April 13, 2007
U.S. WILL EXPERIENCE ITS FIRST NATIONAL
ELECTION IN FEBRUARY 2008
Today, Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, released a Voter Protection 2008 Election Primer that explores the ramifications of the momentum of frontloading the 2008 elections as more states are moving their presidential preference primaries earlier in the election cycle. Approximately 34 states will cast their vote in the presidential preference primary on or prior to Tuesday, February 5, 2008. Of the thirty four states, only seven states will conduct either a Democratic or Republican caucus/primary before February 5, 2007. This means that on February 5, 2008, 27 states will conduct their primary/caucus turning the traditional “Super Tuesday” of March into a “Super Duper” Tuesday of February.
“Everyone has been focusing on what early primaries mean for the presidential candidates and their political strategy and fundraising, without a second thought as to what this means for voters and the administration of elections,” said Edward Hailes, Jr., senior attorney, Advancement Project. “As Advancement Project delved deeply into the status of voter protection preparedness in 2008, we discovered that earlier opportunities for a more diverse electorate to have clout in selecting presidential nominees may put new structural pressures on an already unsteady election system.”
History has shown us that election officials are overwhelmed by changes to the election calendar and historic spikes in voter registration efforts. These two forces alone can create a perfect storm for systemic election breakdowns. With a “national election” occurring in early 2008, five key voter protection questions arise.
1. Will the conduct of this election be fair to voters? Most states require voters to register at least 21 days (three weeks) in advance to vote in the presidential preference primary/caucus. For example, in South Carolina, the voter registration deadline is 30 days before the election. Therefore, should a new voter want to vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary scheduled for January 29, 2008 she would need to register to vote by Saturday, December 29, 2007. If her husband wanted to vote in the Republican Presidential Primary on February 2, 2008, he would need to register to vote by Wednesday, January 2, 2008. Both of these deadlines fall in the middle the holiday season when traditionally many people in the election administration offices would be out on vacation. Additionally, these new registration deadlines will stifle final, campus-based registration efforts, diminishing opportunities for college-age youth to have a voice in these elections.
2. Will these elections increase or decrease the participation of communities of color in the choice of who will be the next President of the United States? Another goal of early presidential preference primaries is to have more of diverse makeup of voters who could vote for the best and strongest presidential nominee. The system is supposed to give candidates an opportunity to present themselves and their views to a broad range of voters and gives voters an opportunity to see, hear and question the candidates and measure them against one another. Given this compact schedule, registration deadlines subvert that goal. For example, Nevada was given the unique opportunity by the National Democratic Committee to have its first determining caucus on January 19, 2008. This was based upon ethnic and geopolitical considerations. If the Nevada Democratic Party adopts Nevada’s statutory voter registration deadline, new voters will have to be registered by the third Tuesday before the election. That’s January 1, 2008.
Although the thought was to increase ethnic and geopolitical diversity, voters in Nevada and South Carolina need to register to vote in 2007 to vote in 2008 while voters in voters in Iowa and New Hampshire—two predominately white states— can fully engage in the process because of same day voter registration.
3. Will election officials have the capacity and ample budgets to conduct this election without incident among the others scheduled from November 2007 through and November 2008? The decision of many states to move their presidential preference primaries to January and February in 2008 will have an effect upon the capacity for election officials and the election offices in counties and cities without incident.
4. Will voters be improperly purged from the voting rolls? The National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) requires states to complete all programs designed to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the voter rolls, no later than 90 days before a Federal primary or general election. Without careful planning, the scheduling of presidential preference primaries early in the year will have an effect on election officials’ ability to comply with NVRA list maintenance procedures. As such, this may result in the wrongful purging of voters.
5. Will election officials be able to adequately recruit and train poll workers?
The poll worker shortage is not a new phenomenon, however the training and support for poll workers is rarely scrutinized. Yet, as elections have become technologically and procedurally more complex, the training and support offered to poll workers have not kept pace. The front-loaded presidential primaries present a potential problem for election administrators to recruit and train poll workers.
“Although the recent election demonstrated that concerted effort could produce a more democratic practice, we now know that both the resource inadequacies and many of the errors that caused the 2000 debacle also persisted in 2004, 2006, and beyond,” continued Hailes. “Advancement Project purports election day registration as a recommend solution to ailing election administration system.”
When properly administered, Election Day Registration (EDR) enhances the voter registration system and the election process. In states without EDR, a voter who is properly registered, but does not appear on the rolls, can cast a provisional ballot. EDR would allow a mistakenly excluded voter to vote in the election by re-registering at the polling place without delay and without utilizing a provisional ballot. A state with EDR would not need provisional ballots and would save money and administrative time because they would not be required to determine voter eligibility until canvassing the provisional ballots after the election. Idaho, Maine, Iowa and New Hampshire have already implemented EDR and will not spend unnecessary time or resources on provisional ballots. Instead election officials in these states can encourage their voters to actively listen and debate the issues and candidates right up until Election Day.
The potential for alarming and widespread threats to the democratic process can only be averted by community-based collaborations between election officials and citizens to promptly establish concrete, comprehensive, well-funded plans to relieve voter registration burdens, poll worker recruitment and training inadequacies, and polling place management problems that are likely to evolve from the magnitude of this change to the election cycle.
“Advancement Project will continue to monitor legislative reforms, state’s purging systems, ensure that eligible voters get on the rolls in time to vote in the 2006 elections, and ensure fair processing of applications and counting of provisional ballots,” concluded Hailes. “We are committed to taking the nation’s elections system from fiasco to promising practice -- by ensuring that the electoral process works to enfranchise all.”