Some good news in the debate over youth voting came out of the primaries yesterday. This from The Fix at the WaPo:

Good news for the country too. 18-29 years olds are set to vote in greater numbers than over 65 year olds, maybe even this year, which means a new generation of engaged citizens is emerging. A strong democracy needs all its citizens to engage. It would even better if more young people took their parents to vote and vice versa. The strongest indicator of a young person voting is whether a peer, friend or family member has asked them to. I'm sure it also influences other generations.

Evidence of what Common Cause predicted in our report on the Indiana Primary for young voters is turning up in the news this evening.  Another victory for the architects of voter suprression in the state.

The reports of student voting problems are here, here and here.  New Voters Project has reported from the ground that students at St. Mary's College, a private institution were unable to vote because their college ID does not count under the law, even though public college IDs would - if they have a valid expiration date.

You don't have to turn people away for having the wrong ID, you just have to get people not to turn up because they know they don't have the ID and can't get it.  Some of the coverage above plays down the impact of the ID law on this primary.  Yes, 12 nuns might not seem like a huge number (it's not even a whole cloister), but it's important to remember that there was a whole convent full of retired nuns that didn't and couldn't turn up because they too didn't have the ID.

In the end, suppressing one vote, disenfranchising one citizen is too high a cost to bear for an unfounded fear which produces a bad law.  It's undemocratic, it's un-American.

In Indiana today young students and nuns, as old as 98, were denied their right to vote because of the strict and vote-suppressing photo ID laws in the state.  The Supreme Court upheld the law in a split decision last week. 

A dozen nuns in their eighties and nineties, barely able to make across the street to vote, were told they could not vote because they didn't have accepted ID.  Four floors of nuns back at the convent for retired nuns couldn't produce ID either, so they didn't try.  According to the AP:

We've seen a lot of coverage of the public financing/campaign finance debate recently.  The main drive has been from the Obama-McCain will they/won't they grist mill and the small donor "revolution" theory.  Our colleague at the Brennan Center, Laura MacCleery posted a great blog on Huffington Post today about these issues:

I very much agree.  Small donors are good for democracy, it's a sign of ordinary people participating in the system, and these people are likely to get more involved in the grassroots.  Just as politicians who raise money in the current system are not bad people (the vast majority are excellent people and in politics for the common good), people are generally good and are giving small donations with noble motivations.  The problem is, the system is still broken.  Money still buys power.  Most people don't have money.  Most people don't and can't give money.

Pizza Hut has started running ads in early primary states of Nevada and South Carolina that feature two young men eating pizza. What's the problem you ask? Well, the script is a weird and contorted dialogue that starts out by complaining about all the "change" the presidential candidates are campaigning on (by now most major candidates are taking on the mantle). Mike Connery at Future Majority blogged on this wondering,

Being kind, it seems like this is an attempt at supporting youth turnout. But why the infantile line "I could use more change in my pocket," and the flimsy staging of one guy saying he won't vote, and then the other saying "you should" before they scarf down some pizza? People I've talked to about this agree that this either a confusing attempt to make the most of the elections season to sell pizza or a weird effort to increase turnout that just backfires.

In the end it's clearly all about pizza, not about recognizing the importance of the change that young people are creating by turning out in record numbers and supporting diverse candidates.

We are entering a year where politics seems to be experiencing a renaissance of civic values and engagement by many groups in American society. I hope that as we approach Super Tuesday and beyond, corporations like Pizza Hut will send a positive, clear message. I don't mind if they sell pizza while they're at it, but just don't screw up the message, people.

In a briefing yesterday, Lowell Finley (from VoterAction), one of the lead attorneys for the nonpartisan voters' case against Sarasota election officials and ES&S, spoke about two hearings that were held this week. A "motion to compel" had been filed to force ES&S and the state to turn over the source code of the I-Votronic machines, as well as to allow the actual machines to be examined.

Finley and the other attorneys for the plaintiffs (including Matt Zimmerman of EFF) seem to feel that the hearings went well. ES&S was not willing to put any of their employees on the stand -- not wishing to open them up to cross-examination -- and only had one expert witness, who in the course of his testimony seemed to contradict himself and perhaps even implicate ES&S's co-defendants (the county election officials) as the cause of the undervotes.

The plaintiffs felt that the judge was quite engaged in the hearings; he paid close attention, took notes, asked sharp questions, and didn't put up with grandstanding or badgering by the defense attorneys. The judge let the hearings go long in order to hear all the testimony and has asked for written closing statements by Friday at noon. We can all hope that he rules on the motion very soon afterward.

Update: You can experience the rally through words and pictures: check out JR's Diary on Daily Kos.

Update: Already, about 2,000 people have taken action in support of this rally by joing our "virtual rally" by sending a message to Gov. Jeb Bush.

As I write this, our president, Chellie Pingree, is preparing to speak at a big rally being held in Bayfront Park in Sarasota, Florida, to protest the certification of the Jennings-Buchanan race in Florida's Congressional District #13.

The fact is, more than 18,000 votes in this race were never counted, and never will be. Why? Because they were cast on ES&S I-Votronic paperless electronic voting machines, and for some reason, the machines neglected to register more than 15 percent of the votes cast in this race. (By comparison, slightly more than two percent of absentee voters failed to vote for one of these two candidates.)

Governor Jeb Bush and his Elections Canvassing Board decided to certify the race anyway -- an outrageous decision, when the margin of votes between the two candidates now stands at fewer than 400.

That's why Common Cause is joining the Florida voters at the rally to demand a REVOTE. It's the only solution to this election debacle.

I wish I were there in Sarasota, and maybe you do, too. However, we can add our voices to those of the folks at the rally; we can send a message to Jeb Bush and tell him than a REVOTE is the only was to determine the real winner in Florida's District #13.

Common Cause Calls for Investigation into 18,000 Lost Votes

Sarasota County Election Should Not Be Certified

Common Cause is calling for an independent investigation into the alarmingly high number of missing votes in the District 13 Congressional race in Sarasota County. More than 18,000 voters, nearly 13% of those who showed up at the polls, cast votes in other races but not the closely contested Congressional race between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan. It represents a massive undercount compared to other counties, including Manatee, which reported an undercount of 2%.

"Sarasota County voters deserve an explanation," said Ben Wilcox, Executive Director of Common Cause's Florida office. "The machines should be impounded, audited and tested to determine if voters were unable to cast a ballot and why. A 13% undercount is unacceptable and this election should not be certified. Election officials should conduct a revote in this county."

An undervote rate of this magnitude is statistically improbable. In 2004, according to a report released this summer by the Brennan Center for Justice, the residual vote rate for these machines in "top of the ticket races" i.e., President was 0.7%. And the residual vote rate for "bottom of the ticket races" i.e. ballot initiatives was only 6.7%. This is twice as high. And it's a top ticket race. "Something clearly went wrong," said Wilcox. "To certify this election would make a mockery of democracy."

Several ironies here: this is Katherine Harris's old seat. AND, the citizens in this county placed a referendum question on the ballot, asking voters to mandate a voter-verified paper record (which county elections supervisor Kathy Dent strongly opposes). The question passed by a large majority.

Common Cause is a member of the MyVote1 Consortium, a broad array of nonpartisan policy and grassroots organizations, each committed to assisting voters and improving our electoral system. Common Cause collected and analyzed data on election irregularities from voters in this election, including complaint messages from calls to the MyVote1 phone line. There were many reports from concerned voters in Sarasota County, who said that Christine Jennings' name did not show up on the ballot summary after people had voted for her.

Articles in the Herald Tribune and also here, and the Miami Herald.

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