FW: Vote fraud and voter intimidation (apropos Justice Stevens' refusalto stay the Sixth Circuit decision)

[Mark Tushnet]

According to a story in yesterday's LA Times, "A challenger [in Ohio] can contest a person's right to vote if the prospective voter is not: a citizen; at least 18 years old; voting in the county where he or she lives, or a resident of the state for at least 30 consecutive days before the vote."  I wonder (really, I wonder) what information a challenger could have in hand that would allow him/her to interpose a good faith challenge to a voter on the first, third, or fourth grounds.

----- Original Message -----
From: Sanford Levinson <SLevinson at law.utexas.edu>
Date: Tuesday, November 2, 2004 3:36 pm
Subject: FW: Vote fraud and voter intimidation (apropos Justice Stevens' refusalto stay the Sixth Circuit decision)

> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Douglas Laycock [DLaycock at law.utexas.edu] 
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 2:32 PM
> To: slevinson at mail.law.utexas.edu
> Subject: FW: Vote fraud and voter intimidation (apropos Justice 
> Stevens'refusalto stay the Sixth Circuit decision)
> 
> 	Could you forward this to Con Law list?  My new e-mail isn't
> registered yet. 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Douglas Laycock
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 1:58 PM
> To: 'Volokh, Eugene'; CONLAWPROF at lists.ucla.edu
> Subject: RE: Vote fraud and voter intimidation (apropos Justice 
> Stevens'refusalto stay the Sixth Circuit decision)
> 
> 	I was a poll watcher in Cook County in 1970 and 1972, once in a
> mostly working black precinct on the south side, once in an 
> affluent and
> white suburban precinct.  That's not much of an information base.
> 
> 	I had three jobs.  One was to watch for any violation of the
> rules by the election judges, to look at the machine when it was 
> openedand confirm the count, generally to watch for any evidence 
> of cheating
> within the precinct.  One was to challenge voters not on the 
> precinct'slist of registered voters, a situation that never arose. 
> The third,
> most important, was to check voters off as they voted.  The party
> committee had a list of "plus voters" -- voters in that precinct 
> who had
> indicated they were going to vote for our side.  Plus voters who 
> had not
> voted first got phone calls, offers of rides, and then people knocking
> on their door to bring them to the polls.  The white suburbanites who
> had not seen this operation before were a bit paranoid about it; they
> seemed to think I was "getting the names" for some nefarious or
> intimidating purpose.
> 
> 	I gather that what is at issue in Ohio is partly the same but
> mostly different.  They may still challenge voters who are not on the
> list, some of whom are not registered and some of whom showed up 
> at the
> wrong precinct.  More important, they plan to challenge voters who are
> on the list, claiming that their registration is improper in some 
> way --
> they don't live where they claimed to, they are also registered
> someplace else, they aren't who they say they are (if you register 
> deadpeople, some live person has to go vote for them or it doesn't 
> do any
> good).  
> 
> 	This is a classic problem of Type I and Type II error.  Both
> parties have hired companies to register voters; these companies have
> hired casual workers; there may be fraud from these workers cheating
> their employers or from voters, or party workers, trying to cheat the
> electoral system.  If everyone votes without challenge and no one ever
> checks, there is no deterrent to that sort of thing.
> 
> 	But the challengers can abuse their power by challenging
> indiscriminately, and by racial profiling.  They are only doing 
> this in
> minority precincts.  Some guy in Georgia apparently challenged every
> voter in the county with an Hispanic name.  A challenge brings the 
> wholevoting line to a halt while it is resolved.  One poll watcher 
> bringingmany challenges can create huge backups and cause many 
> properlyregistered voters to give up and abandon the line. 
> 
> 	The voter when challenged may or may not have with him what he
> needs to refute the challenge.  Every voter should have ID, but no 
> doubtsome don't.  He may not have proof of current address or 
> whatever else
> is at issue.  
> 
> 	We need a way to resolve these disputes without stopping the
> line of voters, but we can't staff that; we barely have enough
> volunteers to staff the polling places, and many of those are
> inadequately trained.  There is no right answer here; there is the 
> votefraud of registering ineligible voters, or eligible voters 
> multipletimes; this is surely going on a little bit and might be 
> going on a lot.
> And there is the vote fraud of stopping the line with multiple
> challenges based on little or no evidence.
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
> [conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 12:47 PM
> To: CONLAWPROF at lists.ucla.edu
> Subject: Vote fraud and voter intimidation (apropos Justice Stevens'
> refusalto stay the Sixth Circuit decision)
> 
> I worry both about vote fraud and voter intimidation, but I'm 
> afraid I
> know little about what in practice poll-watchers and other 
> observers can
> do and actually do (either good or bad).  Can anyone who is more
> knowledgeable on the subject enlighten us?  I ask this on this list
> because this factual backdrop would surely be relevant to the
> constitutional questions related to whether such practices ought 
> to be
> allowed or forbidden.  Many thanks,
> 
> Eugene
> _______________________________________________
> To post, send message to Conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see 
> http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/conlawprof
> 
> Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed 
> as private.  Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages 
> that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list 
> members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
> 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: tushnet.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 247 bytes
Desc: Card for Mark Tushnet <tushnet at law.georgetown.edu>
Url : http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/private/conlawprof/attachments/20041102/40cbf575/tushnet.vcf