Justin's Political Corner

Rather than continuing to solely play defense, the Center for American Progress has released a report detailing 11 pieces of state legislation that voting rights advocates can use to go on offense in 2013:

1. Online voter registration. Less than 63 percent of Americans aged 18-34 were registered to vote in 2009, yet a Nielsen survey found that these young citizens were by far the most electronically connected, with 88 percent having an Internet connection at home. Modernizing the voter-registration process and allowing people to register online would be a boon for the overall number of voters in our country.

2. Election Day registration. Most states bar their residents from registering in the weeks just before an election—at a time when media coverage is at a fever pitch and less-engaged citizens are just starting to tune in. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, stop allowing people to register 30 days before an election. Election Day registration eliminates that barrier, helping a significant number of Americans vote. In 2008 alone, more than 1 million individuals registered on Election Day in these states. Studies have found that Election Day registration boosts turnout on average by 7-percentage points to 14-percentage points.

3. Require public schools to help register voters. Young Americans continue to vote at far lower rates than the rest of the citizenry. This year, for instance, only half of the voting-eligible population between the ages of 18 and 24 cast a ballot, compared to more than two-thirds of senior citizens. One simple way to encourage students to vote is for states to require that public schools provide voter-registration services.

4. Expand early voting. Early voting is one of the most important realms of voting rights over the past decade. It offers citizens more flexibility to vote at their convenience—not everyone can take off an hour or two from work on the first Tuesday of November—and allows election officials to spread the process of counting ballots over a number of days or weeks, rather than getting inundated all at once. It’s also a major boon for minority turnout. Many African American churches, for instance, participate in a “souls to the polls” voting drive on the Sunday before Election Day helping boost black early voting rates. Currently, 16 states don’t offer early voting.

5. Allow voters to cast a ballot in any county polling location. One of the most exciting new developments in the past couple years is the advent of polling centers. Rather than restricting voters to one assigned precinct where they must cast their ballot, a handful of counties now allow residents to vote at any polling location in their home county. Travis County, Texas, home to Austin, for example, conducted a study of its new policy after it was introduced in 2011 and found that allowing voters to cast a ballot at any of the county’s 207 polling locations led directly to a 1.4 percent increase in turnout. Approximately one in three voters ended up going to a different polling location than their usual one.

6. No-excuse absentee voting. For many Americans taking time off during the work day to vote is not an option. Fortunately for them an increasing number of states are enacting “no-excuse absentee” laws that allow anyone who requests an absentee ballot to receive one, not just individuals who will be out of town or have another reason barring them from voting on Election Day.

7. Strengthen penalties for knowingly deceiving voters. Though voter fraud is largely a myth, one form of actual election hijinks occurs when individuals or groups purposefully deceive certain voters about when or how to vote. These deceptive practices are unfortunately commonplace, such as fliers plastered in urban areas telling Republicans to vote on Tuesday and Democrats to vote on Wednesday. States should not only specifically ban deceptive practices, but classify them as a felony.

8. Outlaw voter caging. Voter caging is when an operative or group sends letters to a “target’s” home and uses any returned mail to challenge that voter’s eligibility on the presumption that they don’t live at the listed residence. For years, political operatives have used voter caging as a tactic to suppress turnout among largely minority populations. Because it’s a process that is riddled with problems, states should affirmatively ban the practice of voter caging. There are dozens of reasons why a piece of mail would be returned that are more plausible than a voter intending to commit voter fraud, including as clerical errors or military deployment, and serves primarily to suppress legitimate voters.

9. Reform the voter-challenge process. Poll watchers became a household term in the 2012 election as campaigns and outside groups like True The Vote trained thousands of volunteers to challenge voters’ eligibility anytime they suspected irregularities. When a poll watcher makes a challenge most states place the burden of proof on the voter to prove he or she is eligible to cast a ballot, a process that does little to disincentivize frivolous challenges. States therefore should pass legislation shifting the burden of proof from the voter to the challenger. In addition, states should impose penalties on individuals and groups who make frivolous challenges.

10. Restore voting rights to ex-felons. Felons in most states aren’t just barred from voting while in prison; a handful of states strip them of their voting rights for the rest of their life, even after completing their sentence. As a result, 3.1 million Americans were disenfranchised in 2008. If we as a society want to reintegrate people with felony convictions back into society after they finish their prison terms, it makes little sense to permanently brand them with a scarlet letter.

11. Enact constitutional language affirming an equal right to vote. When Wisconsin passed voter ID legislation in 2011 the only thing stopping its implementation in the 2012 election was the state constitution’s language affirming Wisconsin residents’ right to vote. Every state constitution has different language regarding the right to vote. Still, the most important thing voting-rights advocates can proactively do to prevent further attacks on voting rights such as voter ID is to strengthen their state’s constitutional language regarding the right to vote.

H/T: Scott Keyes at Think Progress Justice

One of the more stunning developments following President Obama’s re-election has been the number of ardent Republicans who have confessed that they believed the anti-Democratic propaganda from Fox News—and got so much wrong as a result.

The voting rights part of this fact-averse bubble had many dimensions: from who is and isn’t registered to vote, to when and where people wanted to vote, to what a voter must do at the polls to get a ballot, to how voter lists are updated—and who can be trusted to oversee the process.

What follows are 10 lies the Right pedaled during the 2012 campaign. Some GOP partisans, like this Nevada group, are already trying to resurrect some of these fake issues. You can be sure you’ll see more as states and Congress look at 2012’s biggest problems, such as people having to wait hours and hours to vote.

1. Non-Citizen Multitudes On Voter Rolls

Florida’s Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott was the worst offender, falsely claiming that there were 180,000 or more non-citizens listed on Florida’s voter rolls. It turned out that Scott and his hand-picked state election chief found 198 non-citizens among Florida’s 11 million voters before backpedaling from the claim. But other Republican top state election officials, in Colorado, Michigan and New Mexico, made the same claim in 2012 in an attempt to scare off legal non-white voters. This line was picked up by other GOP partisans who bought dozens of billboardsin communities of color in several swing states listing the penalty for illegal voting. The billboards came down after strong protests from civil rights groups.

2. Partisan Election Officials Are Trustworthy

Florida’s Rick Scott and Secretary of State Ken Detzner, Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and a handful of other Republicans overseeing their state’s elections are only the latest partisans who have abused their constitutional office by tilting voting rules to give an advantage to their party. We saw the same thing in Ohio in 2004, when Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell followed Florida’s Katherine Harris from 2000. Both Republicans made many decisions that hurt Democrats and elected—and then re-elected—George W. Bush.

This conflict of interest is one of the biggest problems with American elections. But there are more fair-minded ways to oversee voting, such as in Wisconsin where an independent board of retired judges runs and referees that state’s elections. And it should be noted that in Florida this year, many county-level election supervisors (who are elected) pushed back on Gov. Scott’s edicts. That’s because they see their job as serving the public rather than being partisan activists.  

3. Dead People Are Voting (For Democrats)

This propaganda line came after the Pew Center on the States issued a reportshowing that 1.8 million dead people were on state voter roles. Some in GOP circles went nuts, saying dead people would be voting for Democrats. Some newspapers also ran with the “dead voters” angle, revealing that they have little knowledge of the fact that voter rolls are maintained in an ongoing manner and how local officials take many steps to update their rolls (as people register, move and die).

4. Tougher Voter ID Laws Are Needed

Voter ID laws have been on the books for years. You need to show ID to register to vote. New voters must show an ID to get a ballot. And established voters sign in at the polls (or sign their names on mail-in ballots) under penalty of perjury. But those precedents have not stopped GOP-controlled legislatures from enactingnew laws requiring voters to show a specific form of state photo ID to get a ballot. The GOP’s big rationale is that they’re fighting voter impersonation fraud—the claim someone else is voting under another’s name. Of course, their real agenda is preventing likely Democrats in key cohorts—young people, urban residents without driver’s licenses, poor people, etc—from voting.

What the 2012 election showed was that the biggest perpetuators of fraudulent voter registration schemes were Republicans, notably Nathan Sproul, a political consultant who was hired by several state Republican Parties to register voters. Sproul’s workers had a bad habit of throwing out forms from Democrats. State parties were forced to fire him after police opened investigations. This isn’t to say that there were no cases of Democrats tinkering with registrations. But almost all of the cases reported in 2012 involved the GOP’s consultants or lone actors. No one found registration fraud on a scale affecting thousands of votes, let alone hundreds.

5. Tougher Voter ID Laws Protect Minorities 

This absurd line was pedaled by two of the Right’s biggest voting propagandists, former Bush Administration Department of Justice attorney Hans von Spakovsky (now with the Heritage Foundation) and National Review columnist John Fund. They made this claim in their new book, Who’s Counting: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote At Risk, in media commentaries, and at recruiting sessions for right-wing voter vigilante groups that obsess over the specter of illegal voters.

Von Spakovsky said that minority turnout in Georgia went up after it adopted a tougher voter ID law—a claim that handily overlooks how its Latino population has surged in recent years. But more to the point, tougher voter ID laws have given GOP groups a pathway to racially profile voters.

6. Federal Voting Rights Act Is Obsolete

This claim is really outrageous against the backdrop of all the race-based tactics the GOP used to try to defeat President Obama. In lawsuits still unfolding in federal court—and at the U.S. Supreme Court—Republican lawyers are arguing that the U.S. is now a post-racial society, which means that Civil Rights Era laws such as the federal Voting Rights Act are no longer needed.

This year, the two authorities under the Voting Rights Act—Justice Department and a federal appeals court in Washington—found that the new voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina were racially discriminatory, preventing them from taking effect. The Washington court found that Texas’ congressional and state redistricting plan also was discriminatory—and rejected it. And the Justice Department was part of litigation in Florida over that state’s efforts to curb registration drives and limit early voting, all because the GOP-led measures disproportionately would impact those state’s minority voters.

Moreover, while some Republicans in the 16 states that are all or partly regulated by the Voting Rights Act—such as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott—have led the attack on the Voting Rights Act and accused the Obama Justice Department of rampant partisan manipulation of the law, other Republicans in those same states have proposed changes in election law and procedures that have been approved by the Justice Department. So the GOP dislikes the law when it blocks their agenda but likes it when it doesn’t.   

7. Early Voting Is Not Wanted or Needed

This was another absurd claim that was made by top Republican election officials in Florida and Ohio—and was the subject of litigation that, at least in Ohio’scase, lasted until just days before the presidential election. Both Florida and Ohio saw efforts by Republicans, in their legislatures and by their secretaries of state, to limit weekend voting options in the final weeks of the 2012 election. In Ohio, a federal judge was so incensed by Secretary of State John Husted’s intransigence that at one point he ordered Husted to appear in his courtroom to personally explain why he ignored court orders.

In Florida, the GOP-controlled legislature has purposely limited the number of early voting locations—which was also a problem in 2008—and then tried to cut back on the total number of hours of weekend voting in 2012. After litigation led by voting rights groups, the state slightly adjusted the early voting schedule. However, these political decisions were directly responsible for the hours-long lines in both swing states this year.

8. Obama Disenfranschised Overseas Military Voters  

Another aspect of the Ohio litigation over early voting was the claim by Republicans and Fox News that the Obama campaign’s lawsuit to preserve early voting on the final weekend before Election Day disenfranschised overseas military voters. This lie was based on very twisted logic—if you could even call it that. Until 2011, all Ohioans could vote on the weekend before Election Day. But Ohio’s GOP-controlled Legislature passed a law that only allowed for overseas military members and their families to vote on that final weekend in November 2012. The Obama campaign sued, saying that did not treat all Ohio voters equally under the law.

Various Fox News on-air hosts said that Obama was seeking to prevent members of the military and their families from voting in the presidential election, a multi-dimensional untruth and smear. If anything, the Obama campaign lawsuit—which was victorious—would allow all Ohioans, at home and overseas, to have more voting options. (Ohio, like all states, gives troops overseas more time to return their ballots because of mail and delivery delays).

9. One Million GOP Poll Watchers Are Coming

The GOP’s voter vigilante squad, led by the new group, True the Vote, claimed that it would train and send 1 million polling place observers to swing states to be on the lookout for anything resembling (to them) voter fraud and to stop illegal voting. That didn’t happen. There was no invasion of Republican voting posses descending on thousands of local precincts in swing states.

True the Vote is not going away, but it needs to be seen for what it is—the front guard of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Indeed, just as many Tea Partiers elected to the House in 2010 were unseated in 2012, this Republican cadre’s outsized claims should not be taken seriously.    

10. Obama Will Steal The Election Electronically

The Republican National Committee made this claim in letters to a half-dozen top state election officials in swing states one week before Election Day. A top RNC lawyer cited isolated problems with paperless voting machines as a sign that Democrats were poised to electronically flip votes from Romney to Obama to steal the election. State election directors in Nevada and North Carolina responded with forceful letters, saying the RNC’s concerns and theory was unsupported by facts and vote-counting procedures.

Of course, what the RNC was doing was seeking to undermine the public’s confidence in a process that was headed toward re-electing Obama.

h/t: Steven Rosenfeld at AlterNet

In the lead up to the 2000 presidential election, Florida’s Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a private company to create an error-laden “scrub list” of so-called ineligible voters, eventually wrongly purging as many as 7000 voters from Florida’s rolls — or 13 times George W. Bush’s post-Supreme Court margin of victory. Moreover, because Harris’ list “invariably target[ed] a minority population in Florida” that was overwhelmingly likely to vote for Al Gore, it is likely that her voter purge gave the presidency to Bush. Four years later, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell engaged in similar shenanigans to suppress the vote in his crucial swing state — including at one point saying he would reject voter registration forms if they were not printed on 80-pound thickness cardstock.

This election, the role of Kathrine Harris and Ken Blackwell is played by Ohio’s new Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted. Here are just a few of the steps Husted took to try to swing Ohio’s crucial electoral votes to Mitt Romney:

• Trashing Provisional Ballots: In a last-minute directive that directly conflicts with Ohio law, Husted ordered all voters who make a mistake when filling out a form accompanying provisional ballots to be disenfranchised. As the majority of provisional ballots are cast in Ohio’s five largest counties — all of which favor Democrats — and because low-income and transient voters are also more likely to vote provisionally, Husted’s directive will likely disenfranchise many more Democrats than Republicans.
• Restricting Early Voting: Husted fought tooth and nail to limit opportunities to vote early in Ohio, although most of the restrictions on early voting Husted advocated were eventually blocked by a federal appeals court. Nevertheless, Husted still limited the number of hours available for early voting even after he lost in federal court, and he told an election law symposium last month that the court decision restoring early voting periods was an “un-American approach to voting.” Early voters in Ohio overwhelmingly support President Obama. As the federal court restoring early voting explained, “early voters have disproportionately lower incomes and less education than election day voters,” and thus are less likely to work flexibility to take time off to vote on election day.
• Defying Court Orders: After a federal district court declared Ohio’s efforts to suppress early voting unconstitutional, Husted openly defied this order — ordering local elections officials not to comply with it. Husted eventually backed down after federal Judge Peter Economus ordered Husted to personally attend a court hearing concerning his refusal to comply with the law.
• Retaliating Against People Who Oppose Him: Husted fired two Montgomery County board of election members after they voted to allow early voting on weekends when Husted opposed it.

It does not have to be the way.

H/T: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

During his keynote speech at an election law symposium at University of Toledo on Friday, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) claimed two recent court decisions restoring early voting on the last three days before the election was “un-American.”

Husted has sought to restrict early voting, even openly defying a court order to lift the ban on voting on the last three days before Election Day. Once the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal, Husted immediately capped voting hours at just 16 hours for the entire three day period, down from 24 hours in 2008.

Husted asserted that every vote would be counted fairly and accurately, saying that voting in Ohio is “easy” and “anybody who says that there are residents in Ohio being barred from the right to vote is irresponsible.” Husted has certainly had to contend with many such “irresponsible” people. Though the court restored this three day period of voting, Husted has still prevented Ohioans from voting on evenings or weekends throughout October. 

H/T: Aviva Shen at Think Progress Justice

Two federal courts said that the Ohio Republican Party’s effort to reduce opportunities to vote early must not go into effect. And the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Ohio Republican officials to reinstate a GOP-backed law taking away three days of early voting just this week.

Now, just two days after the conservative Roberts Court turned away Husted’s bid to reinstate the anti-voter law, he is still finding new ways to cut back early voting:

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted swiftly limited early voting hours on those crucial three days to 8 am–2 pm on Saturday, November 3; 1–5 pm on Sunday, November 4; and 8 am–2 pm on Monday, November 5. That means Ohio voters will have a total of only sixteen hours to cast a ballot during those three days. And before the weekend before the election, Ohio voters will still not be able to cast a ballot in-person on nights or weekends.

In 2008, the most populous counties in Ohio allowed more time for early voting—both in terms of days (thirty-five) and hours (on nights and weekends in many places). For the three days before the election, early voting locations were open for a total of twenty-four hours in Columbus’s Franklin County (8-5 on Saturday, 1-5 on Sunday and 8-7 on Monday) and 18 and a half hours in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County (9-1 on Saturday, 1-5 on Sunday, 8:30-7 pm on Monday). During those final three pre-election days in 2008, 148,000 votes were cast and “wait times stretched 2 1/2 hours,” reported the Columbus Dispatch.

There is a simple explanation for why Ohio Republicans are so determined to cut back early voting. Early voters are more likely to be minorities and are more likely to have lower incomes. They are also much less likely to have jobs that give them the flexibility to take time off to vote on election day. According to a recent Ohio poll, President Obama leads 57 percent to 38 percent among people who already voted, but is tied at 43 percent with Mitt Romney among likely voters who have yet to cast their ballot.

h/t: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is siding with Democrats in refusing to block early voting in the battleground state of Ohio.

The court on Tuesday refused a Republican request to get involved in a dispute over early voting in the state on the three days before Election Day.

The campaign of President Barack Obama and Ohio Democrats sued the state over changes in Ohio law that took away the three days of voting for most people, but made exceptions for military personnel and Ohioans living overseas. Democrats say nearly 100,000 people voted in the three days before the election in 2008.

A federal appeals court ruling reinstated voting on the weekend before the election and Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

h/t: Huffington Post

Right-Wing Media Claim Early Voting Leads To “Fraud”

But Studies Say Early Voting Boosts Integrity Of The Voting Process …

… And In-Person Voter Fraud Is Extremely Rare

Right-Wing Media Attack Early Voting For Letting Voters Cast Ballots Too Early …

… But Voting Expert Notes That Majority Of Early Voting Ballots Are Cast During Final Two Weeks — By Decided Voters

Right-Wing Media Attack Early Voting As Unconstitutional And Untraditional …

… But Early Voting Was Practiced In Earliest Days Of U.S.

Early Voting Was Expanded In Response To Problems At The Polls …

… And Early Voting Now Makes It Easier For Some Voters To Cast Ballots

Experts Say Attacks On Early Voting May Have Partisan Motivations

Right-Wing Media Claim Early Voting Leads To “Fraud”

Limbaugh: “This Early Voting — It’s A Recipe For Fraud.” During the October 1 edition of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh expressed dismay that “85 percent of the country” will be able to vote “before the last [presidential] debate is over.” He then said, “This early voting — it’s a recipe for fraud.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 10/1/12]

Limbaugh: Early Voting Is “A Recipe For Cheating. It’s One Of The Reasons It Exists.” During the May 31 broadcast of his show, Rush Limbaugh said, “All of us know [Democrats] cheat. All of us know they engage in [unintelligible] — they use fraud. They use early voting. It’s a recipe for cheating. It’s one of the reasons it exists.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/31/12]

Fox’s Dobbs: I’m Concerned About “The Possibility Of Manipulation Of The Results That Comes With Early Voting.”  During the September 24 broadcast of his Fox Business show, host Lou Dobbs discussed early voting with his guest, Wall Street Journal editor James Freeman. Dobbs said, “I’m a little more concerned about the outcome and the capacity and exposure and the possibility of manipulation of the results that comes with early voting, in the minds of many.” He later asked Freeman, “You’re not worried about all of those ballots being insecure?” [Fox Business, Lou Dobbs Tonight, 9/24/12]

But Studies Say Early Voting Boosts Integrity Of The Voting Process …

Florida Senate Report: “Early Voting Increases Procedural Integrity Resulting In More Accurate Ballot Counts.” In an October 2010 interim report on the effect of early voting on Florida elections, the Florida Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections wrote that “early voting increases procedural integrity resulting in more accurate ballot counts.” [FLSenate.gov, October 2010]

.. And In-Person Voter Fraud Is Extremely Rare

In Person Voter Fraud Is Very Rare. On September 20, a voting expert on Fox News said that voter fraud is extremely rare, “on the order of winning the lottery.” A 2007 report from New York University’s Brennan Center noted that allegations of voter fraud “simply do not pan out.” In November 2011, Fox host Megyn Kelly admitted that voter fraud is “not overwhelming.” [Media Matters, 9/20/12, 9/10/12, 11/4/11]

For more on how right-wing media inflate claims of voter fraud, see here and here.

… But Voting Expert Notes That Majority Of Early Voting Ballots Are Cast During Final Two Weeks — By Decided Voters

Voting Expert Gronke: “The Overwhelming Majority Of Early Votes Are Cast During The Last Two Weeks.” On the blog of the Early Voting Information Center (EVIC),PaulGronke, EVIC’s director, wrote:

Most voters don’t cast a ballot during the “extended” early voting period (he must mean the weeks before the “final weeks”, although he contradicts himself there).  I’ll write again what I wrote a few days ago: the overwhelming majority of early votes are cast during the last two weeks, and the majority, in most states I have examined, in the last week. [Early Voting Information Center, 9/29/12]

Right-Wing Media Attack Early Voting As Unconstitutional And Untraditional …

Newsmax: “Early Voting Violates [The] Constitution.” In an October 10 column on Newsmaxheadlined “Early Voting Violates Constitution,” former Bush aide Bradley Blakeman wrote:

The U.S. Constitution sets forth the following criteria for the date of presidential elections in Article 2, Section 1:

Clause 4: Election Day

“The Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

Congress sets a national Election Day. Currently, Electors are chosen on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, in the year before the President’s term is to expire. The Electors cast their votes on the Monday following the second Wednesday in December of that year. Thereafter, the votes are opened and counted by the Vice President, as President of the Senate, in a joint session of Congress.

Our Founding Fathers specifically set forth “a national Election Day” —not days. In the early days of national elections it was no easy logistical task to vote. People had to plan to cast their ballot. Many citizens had to endure long travel and hardship to cast their ballot on a single day. 

You would think that the authors of the Constitution in light of the hassle citizens had to go through to exercise their right to vote would have provided a period of days for ballots to be cast. The fact is they didn’t. I believe the Founding Fathers set forth one day for voting because they knew that in order to best execute a fair election and in order for Americans to understand and appreciate their right to vote that voting should involve some level of “sacrifice” of time and effort.

[…]

If our founding fathers saw no need for elections to be conducted over days and weeks in light of the inconvenience and sacrifice required at the time, why now in 2012, when travel and access to polling places is so convenient do we disregard the constitutional requirement for national elections to be conducted on just one day? [Newsmax.com, 10/10/12, emphasis added]

Dobbs: “Well, 200 Years Of History Would Suggest [Voters] Wait Until” Election Day To Vote. During the September 24 broadcast of his show, Dobbs said that voting “traditionally has been on one day” and later said of early voters, “Well, 200 years of history would suggest they wait until Tuesday, November 6.” [Fox Business,Lou Dobbs Tonight, 9/24/12]

.. But Early Voting Was Practiced In Earliest Days Of U.S.

Voting Expert McDonald: At “The Founding, Elections Were Held Over Several Days To Allow People Living In Remote Areas To Get To The Courthouse.” From an online conversation with voting expert Michael McDonald, an associate professor at George Mason University, that was hosted by the Brookings Institute:

12:47 Comment from Jennifer S. : Why do we vote on Tuesday? It seems inconvenient. Wouldn’t more people vote if we did it on the weekend? Or over a period of days that offered both morning and evening hours?

12:48 Michael McDonald: We used to have early voting in the US! Back at the Founding, elections were held over several days to allow people living in remote areas to get to the courthouse (the polling place back in the day) to vote. In the mid-1840s, the federal gov’t set the current single day for voting because — what else? — claims of vote fraud. That people could vote more than once. [Brookings, 9/26/12]

Prior To 1845, Presidential Elections Took Place Over A 34-Day Period. According to a 1992 report prepared by William Kimberling, then the deputy director of the Federal Election Commission’s Office of Election Administration, before 1845, Congress allowed states to conduct their presidential elections over a 34-day period.

Early Voting Was Expanded In Response To Problems At The Polls …

Beacon Journal: Early Voting Was Expanded In Ohio After 2004 Election Saw Unacceptably Long Wait Times For Voters. Early voting was expanded to include the weekend prior to election day after the 2004 presidential election, when long lines and equipment problems caused voters to wait nearly all day to cast their ballot. The Akron Beacon Journal reported:

The legislature expanded absentee voting in Ohio after the 2004 presidential election that saw long lines, with some voters waiting up to seven hours and others giving up and going home. The first presidential election that allowed early voting without a special reason was four years ago, when nearly 21 percent of all registered voters in Ohio cast absentee ballots. [Akron BeaconJournal, 7/17/12]

Voting Problems Prior To Expanding Early Voting Effectively Left Many Citizens Disenfranchised. The complaint noted that the long lines in 2004 left people who could not spend an entire day at the polls disenfranchised:  

Between 2005 and 2011, Ohio successfully administered an early voting system that included in-person voting in the three days prior to Election Day. This early voting system increased participation among voters, including those for whom work or family obligations make it difficult to vote on Election Day, and reduced the congestion that caused such severe waits during the 2004 presidential election in Ohio that some citizens were effectively denied the right to vote. [Obama for America v. Husted, accessed 10/2/12]

h/t: MMFA

Some of their stupidest excuses:

9. Skewed Polls Depressed Republican Turnout

Many conservatives are complaining that most national polls are “oversampling” Democrats, even though most pollsters don’t weigh their data based on party identification since partisan makeup of the electorate can fluctuate.

Glenn Beck’s “news” site “The Blaze” amplified a blog post touting the conservative theory behind the poll numbers: ”These over-samplings serve a few purposes but mainly drive down enthusiasm for Republicans while assisting the Obama campaign with ‘bandwagon’ supporters who simply like being on the winning team…”

8. The Government Suppressed The Military Vote

On Fox & Friends, guest co-host Eric Bolling asserted that “it’s becoming more difficult, relatively more difficult, for military personnel to get an absentee ballot, yet we’re supposed to believe that getting a photo ID just makes it way too difficult for an American citizen to vote.”

As Media Matters noted, the head of the Military Voter Protection Project, which provided the data that Fox & Friends based its discussion on, said, “The military voting issue has existed long before the current administration. I simply don’t see any politics at play.”

7. The Government Allowed People To Vote Early

Having more people be able to vote, by states allowing ballots to be cast before Nov. 6, is a “recipe for fraud,” according to Rush Limbaugh.

6. ACORN. Again.

From Dean Chambers of UnskewedPolls.com fame:

While the media is creating the perception that Obama can and is winning, the campaign and it’s supporters are working with their allies and former members and leaders in groups like ACORN and others to change the actual vote outcomes as much as they can. … By creating the perception that Obama is winning, the media is giving the campaign a margin in which to be able to engage in voter fraud and make it believable … this is precisely why Obama’s Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder is fighting voter identification laws so strongly. They know they are far less likely to win the if the election if honest and fair.

The national ACORN organization no longer exists.

5. Obama Was Never Vetted

In March, Breitbart.com launched “The Vetting” because “Andrew [Breitbart] wanted to do what the mainstream media would not. First and foremost: Andrew pledged to vet President Barack H. Obama … he wanted to show that the media had failed in its most basic duty: to uncover the truth, and hold those in power accountable, regardless of party. From today through Election Day, November 6, 2012, we will vet this president…”

Breibart.com has been “vetting” ever since. Daily Caller too.

And yet, it is never enough. Red State’s Erick Erickson wrote recently: ”Honestly, he hasn’t really been vetted. We do not know a lot about Barack Obama from his time before the United States Senate. Much of what we could learn has conveniently disappeared. The few things we do know — like his connections to terrorist Bill Ayers — are dismissed by the media.”

3. Romney Wasn’t Conservative Enough

Laura Ingraham declared “conservatism wins” always, therefore Romney losing must mean he’s not being conservative enough.

Rush Limbuagh similarly concluded that if Romney “would just go full-bore conservative [he would] wrap it up.”

A unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision striking down Ohio’s recent law limiting early voting. Although the panel divided on its reasoning, all three judges concluded that the law has serious constitutional deficiencies. Themajority opinion was written by Judge Eric Clay, a Clinton appointee, and Judge Joseph Hood, a George H.W. Bush appointee.

If the state chooses to appeal this decision, it may appeal either to the full Sixth Circuit or to the Supreme Court. Currently, Republican appointed active judges outnumber Democratic appointees 10-6 on this court, and the Sixth Circuit does have a record of handing down ideologically divided decisions in cases that could impact presidential elections. Judge Hood, the Bush appointee who joined today’s opinion, is a district court judge on temporary designation to the appeals court and would not join the full panel of judges should it be convened.

h/t: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

The election could be won or lost weeks before Election Day thanks to early voting that has now spread in one form or another to more than half the states. With early voting kicking off Thursday in the critical swing state of Iowa, and with more swing states following close behind, including Ohio next Tuesday, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will be banking real votes long before the frenetic final days of the campaign.

“I am forecasting in this election cycle that about 35 percent of the vote will be cast before Election Day,” George Mason University professor Michael McDonald, who researches early voting behavior, told TPM. “We know 78 percent of all votes in Colorado were cast prior to Election Day in 2008, and it probably will be around 85 percent in 2012. The election will essentially be won or lost before Election Day unless it’s a tight, narrow, razor-thin margin.”

With more than one-third of the votes nationwide expected to be cast early, Romney’s already shrinking window to erase President Obama’s current lead in public opinion polls before Election Day is closing even faster. While the presidential debates, for instance, remain Romney’s last best hope to shake up the current dynamics of the race, many voters will have already cast their ballots before all the debates are held. Time is running out.

The prevalence of early voting in 2012 — either via in-person early voting or no-excuse absentee voting — continues the modern trend. Some 30.6 percent of the electorate voted early in 2008, but the percentages were much higher in battleground states like Florida (51.8 percent), Nevada (66.9 percent), and North Carolina (60.6 percent).

Ohio, where Obama is surging in public opinion polling, is poised for the biggest boost. Recently the Obama campaign successfully blocked the state in federal court from eliminating three early voting days. But the bigger news is that election officials, for the first time, are sending every single registered voter in the state an absentee ballot request form.

One exception where the rules have moved in the opposite direction is Florida, which cut its number of early voting days from 14 to eight. The effects of the change are still unclear, however, especially as individual counties might offer longer voting hours.

Democrats dominated early voting in 2008 thanks to high enthusiasm among the base, an unprecedented ground game, and a huge cash advantage over John McCain. This time around, Republicans say things will be different: They have vastly improved resources thanks to stronger fundraising and more assistance from outside groups.

The Romney campaign says it has met many of McCain’s 2008 grassroots benchmarks weeks ahead of schedule. Among the stats cited, officials say they’ve knocked on one million more doors already than in the entire ‘08 campaign and made seven times as many phone calls as Team McCain volunteers had at the same point in the race. Conservatives groups and Republicans also ran successful early voting programs in victories across the country in the 2010 elections, though it should be noted that the midterm electorate is demographically much more conservative than the expected presidential electorate.

For its part, the battle-tested Obama campaign is counting on its own turnout operations to counter the expected advantage in late advertising dollars from Republicans and their allies.

There are early indications in first-to-vote Iowa that the Obama campaign’s work may be paying off. While the GOP has made gains in voter registration since 2008, Democrats have made five times as many absentee ballot requests, a figure that is alarming some state Republicans.

Former Iowa Republican Party chair Craig Robinson, who now observes politics in the state closely as editor of The Iowa Republican blog, said Romney’s early vote efforts in the Hawkeye State so far fall far short of where John McCain’s were four years ago.

“There was quite a bit of mail being sent out,” Robinson recalled Tuesday. “The McCain campaign was fundamentally sound. I don’t have evidence of that yet from the Romney campaign.”

Robinson said he’s seen no early vote mailers from the Romney campaign so far. He fears Romney has missed the boat on early voting, leaving the Democrats to bank perhaps thousands of votes weeks before Election Day.

h/t: Benjy Sarlin at TPM

After previously trying to restrict early voting, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) today reversed course on his decision to block county boards of elections from setting their own early voting hours in the days leading up to the November election.

Last month, Husted and Ohio Republicansled an effort to limit early voting hours in Democratic counties, including those with major cities like Columbus and Cleveland, while expanding early voting in Republican counties. After the ensuing uproar, Husted moved to restrict voting hours across the state, only to have his cuts to early voting restored by a federal court.

Facing a direct court order, Husted has chosen instead to back down. This afternoon, Husted’s office released Directive 2012-42 with a brief message: “Directive 2012-40 is hereby rescinded.” As a result, county boards of elections will now be allowed to set their own hours, pending Husted’s appeal of the Obama for America v. Husted decision.

h/t: Scott Keyes at Think Progress Justice

Last month, President Obama’s reelection campaign filed a lawsuit claiming that a recently enacted Ohio law eliminating early voting in the three days before an election, except for members of the military, violates the Constitution’s guarantee that all voters enjoy equal access to the franchise. The campaign’s lawsuit called for the right of allvoters to cast an early ballot be restored in Ohio — it explicitly stated that expanding the franchise, not taking early voting away from military personnel as well, was the appropriate outcome.

he Romney campaign, for its part, opposed the Obama campaign’s position in this lawsuit. Had the Romney position prevailed, as many as 900,000 military veterans could have had their right to vote impeded.

h/t: Think Progress Justice/

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s recent decision to prohibit early voting on nights and weekends in all districts has many concerned about the effect on voter turnout in the state, particularly among low-income and minority communities. But one Republican Party chairman is content to suppress votes among this vulnerable demographic. Doug Preisse, chairman of the Republican Party in Franklin County, which contains the city of Columbus, admitted in an email to the Columbus Dispatch that black voters would now have a more difficult time voting:

I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine. Let’s be fair and reasonable.

Preisse was one of the board of elections members who blocked Democratic efforts in Franklin County to expand voting hours to evenings and weekends. According to the Dispatch, he called claims of unfairness “bullshit. Quote me!”

Secretary of State Husted most recently suspended two Democratic members of the Montgomery County Election Board for voting to allow weekend voting in spite of the directive to restrict hours.

H/T: Aviva Shen at Think Progress Elections