Polls, polls, polls: Slowly I turn, "Niagara Falls"

2012

• Unaligned N.H. vote a test for Mitt Romney- Independents could change the momentum in GOP (By Sarah Schweitzer, Boston Globe) Undeclared voters - who are commonly called independents, and who account for more than 40 percent of New Hampshire’s registered voters - don’t appear poised to derail Romney’s longtime lead over his rivals in New Hampshire. With 39 percent of the overall vote in the UNH Survey Center/Boston Globe poll released Sunday, he had a comfortable margin, and significant support among the independents. Among those independents who have declared their allegiance, 32 percent say they back Romney.
• Youth vote won't return for Obama in 2012, report says (By Perry Bacon Jr., the Grio) In a report on Wednesday, Curtis Gans, director of the Washington-based Center for the American Electorate, predicted voter turnout overall (as a percentage of the eligible voting population) would be lower than in 2008 or 2004. He argued those two elections fired up voters, particularly Democrats, in a way neither party will in 2012.
• New Iowa Poll May Understate Paul’s Support (By NATE SILVER, NY Times/ FiveThirtyEight) The recent Public Policy Polling survey, for instance, estimated that 24 percent of Iowa caucus participants are currently registered as independents or Democrats and will re-register as Republicans at the caucuses. This month’s Washington Post/ABC News poll put the fraction at 18 percent. There is room to debate what the right number is but it will certainly not be zero, as the CNN poll assumes.
• Democrats Lag in Voter Registration (By LAURA MECKLER, Wall Street Journal) Today, far fewer people are registering, and the enormous Democratic advantage among new voters in North Carolina has vanished, according to new data from Catalist, a group with Democratic ties that studies voter rolls. That illustrates a broader challenge for the president's party. Democrats still hold an overall registration advantage in many states, but Obama campaign officials and other Democrats say it is important to bring new Obama voters onto the rolls—both to replenish voters who drop off and offset possible losses among independent voters, who have been skeptical of Mr. Obama's job performance.

Dr. Omar Ali: Need Political Vehicles That Express People's Sentiments

INDEPENDENT VOTERS
Ali interviewed about elections (University of North Carolina Greensboro News) WITH VIDEO Historian Omar Ali spoke to WFMY about the Nov. 8 elections. The election results reflect the same distrust of government and the two major parties that has sparked the Tea Party and Occupy movements, he said.

Should Americans be Forced to Vote?

Some guy who is paid a fat salary by a rich think tank says that the best way to raise voter turnout is to force folks to vote. The New York Times gave him lots of space

This guy fails to see the cause of low interest and low turnout – political powerlessness. Turnout largely follows the power/wealth scale in the US. Turnout increases as you go up the scale, and decreases as you go down it. The wealthiest have the highest turnout, and the most power to get what they want from government.

Indeed, elections and government are dominated by the top 1%. Barack Obama says as much in The Audacity of Hope: When socializing with rich campaign contributors, “I found myself avoiding certain topics during conversations with them. … I had no problem telling [them] that the tax cuts they’d received from George Bush should be reversed. … Still, I know that as a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthy donors I met …,” page 137. Its them he serves first. These key potential campaign contributors of big money are “the top 1 percent or so of the income scale,” page 136, The Audacity of Hope

The lower you go on the wealth and power scale the more intense is the awareness people have of their political alienation. Why bother to go to the polls when you already know it won’t do you any good?

The solution is to have an election system in which the rich and poor, and the moderate middle class, have genuine equality. When the election system is no longer skewed towards the top, folks will feel more empowered. They will turnout more just to feel the joy of exercising their political power. The US should redistribute electoral power as it should be in an authentic democracy.

But to use government power to force folks to vote, like this think tank guy says, won’t advance democracy. That would be merely another act of humiliation of the 99ers.

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Twitter: wjkno1
Author of Internet Voting Now!

Its on! Kelleher v. Jefferson: Internet Voting Debate

From Rick Hasen’s Election Law Blog


Jefferson: If I can shop and bank online, why can’t I vote online?
http://electionlawblog.org/?p=24849

Kelleher: Rebuttal to David Jefferson’s Brief against Internet Voting
http://electionlawblog.org/?p=24922

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Internetvoting@gmail.com
Twitter: wjkno1
Author of Internet Voting Now! at,
http://tinyurl.com/IVNow2011

Magical Thinking about Top Two Elections

The Hankster recently posted an article that mentioned Washington state’s new top two general election, which is preceded by an open primary. Upon clicking the link I found my friend Richard Winger having another one of his automatic fits triggered by the words “top two.” Top two, if not the root of all evil, at least is the bane of third parties, and the friend of incumbents.

But upon close examination, anyone can see that Richard is espousing unscientific mysticism, or magical thinking.

There is no causal relationship of any sort between a top two process for taking the final vote on candidates for office, and favoritism for incumbents or bias against minor parties.

There is only one causal relationship attributable to the final top two vote: namely, the winner receives a majority of the votes.

Richard’s argument that top two is biased against third parties and favors incumbents is pure voodoo. The causes of incumbents repeatedly winning re-election are well-known in political science. Incumbents have forged strong connections with the needed elites in their district. Incumbents generally have more campaign money, more name recognition, more activists in their campaigns, and easier access to the local media. Third parties regularly loose elections because they lack all the advantages of incumbency.

Gerrymandered districts also contribute to incumbent advantage. Party primaries are an additional factor that favors incumbents, because incumbent enthusiasts are more likely to turn out for primaries than are uncommitted middle Americans. Rigged districts and holding primaries also favor extremists, and can foster polarization.

Here is the key point missed by Richard: These factors have their determinative effects in the politics that take place long before the top two elections occurs.

Every sausage maker knows that a good sausage is not determined by the gut that holds the sausage together, but by the ingredients poured into the gut. But Richard is the only cook around who ignores the ingredients, and blames the foul taste of bad sausage on the gut, which everyone else regards as neutral in taste.

All the events that occur before the final top two vote are what account for the persistence of immoderate politicians, polarized legislatures, the failures of third parties, and the repeated re-election of incumbents. This is the case for Louisiana, California, Washington, Wisconsin, and every other state with these dysfunctional patterns.

Richard recognizes the dysfunctionality, but blames the victim – the final top two vote – rather than dealing with the intransigent causes. These causes are the natural consequences of a political system dominated by our a-constitutional two-party system. Putting the gut on the sausage is the last step. If the sausage is bad, it is all the steps taken prior to the last step that are to blame. The last step is neutral.

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Internetvoting@gmail.com
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All
Face Book: http://tinyurl.com/BillonFB
Twitter: wjkno1
Internet Voting Explained on
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/WJKPhD

Natalie Tennant: Internet Voting Profile in Courage

Hello Independents!

Here is a lady politician w/ more guts than any man in the same office in other states; that is, Secretary of State.

I recently posted on my blog a short summary of her achievements w/ Internet voting for West Virginia overseas military. She takes seriously the long standing policy of the League of Women Voters in West Virginia. That policy includes this, "Election laws should serve the voter with maximum convenience, simplicity, clarity, and impartiality." It's my most popular post, so I want to share it w/ you readers of The Hankster.

With rare exception, the growth of Internet voting in the United States is being stunted by special interests. These interests first emerged in 2004.

In 2004 the Department of Defense (DoD), and its sub-agency the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), had an Internet voting system all set up for overseas voters to use in the up coming state and federal elections. The system was ready to handle 100,000 voters, from the half dozen states that volunteered for the trial. Using their own PC, overseas voters could log on to a secure website, and after their registration is checked, vote online. DoD and FVAP officials were so confident that their system was able to mitigate all security threats that they invited 10 outside experts to come and inspect the system, known as the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE. At least four of the 10 were known anti-Internet voting computer scientists.

FVAP personnel took the whole team on the first of several planned visits. After only the second visit, the four got together in private and wrote a scathing criticism full of speculative "coulds" and "possibles," but short on facts and science. The entire election, they alleged, among other things, could be controlled by some undetectable hacker. (They forgot to mention that the system had an intrusion detection capability.) Then they went to the New York Times with their "report," without any peer review or opportunity for FVAP to attach a response.

The Times, and other major newspapers, played up the story with so much sensation (a hacker could elect the president!) that Undersecretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, felt compelled to order a halt to the program. Thereafter, this report, its authors, and a small cadre of well-funded activists have led the way in discouraging FVAP, or any state government, from further attempts at Internet voting trials. They now have a full time staff that follows the legislative process in Congress and each of the 50 states. Whenever they see an Internet voting bill introduced into a committee, they go into action to stop it. They buttonhole committee members, pull out their well-worn report, spout off all the "coulds" and "possibles," without any science to back up their claims, and then remind the elected officials of how they killed SERVE in 2004, using their access to the New York Times and other newspapers.

Most elected officials buckle under this pressure. They cannot afford the costs of publicity that would be required to fight the activists in the media. As they know well, the best way to get reelected is to avoid controversy, and push off the Internet voting proposals "for further study." As a result, in 2010 over 30 states electronically sent blank ballots to their voters who were in the military and overseas, but they avoided using systems based on the SERVE model. These states required that voted ballots be returned by fax, email, or snail mail – anything but real Internet voting on an official website. Indeed, even now, in 2011, FVAP is offering states up to $16M for electronic ballot delivery systems; but not for systems based on the SERVE model. To get financial aid, the systems must use ballots returned by fax, email, or snail mail.

Despite the threats of anti-Internet voting activists, in 2010 West Virgina enacted a trial of true Internet voting for its overseas members of the military, who were eligible to vote in one of the several volunteer counties. As with SERVE, overseas West Virginians in the military could use their own PC to log on to the state’s secure website, and after their registration is confirmed, cast their vote online. The program was supported in the legislative process, developed, and implemented by WV Secretary of State, Natalie E. Tennant.

Just as in the military, a Secretary of State, or any public official, deserves praise whenever they show courage under fire. Tennant showed this courage when she went ahead with her Internet voting trial for overseas military voters. As she stated on the WV SOS website,

"The members of our military are putting their lives on the line every day … I thought it was extremely important to make sure they had secure access to an online ballot. We had to make sure their voice was heard."

The system was first used in the state's primaries. Voter response was quite positive. Tennant reported that of all the satisfaction survey respondents, "we received no negative feedback of the pilot program."

While other methods of absentee voting saw return rates of about 40 percent, the Internet voting ballot return rate was over twice that. Tennant was so impressed that, in her report to the state legislature, she asked them to allow additional counties to participate in the 2010 General Election, which they did.

Tennant made her final report to the WV legislature on 1/19/2011. This report included the statistics on the use of Internet voting in the general election. For example, in the counties where Internet voting was offered, of all the voters who requested that their absentee ballots be delivered electronically, 76% voted on the secure website. In the counties using standard mail as the absentee ballot transmission method, 58% of the requested ballots were returned. Clearly, there was a higher rate of participation with Internet voting.

Most of the voters who used Internet voting in the primary also used it in the general election, indicating a high degree of satisfaction. Indeed, of those who took the satisfaction survey, 100% rated the system’s ease of use as "simple" or "somewhat simple."

Tennant reported that to date, "no significant deficiencies or concerns have been identified with the West Virginia online voting pilot." Unfortunately, because of all the media attention to the fiasco in Washington DC's Internet voting trial (which was set up by Oliver and Hardy, and then hacked by yet another comedian), Tennant did not recommend on her own authority that Internet voting should be used in all of West Virginia's counties. She suggested instead that a study group be convened to decide the matter.

Tennant is in the lead on other election reforms. For example, she is overseeing WV's experiment with the public financing of campaigns for election to some state court judgeships.

Tennant made a try for the West Virginia governorship in the first half of 2011, but lost in the Democratic primary; perhaps her courage under fire was not given sufficient profile.

Suggested Readings
On the DC fiasco:
http://tinyurl.com/DCin2010

On the Security of WV's Internet Voting System:
FAQ, at http://www.sos.wv.gov/elections/voter-information-center/Documents/FAQ%20WVUSOV.pdf

Tennant addresses the technical aspects of how the state handled security issues in two papers.
1. Tennant's NIST Position paper of June 9, 2010
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/UOCAVA/2010/PositionPapers/ZICKAFOOSE_WestVirginiaUOCAVA.pdf (Written after the primary vote, and before the general election; with her request for an extension of the program to other counties)

2. West Virginia's SOS report on the Online Voting Pilot Project 1/19/2011
http://www.sos.wv.gov/news/topics/elections-candidates/Pages/SecretaryofStateReleasesLegislativeReportOnOnlineVotingPilotProject.aspx

Also see:
Pew Center Reports

Internet voting for military, overseas voters debuts in West Virginia
Clerks and secretary of state pleased with first use
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/report_detail.aspx?id=59033

Pew Report on Military Voting Reform
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/report_detail.aspx?id=62365


William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Internetvoting@gmail.com
Twitter: wjkno1
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/WJKPhD