This morning, my NPR affiliate broadcast a short debate on Tuesday’s ballot questions. The representative from the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance (MFA) was, to say the least, untruthful about the Citizen’s United. To add insult to injury, I was reading the Massterlist at lunch and came across the MFA employing a tried-and-true method for voter suppression: voter caging.
Suggesting the possibility of “serious problems” with voting in the Sept. 4 primary, a right-leaning organization is calling on Secretary of State William Galvin to investigate returned mail sent to 571 people the group says were recorded as voting.
“With early voting starting, it is imperative that your office and others ensure that only appropriate voters vote in the upcoming election,” Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance Executive Director Carl Copeland wrote in an Oct. 23 letter to Galvin and state elections divisions director Michelle Tassinari.
Norton did quote Maurice Cunningham, a UMass-Boston professor, who referred to the move as voter suppression, but shed no light on the actual tactic or, frankly, the anti-democratic ugliness of the Mass Fiscal Alliance’s attempt at voter caging. The MFA’s motives may have more to do with trying slime Secretary of State William Galvin than providing a pretext for voter suppression. Either way, it falsely calls the integrity of voting into question. As the Brennan Center explains,
Voter caging is a distinct form of caging, and much more dangerous. Voter caging is the practice of sending mail to addresses on the voter rolls, compiling a list of the mail that is returned undelivered, and using that list to purge or challenge voters registrations on the grounds that the voters on the list do not legally reside at their registered addresses.
Supporters of voter caging defend the practice as a means of preventing votes cast by ineligible voters. Voter caging, however, is notoriously unreliable. If it is treated (unjustifiably) as the sole basis for determining that a voter is ineligible or does not live at the address at which he or she registered, it can lead to the unwarranted purge or challenge of eligible voters.
Mass Fiscal Alliance knows the playbook, which the Republican National Committee ran throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
“A first-class stamp guarantees a return to our office on any letter that is deemed undeliverable,” the alliance wrote in an Oct. 24 memo to supporters. “If any letters are returned, that raises a major red flag. People are supposed to live at the address where they are registered to vote, and if they cannot receive letters at that address it is an indication that something could possibly be awry.”
The red flag, of course, is Republican politics. The Mass Fiscal Alliance’s biggest “concern”:
the sizable rate of return for the City of Lawrence. 2.61% of registered voters were unable to be contacted through the postal service at their registered addresses.
Typical thuggery from the GOP.
It is not illegal to be registered to vote in several places, and is not evidence of fraud or any other suspicious intent. It happens quite often among young voters who, for example, register to vote at home when they turn 18 and again when they move away to college.
It is illegal to VOTE more than once.
The entire voter fraud meme is a transparently racist ploy to disenfranchise minorities by the GOP, indistinguishable from poll taxes and literacy tests.
It seems to me that the crux of the problem is that renters tend to move more often than homeowners, and very often will not update their registrations, since when you move, you have better things to worry about than voter registrations.
If Democrats ignore this issue, it leaves the door open for Republicans to play these kinds of games and then scream “voter fraud!” when in reality this is primarily an administrative situation, with a small chance of actual voter error being introduced (if someone votes in the wrong precinct, they could be voting for a candidate that does not represent them, which could, in rare situations, tip an election. See: Virginia ).
It is certainly possible that in Lawrence, 2.61% of the registered voters could not be reached via the mail at their registered address, because the act of registering to vote is now fairly passive, with people often just checking a box somewhere when doing something else. Passive registration is a good thing – there should be no barriers to voting. I would bet that most of that 2.61% has either never voted, or voted just once – again, nothing wrong with that per se.
What could we do to streamline the process of voters who move and later try to vote? Those are the people we really need to worry about. I think that actually forcing re-registration of voters who can’t be reached at their prior address is too onerous. We should be able to “transfer” a registration, and if we are really smart (and I bet that someone at MIT could figure this out), transfers should be permissible across town borders.
It shocks me a bit is that we aren’t throwing computers and knowledge workers at this problem. It should be relatively easy to have a central database of voters within a city or town. It would be relatively easy to flag a voter as “potentially relocated” when voter rolls are maintained and updated. If a flagged voter shows up at a polling location, either verify that they have not moved, or if they have moved, allow them to update their address. It should even be readily possible to design a mechanism for someone to show up in Town B, tell the poll worker that they had previously registered in Town A, and put in an instant request (with address verification) to transfer the voting record from Town A to Town B.
Allowing Republicans to play offense here will likely lead to laws that are designed around myths, laws which will make it harder for people to vote, because it is a Republican goal that only the most motivated should be voting.
I suppose I’m more cynical than you — I find nothing “shocking” about this at all.
It is instead entirely self-serving, because:
1. The “problem” of where a person is currently registered is readily solved
2. The immediate result of that solution is to demonstrate even more conclusively that there is NO “voter fraud” issue.
3. The negative consequences of enforcing a single “principal residence” may well outweigh any benefits.
It is interesting to handle voters who move out of state, and even more interesting to handle voters who have more than one residence — each voter would have to declare a single “principal” residence for the purposes of voter registration. America has a tradition, loudly championed by conservatives during the cold war, of resisting any sort of nationwide identification or registration system (this was a politically significant argument against the creation of the current Social Security system).
It is perfectly legal to have several driver’s licenses, each issued by a different state. This is quite common among commercial truck drivers.
There are legitimate privacy concerns about any of this. It creates yet another central database to draw the attention of malware. There are financial and tax consequences of declaring a principal residence in addition to voter registration. For example, banks typically treat the mortgage of a principal residence differently from a second home or investment property. If a voter were to declare a “principal residence” for voter registration different from a “principal residence” that he or she is paying a mortgage on, what happens if the bank learns of the difference?
The claimed problem is people who vote more than once. There is ZERO evidence, despite extended investigations, that this happens.
I’m willing to listen to what you have to say, I’d like to know more, but I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. Are you suggesting that we shouldn’t put in effort to tie a voter to a residence?
Did you misunderstand my point about the central database? I said “within a town”. I’m sure many towns already have such a thing, so it’s nothing new. The lack of technology is that the database is just used to print off static lists, and if the list is static, you can’t transfer someone on election day.
I realize it is a crime to vote repeatedly, and I know that there is zero evidence of widespread voter fraud (though there are isolated examples, of people voting more than once, usually Republicans), but I don’t think that this warrants elimination of protections that are already in place. I am suggesting that if Democrats want top put this Republican bogeyman to bed, that they take charge and adopt things which solve the problem but are not a hindrance to voters.
For example, the “voter ID” bogeyman could easily be solved by taking a photo of the voter when he/she registers, and making that photo available to the poll workers. No ID to purchase or lose, but it shuts up the Republicans who claim that people are showing up to polls and voting under someone else’s name.
I’m saying that there is no need to take further steps to prevent a voter from being registered in more than one place.
I see no additional harm in using whatever databases currently exist. When you mentioned “… flag a voter as ‘potentially relocated’ when voter rolls are maintained and updated”, I perhaps incorrectly thought you were proposing to tie these systems together in some way (beyond what’s already in place). I apologize for misinterpreting your comment.
I think that any attempt to strengthen identification requirements for voting does more harm than good. There are no perfect systems and we agree that the “problem” itself doesn’t exist. An implication of that is that the only consequence of such an effort will be to turn away perfectly valid voters. Since there are no pink elephants, any alarm from a pink elephant detection system will be false.
Nothing will shut up Republicans who so eagerly seek a target for their bigotry.
AGREED : This is a solution in search of a problem.
I agree that that voter fraud is not an issue, but what worries me is that if we allow it to just sit there, it gives Republicans a bogeyman to bang the drum over, and eventually they may convince enough “regular voters” that we need to take much more drastic issues. Many non-rabid-voters agree with Republican proposals for things like Voter ID or even Cross Check because only Republicans are proposing solutions. Democrats should head that off at the pass.
It seems sensible to have voter rolls which are periodically maintained, (and I think it may even be federal law). If you have a town of 15,000 people over the age of 18 and you have 20,000 people registered to vote, this is a nonsensical situation that erodes the public trust. Obviously you don’t want dead people on the rolls either.
While there are no perfect solutions there are solutions which may be better than what we are doing now. Why not explore them, given that it is crucial to not let Republicans make voting any harder?
I think the advantages the GOP gained by claiming voter fraud are on the wane. People have finally caught up on that lie. We need to fight for people’s right to vote, but we don’t need to do backflips to counter claims of voter fraud.
Republicans will eagerly bang the drum over whatever bogeyman they choose to target that day, there is no point in attempting to change their behavior.
Most Massachusetts towns have an annual census of each household, and remove people from voter roles who do not respond. I think it’s unlikely that any of the 351 Massachusetts cities and towns have more people on their voter registration rolls than they have residents.
Dead people on the voter rolls are, of course, not a good thing. Still, that’s another example where the cure (removing the “dead” people) may be more painful than the disease. The consequences of removing perfectly live people who are mistakenly identified as “dead” are generally much worse than leaving names of people who are dead on the rolls — as Ms. Bump recently discovered to her chagrin. Unless a “dead” person pulls a ballot, the presence on the roll does no harm.
Because there is no problem to be solved. Attempting to “improve” anything with “better” “solutions” only validates the Republican lies.
As the old engineering adage goes — “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
I assumed until recently that registering to vote automatically cancelled previous registrations. Just a crosscheck of SSNs should do the trick.
@ Christopher Just a crosscheck of SSNs should do the trick: Nope.
Most voter roles do not include SSNs, and even if they did it would be a violation to share them for a “crosscheck”. Even the SSA databases contain errors — inaccurate SSNs often happen (either by accident or intentionally). References like this provide some background into the issues.
Matching people among different databases while minimizing both false positives (incorrectly concluding that two entries refer to the same person) and false negatives (incorrectly concluding that two entries refer to two different people when they are actually the same person) is quite difficult. It is impossible to eliminate both false negatives and false positives — steps taken to do one increase the rate of the other.
Which is exactly why SSNs should be allowed and included. Every manmade system may have a margin for error and there should always be ways to double check and correct that, but SSNs are unique identifiers. If they can be used on tax returns they can be used on voter rolls but not publicly visible of course. If that particular number is the concern then use another system. Votebuilder that Dems use assigns each individual an ID#, for example.
@ SSNs should be allowed:
NO NO NO, a thousand times no. Do you have any idea of how disastrous it is to have your SSN stolen?
Do you seriously suggest that a voter registration database maintained by a small town in rural Massachusetts (never mind someplace in the Kentucky mountains) will have security comparable to the IRS?
If each system defines its own uniqueID (both do), then they are useless for comparing two different systems. Some states use a DL (Driver’s License) number, but there are all sorts of issues with that — not the least of which is that some people legitimately have multiple DLs and others have none.
BTW, your answer doesn’t address one of the more troubling aspects of relying on any given uniqueID — people who mistakenly or intentionally enter an incorrect number.
The idea of a widely-used nationwide unique ID is a hard problem with no easy answers that have acceptable consequences for privacy and data integrity.
The risks of any approach like this dwarf the impact of the non-existent “problem” they set out to solve.
America does not have a voter fraud issue.
I’m not arguing massive fraud, but since obviously there are plenty of people with similar or even identical names legitimate errors could be made on name alone. Like I say if SSNs are a concern use a different unique number like I believe Votebuilder already does. I just believe in all I dotting and T crossing when it comes to something this important as a matter of principle.
I know of no databases that rely on names alone. The only way a unique number works on two separate databases is if the same unique number system is used by both.
If I have “uniqueID 1234” from system A, and “uniqueID abcd” from system B, how do I determine whether they are the same person? Since the two mechanisms for assigning uniqueIDs are different, I need to use some other approach.
I get that you believe that you’re just dotting i’s and crossing t’s, and I understand that this is a matter of principle for you. The unavoidable fact is that any attempt to dot ALL the i’s and cross ALL the t’s either adds dots to some characters that aren’t “i” and crosses some characters that aren’t “t” or leaves some i’s and t’s untouched.
The result of that well-intentioned effort is to create far more and far worse problems than just leaving things alone.
In my view, the most important “matter of principle” at play here is that any person who is legally eligible to vote should be able to do so. I think that principle is many times more important than making sure that people who are not eligible to vote do not do so — especially given that there is ZERO evidence that anybody attempts to vote illegally.
There are millions of voters being denied the right to vote nationwide right now because of people similarly acting on their beliefs “as a matter of principle”.
The way I envision it you would not be 1234 in system A and abcd in system B. There would be a single nationwide database and you would only be, say, 1234 and no other voter in the entire country would also be 1234.
@ single nationwide database:
I fear we’re going in circles. I addressed that yesterday.
Creating such a single nationwide database creates its own issues and consequences, as I attempted to describe yesterday.
There really is no easy way to do this that doesn’t have a long list of very negative consequences. The three major credit bureaus have spent billions of dollars over three decades doing the best they can to solve this problem.
This discussion motivates me to write a separate piece about false negatives, false positives, and what they mean for problems like this.
Civics would take care of your first paragraph. There is no reason for registration NOT to be right up there on the list of things you update as soon as you move and frankly one of the easiest of the moving update tasks there are.
Rick Green’s “leadership” of MA Fiscal Alliance should be bought more into the light. Even this tough piece on him by Scott Leigh is fairly tame, given the decade or so if dishonest negative mailers they’ve sent our accusing lawmakers of favoring “illegals” over veterans and other BS.
Why does Rick Green gat a free pass for all the disinformation he has spread through MA Fiscal Alliance????
Rick Green gets a free pass because he is a radical reactionary Republican.
I’m not sure it’s a completely free pass. That is the sum total of his public record since he has not held office and that’s most of what we hear about him in these parts.
It’s perfectly legal.
You can be registered to vote in MA, move to a different place in MA, and still vote there up to six months after you move. If you leave no forwarding address when you move on September 1, the voter caging letter would be returned to sender, you could still vote at that address on November 6, and it would be perfectly legal.
Want to reduce the number of people who vote at addresses where they no longer live? Implement same day voter registration.
Instead of trying to create voter registration processes with our less than perfect knowledge of how things work, we might do better by looking at what does work. Stomv already named one thing: automatic voter registration.
The Brennan Center offers comprehensive list of what’s needed: