The following ideas are from the second chapter of the book Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression.

In 1995, Debbie Hardy was a drug addict who had served six months in jail on a felony charge.  She gave birth to nine children out of wedlock and lost custody of all of them.  But then she turned her life around.  She kicked her drug habit, and helped her older sister to do the same.  By 2004, she was raising two of her oldest children--with one bound for the Navy and the other college.  She also had a good job as the manager of a Burger King restaurant.  

Hardy lives in Florida, however, a state that imposes a lifetime ban on voting by former offenders who have completed their sentences.  So Hardy's past continues to haunt her.  "I am trying to do the right thing, but I have had this felony hanging over my head for 12 years," said Hardy.

Over 2 million people in the United States have completed their sentences but cannot vote (that's more people than the voting-age population Delaware, Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont combined).  Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia are alone with Armenia in being the only democratic governments in the world that permanently revoke voting rights from all citizens who have completed their sentences.  A few other states--Alabama, Arizona, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wyoming-- disenfranchise many but not all people who have served their time.  As a result, U.S. citizens account for only 4.6% of the world's population but make up almost half of the people on the planet who cannot vote due to a criminal offense.  In states like Florida and Virginia, 25-30% of black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction.

Despite the fact that 80% of Americans favor restoring voting rights to Americans who have completed their time, the rule persists because some politicians benefit from the exclusion.  

The following ideas are from the third chapter of the book Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression.

In December 2002, Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell had the political opportunity of her life.  A month earlier, the Republicans had regained a majority in the United States Senate, securing 51 seats out of 100.  Conservatives across the nation were now looking for Terrell to fortify the Republicans' slim majority by beating Louisiana's incumbent U.S. Senator, Democrat Mary Landrieu, in a runoff election on December 7.

A few days before the December 7 runoff election, pollsters proclaimed the race between Terrell and Landrieu a dead heat.  One poll showed Landrieu at 47% and Terrell at 45%, with 8% of voters undecided.  "It is a toss-up," said pollster Brad Coker, who noted that in most elections undecided voters lean toward the challenger.

But Terrell, like many Republicans around the country, had a problem.  Polls showed that although 58% of whites supported Terrell, only 6% of African Americans said they would vote for her.  Other Republican candidates had invested time and money trying to attract black votes with little success.  The best use of Terrell's finite resources seemed to be to win over undecided moderate voters.  She could only hope that fellow Republicans like U.S. Senator Trent Lott would avoid race-tinged comments that might stimulate African-American turnout and alienate white moderates.  

Terrell's Democratic opponent, Senator Mary Landrieu, had a different race problem.  Black Louisianans accounted for 32.5% of the state's population, but made up only 26% of the electorate in the November 5 primary--the lowest in the previous ten years.  She could have avoided the entire runoff if she had secured a majority of the votes in the primary.  Why didn't African Americans turn out for her?

Blacks had their reasons.  Democratic State Senator Cleo Fields and many other African-American leaders claimed that Landrieu failed to respond to the needs of their community.  They resented that she wooed conservative white voters by boasting how she voted with Republican President George W. Bush 74% of the time.  "African-American voters should not be taken for granted by any elected official in a state that has such a high African-American population," Fields warned.  

The polls for the December showdown shifted based on projections of black voter turnout.  One poll showing Landrieu and Terrell tied if African Americans made up only 23% of the electorate revealed that Landrieu would enjoy a six-point lead if black turnout reached 28%.  A final poll taken by Terrell's pollster, Verne Kennedy, the night before the election showed Terrell would win if African Americans made up only 26% of those who voted.  "The higher it gets over 26 percent," said independent pollster Brad Coker, "the greater Landrieu's odds" of winning.

I tapped the following into my PDA this morning (Thursday, July 27) when I attended the ceremony for the signing of the bill extending particular provisions of the Voting Rights Act on the south lawn of the White House, and edited it later on in the day. UPDATE: I later discovered that the day before Bush signed the law, nine of ten Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee, including chair Arlen Specter, signed a report questioning the constitutionality of a renewed Voting Rights Act. They reportedly submitted the report into the legislative record without showing Democrats, and Dems claim that the report was submitted to increase the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court will invalidate or cut back the renewed Voting Rights Act. So much for “We Are the World.” More on the last minute report is here.  

I'm at the signing of the renewal of the Voting Rights Act.  Like too many things in my life, I made it here just in time at 8:57 am (we were warned officials would close the gates at 9:00 am).  

There are about 400 people here.  Perhaps 40% (maybe even half) are African American, and the rest are Asian-American, Latino, or white.  I see a lot of friends from the Hill, the academy, the civil rights community, and other arenas.  Despite the fact that the sun is not yet at full blast, we are all sticky from the humidity and the heat.  

Those with red tickets get to sit in the white lawn chairs inside the ropes, while those of us with blue tickets are to stand outside of the ropes (I don't know if that's just coincidence, or if the colors for insiders and outsiders are switched when a Democrat sits in the White House).  Red ticket holders include dignitaries like Don King, Juan Williams, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King III, while blue ticket holders seem to be Hill staffers and others of us who are not household names.  A group of twenty-something kids (I don't see any who are people of color) manage the crowds and enforce this separation.

A friend and fellow blue ticket holder tells me that he's looking for a red ticket, but I'm not on a similar quest.  The Washington phenomena of getting into the VIP reception, section, or whatever it happens to be is common, but I'm not into playing it (not that I haven't found my way into an occasional Congressional Black Caucus legislative weekend reception when I was in law school).    

The military band has taken a break, and I ask the conductor if they'll play "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" today.  He responds, "Great song, but it's not on our list today."  I guess it is a bit much to expect that the White House military band will take requests, but the song would have been very appropriate for the signing of renewal of important provisions of the Voting Rights Act.  I wonder how often the playlist is connected to the substance of the ceremony.

Over the next 10 minutes, about 50 members of Congress wander onstage, including Senators Clinton, Leahy, Spector, Reid, Frist, and Kennedy, as well as Representatives Conyers, Watt, Pelosi, Scott, Rush, Rangel, and Kilpatrick.  They mount a grandstand behind the presidential podium.

At about 9:25, perhaps to fill empty seats, those of us with blue tickets are allowed inside the ropes, and we scramble in like mice picking up crumbs.  I feel a bit hypocritical as I enter the red section.  I quickly grab a seat in the back row.  

At about 9:40, George W. Bush comes out.  He's on the stage surrounded by members of Congress, and they are looking out toward the Washington Monument, while we're looking at them toward the south side of the White House.  

The following ideas are from the second chapter of the book Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression.

Tanya Thivener, a 38-year old mortgage broker in Columbus, Ohio, knew the wait would be long when she arrived at her neighborhood poll on Election Day 2004.  The line snaked outside of the door.  Ohio was a swing state, and the electoral meltdown in Florida four years earlier showed that every vote mattered.  Tanya waited an hour outside in the rain.  And then she waited some more.  

But many of Tanya's neighbors lacked either flexibility with their bosses at work or patience.  "A lot of people left in the four hours I waited," Tanya told the Washington Post.  "A lot of them were young black men who were saying over and over: `We knew this would happen.'"

After Tanya voted, she drove to her mother's house in Harrisburg, a suburb of Columbus.  Her mother reported that voting took only 15 minutes at her neighborhood poll.  "County officials knew they had this huge increase in registrations, and yet there weren't enough machines in the city," Tanya said.   "You really hope this wasn't intentional."

The county election board determined that they needed 5,000 machines to accommodate voters, yet decided to ride out election day with just 2,866 machines.  "Does it make any sense to purchase more machines just for one election?" Democrat Michael R. Hackett, the deputy director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, asked a Washington Post reporter.  "I'll give you the answer: no."

Instead of purchasing or renting additional machines, the Franklin County board decided to rearrange machines.  It moved machines from urban areas in Columbus to its suburbs.  As a result, about half of Franklin County's 146 wards had fewer voting machines than in 2000.  

As a result, conservative suburban precincts in Franklin County tended to have more machines per registered voter than the more liberal urban areas.  Many frustrated people "walked away without voting," Scott Britton, Executive Director of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Ohio, told the Columbus Dispatch.   "I don't think we'll ever know how many there were."

The fact that voters in Franklin County (170 voters per machine) faced lines that were three times as long as voters two hours north up Interstate 71 in Summit County (86 voters per machine) illustrates a larger problem.  An American's right to vote and have the ballot counted depends on where he or she lives.  Voters in almost every other democracy in the world enjoy a more equal opportunity to cast a ballot.  

Why?  Because the United States is one of the few nations where local officials--who often also represent a political party--enjoy extensive control over elections for federal office holders.  States decentralize the process and give election administration responsibility to county, city, and township governments, which in turn adopt their own unique practices.  

Thus, the matrix is comprised of hundreds of election rules and practices that vary from state to state, and often from county to county.  Americans do not have a single uniform set of rules for voting or even 50 separate state election systems, but effectively 4,600 different election systems.  

While almost all other nations have a clearly established constitutional right to vote for its citizens, U.S. constitutional provisions prohibit only discrimination in voting based on race, gender, and similar factors.  Thus, in America your "right" to vote depends largely on the inclinations of your state and local politicians and bureaucrats.    

The following ideas are from "How to Rig Elections," the first chapter of the book Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression.

Floridians cast six million ballots in the November 2000 presidential election.  At the end of the night, Republican George W. Bush led Democrat Al Gore by just 1,784 votes.  In accordance with state law, Florida conducted a statewide machine recount, which left Bush ahead by only 300 votes.  

At that point, the Gore team focused on four heavily Democratic counties--Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia.  An initial manual recount of a few precincts within each of the four counties--in which election workers examined each ballot by hand--showed vote totals different than the machine count.  Each of the four counties decided to manually recount all of its ballots.  

Republican Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris--who also served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign--objected to the county-wide manual recounts.  She cited with unnerving specificity that Florida law states that counties can do a hand recount of all ballots if the sample manual recount of a few precincts "indicates an error in the vote tabulation . . . ."  Harris argued that this phrase allowed a countywide manual recount only when the machinery or software used in counting the ballots malfunctioned.  Throughout the next several weeks, she made a number of similar decisions that seemed to favor Bush.    

Harris, the granddaughter of a Florida citrus and cattle baron, was a trim 43-year old brunette.  Her creamy red lipstick and long black eyelashes attracted attention from the press and late-night comedians.  State disclosure records indicated that Harris had a personal net worth of $6.5 million, but her 55-year-old husband, Swedish businessman Sven Anders Axel Ebbeson, was reported to be worth much more.  

From the beginning of the primary season she supported the Bush nomination, traveling with a group of Florida Republicans to New Hampshire to campaign for him.  "I am thrilled and honored to announce my support of George W. Bush for the presidency," Harris pronounced in a statement featured on the Bush-Cheney web site.  Phone records would later reveal that Harris was in contact with the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign and with Florida Republican Governor Jeb Bush during the contested period following the 2000 election.  

Even though counties like Palm Beach had not finished their manual count, on November 26 Harris arrived in the cabinet room of the Florida state house clad in a hunter-red suit jacket to make a formal announcement to the press and the public.  She proclaimed that George W. Bush had won Florida's electoral votes by 537 votes, and that her office "conducted itself with integrity and independence."  In concluding her remarks, Harris stated:

"Finally, I wish to point out that our American democracy has triumphed once again. And this is a victory in which we can also take a great deal of pride and comfort. The true winner in the election is the rule of law. Thank you and may God bless America."

In 33 states across the nation, the secretary of state or some other elections director is an elected partisan like Katherine Harris.  In many other states, the functional head of the Republican or Democratic state party--the governor--appoints the state elections director and/or a commission to administer elections.  

Most other democracies in the world recognize the conflict of interest inherent in partisan oversight of elections, and take concrete steps to address it.  Over half of the world's democracies use independent officials or commissions to administer elections, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and even the newly formed Iraq.   Another 27% allow the government to manage elections but have an oversight body composed primarily of judges, including France, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Japan, New Zealand, and Israel.

The following ideas are from the first chapter of the book Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression.

In March 2001, Republicans held a five-seat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.   Because of its massive size, California would account for 53 seats in the House--or almost one out of every eight seats.  Political junkies across the nation eagerly waited to see whether California--where Democrats controlled the state assembly--would redraw district boundaries to replace three Republican incumbents with Democrats and steal the U.S. House from the Republicans.  

The task of actually drafting California's new districts did not fall to officeholders or their staffers, but to a chain-smoking, rumpled political consultant hired by Democrats.  Fifty-three-year-old Michael Berman was a principal partner of BAD Campaigns, a firm known for running expensive campaigns featuring hard-hitting television spots and direct mail for many of California's most powerful Democrats.  

Democrats, who held 62% of California's U.S. House seats and a slightly higher percentage of State Senate and State Assembly seats, effectively controlled the process and hired Berman to draw the new U.S. House and state senate maps (another consultant would draft the state assembly map with Berman's input).  State Democrats paid Berman $1.36 million to draw the state senate districts, and sitting Democratic members of Congress collectively paid him about $600,000 ($20,000 each) to draw the U.S. House map.  

"Twenty thousand is nothing to keep your seat,'' Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez told the Orange County Register. "I spend $2 million (campaigning) every election.  If my colleagues are smart, they'll pay their $20,000, and Michael will draw the district they can win in.  Those who have refused to pay?  God help them."

In September 2001 California lawmakers unveiled the new maps for U.S. House, State Senate, and State Assembly.  In order to reach the two-thirds vote needed to immunize them from referendum challenge, Democrats struck a deal with Republicans.  The new maps would protect almost all Republican and Democratic incumbents.  Democrats would maintain their majority, but Republicans would not lose any additional seats.  

"The congressional lines . . . are part of a private deal cut by Karl Rove (President Bush's chief political adviser) and the Democrats," Republican redistricting expert Tony Quinn told the Copley News Service.  According to the Los Angeles Times, the Bush White House pushed to maintain the status quo, even though it favored Democrats, in order to preserve Republican control of Congress.  

Incumbents and parties would not only hang on to their existing seats, but Berman's new plan would make them safer from discontented voters.  In 2000 Democrat Michael Case made a strong but ultimately unsuccessful run against Republican U.S. House incumbent Elton Gallegly in a district where registered Democrats accounted for 40% of the voters and registered Republicans a percentage point less.  But Case decided not to make another run in 2002 after redistricting inflated registered Republicans to 46% and deflated registered Democrats to 35% of the districts' voters.  

In the November 2002 election, Michael Berman's handiwork paid off.  One hundred percent of the incumbents who ran won.  The padding of districts also ensured that most races were not close.  The average incumbent won with 69% of the vote.

"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it."

-George Orwell, Nineteen-Eighty Four

In The Matrix, thirty-something Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) plods through life as a software programmer at the megacorporation Metacortex.  Neo intuitively suspects that something is amiss in the world.  As the story unfolds, Neo is guided to Morpheus.  

Morpheus eventually explains.  "It's that feeling you have had all your life.  That feeling that something was wrong with the world.  . . . The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room. . . . It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

Morpheus reveals that the life that Neo thought was reality is actually a computer-generated virtual experience, and explains that the villain is not a single physical machine or entity--but instead "a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix."  The simulation placates most human minds into unquestioning acceptance of their captivity while the parasitic machines drain energy from the encapsulated human bodies.  "[C]ontrol the Matrix," Morpheus explains to Neo, "and you control the future."

Virtual Democracy

Most people have a relatively simple understanding of American democracy.  Each person has a right called a "vote."  A person casts the vote for a candidate.  The candidates who receive the most votes win and make laws.  Candidates win by supporting popular policies.  A "free" people thus govern themselves.  

But contrary to conventional perception, American democracy is not an organic, grassroots phenomenon that mirrors society's preferences.  In reality, the will of the people is channeled by a pre-determined matrix of thousands of election regulations and practices that most people accept as natural: the location of election district boundaries, voter registration deadlines, and the type and number of voting machines at a busy polling place.  This structure of election rules, practices, and decisions filters out certain citizens from voting and organizes the electorate.  There is no "right" to vote outside of the terms, conditions, hurdles, and boundaries set by the matrix.    

Although most people are oblivious to the matrix, it has very real consequences.  In our closely-divided political environment, even an obscure election rule or practice in a single state can determine who sits in the White House or which party controls Congress.  Collectively, the various rules and practices result in a class of politicians that control various aspects of Americans' lives, such as the number of students in a second grade classroom in Detroit, the level of mercury in the air we breathe, and whether a student in the Army Reserve will sleep in his University of Iowa dormitory or in a barracks in Baghdad, Iraq.

Read the full Matrix chapter by clicking here. . .

I was invited to guest to talk about ideas in my new book, Stealing Democracy:  The New Politics of Voter Suppression.  Current events related to the book--such as renewal of the Voting Rights Act--have dominated my posts.  Recognizing that we've only got a few days left in July, I'm going to turn to the book.  Hopefully I'll have more success with my task than Admiral Stockdale did in running for Vice President.  

Stealing Democracy is not dry or technical (I suppressed my scholarly instincts), but uses stories about real people and cultural events to explain the challenges that confront our democracy.  The first chapter, for example, explains how our political system is like the movie "The Matrix."  The best way to start, I think, is with a quick snapshot of the book. . . .    

INTRODUCTION: THE MATRIX -- Politicians use an invisible web of election rules, practices, and procedures to shape the electorate and determine political outcomes.

CHAPTER ONE: HOW TO RIG ELECTIONS -- Self-serving politicians like Texas Congressman Tom DeLay orchestrate voting district maps to enhance their political power, and partisan Secretaries of State like Katherine Harris issue election rules that benefit their favored candidate.    

CHAPTER TWO: PATCHWORK DEMOCRACY -- The United States features over 4,600 different sets of voting rules, and thus your "right to vote" depends on where you live. Voters in favored districts cast ballots quickly while other voters navigate 3-hour lines and antiquated punch card machines.

CHAPTER THREE: DOES RACE STILL MATTER? -- Politicians still use race to predict voting behavior and erect barriers that exclude voters of color.

CHAPTER FOUR: NO BACKSLIDING -- The Voting Rights Act's "preclearance provisions" are still needed.

CHAPTER FIVE: LA SOCIEDAD ABIERTA -- The bilingual ballot provisions of the Voting Rights Act remain critical.

CHAPTER SIX: FRAUD OR SUPPRESSION? -- Those who would condition the right to vote on the showing of a photo ID fail to establish that their proposal will exclude even one fraudulent voter for every 1000 legitimate voters excluded.  Our anti-fraud efforts should focus not on average Americans, but on those who have the incentives and opportunities to steal elections---partisan election administrators and private vendors that supply voting machines and purge voting rolls.  

CONCLUSION: THE CHOICE -- Average citizens explain how and why they invest time working through Common Cause, National Council of La Raza, The League of Women Voters, and the NAACP to change democracy.