Voting rights bills and lawsuits megathread (Updated: April 27th 2020)

[Rjjr77]

The Supreme Court will hear a case next term challenging Ohio’s policy of removing inactive voters from the registration rolls: http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/335595-supreme-court-to-hear-ohio-voter-purge-case

I have a feeling the supreme court will rule this practice as constitutional, and in my opinion rightfully so.

[Rjjr77]

Automatic voter registration unanimously passed the IL House today and will return to the Senate for concurrence on the House amendment which became the bill.

Why is everyone (including Rauner) game for this version and not the last one?

The first version was essentially based on the idea that this is a great progressive idea and we ought to pass it. It couldn't be implemented as passed, and likely violated federal law to boot. The current version is based on the idea that we can make the voting process more efficient and secure, especially in light of polling places crowded last year with election day registrants and a state election data base hacked last year exposing over 100 K records.

The Senate has concurred with the amendment and it is on its way to the Gov.

Got it, thanks. AVR I think is a great idea all around for simplicity, IMO.

I actually don't agree. Avr is a operations mess

[Rjjr77]

I actually don't agree. Avr is a operations mess

How? All it does is automate something that previously required some input from people (although some versions of it still require a modicum of input). Otherwise I can't possibly see why you would say this.

It is only a mess so long as the design and basic implementation is a mess. The idea itself is solid, and there is no reason it couldn't be implemented smoothly.

It's great in theory hard in practice. People are not stationary, they move around, 40% of eligible voters never vote. We have a moving 40% clogging up rolls making larger voter books that may be registered in places they don't live with no update.

The biggest problem with us voting is illegal voting. It isn't fraud. It's people voting in places they aren't eligible in, this continues this as well as presents people that run elections with additional challenges.

At the end of the day SOME responsibility has to fall on the voter.

[Rjjr77]

I actually don't agree. Avr is a operations mess

How? All it does is automate something that previously required some input from people (although some versions of it still require a modicum of input). Otherwise I can't possibly see why you would say this.

It is only a mess so long as the design and basic implementation is a mess. The idea itself is solid, and there is no reason it couldn't be implemented smoothly.

It's great in theory hard in practice. People are not stationary, they move around, 40% of eligible voters never vote. We have a moving 40% clogging up rolls making larger voter books that may be registered in places they don't live with no update.

The biggest problem with us voting is illegal voting. It isn't fraud. It's people voting in places they aren't eligible in, this continues this as well as presents people that run elections with additional challenges.

At the end of the day SOME responsibility has to fall on the voter.

In IL this was borne out by testimony from county clerks and local election officials. That same testimony talked about how the most important thing to address this was to catch address changes that lead to people showing up in a polling place without registration. Downstate IL counties were particularly affected by this in the 2016 primary when a surprising number of unregistered voters came out for Trump. Those counties spent a lot of time and money processing provisional ballots.

AVR fixes that. Most people will go to the DMV or some other state agency when they move to change their address. In the case of the DMV that change links to their status under the federal Real ID program (which includes citizenship) and uses that to verify their eligibility to vote. The new address and registration goes to the local election jurisdiction, and at the same time the state election board notifies the locals to delete any prior registration. The state can also tie to other states to track moves between states.

Avr doesn't fix this, it actually accentuates the problem. Yes people go to the dmv to change addresses but this actually creates duplicates under AVR, because AVR doesn't automatically remove anyone.and many people who move within state don't go to the dmv in anyway

[Rjjr77]

It's great in theory hard in practice. People are not stationary, they move around, 40% of eligible voters never vote. We have a moving 40% clogging up rolls making larger voter books that may be registered in places they don't live with no update.

The biggest problem with us voting is illegal voting. It isn't fraud. It's people voting in places they aren't eligible in, this continues this as well as presents people that run elections with additional challenges.

At the end of the day SOME responsibility has to fall on the voter.

Honestly, I don't really get what you're saying. The point of AVR is to keep the voter registration database in sync with other state databases, so when people move, their registration follows them. This has been done in other states and it is mostly working as expected.

Second, from a developer's perspective the 'clogging' is completely irrelevant. A database with 700,000 or millions of people in it is not unmanageable. If gmail or outlook can handle millions of users, state systems can be made to handle the same. We're not really talking about a complicated system when it comes to voter registration.

I haven't seen any evidence that AVR is anything but positive for the way elections are handled. People shouldn't have to worry about their registration when the state already has all the relevant information - particularly when someone is already registered and they move, and give the DMV their new information. It's all so redundant and to me, reflects this outdated view that "the gubmint" is always wrong, inefficient and incapable, when it is not, at least in this case. And this is before you factor in lawmakers screwing with the way elections are handled for meager partisan advantage.

You live in this fantasy world where everything is online. Statewide databases are great but that's not how elections are actually run. They are run by underpaid local officials who physically have to create pollbooks. Whether electronic or physically it is up to these individuals to constantly enter early voting into these databases as well as deal with the actual logistics of putting on a physical election.

AVR doesn't keep the books straight in anyway, it actually does the opposite, it puts tons of people with no desire to vote on the rolls, as well as people that move. DMV databases are atrocious full of duplicates and people who live nowhere near where they say there are. The only way AVR works is if a nationwide database is created, using IRS and citizenship data