Iowa Voters

Does any other Secretary of State agree with Iowa’s Matt Schultz–that abortion and gay marriage are legal because cheating determines election outcomes? Or is our Secretary of State saying Iowa has the worst elections in the nation?

In an astonishing, passionate speech to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition April 15, Shultz said the group could not advance its agenda because its opponents “cheat” at the polls. His solution? Voter ID cards, of course.

Schultz offered no evidence of such cheating. He charged that

we have a lot of forgetful Democratic Senators in the state of Iowa. They just don’t get it. . . . Why would somebody be against voter ID? WHY? It’s time to call a spade a spade. . . This about honesty and integrity–I’m an Eagle Scout–I think it’s important we have an Eagle Scout be Secretary of State

Calling a spade a spade apparently means being ready to say Democrats win by cheating, which he soon said.

But first Eagle Scout Schultz went further, alleging, “They think that non-citizens should be able to vote. What planet are we living on?” He did not elaborate on exactly who thinks non-citizens should be able to vote, but he appeared to still be talking about Iowa Senate Democrats.

“There are a whole lot of issues that we care about: abortion, gay marriage, a whole lot of social issues we care deeply about. But you have to start caring about voter ID and election integrity as well, because if you don’t have that, you’ll never be able to make a difference in any other issue you care about–never. Because they will cheat. They’ll cheat. And we need to make sure that we stop them.”

In his quest for integrity the Scout ignored evidence that only a minority of Iowans back the views of his audience. Rather he told the audience that he needed their help in order to get his ID bill enacted, so that they could then get their issues enacted.

He also ignored the opinions of local county auditors, who have shown little support for his crusade. He ignored the principle report debunking the case for strict ID laws.

Schultz concluded that “we are here to protect our faith and our freedom, and we’ll do it at the voting box.” Meanwhile 70% of Americans think the GOP is out of touch with reality. Our top Eagle Scout is evidence they are correct.

cross-posted at BleedingHeartland.com

President Obama wants to cut voting time so long lines are eliminated, but Iowa’s Peter Cownie wants to lengthen voting time by eliminating one short cut—no straight ticket ballots would be allowed.

Why not? Cownie says in his newsletter the current law “has fostered partisanship and created a less educated voter.” He does not say how the ballot “creates” these dumb voters, so perhaps he means only that it assists dumb voters.

He’s more convincing about fostering partisanship. He says we are evenly divided between Rs and Ds and says we are one of only 15 states with straight ticket balloting. So is it caused in part by straight ticket voting? Is it bad to be evenly divided? Bad to be partisan?

Cownie seems to think so. But there is no straight ticket voting in New Hampshire, Colorado, Florida, Ohio, or Virginia, pretty partisan states judging from recent elections. There must be some other cause.

Or look at Rhode Island and Utah. Both have straight ticket voting like Iowa. Both are nearly one party states, quite different from Iowa’s balance between the parties. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, Kentucky—straight party voting states are a pretty diverse list. No pattern of partisanship that I see.

Cownie says curtailing straight ticket options will “create the expectation that Iowans pay their ballots the attention those ballots deserve.” He wants voters to “scrutinize each candidate a little more, understand them a little better.” If they do, he believes they “will find themselves making more informed decisions on their ballots.”

If Cownie wants more informed voters, why does he not respond to the issues survey at Project Vote Smart? They say

Peter Cownie refused to tell citizens where he stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders.

Filling in small circles for a dozen offices may not be tedious for young voters like Cownie, but for the arthritic or those with weak vision, the straight ticket option may be a godsend. It saves their weak hand muscles for all those judicial retention circles on the back of the ballot.

Cownie has not made the case for his bill. He offers no research on the topic even though he was asked to do so. Perhaps there is none available. Let’s leave well enough alone.

Cross-posted at BleedingHeartland.com

Iowa blogger John Deeth has a good post on why there are so many elections in some counties. Here’s an excerpt:

Under Iowa election law, no non-school election can ever for any reason be combined with a school election. Doesn’t really matter why - “it’s the law” ends the practical conversation - but the reasoning seems to be that school districts and precincts have different boundaries than cities, townships and regular precincts.

And don’t get me started on school district boundaries, which are confusing even to redistricting consultant Jerry Mandering. They’ve got more notches and diversions than the Norwegian coastline, and they’re all based on where Grandma and Grandpa wanted to send the kids to school in 1960, when the old township-based school system consolidated into districts.

Read the rest at his website.

Nearly six million former felons are disenfranchised in America, including 13% of African American males. Armenia is the only democracy in the world that disenfranchises former felons for life–except for Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia.”

The American Prospect, Jan/Feb 2013, page 50

This is Governor Branstad’s doings. He will tell you there is a torturous paper trail around his ban, but virtually no one has navigated it in its first two years.

Branstad appears to believe in taxation without representation.

Iowa’s voting laws made news last week when the Des Moines Register reminded us of who cannot vote here. Iowa has become one of the most difficult places to vote for felons.

It’s not clear to me why everyone who is 18 years old cannot vote, criminal record, even presence in jail notwithstanding. Is this a democracy or not?

Now the Iowa Justice Reform Coalition is asking for your help. They are soliciting letters to the editor on the subject of felon disenfranchisement. Since Iowa’s last step forward on this front happened on July 4,2005, now is a good time for those letters:

Iowa’s Horrible Turnaround on Ex-felon Voting Rights

We became complacent. During the years prior to Terry Branstad’s move back into the Iowa Governor’s Office, we should have been making permanent changes to Iowa’s law on the restoration of ex-felon voting rights. We didn’t.

When Governor Tom Vilsack issued Executive Order No. 42 on July 4, 2005, ex-offenders in Iowa were given the right to vote and hold office, providing they had completed their court-imposed sentences. Governor Chet Culver continued the process. Then, overnight, Governor Terry Edward Branstad turned the process over completely.

A recent Associated Press article reports that Governor “Branstad has made Iowa one of the most difficult states in the nation for felons to vote, with an executive order he issued last year already having disenfranchised thousands of people.” http://www.desmoinesregister.com/viewart/20120624/NEWS/306240062/Few-Iowa-felons-pursue-voting-rights

A University of Pennsylvania white paper matches “discharge records to the Iowa voter file,” and found that “ex-felon turnout substantially increased following Executive Order 42.” One figure estimates this increase to be as much as “four to eight percentage points.” http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~marcmere/workingpapers/IowaFelons.pdf

So if ex-offenders are turning out to vote in substantial numbers, why is Governor Branstad making it more difficult for them to vote? Didn’t he and a tsunami of Republicans take office with the help of those votes from ex-offenders? There is no scientific connection, but it makes you wonder, doesn’t it.
The 7th anniversary of Governor Vilsack’s executive order is this upcoming Independence Day, July 4 (Wednesday). We’re asking you to write a letter-to-the editor of your local newspaper and describe the problems you see with disenfranchisement of ex-felons.

It always helps to see where a pattern exists. Recent calls to stop student voting in some states, to end same-day voter registration in some states, to demand photo ID cards in some states, and to repeal parts of the federal Voting Rights Act are all part of this pattern of disenfranchisement. Eternal vigilance is the price of voting rights. If you have a story to tell about disenfranchisement, find a way to tell it now.

If you need to address this matter for a particular disenfranchised voter, you can start with this ACLU flier on the nuts and bolts and paperwork required.

Cross posted at BleedingHeartland.com where you can comment.

In his press conference last week Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz said voter fraud cases were “getting prosecuted all over the country.” This must have been one of them. The convict is the Indiana Secretary of State, Charlie White, a Republican. He has stepped down from office.

This one would not have been prevented even if White had shown his ID. He probably did show his ID, given that Indiana has a recent voter ID law.

White had moved to a new residence, but voted at his old residence because he still held a local office there (improperly). At the time he voted in May 2010 he was running for a higher office–Secretary of State.

He was elected. Now he has become the nation’s most notorious fraudulent voter. ID cards had nothing to do with it. I wonder if Schultz’s other cases from “all over the country” are any better evidence for his bill.

cross-posted at BleedingHeartland.

Our Secretary of State still wants to see your ID. Make that a photo ID with an expiration date on it, please, so your Iowa State student ID card will not suffice.

You need it unless you vote absentee, or get someone to swear you are really you, or swear it yourself if you are in a nursing home and can’t vote like other absentee voters. Or unless you have a religious objection or swear you are indigent. In those last two cases we break out the dreaded provisional ballots again.

With that many loopholes his new bill offers way more inconvenience, hassle, confusion, and expense for the state than it offers security for already honest elections.

The Secretary admitted that he knows of no impersonations that could justify this law. He absurdly says the only way to know if they are happening is to video tape voters coming into the polling places. If the Secretary photographed everyone entering the polls, he’d still need a way to identify the photos. Who can claim that these voters were someone else?

He cited the pranksters in New Hampshire this month who recorded themselves lying about who they were in their effort to show they could lie about who they were. They actually were given ballots, but then they ran off without voting. I think they knew it was a crime already.

I wonder how many hours the Secretary spent studying election records to see whether any votes were cast by voters who had died the week before the election. This is the main avenue for voter fraud that might go undetected. It shouldn’t be very hard to study this. The list of who voted is in his possession. Deaths are pretty public, too, along with the date of death.

The Secretary also said the ID card is not a real barrier to voters. He said that in Indiana turnout was higher after the law went into effect than it was before the law. But turnout goes up when population goes up. It also goes up when voters are more interested in the candidates.

Turnout is poor evidence in this debate where only a few voters are going to be affected. Schultz really should hope turnout goes down. That might prove his ID law had deterred fraud. Or it might prove he had disenfranchised people.

Since Schultz can’t prove any actual impersonations, he justified his bill by pointing to close elections. He said even a few impersonations could matter in a close race. But he also admitted a “very limited number of people” would not get to vote under his new rules. Those few voters could also matter in a close race. He has created a problem bigger than the one he is claiming to solve.

Voters don’t know which races will be that close. Elections aren’t stolen by voter impersonators. They are stolen via absentee ballots sometimes. That would certainly be the way to go in Iowa whether this law passes or not.

In fact his bill may not pose much of a barrier. To be denied your ballot, you would have to show up alone and not see anyone in the room who could sign for you. That may happen in the city, but rural Republicans have nothing to fear. What a coincidence.

What Schultz really needs is evidence this impersonation crime has actually happened. Good luck with that. The recent allegation that 953 South Carolina dead voters had cast ballots began to fall apart as soon as a few of the names were checked by the state election department. The rest of the list remains secret and in the hands of the accusing Dept. of Motor Vehicles. Something is rotten in Columbia, S.C. It smells all the way to Des Moines.

The photo above is from the Sandusky (OH) Register.
Hat tip to Radio Iowa’s audio.
cross-posted to Bleeding Heartland, where comments are allowed.

Republicans took a ribbing during Iowa’s recent caucuses because they did not practice what they preach. They did not require their own voters to show a photo ID card before allowing them to vote for a Presidential candidate.

Now some Republican dirty tricksters have tried to make their case for ID cards in a novel way—by committing a crime. They went to New Hampshire polls and got ballots for people who had just died. They filmed themselves doing it(embedded here). This is supposed to prove that ID cards are needed. Actually it proves something else.

Two things, in fact First it proves the crime of impersonating a voter is already well deterred. The tricksters never cast the ballots that were given to them. They merely left the polling place as soon as they had been handed the blank ballot. Even for the sake of their propaganda, they knew better than to carry this crime any farther.

But if it’s not worth the risk even in this case where they were in control of events, how much less is it worth the risk of actually casting just one fraudulent vote into a sea of thousands of legitimate votes? At one polling place the trickster was spotted by a poll worker who recognized he was using the name of a recently deceased man. This inconvenient fact was not included in the propaganda video.

The likelihood of altering the outcome is so tiny that no voters ever take this risk. Voters are smarter than tricksters, as we shall see shortly.

The trick also reveals something else inadvertently–that the crime is so rare no good evidence of it exists. It has to be staged. Ask your friends if they know of any cases. Ask if they have ever gone to vote only to learn they had already been impersonated by a previous voter. Better yet ask our Secretary of State Schultz how many voters ever report to him that they have been stopped from voting for this reason. You won’t find much evidence.

Now that video of this crime has been released, it turns out that merely “obtaining” a ballot in someone else’s name is a crime. It wasn’t necessary to cast the ballot. They may already be guilty.

Why didn’t they stage this trick at the Iowa Republican caucus sites? Because it would have made Republicans look bad. It still does.

The eyes of the world are upon us, but not only to see who is declared the winner of the GOP caucus Tuesday night. Some are trying to see just how the votes get added up. A reader from Florida writes:

While researching the Iowa Caucus process I came across your website. I was just wondering if you were aware that the Iowa GOP has decided to tally the votes in an undisclosed location this year due to an anonymous threat to ’shut down’ the caucus. This is very concerning to me and I was wondering what your take is being that you’re much more familiar with the Iowa election process than I am. I have heard that Iowa is one of the most transparent states in terms of voting, but wouldn’t counting the votes in secret open up the potential for serious vote fraud? Knowing that the Iowa GOP is not very fond of the current front runner in Iowa I am even more suspicious.

Indeed. It’s easy to imagine the whole Republican Party in the corner with Mitt Romney, hoping to hold off the Paulites and the Gingrich disaster, willing to do anything to save their careers from the hoi polloi. Might they even move their vote counting to an undisclosed location? Sure, even their beloved VP hangs out there!

The party continually points out that votes are counted at the caucus site and everyone can watch as they are phoned in to Des Moines. But then what?

Can a handful of candidate staff in Des Moines keep track of 1700 sets of of results pouring in all at once?

We know this can be done right because the Iowa Democrats did it properly in 2008. Those results were reported to an automated system that promptly put them on the internet. Caucus sites that had an internet connection could verify that their results were correctly posted to the world. Why didn’t Republicans adopt that method this time? Why are they waiting two weeks to publish their returns? (two weeks???)

As my correspondent in Florida continues–

I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but I [don’t] exactly have the utmost faith in the modern election process. . . . It certainly doesn’t help that these organizations seem to quickly change the process at the last minute. One example from the recent Florida straw poll was when the voting window was suddenly changed without notice and ticket carrying convention attendees were send home without getting to cast a vote.

He also asks what he can do to remove the doubt. Perhaps the famously networked Ron Paul campaign could set up a website similar to the one Iowa Democrats used in 2008 and publish a parallel set of results that can be seen on-line instantly by people at every caucus. Probably not all precincts would participate in their duplicate reporting system, but it would function as a large, unscientific exit poll and a spot check on the official results.

Short of that local voters can’t know their totals were correctly placed in the larger totals until the two weeks pass. That is antedeluvian.

A local judge in Pennsylvania’s Venango County has dismissed the local election board. The board was investigating the county’s iVotronic touchscreen voting machines. They had hired university experts to delve into complaints of machine misbehavior during the May 2011 primary.

Although their investigation was not yet complete, they had received an interim report from their investigator, David Eckhardt of Carnegie-Mellon University, which you can read here

Luckily Iowa no longer uses touchscreen machines (Thank you Michael Mauro!), so this report is of limited local interest. It’s published here as a reminder of how close we came to the turmoil touchscreens can cause. The Pennsylvania drama will continue, as the fired board has gone to court this week seeking a stay of execution. Can you imagine that happening in Iowa just a month before our Presidential caucuses?

Good luck to Marybeth Kuznik of VotePA.us and all the others who are working to make their elections as transparent as the Iowa caucuses.

A columnist for the Mason City newspaper has defended Cerro Gordo’s top election official from a “cheap shot” taken by our Secretary of State Matt Schultz.

Schultz apparently went out of his way to pick a fight (deja vu) with County Auditor Ken Kline over requiring voter ID cards.

He [Kline] was asked by a constituent at a Board of Supervisors meeting what he thought of the proposed law.

“Am I opposed to it? No. But what problem are we solving?” asked Kline.

He said to his knowledge, Iowa never had a problem of someone voting in someone else’s place.

In his response to Kline, Schultz, in a letter to the editor to the Globe Gazette, said people have to show photo IDs to get on an airplane or to get a checking account, so why not when they vote?

. . .
The really unfair comment from Schultz was when he wrote, in reference to Kline, “We must elect men and women who will stand up for fair and honest elections.”

Who knows what he meant by that?

The newspaper went on to cite Kline’s outstanding record, concluding that “he’s a stand-up guy who deserves better than to take a cheap shot from a state official for simply answering a question from a constituent.”

Schultz offered this cheap shot because he has no legitimate answer to Kline’s question: What problem will we solve with Schultz’s pet idea? There is no problem. The Schultz “solution” will cost Iowa lots of money and will inconvenience voters. Kline is right to question it. The Globe-Gazette is right to defend him.

Iowa has become the first state to complete its redistricting. Congressmen did not get to use their influence to draw districts who would re-elect them. Legislators did not draw districts to maximize their chances to control the legislature after the next election. The Governor did not hold the whole map hostage to unrelated demands.

Iowa has the best redistricting system in the USA. We have objective and fair rules for drawing the districts. We have a fair process for accepting or rejecting the map that is produced by professional staff. We had the wisdom to let the chips fall where they fell.

This is one of our main claims to being a good government state. The legislators long ago who established this system should be proud.

When Iowans elected a new Secretary of State in November, county election officials (Auditors) adapted quickly. Secretary-elect Schultz had already riled the auditors during the campaign. He had insinuated that voting rolls were improperly managed, and he had called for new laws to block imaginary illegal voters.

The auditors initiated a study of photo ID requirements for voters when Schultz told them he would press for such a law in Iowa. A handful of other states have a similar requirement. Seven auditors traveled to two of those states, Indiana and Florida. Their 14-page report is now available on the front page of their website.

Reading between the lines of the report one can see the ID laws don’t prevent this imaginary fraud so much as move it to a new place in the voting system. Voters can escape the photo requirement by voting absentee in Indiana, for example. One Indiana official said he encourages voters to use absentee ballots if the ID rule is a stumbling block for them. However, the Iowa report notes

Since mailed absentee ballots are already the area of the election process that is most prone to voter fraud, this “go-around” actually opens the election process to greater potential for voter fraud.

Indeed Indiana and Florida each cite their own history of absentee ballot fraud yet both still permit absentee voters.

It is not clear if either state relies on the photo rule anyway. Indiana absentees avoid the photo law. At the polls it is common to rely more on signature similarity than to study the photo ID, according to one Indiana official. Furthermore, Indiana allows names that don’t exactly match each other, citing ten variations of the name J. Crew, for example, that would all be allowed to vote with the same ID card.

Florida voters can avoid presenting a photo if they have two forms of ID or if their signature on voting day matches a prior signature in the state’s database.

Look-alike brothers Bill Jones and Bob Jones could probably vote for each other in Indiana as easily as in Iowa. People with paperwork skills can probably navigate the system with little hassle. I don’t think the voter ID demand is even intending to stop them, both because it is so rare that one voter impersonates another, and because that is no way to steal an election.

This campaign may be driven by a widely held notion among Republican activists that “DemocRATS” don’t win elections unless they cheat. Rather than rely on evidence for this view, they hold it as a matter of faith. They proceed to claim it’s just a sensible requirement, thus avoiding the need think clearly about the notion.

The auditor’s report does not advocate or condemn voter ID laws. Auditors knew they had to avoid that policy debate. Instead it explains the stories of the other two states and recommends some minimum standards for Iowa in case the legislature agrees to erect this new blockade. They include “a significant financial investment” in voter education for the indefinite future, money for free ID cards, money to defend the law against a likely court challenge, and money for improving the technology that links databases of registered voters and licensed drivers. That’s four new lines of expenditure, estimated to exceed two million dollars a year in the report.

But since the report was written, Secretary Schultz has reduced funding for Iowa’s innovative poll worker technology tool known as Precinct Atlas. Counties who use the optional device must divide up the $30,000 cost formerly paid by the state.

Secretary Schultz says his new ID plan will make elections “secure.” County auditors who used the Precinct Atlas made the same claim for it. Security is in the eye of the beholder.

cross-posted at Bleeding Heartland.

The new Republican Secretary of State in Indiana has been indicted for voter fraud. His fraudulent voting behavior was not prevented by the state’s photo ID law. By the way, here’s his photo ID now:

Actually I don’t know if he showed his ID card when he voted, but it is required by Indiana law.

Secretary White simply did not live where his vote was cast. But he needed to appear to live there because he was getting paid to represent his old neighborhood on the city council!

Now that this fraud has apparently been perpetrated on the Republican Party of Indiana (it happened in the primary election), what does the man’s attorney have to say about it?

“I’m confident that this doesn’t rise to the level of a criminal offense. … He had kind of a chaotic personal living situation at the time.”

Money may be the mother’s milk of politics, but double standards are the sine qua non. . . . . .also posted at BleedingHeartland.

Iowa’s county election officials (the county auditors) oppose a bill that has already passed the Iowa House. The bill would require voters to show a photo ID before voting. Absentee voters would have to photocopy their ID and mail it in with the ballot (Think for a moment how that would help the auditor know if the person in the photo matches the person who mailed the ballot).

Republicans dominate both the House and the auditors group. The sixty House Republicans voted unanimously for the bill three weeks ago. According to the Register, not a single auditor endorses it. Meeting last week, the Iowa auditors decided to register their group in opposition to the bill.

Secretary Schultz said the bill, HF 95, should be passed to prevent people from impersonating someone else at the poll. Auditors said they had never heard of such a thing happening.

This is the second time the group has rebuked the new Secretary of State. Last summer a large faction of the auditors endorsed Schultz’s opponent, an unusual step for these generally tight-lipped officials. Even Schultz’s home county auditor, Republican Marilyn Jo Drake, endorsed the incumbent Mike Mauro.

Other groups that have registered against the bill include the ACLU, AARP, the Governor’s Developmental Disabilities Council, the Methodist Church, and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. Backing the bill are the Farm Bureau, the Iowa Minutemen, and the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

also posted at Bleeding Heartland.