Ground War 2004

Protecting the Vote in Arizona

By Nation Contributors

Tucson, Arizona

"Our goal, frankly, is for this to be the most boring day of your life," Dawn Wyland, co-coordinator of Election Protection in Tucson, Arizona, told a crowd of forty-five prospective poll monitors including myself--more than double the turnout she expected--last Saturday.

Her audience chuckled, but the laughter died quickly. Then the hands started going up. "What if people get turned away for not having ID?" (Call for an attorney.) "What if someone is at the wrong polling place?" (Call the hotline, 1-866-OUR VOTE, and find out where they need to be.) "What if a fight breaks out?" (Call 911.) "Will we have flashlights for after it gets dark?" (Good idea!) From the back row: "Can I wear my Nader button?"

The scene is replaying itself in union halls, classrooms and church basements across the country as concerned volunteers attend dozens of trainings this week, following on more than 100 sessions since August. In many cases, groups that were organizing poll monitoring independently have joined forces with Election Protection, a massive combined effort of People for the American Way, the NAACP, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and now some hundred partner organizations. "The collaboration has been truly amazing," says Wyland. Never before have so many people been so willfully informed of the intricacies of casting a vote, and never before will so many be spending the day standing in the rain/cold/desert sun guarding a clear path to the ballot box.

Meanwhile, the GOP is trumping up "voter fraud" charges. As Peggy Noonan put it, "We don't want DEAD PEOPLE to vote, or cartoon characters, or people who live in Palm Beach voting there AND in New York." But these scattered and unsubstantiated claims pale in comparison with widespread, documented reports of Republican-led 2004 disenfranchisement schemes.

In Ohio Republicans have already challenged the eligibility of 35,000 new voters--a move just blocked this morning by a US district court judge. In Oregon and Nevada (at least) countless new Democratic voter registrations were trashed by trickster canvassers hired by a longtime Republican consulting firm. In Milwaukee the mayor fears a ballot shortage because the Republican county executive printed up only three-quarters of the requested amount, citing voter fraud concerns.

Thankfully, the public has its antennae up. "They see through it," says Vicky Beasley, legal director of Election Protection. "And this year they're not going to wait until after the fact to say 'I woulda coulda shoulda.'" The nationwide, nonpartisan initiative is "by far the largest mobilization of voter protection that we've ever seen," says Beasley. Twenty thousand are already signed up to poll-watch, including thousands of lawyers, and a high-tech "electronic incident reporting system" will compile challenges as they happen.

The goal is 25,000 poll monitors at 3,500 "battleground" precincts, spanning fifty-six cities, and Beasley is confident they'll meet or surpass the goal. "This week we've literally had fifty people calling the volunteer hotline every thirteen seconds," she says. Most of the volunteers will be taking time off work, and many will be traveling hundreds of miles out of state. Here in Arizona, nearly 900 Californians are heading east to stand outside the polls in Phoenix and Tucson; in Pennsylvania, 1,300, mostly from Washington, DC, and New York City, will be stationed in Philadelphia alone.

Armed with cell-phones, incident reports and 5 million copies of the Voters' Bill of Rights, many volunteers are bracing for the worst. In all likelihood, however, one of their main acts of heroism will be last-ditch voter rights education; specifically, that all eligible voters should make sure they cast a regular, and not a provisional, ballot.

Provisional ballots were mandated in 2002 by the Help America Vote Act as a "fail-safe" voting mechanism. The idea sounds safe enough: Instead of turning someone away because they're not on the rolls or because they are at the wrong precinct, hand them a provisional ballot and check it later. The problem, explains Ari Weisbard of Demos-USA , a nonpartisan group that has been on top of potential 2004 snafus, is that thirty states and DC--60 percent of the electorate--will throw out provisional ballots if they are cast in the wrong precinct; ten states will throw them out if ID isn't presented. In such locales, poll workers should send voters to the correct precinct or back home to get their ID, but the fear is that they'll just hand over a provisional ballot--and a false sense of enfranchisement. "People will leave thinking they've voted when they haven't," says Weisbard. "That's worse than being turned away and not voting at all."

The problem dawning on volunteers is this: Because most voters won't know the perils of provisional ballots, they won't emerge from the polls with the telltale signs of anger and frustration of people who've been told they can't vote. Since Election Protection poll monitors will have to obey the seventy-five-foot rule, how will they know if poll workers are pushing provisional ballots? "We're engaging with the voter before they actually make it into the polling place. We're canvassing the weekend before. We're on the radio," says Beasley. "By all means, we are helping people confirm that they're in the right polling place before they cast that provisional ballot."

Ultimately, Election Protection, not to mention the countless smaller initiatives, can do only so much. It can pick up the slack of election offices with a surrogate hotline. It can report and respond to shenanigans that would otherwise go unchecked. It can dispatch lawyers with lightning speed. But it can't, for instance, print extra ballots. Or train poll workers. Or stop wholesale voter legitimacy attacks that are somehow legal. The best we can do is just be there. And watch. With flashlights if we have to. And it will be anything but boring.

Jennifer Block

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October 28, 2004