Voting dilemma

In Europe, the voting for the EU parliament is currently going on, and in Denmark it happens on Sunday. At the same time, Danish voters are also asked to vote on a change of the constitution, which would change the rules regarding succession in the Royal family.

Currently the rules are that if the current monarch has one or more sons, the oldest son is the successor. In case there are no sons, the oldest daughter is the successor (in case there are no children, it gets more complicated).

The constitution change would result in men and women being treated equal, so it's always the eldest child, no matter their gender.

As a progressive, I have some serious problems deciding what to vote. Since I am very much for equal rights, I won't vote against, but I am debating whether I should vote at all. I regard the whole concept of royalty as outdated and abhorrent - the whole concept that someone gain privileges according to the law, solely because of their family ties, goes against everything I consider important. Voting yes to the constitution change could be seem to legitimize the whole system of royalty.

I know I am not alone in thinking this in Denmark, and many non-royalists are considering not voting, turning it into a referendum on royalty. If less than 40% of the eligible voters vote yes, the change will fail, regardless of the result.

This is no way to hold an election

I have not commented much on the upcoming election, except for making my support of the Obama/Biden ticket clear. The reason why I haven't done so, is because I expect all my readers to have made up their minds already, and because I frankly find the possibility of a Republican victory depressing beyond words.

So, this post is not about the upcoming US election, but rather about the US election process.

Considering the fact that the US has been a democracy for a long time, it's hard for me to understand how badly the whole process of voting works out in the US. After each election we hear numerous stories about the problems people have had with getting to vote. These problems are especially widespread in poor neighborhoods, which means Blacks are dis-proportionally dis-franchised. There have been some evidence that some of these problems are to some degree caused intentionally by people who find it politically convenient if the affected group of voters don't get to vote. Other problems are on the other hand caused by incompetence, which people in position to do something about this, don't care about.

How can a country claim to be a democracy when people are blocked from voting?

Another great problem is that people can't be sure that their vote is counted, even if they get to vote. This was best demonstrated in Florida in the 2000 election. However, that's hardly the only time when this has been demonstrated - there have been numerous examples of problems with voting machines, yet again, it seems like the people in positions to do something about this don't care.

This should be completely unacceptable in a country that claims it's a democracy.

Even worse, there are countless ways in which the voting machines can be hacked - they well described in this blogpost: Hacking Your Vote (sent to me by Dalager). The post doesn't tell anything new, but it's a good summary of the possibilities.

One of the most important tasks in a democracy is to ensure that people can't commit voting fraud, yet the electronic voting machines are still in use. How can that be accepted in a country which claims it's one of the oldest democracies in the world?

I have said in jest in the past that I think the EU should send observers to ensure that the US elections are fair. Maybe we really should?

US vote fraud and Karl Rove

The Atlantic Monthly has a dispatch by Joshua Green about the Bush adminstration's focus on vote fraud, and how it seems likely that Karl Rove is the man behind that.

Karl Rove's Voter Fraud Fetish

Until Alberto Gonzalez testifies next week, the main area of interest in the ongoing attorney general scandal is the White House’s seemingly odd fixation with “voter fraud.” At least two of the U.S. attorneys at the heart of the scandal were removed for failing, in the estimation of Bush officials, to adequately pursue and prosecute voter fraud. The trouble is, there doesn’t seem to be much fraud to prosecute.

[...]

Allowing for the possibility that someone, somewhere in the White House genuinely believes voter fraud is a problem, I think a much likelier explanation is that administration officials—and one official in particular, Karl Rove—see the issue of voter fraud as a handy political weapon at election time. Voicing concerns about fraud often paves the way for intimidation tactics like poll watching that depress turnout, especially among minorities and less educated voters who tend to vote Democratic.

Rove never passes up an opportunity to seize an electoral advantage. But I have a better reason for suspecting his handiwork. The closest race of Rove’s career—the 1994 election for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in which Rove’s candidate actually trailed the morning after the election—hinged on the issue of voter fraud.

The dispatch links to a NY Times article about the number of vote frauds actually found by the Justice Department in the five years under the Bush adminstration.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

120 people in five years? Doesn't sound like a widespread problem, and it seems that the the Election Assistance Commission study of the subject agrees, even if the findings were downtoned. Of course, there are still some cases pending, but I doubt it's many more.

There is no doubt that there are serious issues with the US voting process. Up towards 2 million votes are not counted, and they disproportionally belongs to minorities. Large numbers of voters are kept from voting, even if they are elible, due to bad data used for scrubbing voting lists. Florida, of course, being the worst example. And then there is the simple fact that felons get disfranchised in some states, even after having served their time. However, vote fraud is not one of them, and any focus on that issue is either an attempt to distract from the other issues, or an attempt to intimidate voters.