Black Box Voting

When a touch screen voting machine tried to steal Oprah Winfrey's vote for President last Thursday, the public and media noticed.  Oprah was voting on a touchscreen voting machine paid for by funds from ironically named "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA).

This week, Tim Robbins found to his shock and anger that his name had been purged from New York's voter rolls.  His right to vote was being stolen by the voter registration databases - also required by HAVA. Robbins refused to vote an "affadavit ballot" or similarly named provisional ballot, because he felt that (rightly so) such a ballot might not be counted.  Robbins went to court, and after a few hours obtained a court order stating that he was indeed a registered voter.  Robbins had voted regularly and at the same location for years, and had not changed residence.  Robbins was then able to cast a regular ballot.  Most of us would not be able to do this.

"This is just one example of how difficult it is to vote in the United States," he said.

There seems to be a common thread in these federal laws with the catchy names, like the "Clean Skies Act", "No Child Left Behind Act", and others.  The common thread - these acts do the opposite of what their name says. 

Demos has a warning about provisional ballots.  Provisional ballots are conditional ballots issued to voters who have registration problems. Some election officials like to describe provisional ballots as "Fail Safe".  Demos warns that many states reject tens of thousands of these ballots. What many voters do not realize is that provisional ballots are not counted on election night, have to be approved before they can count, could go uncounted for several days after the election,and in some states a high rate are rejected.