Washblog

Obama's local Director of Voter Protection

Huffington Post has an article on Kramer Phillips, the Obama campaign's Washington State Director of Voter Protection. The author of the article is a local campaign volunteer. Here is an excerpt:

"The Director of Voter Protection is Kramer Phillips. He has the face of a Renaissance angel with tousled dark blond hair and a string-bean physique that is clothed in preppy attire: white shirt and tie and loafers. He sits hunched over his laptop. To his left is a TV, tuned to MSNBC. On the desk, a bottle of Alaskan Amber (unopened) keeps company with How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond. Kramer has worked on several elections over the past six years, written a thesis about Universal Voter Registration and drafted two model state initiatives for the same reform. He's twenty two.

Along with several other older volunteers, my first job, was to call the twenty-two hundred voters whose absentee ballots were discarded from the August 2008 primary election due to signature concerns. Kramer discovered that the Secretary of State didn't have the list. Each county kept their own information stored in their own particular way. Some counties had computerized lists, while others had to compile the list just for our request. Such information is available under the freedom of information act to anyone interested enough to ask. Pierce County had just tossed the "bad" ballots into a box and someone had to photo copy each one and then send the stack of photocopies to Kramer..."  

Full Article Here.

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Two new reports have come out that reference WA's Secretary of State's voter registration database "maintenance" procedures.  

The first is the Brennan Center report on Voter Registration Purges.  The Brennan Center is conducting some open records requests in 12 states based upon the state's history.  WA is one of those states. The article states that the 12 states "were chosen because they had flawed purges or voter registration practices in the past, they use problematic purge procedures with insufficient protections for voters, they recently conducted large-scale purges, or they have specific practices in place that warrant further examination."

The other report, "Vanishing Voters," says WA is one of 9 states that may be canceling registrations in violation of federal law. The federal law (and state law) states that registration cancellations cannot take place within 90 days of a federal primary or general election. This means there should be no cancellations after May 18th. However, because of the lack of transparency in the process, the average citizen is unable to verify that Sam Reed's office is complying with the law. In order to make such a determination the citizen would need a technical background and data base software.  Something I lack.

Article on Brennan Center Report.

Vanishing Voters.

Then another r

by raincity calling on Mon Oct 06, 2008 at 07:24:12 PM PST

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I don't know how to remove them.

by raincity calling on Mon Oct 06, 2008 at 07:28:40 PM PST

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Hey! This doesn't make me happy! Whooopie! Frolick! Twirl! Dance around!

We really need to work on canvassing boards, and such. Oh wait: that's pretty opaque too, isn't it?

But going into the fiasco which could be this election, we need to calibrate our concerns accurately.

by m3047 on Sun Oct 19, 2008 at 03:13:00 AM PST

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