Lots happening on the Election Reform front these days. It already seems like eons ago (although it's really only been 10 days) that we helped sponsor the Lobby Days to support federal legislation calling for a mandatory voter verified paper ballot and voting accessibility. All those lobby visits must have had an effect -- in fact, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee is having a
hearing tomorrow on this very question.
At first, the chair and ranking member (Lott, R-MS and Dodd, D-CT respectively) lined up only opponents of voter verified paper ballots. Evidently, these two are foes of the voter verified paper ballot. Then, at our urging and at the urging of some of our coalition partners, Senators Ensign (R-NV) and Dayton (D-MN) got into the act. At this point, we know that Dr. David Dill has been asked to testify and we hope several other advocates will be invited, also.
There's a move to request C-Span to cover the hearing. Send an email to events@c-span.org and ask them to send a camera crew -- we want to know what goes on.
Other news: in Ohio, HB 3, which was causing us all heartburn, has been delayed until the fall. This huge bill (last count, more than 700 pages long) contained some good but mostly bad election reform measures, and we were opposing it. One of the worst measures would have mandated that provisional ballots must be cast in the correct precinct in order to be counted. That's ridiculous -- people cast a provisional ballot often because they have been sent to the wrong precinct.
Common Cause helped organize a very successful Lobby Day in Columbus a few weeks ago and we've been urging folks to call their legislators; we certainly attribute the bill's postponement at least in part to the efforts of our Ohio activists. We're in the process of hiring more staff in Ohio to pursue this on the ground, and will keep you informed.
An earlier blog post mentioned the excellent victory in Iowa in which Governor Vilsack has promised to sign an executive order re-enfranchising some 80,000 ex-felons. Though we don't have staff on the ground in Iowa, we do have responsive members, many of whom called and wrote the governor and urged him to make this decision. He plans to sign the order on the 4th of July.
And have we mentioned the hard-fought and very sweet victory on SB 55 in Connecticut? Although this election reform bill mandating vvpb had wide support in the General Assembly, there were forces working against it. Due to outstanding public pressure and fine work by advocates and legislators, it passed, and Governor Rell has said she will sign it.
Finally, I wanted to let you know about a very constructive discussion that took place in our offices in Washington, DC, last Thursday. We invited representatives from civil rights voting groups, paper trail voting groups, and democracy groups to engage in a dialogue with Dr. Robert Pastor, the executive director of the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform. Dr. Pastor had indicated a willingness to listen to advocacy groups and hear about their concerns regarding the commission's ultimate pronouncements. The two-and-a-half hour meeting was productive; there was discussion of issues ranging from voting machines to ID provisions, and many other topics. Not only was it a chance for many of these groups to sit down with Dr. Pastor, it was the first time for many of them to get together. While some of the groups disagree about particular policy priorities, they all agree that the watchwords of any reform should be ACCESS, ACCURACY, and ACCOUNTABILITY.
