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Students not encouraged to vote in Allston
By adamg on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 7:14am
Seems there were some issues during the primary at the Jackson-Mann School, where a lot of the small number of BU students who vote locally vote. Or would, if they were allowed to.
Also, the kids learned that the 150-foot rule (candidates and their palm carders are supposed to stay 150 feet away from the poll) is a complete joke in Boston (but sometimes, dropping a dime does work.
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Comments
I agree it's ridiculous, but
I agree it's ridiculous, but the id situation is actually MA election law. You only have to show an ID to vote under certain circumstances. The poll worker doesn'tg know why, just that the state put an *ID* tag next to a voter's name. Whoever wrote this article is unfortunately obscuring any real issues that may have happened by being ignorant of how elections work in MA.
@#1: That explanation does
@#1: That explanation does NOT explain away all of the ID issues mentioned in the article and the inconsistent application of those rules, and there's still the very real issue of requiring students to show not just ID but proof of residence that they simply do not have access to. I don't think any issues are obscured here.
You also have to show ID
AND fill out and sign a form if you have been declared an "inactive voter", as happened to me in the primary.
Really stupid if you ask me, as the poll worker figured out I was an "inactive voter" by referencing a list they had. And when I questioned why I needed to fill out a form AFTER showing my ID, which verified the address they had on the "inactive voter" list, I got the classic bureaucratic response "State law now requires it."
Between this sort of nonsense, and the totally illogical "you must declare a party to be handed a ballot" system, it's no wonder why so many people are apathetic to the elctoral process.
I don't know what you mean by
I don't know what you mean by "declare a party". In Massachusetts, if you're not enrolled in any party, you can choose one party's primary to vote in.
So you have to tell the poll worker which party's ballot you want. This doesn't mean you're joining that party, and you remain unenrolled for the next election.
Assuming we have primaries (even though they're not a perfect system), I don't see any better way of handling this issue.
That is exactly the problem with the system -
being forced to choose a party ballot in order to vote. This unfairly restricts your choices BEFORE you even enter the ballot box.
Why is this a problem? Say I want to support one candidate for a local office, and another candidate for a state office but each candidate is from a different political party (which is a perfectly logical scenario for an "unenrolled" voter). Under the current primary system, I cannot cast a vote for both candidates, but am forced to choose between one or the other based NOT on the candidate's qualifications, but on the totally arbitrary basis of which political party they are affiliated with.
However, there is a very simple way to solve this. Put all primary candidates (with their party affiliation - and including INDEPENDENT candidates) on a SINGLE ballot, with the instruction "Vote for One Only" beside each race. Assuming that each race has at least one primary candidate from each party, this insures that no voter will be faced with an unopposed candidate on the ballot. It also simplifes the preparing and distribution of ballots to voters (one size fits all). But most importantly, it maximizes the choices available to the voters, which will also increase voter participation in the election.
As for VERBALLY declaring a party (for everyone within immediate earshot to hear) to the poll workers (some of whom may be your neighbors or friends), you should realize that, although unenrolled voters remain so after the election, their party selection becomes part of the public record for that election. To make matters even worse, in recent primaries the ballots have been color coded by party. So if the workers or your neighbors didn't hear your party selection, they only have to glance at your ballot.
Besides resulting in the sudden receipt of lots of junk mail from the candidates for the general election, these principles violates the Constitutional provisions for a secret ballot.
There have already been
There have already been organized efforts to vote in the opposition's party's primary, to try to keep the strongest opposition candidate off the ballot.
And those organized efforts
still require the voter to select a political party (even if they don't permanently join it) in order to receive the ballot in the first place.
We need to remove the focus from the political parties, and put it on the candidates themselves. Continuing this foolish and unconstitutional system of "ballot for each party - choose one and only one to vote" won't accomplish that goal.
And putting all primary candidates on a single ballot doesn't prevent a person from voting for only those candidates from a given political party if they so choose. It does, however, give the unenrolled voter more choices, and the lesser known candidates a better shot at getting votes.
One primary - one ballot - one vote.
Article based on misunderstanding of election law?
The article states that poll workers are required to ask everybody who votes for their ID, but that's simply not the case. Remember how the country got rid of those Jim Crow laws a few decades ago?
My understanding is that Mass state election law requires the poll workers to ask newly-registered voters for their ID the first time they vote, but only if they failed to include a copy of their ID with their voter registration materials. Without knowing the individual cases, it sounds like the voters who were asked for ID and/or proof of residency were these kinds of cases, while those who were not asked for the documents had successfully voted before and were now 2+ time voters.
The article seems to be trying to create an issue out of the author's own ignorance over the law, or failure to research the voters' cases to figure out why they were turned away. The obvious thing the author should have done is take a few names of turned-away voters and call up Geraldine Cuddyer, the head of the city's department of elections, to figure out what happened. Would have been educational, too. Sloppy.
Thanks for the comment. We've
Thanks for the comment. We've edited the article to include this information. FYI, looking over election law it also seems that when you change address you will be required to show ID as well, something that was not universally applied. Additionally, the ID issue is only a small part of the article. This law's application does not explain why many BU students whose addresses had changed were turned away or asked to fill out provisional ballots, or the fact that students are asked to provide proof of residence they cannot. BU has a role in this, the city has a role in this, but I really don't think this one law you cite explains away all the issues many students reported.
Why was I NOT asked to show
Why was I NOT asked to show ID the first time I voted in Boston (Fenway high school) but WAS asked to show ID on the next election, in the exact same place, with the exact same address?