Any person removed from voter rolls incorrectly

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Wed May 30, 2012, 10:01 PM - Edit history (1)

shall receive a payment from the state government of $2,000. This is a strict-liability deal. (Meaning that innocent intent or human error on the part of the state is not a defense. No hard feelings... just pay the damn money.)

This proposed (by me) national law would have constitutional problems because I doubt Congress can mandate such a payment, but it's a fine general idea if implementable in some fashion.

If people want to buy elections at least raise the price (!)

The payment should not be so large as to be a envy-making windfall. You don't want folks to resent victims of disenfranchisment schemes. But it should be large enough to incentivize people to take the trouble to show they are still qualified voters.

And large enough to add up to enough in aggregate to get attention from independents when a party wastes state money by trying to purge voters. (Independents are said to dislike government wasting money.)

And large enough to guarantee that states err on the side of leaving people eligible. (Having dead people on the rolls of eligible voters is only a problem if they show up to vote... and in that zombie-apocalypse scenario I would probably let them vote whether they were on the rolls or not.)




Number 5629 on my list of worthwhile policies that will never happen.

[kickysnana]

1. Perhaps they should get two votes in the following election...

(but only if they are of a different party than the current state administration.)

[hvn_nbr_2]

2. I like that idea

They're always talking about "responsibility." Let them take some responsibility for depriving eligible voters of their right to vote.

[cthulu2016]

4. Yes. The burden should be in removing names, not on staying enrolled

To remove names the state should have to demonstrate something. Instead they seem to drop groups of people and leave the burden on them to know it, and contest it.

[siligut]

3. There has to be some kind of repercussion.

And the person who was falsely removed should be compensated for the error. Mostly, this cheating has to be stopped.

[Make7]

7. OFF-TOPIC: Quotation marks don't work for code in signatures.

Using quotation marks is causing unexpected things to happen. Your signature looks different in each browser I have on this laptop.

[div style="border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; height:3px; width:100%"]
[center]In FireFox:[/center][font color="#00aa00" face="Times New Roman" style="font-size:48px;"][center]Life is too serious to be taken seriously. Mike Leonard[/center][/font][div style="border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; height:3px; width:100%"]
[center]In Internet Explorer:[/center]
[font color="#00aa00" style="font-size:18px; font-family: Helvetica, san-serif;"][center]Life is too serious to be taken seriously. Mike Leonard[/center][/font]
[div style="border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; height:3px; width:100%"]
[center]In Opera:[/center]
[font color="#999999" style="font-size:13px; font-family: Verdana, Ariel, Helvetica, san-serif;"][center]Life is too serious to be taken seriously. Mike Leonard[/center][/font]
[div style="border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; height:3px; width:100%"]
[center]In Safari:[/center]
[font color="#00aa00" style="font-size:13px; font-family: Verdana, Ariel, Helvetica, san-serif;"][center]Life is too serious to be taken seriously. Mike Leonard[/center][/font]
[div style="border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; height:3px; width:100%"]

It looks like your intention is to have the text in your signature blue, yet it appears green to me (75% of the time), and the size varies greatly. In the [font] tag it looks like you are using 14 for the size. That is not a valid size for HTML, the range is 1 to 7 (seven being the largest). Also the face is "face"? Is that even a font?

Actually, the whole reason I bring this up is because I am using Stylish to hide signatures, but the use of the [center] tag makes them visible - and your huge green font in FireFox is exactly the kind of thing I am trying to hide. Not sure what browser you are using or how it looks, but I request that you use the following code for your signature (like the IE version above but blue):

[font color="#000099"][div class=post-sig style=text-align:center;color:blue;font-size:18px;font-family:Helvetica,san-serif;][i]Life is too serious to be taken seriously. Mike Leonard[/i][/div][/font]

Change the color, size, and fonts to whatever you want. Right now not everyone is seeing the same thing you are with your signature coding. (Of course, I am hoping not to see it at all. )

Thanks,
[font style="font-variant:small-caps;"]Make7[/font]

[siligut]

15. I fixed it

Thanks, I had no idea, I just used the DU HTML tags.

[kctim]

5. So, how would people

"show they are still qualified voters" and collect?

[cthulu2016]

6. The same way they are reinstated today

Demonstrate that they are qualified to vote in the state.

And yes, there would be a motive for the state to be more strict about reinstalling improperly dis-enrolled voters, but there would also be an incentive for voters to mount a better case for reinstatement. (For instance, if told they need a birth certificate instead of a baptismal certificate they are likelier to get hold of their birth certificate if they might gain money thereby.)

In any scenario the percentage of all complaining parties reinstated would be lower because the raw number of people requesting reinstatement would be much higher.

I think the practical effect of the contrary motivations would still be more voters on the rolls than otherwise.

[surrealAmerican]

8. I don't like the idea.

It's too much like paying people not to vote. I'd like to see jail time for people who disenfranchise voters instead.

[cthulu2016]

11. Quite the opposite

The payment is compensation for making voting more difficult, with an eye toward incentivizing states to stop making it more difficult.

People who got the money would also be reinstated, of course, and would be much likelier to vote than if they hadn't been reinstated... it's not either/or.

Prosecuting vote-purgers is not as effective as an economic counter-incentive because you need evidence of criminal intent.

A strict-liability solution is like a parking ticket. Unlike a criminal trial, the city doesn't care whether you knew it was a handicapped spot. Whether you intended to deprive a handicapped person a spot.

You parked there. You pay.

These voter-suppression people will always say it was innocent error, so eliminate the defense.

If you don't want to pay fines then err on the side of not purging people. When in doubt, leave them on!

[surrealAmerican]

12. I guess the question I have is: ...

... what if you don't mind paying fines? Some unscrupulous people could see this as a price worth paying, especially since it's not their own money, but the taxpayers'.


The analogy doesn't quite work. You can contest a ticket in court. If it turns out that the handicapped parking space wasn't properly marked, you might not end up having to pay that fine.

[cthulu2016]

13. Yes, if you could not have reasonably known

If somebody had stolen the No Parking sign then there's not a presumption that you should have known.

But you cannot say that it was an honest personal mistake. Your state of mind doesn't enter into it.

In some voting right act enforcement it gets down to, "Look... for whatever reason, the numbers show that black people happen not to be voting in these elections at anywhere near the rate black people vote everywhere else, and we will take steps to increase black participation."

I do not see much hope for limiting voter-disenfranchisement if we have to prove what people were thinking when they happened to dump a disproportionate number of Spanish sounding surnamed voters. It really shouldn't matter why.

Take steps to make sure it doesn't happen.

As to whether people mind paying fines, most American voters support voting. I am sure there are mad billionaires who might want to kick in some money to cover the risks of dumping voters but they couldn't. The state would have to pay.

And most citizens (not all, but a strong majority) generally favor voting so the first time their state pays out a few million to needlessly un-rolled voters folks won't like it.

That was not true of some deep south states back in the day. Some states paid an incredible price just to be dicks. For instance, a lot of southern cities (before air conditioning was as universal) closed ALL of their swimming pools when ordered to integrate them. No pools, nothing to integrate.

But I do not see a lot of tax-payers supporting expensive disenfranchisement these days. I dunno... maybe Arizona would pony up the fines to keep trying to dump hispanic voters. But even if so, has it made anything worse? They are already doing it for free.

[dogindia]

9. Anyone removed from voter rolls by drone strikes? nt

[TheKentuckian]

10. I say 10,000 + legal fees + costs for documents, parking, related transportation expenses + up to 10

years in the Federal pen for depriving a citizen of their vote without cause for the official responsible for the action.

The 10k would also be tax free to the deprived individual. The state can be responsible for them or they can just get a pass, I don't care but the state should understand the hit cannot be cushioned by recouping any part of the money so the money cannot be taxable.

[unkachuck]

14. any person....

....found removing an eligible voter from the voting rolls shall be charged with felony obstruction of democracy punishable by a minimum $10,000 fine and ten years in prison.

....put the punishment on the criminals, not the taxpayers....

[cthulu2016]

17. That is ineffective

To put people in jail requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of their intent. It's a very high standard.

Voting fairness cannot be policed by the criminal law, as a practical matter. It is largely about effect, not intent.

Most of voting rights enforcement has no criminal component. "Look, whatever you intended this policy to do, it has the effect of a lot less minority voting. We don't have to prove what is in your heart. We are telling you to fix it."

Someone says, "This policy is to reduce voter fraud." Sure, that's bogus, but even if it was absolutely true the discriminatory effect would be the same. So with or without criminal intent the policy must be changed.

Say a computer program was giving extra scrutiny to names that begin with three consonants. And because of all the McDougalls and MbDonalds and such the effect is that a lot of Scottish people are being dropped. It doesn't really matter whether someone is trying to suppress the Scottish vote... it is being suppressed either way.

And if a state is so sloppy that it is constantly dropping people innocently, then they clearly need an incentive to fix the system.

The purpose of the proposal is not to let bad guys off the hook, it is to establish a very easy to prove and easy to implement standard.

As to whether the ta-payers should pay... why not? We always pay for electing horrible people, one way or another. It is part of the process by which we learn to elect less horrible people.

[Scuba]

16. Remove my name and I'll sue for a million, promise!