From an ex-Republican reader

Submitted by James on

Why I will never work the polls again

by Joe Vincoli

I used to enjoy working the polls. A chance to do something that had a civic value. A chance to build a sense of community.

After this election I will never work the polls again.

Since last Thursday I have had so many of my neighbors come up to me in the booth and express their contempt for me just because I am wearing an election vest.
They don’t know I live on the same street or in the same neighborhood. They think I am part of the 'big scheme'.

“It’s all rigged!”

They challenge every aspect of my work. They act as if they would spit on me if they could get away with it. Men and women alike. I live in a Republican district. 90% of the voters that I assist are Republicans. I am a white male. A registered Republican.

Until this week I had never known what it was like to be hated solely because of my appearance. My neighbors taught me what that feels like.

That’s why I won’t be working the polls in the future. And that’s why I won’t be a registered Republican any more, either.

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Comments

It seems like something is happening

Submitted by James on

People are waking up to the horror of hate, lies and bigotry that the GOP is spreading with the leadership of Donald Trump. They're thinking, "Oh my god. How will I ever live with myself if I vote for Trump?"

Debunking the Interstate Crosscheck Program

Submitted by teddyrooseveltp... on

Slate has an article from a half-dozen professionals examining possible voter fraud among records of the 2012 election, in particular the "double voting" strategy that was supposed to be caught by the Interstate Crosscheck Program touted by Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach.

If you'll recall, NC's GOP leaders signed up for this program, sending NC voter records to Kobach, and generated a considerable amount of publicity about voter fraud going on in the state.

They didn't find any fraud.

A closer inspection of the data Crosscheck sent to Iowa—which we obtained through a public information request—corroborates our statistical estimation. In both 2012 and 2014,

Crosscheck flagged more than 100,000 Iowa registrations as potential duplicates, with a matching registration in another state. In only about 5 percent of these cases were both registrations used to cast a ballot. And in all but six total cases (in both years combined), the two registrations used to cast a ballot had inconsistent middles names or different Social Security numbers, indicating they are likely different people. If Iowa used Crosscheck’s guidelines for purging registrations, as some counties have done, about 1,200 registration records used to legitimately cast a single vote would have been purged in order to prevent these six potential double votes.

The current specter of voter fraud was promoted by Republicans and carried forward aggressively by the GOP’s current nominee. Republicans argue that Trump’s volunteer poll monitors thwart voting by ineligible voters, that stringent voter identification laws block voter impersonation, and that ending early voting prevents double voting. While once again it’s been demonstrated that there is little voter fraud for these tactics to prevent, such rhetoric and policies disenfranchise actual voters. Election rigging is not the problem. Our electoral integrity is not threatened by the little voter fraud that may occur, but rather by the disproportionate response that makes it harder for so many eligible Americans to vote.

I have raised concerns about NC's participation in this program some time ago here at BlueNC - this mass sharing of voter data records presents opportunities for your personal data - including birth date and Social Security numbers - to be compromised by hackers.

Potential

Submitted by phubar on

That's the problem. It may not have been six, it could have been four. It could have been an error by the poll worker, checking the wrong name. It could have involved (gasp) Republican voters. Or someone under the misguided idea they could vote for local offices in two states because they live in two states part time. It also appears that this would be one of the most risky ways to try to double vote, since they have all of your identifying information on file. And getting caught is one of the biggest reasons people don't vote illegally. What undocumented worker wants to risk capture and deportation to vote in a gerrymandered district in NC? And few districts in NC are contested districts. Regardless, the bar should be extremely high before a single person is removed from the voter rolls. And trying to remove a thousand qualified voters to catch six potential fraudulent voters cannot be justified.

And the security really worries me

Submitted by teddyrooseveltp... on

With Interstate Crosscheck's informal arrangement, with states sending all their voter data to Kobach, there's a big potential for misuse of the information or exposing it to hackers. There's absolutely no legal chain of responsibility for this arrangement if something goes wrong.

If voters from NC have their personal data stolen from this database and it's used for identity theft, who would be responsible under NC state law? How do we know that this data is secure and the procedures used to ensure it's secure with the data going through so many out of state staff hands?

It's a disaster waiting to happen.

If you combine the security concerns with the fact that Interstate Crosscheck doesn't even work for its intended purposes, it should be "job one" for Cooper to withdraw NC's data from this system.