Iowa Election Bills

No Big Action in Iowa Election Bills

There's no election bills on the docket of the Iowa Legislature that are as big as 2007's election day registration law, 2008's elimination of even-year school board elections, or the pre-trifecta era Republican efforts at requiring photo ID to vote. But there's still a few interesting proposals sitting at the subcommittee stage.

Thursday I looked at the recall bill, which probably got the oomph knocked out of it on Friday when the Linn County Supervisors reversed course and took their pay cut. Yesterday I noted Mark Kuhn's bill requiring special election rather than appointment for U.S. Senators, but that was mostly an excuse for old war stories.

There's a few other irons in the fire. Each year some Republican makes the move to close the polls at 8 p.m. in primary and general elections, like we do in local elections. This year it's Rep. Rod Roberts of Carroll, who the mentioner is mentioning as a possible governor candidate, has the annual Republican bill to close the polls at 8 instead of 9.

Iowa has one of the later poll closing times, as you may have noted last November when we went up on the board at the same time as most of the Mountain Zone states. Some states close as early as 6 local time.

Johnson County saw nearly 600 voters in the last hour. There were spikes in new-growth precincts like North Liberty, where more people needed more time to find out where to go; some surprising rural precincts, where long-commute folks who work in town needed extra time; and the off-campus student precincts.

The voting age for primary elections would drop to 17 ½ under Des Moines Democrat Wayne Ford's proposal. The principle is good—if you're voting in November you should be able to help choose the nominees—and is analagous to the caucus process, where you can participate if you'll be 18 on Election Day. But as it's written there's a gap of kids born in May who could vote in a primary, but not in November.

I'd like a simpler bill: if you turn 18 by November general election day, you can register and vote that whole year. That would also get rid of that weird gap of kids who are old enough to caucus but not old enough to register to vote. Probably no one cares about that but election office staffers and credentials committee chairs, which means I probably care more than anyone else in the state.


Iowa would join Nevada in adding None Of The Above to the ballot under a bill sponsored by Republicans Jeff Kaufmann and Soctt Raecker. But unlike Nevada, this plan would be binding. If NOTA wins, there's a new election with new candidates.

I've always had a problem with None Of The Above. There's a lot of ways to Make A Statement, but the ballot is about making real world, final choices, and one of the principles of a democracy is we agree to live with those choices. Even including the option sends a “government is bad and all politicians are crooks” message. The place, time, and way to address those things is through the filing and nominating process, or in the worst case by a write-in (a legitimate one, not Mickey Mouse). If you don't like your choices, do it yourself. That's what I did. My legislative race was literally a case of “if you don't do it, he's unopposed.” So I guess in that sense I was none of the above.

Raecker also joins Democrat Geri Huser in proposing campaign contribution limits. Meaningful campaign finance reform would be one of the biggest improvements in our political system (the other would be meaningful redistricting reform but Iowa already has that). But there's a case to be made that the Deam-Obama model of lots and lots and lots of small donors already is the change we need.

I suspect this Iowa bill won't fly, because of its limits on contributions from parties and (mostly) because leadership is really, really proud of the money it can raise. But it's a more realistic hope than the pipedream of the public finance VOICE bill. Public finance advocates are still at the early, early stages of public education on the issue and need to overcome the “taxpayer subsidy for politicians” mindset. Plus it's still an insider-y issue.

For now, Regular Folks don't care about campaign finance, but they really hate robocalls. A trio of bills take on this unpopular but apparantly effective tactic. Ray Zirkelbach would ban them outright, Roger Wenthe takes on the issue of how calls are identified, and Bruce Hunter is after push-polling and mandatory disclosure.

I'm of mixed mind here. Push polls often indulge in the worst sort of "have you stopped beating your wife" innuendo, but as a free speech absolutist I'm reluctant to ban anything. Robocalls will stop only if and when they stop working.

What I don't see here is the National Popular Vote Plan bill that Joe Bolkcom had last year, which would give Iowa's electoral vote to the nationwide popular vote winner, effective when states representing an Electoral College majority do the same.

It's still early in the session, and we all know the real action happens at end game, so more stuff may yet land on the table.

Few Voters Registering Third Party

Few Take Advantage of Green, Libertarian Registration

Less than one Iowa voter in every 2,000 has taken advantage of a change in state law that allows people to register with two third parties.

The Greens and Libertarians fought hard in court for the change, which established a petition procedure for parties to earn a place on the voter registration form without winning the two percent of the top of the ticket vote required for full party status. An out of court settlement, later enacted into law, kicked in on Jan. 1, and the first registered Green was "elated" at the chance to express his preference.



But through Nov. 26 only 1357 voters--0.05 percent--have registered with one of the third party "political organizations." 937 are Libertarians and 420 are Greens.

The Greens had full party status in Iowa for two years, after Ralph Nader won 2.2 percent of the state's vote in the 2000 presidential election. At the end of the two year run, Iowa had 2,480 registered Greens. That's only one of every 700 voters, but it's six times more than they have now.

Holly Hart of the Iowa Greens says there has been "slower but steady growth" in Green registration during 2008 than there was in 2001 and 2002. "Since there has been far less general interest in high-profile third party candidates in the past two cycles, and more aggressive recruiting by the Dems, I am not surprised that the growth rate is slower than before," she said.

Libertarians also seemed on the verge of a breakthrough in 2008. Ron Paul was seeking the Republican nomination, true. But his network of email contacts and online contributors would have been a priceless tool for Libertarian nominee Bob Barr. Paul endorsed Constitution nominee Chuck Baldwin instead, and . Barr scored the half a percent range that's been typical for Libertarian nominees for the last 20 years.

"For every registered member you have, you get three or four votes for your top of the ticket candidate," said Kevin Litten of the Iowa Libertarian Party. "My goal is to make that number grow, and I don't know how yet."

Further down the Iowa ballot, the Greens and Libertarians stayed out of Iowa's 2008 U.S. Senate race. Both parties ran candidates against Tom Harkin in 2002 and Chuck Grassley in 2004. The Greens only ran in one congressional district, and the Libertarians ran in none.

"The big difference is the level of awareness of the option. Nader made a big splash and a lot of people were excited about his candidacy, which led to a lot of people making the effort to register Green," said 2nd District Green congressional candidate Wendy Barth. "Last year a quiet little modification was made to the state law, and only a few people went out of their way to take advantage of it."

Ballot challenges could shift election

Election Could Be Decided Monday

If John McCain is going to win Iowa, it will likely happen Monday.

And if Barack Obama is going to win Iowa, it's already happened. Depending on how you look at it, it happened in the past six weeks, or it happened starting two years ago.

Record early voting, election day voter registration, and ballot challenges may have a bigger impact on Iowa's seven electoral votes than Tuesday's election day voting.

Iowa has seen unprecedented levels of early voting since ballots became available Sept. 25. Through Saturday, 553,669 voters had voted early or requested mailed ballots, and 481,179 ballots had been returned. Democrats hold a 100,000 vote edge in requests. Early voting continues through Monday.

Absentee ballot boards start the work of processing these ballots Monday, opening envelopes and dealing with challenges to absentee ballots. That's the way McCain can improve his percentages today: through the Republican Party's program of "ballot integrity" or "vote suppression," depending on your perspective.

Republicans issued unprecedented challenges to absentee ballots in 2004, concentrating on urban and academic counties. In liberal Johnson County, over 2,000 ballots were challenged for mistakes such as bad addresses and missing signatures. Of the challenged and provisional ballots that were counted, John Kerry won 77 percent, better than any single election day precinct in the county.

Democrats took note, and the seeds of an Obama victory may have been planted two years ago when the Democrats took over the statehouse trifecta of governor, state House and state Senate. The Democratic majorities quickly passed election law changes for Governor Chet Culver to sign.

Most significantly, Iowa joined neighbors Wisconsin and Minnesota with election day voter registration. It's hard to tell what the impact will be, but states with election day registration have the highest turnout in the nation, and young people use the process most frequently. Both those trends would help Obama.

The Democratic legislature and Culver also tightened the laws on ballot challenges. Each challenge must be presented individually, rather than as a group or "blanket" challenge, and the law restricts challenges to a few items such as citizenship, felony status, and residence. A voter cannot be challenged for registering or changing address on election day. Challengers must provide name, address and phone number, and are subject to misdemeanor charges for frivolous challenges.

In another legal change, auditors are directed to open the outer, "return carrier" envelope of absentee ballots when they arrive in the mail and check the inner "affidavit envelope" for problems like missing signatures. The change gives voters a chance to fix their own mistakes. In 2004, the outer envelopes weren't opened till the day before the election.

The Democratic Party also adapted to the 2004 absentee challenges by doorknocking high-turnover areas like college towns later. That way, fewer voters would be likely to move after having requested a ballot from an old address, thus subjecting themselves to a potential challenge. Democrats also steered voters toward more in-person early voting and less voting by mail.

The trend toward heavier early voting may produce some anomalous precinct results. With so many Democrats out of the election day voting pool, Republicans may "win" some precincts they haven't before. Polk County saw the dynamic a few years back in a Democratic supervisor primary, where Gene Phillips won every election day precinct, but John Mauro had an exceptional early voting program and won 80 percent of the absentee vote to win the nomination. He lost the election day vote because his people had already voted.

That happened at the presidential level in 2004. John Kerry led the Iowa absentee vote by 70,000 votes, but Geirge W. Bush carried election day by 80,000 to win the state by 10,000.

Republicans may look at the election day results, compare them to the absentee vote, and cry foul. They may already be laying the groundwork for that with the national attention to problem voter registratiuons collected by the ACORN community organization. But in Iowa, we'll be able to look at the details. For the first time, absentee results will be released by precinct, rather than lumped into one county-wide "special precinct." Political numbers geeks will be able to look at absentee results and election day results side by side to check the effectiveness of their absentee ballot programs in minute detail.

Casual election watchers Tuesday night may also see Iowa's totals narrowing as the votes come in. Absentee totals, which will favor Democrats, tend to be released earlier. The election day precincts, which will lean Republican because Democrats disproportionately voted earlier, will trickle in later.

First Green in state "Elated"

First Green in state "Elated"

The first registered Green in the state is “elated” to finally be able to vote under his preferred political affiliation after years of complaining, but he’s still hoping the Greens achieve full political party status.

Beginning Jan. 2, Iowa has established a new class of minor political party called a “political organization.” The change is part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Green and Libertarian Parties. Political organizations are required to have run a statewide candidate within the last decade and to complete a petition process.

The news, and the handful of new Green and Libertarian registrations, have been buried by the caucuses and the massive waves of caucus-night party changes to the major parties, but that wasn't on the mind of Ron Kinum of Iowa City the morning of Jan. 2. “I really was hoping to be the first if it was possible, without being egocentric about it,” said Kinum. He went to the Johnson County Auditor’s office just before 8 a.m. on Jan. 2, after attending the Hamburg Inn’s Coffee Bean Caucus results announcement.

“I filled in the form and requested they enter my registration in the computer so I would be among the first registrants,” said Kinum. “I really did expect someone somewhere in the state would want to register before they went to work or something. As it turned out, the clerk said I was the very first to register!”

“I was more elated over just being able to sign up as a Green after three years of complaining to the Auditor's office and to the state ID office where I got my ID back in 2006,” Kinum said.

Kinum is still not happy about the way the process treats the Greens. “They still discriminate about us as being a ‘political organization,’” he said. Full party status still requires two percent of the vote for governor or president. The Greens had full party status from 2000 to 2002, and the Reform Party had party status from 1996 to 1998.

As political organizations, the Greens and Libertarians will not hold primaries. Soma activists, like Holly Hart of the Greens, are just as happy not to have a primary, since a low turnout primary leaves a small party vulnerable to takeover by candidates who do not support the party’s values. That happened to the Reform Party in 2000, when Pat Buchanan took over the remnants of Ross Perot's organization and drove the party's only elected official, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, to quit the party.

Kinum was also displeased with the Coffee Bean Caucus results, noting that Green candidate Cynthia McKinney’s coffee bean jar was not added until December, shortly before her announcement. “Many of (her) 36 (votes) were from me,” he said. “I figure I put in at least a third of them. I am a somewhat regular customer.” (The Coffee Bean Caucus slogan is "One bean, one vote," not "One person, one vote.")

Kinum attended the Democratic caucus for his precinct, wearing green clothing and a Green Party hat. He did not participate because he refused to re-register as a Democrat as required under party rules.

Kinum is well known in Iowa City for attending political events in Iowa City and carrying large hand-made signs, and he made a special sign for the caucus:

GROW UP

CITIZENS OF
OZ!

THE CAUCUS SYSTEM IS

ANTI-DEMOCRACY! 

ONLY THE PRIMARY GIVES YOU A

VOTE!

Kimum was unimpressed with the proceedings on caucus night. “It is so Neanderthal in the process that I cannot believe how ignorant these people are about the way they are doing this! Why don't they have foot races and arm wrestling to decide their candidates?” he said. “They're wasting an entire night to play politics like little children rather than to just have a primary vote and get the issue decided by the tally numbers!”

But other Greens, including Hart, like the caucuses’ system of second choice voting. “The caucus poll is proportional representation, exactly what Greens say we want,” she said. “There are some undemocratic things involved, but the caucus poll isn't one of them.”

Election Law Changes Moving Forward in U.S. House

Election Law Changes Moving Forward in U.S. House

Election professionals are worried that changes to federal law might complicate their work, but advocates for equipment reform say updates are essential and can be in place for the 2008 presidential election.

HR811, sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., is expected to be the first major federal election law change since the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.  HAVA was meant to fix all the equipment problems arising from the hanging-chad nightmare of Florida in 2000, and it added more verification requirements for voter registration.

One HAVA change is that every precinct in the nation is required to have accessible voting equipment, with the idea that a visually disabled person could follow audio prompts and mark a ballot in secrecy.  Some jurisdictions met this requirement with a "ballot marking device," which takes the voter's input and prints a paper ballot.  But many more addressed it with touch-screen voting equipment, either with or without a paper trail.

In the four years since HAVA's passage, concerns about the security of touch-screen voting equipment have increased  "There is a consensus among computer scientists that these vulnerabilities are a danger to our democratic process," said Sean Flaherty of Iowans for Voting Integrity.

Holt's bill requires a paper trail to be kept on an "individual, durable ballot."  Most current touch-screen systems that have paper records produce a continuous roll of paper, dubbed a "toilet paper roll."  Most of these use a thermal printing process, much like older fax machines, and the print quality degenerates with time and exposure to light.  Flaherty said the bill has a split deadline: Jurisdictions that had rolls on or before the 2006 general election would be able to keep them until 2010, but other jurisdictions must have individual durable ballots up and running by the 2008 presidential election.

"The paper trail is great for a recount," said Flaherty, "but recounts are few and far between. You have to have routine audits to make sure that elections are being tallied correctly."  Under the Holt bill, 3 percent of precincts would be audited in every federal election.  If the margin of  victory in a federal race was between 1 and 2 percent, the number of audited precincts would increase to 5 percent; 10 percent of precincts would be audited if a race was closer than 1 percent.

Audits are critical, said University of Iowa computer science professor Doug Jones.  Since testifying before Congress in the wake of the Florida 2000 presidential debacle, Jones has emerged as a national expert on computer election systems and security, winning the nickname "the Yoda of voting equipment."

"Bush v. Gore was a victory for the machine method of tabulation," said Jones, "because it held that the eyeball is a subjective process. That's bankrupt.  It assumes that machines are reliable.  Machines need to be checked."  Jones said methods of checking integrity other than audits are less effective. "Source code review doesn't always work.  People don't find the corruptness."

Voter verification is also an important part of the ballot-marking process.  "On a paper ballot, people verify as they make their marks," said Jones. Touch-screen systems instead use a final verification screen that a voter can review before making the final touch to cast the ballot.

"Only about 30 percent of voters notice the verification screen," he said.  "And there's good reason to believe that even fewer notice the voter verified paper trail, due to legibility.  But if even one percent of voters check the verification screen, they'll detect a crooked system."

The verification screen became a key issue in a close 2006 congressional race.  Ironically, the race was not only in Florida -- it was the contest to replace Katherine Harris, who was in charge of Florida's 2000 election as secretary of state.  Thirteen percent of voters in Sarasota County undervoted (skipped the race on their touch-screen ballots) in a contest decided for Republican Vern Buchanan by a few hundred votes. "In Florida 13, the congressional race was gone on the review screen," said Flaherty.

"But look at the rate of complaints it takes to trigger action, as in Florida 13," said Jones.  "Yet the conclusion officals drew was 'it's the voter's fault.'  They'll ignore the voters unless there's more complaints -- which leads to a distrust of the verification screen."

Election officials, having gone through one round of procedural changes since HAVA, are wary of yet more requirements.  A report issued by the Election Center, a nonprofit association of local election officals that focuses on training and certification, argued:

The proposed numbers of ballots counted under the audit provisions are unreasonable and inconsistent with auditing protocols. The assigned percentages are not statistically relevant to the objectives associated with conducting audits.  The bill mandates an impossible effective date for implementation in states where no such audit function exists, (and) fails to recognize existing timelines and dates for certifying elections."

Flaherty, of Iowans for Voting Integrity, dismisses concerns that the Holt bill asks for too much too soon, and says equipment can be replaced before the presidential election.  "States have proven 2008 is doable.  North Carolina did the whole process in eight months.  If it's important, it can be done."

Local election officials are also concerned about the cost of HR811.  Most jurisdictions replaced their equipment after HAVA, and those with touch screens eventually will face yet another equipment purchase and the related costs in training.  HAVA combined the stick of requirements with the carrot of funding.  At a recent town hall meeting in Iowa City, U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, said county auditors have talked to him about costs, and Holt has assured Loebsack there will be funding.  Loebsack also said many Republicans in the House are supportive, but that movement is slow in the Senate.

Iowa's three Democratic House members -- Loebsack, Leonard Boswell and Bruce Braley -- are among HR811's 216 co-sponsors.  The two Iowa Republicans -- Tom Latham and Steve King  -- are not. "There's a lot of passion for this issue among Democrats, but support is bipartisan,"  said Flaherty.

The main bill in the U.S. Senate is S1487, sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.  Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama are Senate co-sponsors.  All have their own bills, which are not expected to advance. Clinton's bill contains a Democratic wish list such as nationwide same-day registration and access to absentee voting.

Iowa Party Registration Case Resolved

Iowa Third Party Registration Case Resolved

Ballot Access News reports that the lawsuit filed by the Iowa Libertarian and Green Parties in 2005, with the support of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, was settled this week.

Iowa will now print a blank line on the “political party” question on the voter registration forms. Voters will be allowed to register into any “unqualified party” that (1) submits 850 signatures and (2) has placed candidates on the ballot in the last ten years.

Before this agreement, the only way Iowa law allowed for voters to register in a third party was for that group to earn qualified party status. There was only one route to that status: winning 2 percent of the vote for president or governor. Two parties qualified in recent years -- Reform in 1996 and the Greens in 2000. Both lost their status after two years by failing to poll 2 percent for governor.

Other parties that have run candidates in the last ten years include the Constitution, Socialist, Socialist Workers, and Pirate parties, and the now-defunct Natural Law Party.

Kansas is now the last state in which it is physically impossible for a voter to register into any party that is not a ballot-qualified party.