sooner or later.
I can work on NM for a start. Richardson proposed a plan for standardizing voting statewide using machines with paper trails (basically, exactly what we want) back in February or so, and I think the plan has been carried out, but I don't know for sure. I'll check up on it; if it's gone as intended it could be a good model for other states to follow.
I part of your oversupply of New Yorkers, but I can be reassigned to any state not covered.
Do you know about this thing, which might or might not be defunct?
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.php
4: Actually, Rob, since you're in a part of New York that is decidedly underrepresented here, you can probably work more locally. This is really more a local than a state-level issue.
This page has what looks like a table of state-level legislation:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?list=type&type=13
7: Am I correct in reading this page as saying that New York’s S.5877 is a law, so that we've basically achieved what we wanted for New York State?
8: Looks like it. In fact, it looks like a lot of this work has already been done.
As I remember, there is good information on Black Box Voting, but there have also been problems and controversies on the site which mean that it should be approached with care.
Johns Hopkins computer science professor and e-voting critic Avi Rubin's blog would seem to be a good resource; he also just put out a topical book, although I've neither read it nor seen any reviews.
Delurking to say that the state office to pay attention to is Secretary of State. This is the elected official in charge of ensuring that elections are administrated fairly. In Minnesota, Mark Ritchie is running for Sec of State because when he got the November 2 Voter registration campaign going, he realized that the current Rep. occupant of that office mucked around with MN's historically clean elections; Ohio and Florida were more flagrant examples. We may have good laws on the books, but the person in charge can monkey around with things. More here:
http://www.markritchie06.net/
I imagine that the office of the Sec of State should be a resource for information about how your state conducts elections, what the laws are, etc.
I will now relurk.
To combine 9 and 12, it turns out that there is already a slick blog-based project devoted to electing secretaries of state who are less corrupt than Robert Mugabe.
11 -- Thanks for the link, I've heard his name, but haven't read the blog and it looks quite good.
I'm definitely in, although I'll admit that I may not be as on the ball as I'd like until I get some RL things sorted out over the next few weeks (e.g., the move, some work issues).
You all are making an honest woman out of me. Whenever a RL person I don't want to know about Unfogged asks how I met one of you, my go-to response has been "Oh, some political volunteering thing I'm involved with..."
Hey, thanks Joanna. Delurk again at will.
Looking at that Secretary of State Project blog, that looks like something useful to spend the next month on -- donating or volunteering on local races.
It looks like VerifiedVoting and Electionline already have some pretty detailed state-by-state information. Here are some links:
The whole 'compiling' thing may be entirely misguided. Perhaps a better idea is to start combing through the sites that have been linked and looking for possible local projects where some pressure would be useful now.
(This bit is what always keeps me from ever doing anything useful -- the incredibly embarrassing process of moving from 'I should be doing something useful, but I have no idea what' to figuring out what, if anything, useful there is to do.)
Compiling's not a bad start, especially since it will help Unfogged figure out its niche.
What might be helpful would be a way to sort out the jaundice-colored posts from the cock-jokes, maybe with a tag that brings them all up.
I'm sensing a dislike for orange -- would another color be preferable? (I'll try to figure out how to categorize posts -- I'm sure it's easy.)
I do think that splitting up states is still the way to go -- looking for the current state of play in the state each person has volunteered for, and developing some kind of notes (e.g., Michigan is fine, New Jersey has good laws but the SoS is buying weird machines... whatever.) So far Teo's claimed NM, and Rob, by implication, has NY.
New Jersey has good laws but the SoS is buying weird machines
Is this for real or just an example you're pulling out of your butt? I surfed over to the NJ SoS's page to check where they are buying machines and one of the companies listed is Election Systems and Software, whose address is on John Galt Blvd. in Omaha, NE -- made a chill run down my spine.
Oh, I like the orange. I was just imagining that in a week's time someone would try to find a link in a thread and would only have the color to navigate by.
Another table of ID requirements by state.
21: The example is ex recto. I don't know a thing about the current state of affairs in Jersey. Do you want Jersey?
I made a category called "Voting" and put this post in it. Voting posts can be found here: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/voting/. Maybe one of the youngins will feel like prettifying that page.
Another site with information about voting machines:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/
There's a video showing Ed Felten picking a lock and tampering with a Diebold voting machine, as well as a link to his recent paper. Ed also uninstalled IE from Windows, hacked digital music recordings, and, um, made the Rose Bowl scoreboard read "Caltech vs. MIT" back in college.
Teo's claimed NM
Judging from the sites linked in this thread, NM seems to be fine--mandatory paper ballots with optical scan, statewide.
23 -- Well I could work on NJ but I ought to warn you I've never been much good at researching. It would be great if this exercise made me understand how to research. I will also probably be taking my cue a lot from what other people are doing. Where should I put information I come up with? Do I wait for Mr. H and PdfTo3ds to create the Wiki? Sorry about all the questions. -- Like I'm thinking if I look up news stories about each of those companies listed at the link I posted in 21, I could see which ones are suspect, and write that up. Dear God, John Galt Blvd. in Omaha -- what a fucking trip.
I wonder what the John Galt Software Company's voting machines are like. I'm picturing a big lever surrounded by voters who are trying to pull it toward the candidate of their choice, but only the strongest, tallest and most arrogant man in a given precinct is able to bend it to his will.
I think the most productive thing for us to do at this point (since it appears most of the data collection has already been done by other sites) would be to scour those sites for remaining problems that we could focus on.
Sounds sensible -- the state thing is just to give each person some focus. Given that I can't think of a Floridian here, I'll take a look at FL -- I have a vague sense that I've seen coverage of FL problems recently. Georgia, too -- they have that ghastly voter ID thing that just got overturned; one wonders what their voting machines are like.
I'll take a look at FL
Hey! What, Buck's out of town or something?
One of the problems we may run into a little later is that if we want to, say, put pressure on state legislatures or secretaries of state to make good decisions on this issue they'll probably be unlikely to listen to people who aren't constituents. So if we get to that point, it would be a good idea to have people who live in the areas in question take over.
There's really an unbelievable amount of information at Electionline. They have reports on major issues, and election previews for individual states. Those might be good places to look.
All those election previews seem to be for elections that have already happened.
Yeah, it would be nice if they would write previews for the elections in November.
Hey, I was out of town all weekend, but this sounds like good times. I'll look into what the law in RI is (although I know that we currently use optical scan ballots).
I do some work with these fine folks:
http://www.demos.org/page13.cfm
and these
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=114
THis warms my heart.
Ohio voting is, famously, a patchwork mess. How specific do you want anything beyond that, LB? I live in Cuyahoga County, to boot, and while the breakdown in the primaries wasn't quite as bad as the Al Wynn disaster in Maryland, it was pretty bad.
Oregon uses vote-by-mail statewide, but questions remain concerning the accuracy and hackability of the optical scanners used to tally votes; many counties use ES&S scanners, for example, which have been found to have problems elsewhere. NM may have the same issues. Anyway, I'll take Oregon.
I like the map idea that was proposed in the earlier activism thread. A good precinct-level presentation identifying areas with problematic voting policies or technologies could, I think, really help voting-reform advocates target advertising, outreach and GOTV efforts. (That may have been suggested; I didn't read the whole thread.) If someone else isn't working on that already, I'd be happy to take it up with some graphic designers.
LB, will you compile a list at some point of states that no one's chosen? Perhaps along with states which might need more than one person?
My analyst husband who deals with the New York City Board of Elections as part of his work suggests the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU (part of the law school). Apparently they compile good reports of this sort of stuff. He also suggests that Precinct Based Optical Scan voting machines would be best (and cheaper).
NM may have the same issues.
It very well might; ES&S appears to be the company providing the new machines being used across the state. They're the one headquartered on John Galt Blvd., so checking on them might be a good idea.
I think this is a great idea. It's got bipartisan appeal and is unquestionably good for America.
I like the map idea that was proposed in the earlier activism thread. A good precinct-level presentation identifying areas with problematic voting policies or technologies could, I think, really help voting-reform advocates target advertising, outreach and GOTV efforts.
This is a good idea if we end up with information at this level.
8, 26: I think knowing that there are good laws in a given state is a first step, but I'd like to know literally what machines and procedures are used -- there's no assurance that they're going to be in compliance with the law as we'd interpret it. I'd keep looking for detail both in NM and NY.
I live in NY and grew up in NM, so assign me some neglected state.
DaveB is Teofilo! It all makes sense now!
So far we have people with dibs on NY, NJ, NM, FL, GA, RI and IL -- take your pick from the remainder.
I think it probably makes sense to do an initial compilation of everything you can find on your states from the linked websites and some googling, and all report back in with what you've got by Friday. (Obviously, if what you've got is "Too busy this week", that's a report.)
Go for it. Are you a citizen of Japan (I have an uneducated belief that that's somewhere between difficult and impossible, but I don't actually know) or do you just live there? And if the latter, have you sent away for an absentee ballot yet?
Shh, LB! We don't want this guy voting!
Oh, I know, but this is the good government thread. We can try to browbeat GB into agreement in the rest of the blog.
I just live here. But for a really fascinating look at a guy who gained Japanese citizenship (and renounced his US citizenship), here's his blog.
I'll take PA, then. If we don't cover all the states the first time 'round, we should focus on relatively swing ones, no? My first thought was to research UT, since I went to college there and paid some attention to state politics, but vote-fixing there would only be a good thing.
46: As a jack Mormon, I'm probably closer to being Jackmormon than teofilo. But really I'm neither.
I'll take North Carolina, unless Apo or McManly Pants wants it, in which case I would be happy to take Georgia.
States people live in are still avaliable? Cool. I'll look at MA.
The three municipaities that I have lived and voted in here have all been optical-scan paper ballots, but there's been a bit of a ruckus lately about whether we'll be in compliance with HAVA as regards disabled access - that seems to be a kind of back-door to sneak in more technology to otherwise low-tech elections.
I'm willing to do preliminary research on California, but if we're getting down to the precinct level, no way will I be able to do it by myself. (The thought of even doing that for my home county make me kind of dizzy.) If someone's willing to share the work, dibs on Northern California.
Yeah, California is huge, and has gotten a ridiculous amount of media coverage. My guess is that the smallest level of granularity we really need to worry about is counties -- aren't voting methods standardized by county everyplace?
in compliance with HAVA as regards disabled access - that seems to be a kind of back-door to sneak in more technology to otherwise low-tech elections.
I've gotten that impression too -- that one of the more peculiar things in coverage of voting methods has been explanations from the sort of person you wouldn't normally suspect of being overly concerned with the rights of the disabled that no-paper-trail touch-screen methods are absolutely required as the only method that can accomodate blind voters.
aren't voting methods standardized by county everyplace?
I thought I remembered reading about differential levels of access at different precincts within Cuyahoga County back in 2000. I guess they may all have had the same machines however.
I believe responsibility for voting procedures rests only with officials at the state and county levels (Secretary of State and County Clerk--these may have different titles in some states). So yeah, I think the county is the lowest level we need to focus on. Any irregularities at the precinct level will probably be mentioned in information about the county in question.
(DaveB: where in NM?)
aren't voting methods standardized by county everyplace?
Not in MA - per-municipality, all 351 of them. We don't even really have counties anymore; they were abolished for all practical purposes a few years ago. Some of the western former-counties have created things like the "Frankin Council of Governments", but as a cooperative effort, not one with staturory power.
don't even really have counties anymore; they were abolished for all practical purposes a few years ago.
Goddamn do I hate federalism. This sort of thing is just untidy.
I thought you only hated state-level federalism.
That's what I hate. MA has the power, as a state, to invent some nitwitted method of local organization other than counties for MA and MA only. So any understanding of law or politics relating to local government developed outside of MA is useless within MA.
I don't mind giving localities power, but I want the forms standardized nationwide.
I dunno, LB, the New England town is one of the most venerable institutions of local government in North America, and has been around since long before there was a State of Massachusetts.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with towns. I just want to have a standardized hierarchy nationwide -- states contain counties, which contain municipalities and other forms of local government. It's not that I care what that form is, I just want it to follow the same form nationwide.
Aren't voting methods standardized by county everyplace?
Not in my area -- counties are rolling out electronic voting machines by whatever priority they see fit. The richest and/or most densely populated areas seem to get them first, which is why my old precinct (most densely-populated in that county) had them in 2000 and my current precinct (few condos/apartments, gentrifying) will probably be among the last to give up paper ballots. We did get one this last election for disabled voters, but considering how many old people there are in my neighborhood, you'd think that if they were really worried about the disabled we'd have had it a lot sooner.
65: We pretty much have that already, it's just that in certain heavily-developed states some of the intermediate institutions are superfluous; why does MA need counties? Also, this is a little rich coming from someone from NY, which has one of the most bizarre systems of local government anywhere.
Hey, you're in New York, where you have both the "borough" division within NYC (I've never figured out if that implies a sub-municipal lelvel of power or not ) and the rural practice of having "village" sub-municipal entities with actual power within towns. And the villages can have the same name as their enclosing town.
(I think Virginia would drive you nuts, too - IIRC there are counties, and towns within counties, but cities are parallel to counties, not enclosed within them, and there's unincorporated land within counties that is not within any town, so even the *number* of levels of government one is within is variable.)
"Sub-municipal" is probably not the best descriptor for New York villages; they're really very small municipal entities, enclosed (like cities) within towns, which are rural units of administration equivalent to Midwestern townships. This all takes place below the county level.
I disapprove of all that too. (The borough thing isn't that weird, though. Boroughs are just counties -- New York got bigger than its home county and spread to include four other neighboring counties. So it's a reversal of size, in that the municipality is bigger than the counties it encloses, but it's not an additional form of government.)
Also, more directly related to voting, NY has the wackiness of letting minor parties endorse major candidates and thus have multiple lines on the ballot (and thus express "I voted for the Dem but my heart is with the Greens" or whatever). MA is actually voting this November on whether to adopt such a system ourselves.
It's great, and MA should do it. Yay, fusion!!
NY's third-party system is actually very good, and it would be great if other states followed its example.
Contrast this with Texas, which has straight-ticket voting (i.e., a single box you can check, saying you're voting for all the Republicans or all the Democrats.) As for third parties, they scarcely even have a second party any more.
Don't most places have straight-ticket voting?
Not NY -- you need to flip all the little levers manually.
I thought boroughs were a little different from counties in NY. I live in the borough of Brooklyn, which I'm told is in King's County.
teofilo: I grew up on the west side of Albuquerque. West Mesa HS, graduated early '90s. You? I've noticed New Mexico references from you as I've lurked, but now suddenly you're going on about municipal organization in Mass.
It's not in Kings County, it is Kings County.
The borough of Manhattan is New York County, of Brooklyn is Kings County, of Staten Island is Richmond County, of Queens is Queens County, and the Bronx is Bronx County. There's no distinction between the borough and the county (I don't think) other than the dual naming structure -- it's not an additional layer of government.
77: I grew up in the University area and went to AHS. Small world.
78: There was originally a difference; Brooklyn, for instance, was once a small city in Kings County, which was mostly rural. Over time it expanded and annexed adjacent urbanizing areas until eventually there was no difference between the borough and the county. Then it was absorbed into NYC. Something similar happened for all the other boroughs.
Minnesota is voting this fall, I think, on preferential voting with a runoff, so you can vote for your first, second, and third choice candidates.
At least, the Star Tribune endorsed the idea.
69: by "villages" don't you mean "hamlets"? In PA the unincorporated towns are called "villages", and are subsets of "townships", but in NY they are "hamlets" and are subsets of "towns".
I think a village is an incorporated hamlet (or a hamlet is an unincorporated village) and both are subsets of towns.
"Hamlet" is an actual political designation? That's so twee.
Right, villages are incorporated. I'm not sure about hamlets, but you don't see them on, e.g., road signs, so they're probably the unincorporated equivalent. Cities, btw, are also subsets of towns in NY.
Depends on where you are. My mom has a house in Southold, and the hamlets within Southold (actually, they're referred to as towns, but I know they aren't really) certainly appear on roadsigns.
Here we go. Turns out hamlets are indeed the unincorporated equivalent of villages. Also, I was wrong to say that cities are subordinate to towns; they're separate, unlike villages.
It's not that I care what that form is, I just want it to follow the same form nationwide.
Why? This exceeds even my desire to carve nature and/or polities at the joints into bite-sized pieces.
Pa. also has a designation of 'municipality.' I'm not quite sure what it means, though.
Eh, political subdivisions aren't the worlds biggest problem. As a stand in for variable state laws, which really irk me, I find them irritating.
"Here's video of Clint Curtis, a former programmer for Yang Enterprises (YEI) in Florida, testifying under oath that Representative Tom Feeney asked him to write a voting machine program to rig elections. Feeney is Republican Congressman who was the Speaker of the House of Florida at the time, as well as a lobbyist for Yang Enterprises, and Yang Enterprises' corporate attorney. (Feeney was also named one of the "20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress" by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington).
In the video, Curtis testifies that Feeney asked him to write a program for touchscreen voting machines that could undetectably 'flip the vote 51-49 to whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win.'"
79: I took Russian at the CEC for two years and our classroom was over in the main AHS building.
In the main AHS building? That sounds kind of odd; when I was there all the CEC classes (I took AP Physics there) were taught only at CEC. They no longer offered Russian at that point, though.
I think in Pennsylvania "municipality" means either a "city", or a "borough" (which I think is like a city but supposed to be smaller), or a "township" (more sparsely populated areas, which contain unincorporated towns which are called "villages"). In other words, every square inch of Pennsylvania is part of a municipality, either a city, a borough, a township, or a town. (The town is Bloomsburg). If you are in a village, you are also in a township, but if you are in a township you are not necessarily in a village.
Here are the municipalities in Allegheny County. You will note that every square inch is part of exactly one municipality. And villages aren't on the map, because villages don't really matter politically. A village is basically a post office with a name that makes it sound like it is an actual town, surrounded by houses which would also like to be considered part of that town.
There was supposed to be a link in that post.
http://www.county.allegheny.pa.us/munimap/
every square inch of Pennsylvania
Does this include state and federal parkland? (Just curious.)
I think it does. Let's check out the municipal map of Elk County which is largely a national forest:
It looks like it consists of 9 townships and 3 boroughs (unless St. Mary's is considered a "city", which it certainly should not be).
Most of the area west of Ridgway on that map is part of the Allegheny National Forest, but it's divided into townships just like the rest of the state. I can't find a good map that includes both national forest boundaries and county/municipal boundaries, though.
So are boroughs part of townships or separate from them?
As soon as I posted that I found a much, much better map of Elk County. Warning: PDF
Boroughs are separate from townships, although a borough may be surrounded by a township. Boroughs have separate governments, like cities but smaller.
As you can see here, the Ridgway Borough tax collector is a different person from the Ridgway Township tax collector.
Do links not work anymore? The word "here" should have linked to this:
http://www.co.elk.pa.us/elections/November2005Results/LNGQRYPC.HTM
That's different from New York, then, where villages are contained within towns (though cities aren't).
In Pennsylvania, villages are also contained within townships, but boroughs and cities aren't.
I don't think PA has an equivalent of your "village", because if a village becomes incorporated here it becomes a borough and is no longer part of the same government as the surrounding township.
As you can see here, a township's area is reduced by the incorporation of a village that used to be part of the township - and a township's area is increased if a borough decides to merge with the township and become a village.
For example, here's a village that used to be a borough but decided to just become part of the surrounding township. This makes it a "census-defined place" which no longer has a government. In Pennsylvania we call these "census-defined places" villages.
Yeah, that's what's apparently called a "hamlet" in NY. The basic thing here seems to be that NY towns are not exactly equivalent to townships in PA (or, presumably, in other states that have them, like much of the midwest), although they are similar.
VoteTrustUSA has articles about voting machine vendors and other stuff.
91: The first year was in one of the portable classrooms in back of the main building (west side). Two years later, when I took a second year of Russian, they'd moved us into the main building, a classroom on the north side. I guess the CEC was full. Being over at AHS was great, though, since it meant nobody really had much control over us, and our teacher let us get away with a lot as long as we learned our declensions.
sam k said he'd take GA if either Apo or I wanted NC - I'd like to call dibs on NC if I can. (If Apo wants to be involved and also wants NC then he's just going to have to thumb-wrestle me for it.)
Excellent; so that leaves you with NC, Sam with GA, and I've got FL. I don't know if you saw above, but the idea is to reconvene with progress reports on Friday. (Progress reports of course possibly including "I didn't get to it this week").
I'm terribly glad you're in -- you actually understand the technical end of this stuff, right?
I'm in, although I think I don't understand the assignment. We are looking for:
a summary written of (1) what the current governing law in the state says about voting methods; (2) what person or organization within the state is responsible for making discretionary decisions about voting methods; (3) what the current and near future state of affairs is -- is the state testing new machines? Have they just bought? Are they making purchasing decisions? What do they have now?
Magpie said she would work on California. I should coordinate with her; although there was also talk about California getting lots of attention.
Do I understand correctly that the end product is a wiki, by state, with the information we're gathering this week? And once we have that, we'll use it to look for places that require greater focus?
Not yet a wiki, I don't think -- at this point each person is just making a first pass at collecting information, which 'information' conceived loosely as: what's the state of the governing law in your state? Who makes decisions about voting methods (office, name, are they made statewide, or at the county level?) To the extent you can find out, what machines are now being used? What coverage has there been of problems with your state's current voting methods.
The hope is that some states can be knocked off as not currently a problem without much review -- if, to make up an example, MN has precinct by precinct optically read ballots statewide, we know there's nothing more to worry about there. With whatever people come back with this week, we can talk about what more research needs to be done. And, of course, if someone comes up with "Hey, in Jersey they're about to switch the whole state over to the Diebold Electostealomatic -- the decision is being made between now and the first of the year!" then we have a useful project to focus on.
Cool. I went through most of the links above and was jealous that all those people knew so much about important stuff to do. They're already working on their projects. We could write to some of them and ask for assignments.
I decided I'm going to volunteer for the new local ACLU chapter, instead of Unfogged. I don't think I have that much to offer here. Unless you guys want to make an ad--I'm good with AfterEffects. Jittery type!!
111: Well, yeah. That's sort of why I'm not thinking of the wiki yet -- my thought was that an organized approach to what's been written by the people already doing work on this stuff might come up with some useful projects to focus on.
108: Yep, network security is my field, so I'm very comfortable with the technical details.
I'm not sure if this will happen by Friday for me, but I'm going to see what I can dig up on NC's laws, at least, by Friday.
I didn't do much; fortunately, Kim Alexander has already done most of the work.
She made up a map of , and wrote up a summary of California voting law, saying that California's Secretary of State has come around to requiring a paper trail.
She lives in Sac, so if there is still enthusiasm for this project, I'll email her, and ask to take her out to coffee so I can ask her for suggestions of what to work on.
Anyway - I'm out for the day. Have a fun weekend.
Hey were we supposed to report back today? I didn't do anything exhaustive but I got some data. Should I post it here? Something else?
I'll put up a post this afternoon.