Professor Nancy Rose, California State University at San Bernardino

Professor Juliet Schor, Boston College

Professor David Shapiro, Pennsylvania State University

Professor Stephanie Seguino, University of Vermont

Professor Timothy Smeeding, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Professor Sally Stearns, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Professor David Terkla, University of Massachusetts at Boston

Professor David Vanness, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Professor Thomas Weisskopf, University of Michigan

Professor Amy Wolaver, Bucknell University

Professor Barbara Wolfe, University of Wisconsin at Madison

For a more detailed discussion of each of the 10 issues, plus details on the candidates’ positions, go to www.epgwi.org.

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Seven Things That Could Go Wrong on Election Day

Thursday 23 October 2008

» Read Article on Time.com

by: Michael Scherer, Time Magazine

We can go to the moon, split atoms to power submarines, squeeze profits from a 99 cent hamburger and watch football highlights on cell phones. But the most successful democracy in human history has yet to figure out how to conduct a proper election. As it stands, the American voting system is a worrisome mess, a labyrinth of local, state and federal laws spotted with bewildered volunteers, harried public officials, partisan distortions, misdesigned forms, malfunctioning machines and polling-place confusion. Each time, problems pop up on the margins; if the election is close, these problems matter a great deal. Republicans and Democrats predict record turnouts, perhaps 130 million people, including millions who have never voted before. The vast majority will cast their votes without a hitch. But some voters will find themselves at the mercy of registration rolls that have been poorly maintained or, in some cases, improperly handled. Others will endure long lines, too few voting machines and observers who challenge their identities. Long a prerogative of local government, the patchwork of election rules often defies logic. A convicted felon can vote in Maine, but not in Virginia. A government-issued photo ID is required of all voters at the polls in Indiana, but not in New York. Voting lines are shorter in the suburbs, and the rules governing when provisional ballots count sometimes vary from state to state. As Americans cast their ballots on Nov. 4, here are some problems that threaten to throw this election to the courts again.

1. The Database Dilemma

"Joe the plumber" is not registered to vote. Or at least he is not registered under his own name. The man known to his mother as Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who has become a feature of John McCain's stump speech, is inscribed in Ohio's Lucas County registration records as "Worzelbacher," a problem of penmanship more than anything else. "You can't read his signature to tell if it is an o or a u," explains Linda Howe, the local elections director.

Such mistakes riddle the nation's voting rolls, but they did not matter much before computers digitized records. The misspelled Joes of America still got their ballots. But after the voting debacle in 2000, Congress required each state to create a single voter database, which could then be matched with other data, such as driver's licenses, to detect false registrations, dead people and those who have moved or become "inactive." In the marble halls of Congress, this sounded like a great idea - solve old problems with new technology. But in the hands of sometimes inept or partisan state officials, the database matches have become a practical nightmare that experts fear could disenfranchise thousands.

In Wisconsin, an August check of a new voter-registration database against other state records turned up a 22% match-failure rate. Around the time four of the six former judges who oversee state elections could not be matched with state driver's license data, the board decided to suspend any database purges of new registrants. But database-matching continues elsewhere. In Florida, nearly 9,000 new registrants have been flagged through the state's "No Match, No Vote" law. (Their votes will not be counted unless they prove their identity to a state worker in the coming weeks.) In Ohio, Republicans have repeatedly gone to court to make public a list of more than 200,000 unmatched registrations, presumably so that those voters can be challenged at the polls, even though most of them, like Joe, are probably legit. "It's disenfranchisement by typo," explains Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks voting issues.

Elsewhere the purges are peremptory. A county official in Georgia this year removed 700 people from voter lists, even though some of those people had never received so much as a parking ticket. Another Georgia voter purge, which seeks to remove illegal immigrants from the rolls, has been challenged by voting-rights groups that say legal voters have been intimidated by repeated requests to prove their citizenship. Back in Mississippi last March, an election official wrongly purged 10,000 people from the voting rolls - including a Republican congressional candidate - while using her home computer. (The names were restored before the primary.)

With just days until the election, the scale of the database-purge problem is unknown. Millions have been stripped from voter rolls in key states, but the legitimacy of those eliminations remains unclear. The sheer volume of state voter checks against the federal Social Security Administration database, however, has raised concerns. Six states that are heavily using the federal database were recently warned by Social Security commissioner Michael Astrue about the danger of improperly blocking legitimate voters. "It is absolutely essential that people entitled to register to vote are allowed to do so," he said in October.

2. "Mickey Mouse" Registrations and Polling-Place Challenges

Thanks to a few bad apples, ACORN is no longer just an oak-tree nut. McCain blames the group for "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history." Members of Congress have demanded investigations. The fbi is asking questions. Republican protesters have started crashing political events in squirrel costumes.

Yet the problem of registration fraud is age-old. For decades, both parties and many other groups have paid people to go out and register new voters. In the case of acorn, a community group that represents low-income and minority communities, this led to a massive registration drive this year, which signed up 1.3 million new people, mostly in swing states. The problem is that a small fraction of those new voters don't exist. That's because the 13,000 part-time workers conducting the acorn registration drive were paid on a quota system, providing them a clear incentive to fabricate registrations. Across the country, registrars have flagged thousands of acorn forms as suspect. In Florida, "Mickey Mouse" tried to register with an application stamped with the acorn logo. The starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys signed up to vote in Nevada. But there's a difference between registration fraud and voter fraud; the latter has not been documented on any significant scale in decades. Phony registrations are difficult to translate into fraudulent votes. Under federal law, new registrants still have to provide election officials with identification before casting their first ballot. Unless Mickey Mouse has an ID, the chance that he'll vote is slim.

Democrats complain that trumped-up charges of voting fraud could scare people from the polls. On the other hand, the acorn effect makes elections suspect - and that's bad for everyone. Republicans in several key swing states have argued that the false registrations make it necessary to monitor polls and challenge suspect voters. If that happens on a grand scale, the voting process could become more like running a gauntlet than exercising a right, with polling-place delays and confrontations that could scare people off or just lead them to conclude it's not worth the time.

3. Bad Forms

Until the palm beach county butterfly ballot had its 15 minutes of fame, few believed that bad design could determine the fate of the world. But then a local election official created a form that confused elderly voters, causing thousands to mark both Al Gore and another candidate on the same form, disqualifying enough votes to put George W. Bush in the White House.

Eight years later, punch-card ballots are mostly a thing of the past, but bad design lives on. This summer, the McCain campaign sent poorly designed absentee-ballot forms to more than 1 million voters in Ohio. The form included a redundant box for voters to check if they were "qualified electors." Though the box was not required by law, the Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, rejected thousands of otherwise complete forms with unchecked boxes. Luckily for the voters, the state supreme court stepped in to overrule Brunner's order, which it noted "served no vital public purpose or interest." A lawsuit has yet to be filed in a similar case in Colorado, where Republican secretary of state Mike Coffman, who is running for Congress, ruled that more than 6,400 new registrations should be rejected because people failed to check a box before providing the last four digits of their Social Security number. Again, the box was redundant, since new registrants provided all the other required information, yet Coffman has declared the forms incomplete and sent letters alerting voters that they have just a few days to fix the mistakes or be left off the rolls.

4. The Voting-Machine Fiasco

As soon as the last chad was counted in Florida, Congress got to work on a new law that authorized $3.9 billion to buy new, high-tech voting equipment. On the whole, the new machines were an improvement over the old punch cards and levers, but many parts of the country now find themselves yearning for the old problems of paper.

About one-third of voters this fall will use electronic machines, usually touchscreen systems that produce no paper record of the vote. If the machines are miscalibrated, they are known to malfunction, sometimes causing the selection of one candidate to show as a vote for another. But the bigger concern, which has been echoed by computer scientists, is that the machines have no independent paper backup. A memory failure or a corruption of the data leaves no route for a recount. The 2006 congressional election in Florida's 13th District produced the nightmare scenario. Republican Vern Buchanan won the contest by a margin of 369 votes. But in a single, Democratic-leaning county, more than 18,000 voters mysteriously failed to record a selection in the congressional race, an undervote as much as six times the rate of other counties. There is no way to know for sure what, if anything, went wrong.

Since that election, several states, including Florida and California, have required paper records for all electronic-voting devices. A bill in Congress that would mandate paper records of all machines nationwide has gathered 216 co-sponsors, including 20 Republicans.

Meanwhile, 11 million people live in counties that will use lever machines or punch-card ballots this year, even though the congressional deadline to replace that equipment passed in 2006.

5. Unequal Distribution of Resources

This summer, a local democratic county clerk in Indiana noted a surprising increase in new registrations from the area around Ball State University. He suggested that a new early-voting location be set up on campus. But the county's Republican chairwoman, Kaye Whitehead, opposed the plan, calling it a "political ploy" that would encourage students to vote in exchange for freebies like hot dogs. "This is a serious election," she told the local newspaper, before the lone Republican on the election board blocked the site. "You need voters who are informed."

Partisan squabbles about access occur regularly across the country, often with major effects on Election Day. In 2004 lines in Ohio's Franklin County led some Democrats to complain that Republicans were using resources to affect the outcome of the vote. While suburban precincts had enough machines so voters didn't have to wait, largely Democratic precincts in Columbus had lines with four-hour waits - often in the rain. Bipartisan estimates suggested that between 5,000 and 15,000 voters gave up on waiting and never voted. But even the question of which precincts get election machines is a maze: in Wisconsin, one voting machine is required for every 200 voters registered in a precinct. In Virginia, by contrast, the law calls for one machine for every 500 to 750 voters, depending on the size of the precinct. In Colorado, which saw six-hour waits for ballots in 2006, the law simply calls for a "sufficient" number of voting booths.

6. New Burdens of Proof

The sisters of the holy cross in notre Dame, Ind., don't have much use for driver's licenses. Or at least that's what a dozen of the nuns thought on May 6, when they went to vote in the presidential primary. They were each turned away as a result of a recently established ID-check requirement at Indiana polls.

In the intervening months, the elderly sisters have all had a chance to get government identification. But an explosion in voter-identification laws has raised the prospect that thousands will turn up to vote next month and find themselves turned away. Federal law now requires that all first-time voters who register by mail provide some sort of identification either when they register or when they vote. But states have applied that rule in markedly different ways. In Pennsylvania, first-time voters can use a firearm permit or a utility bill to identify themselves, and longtime voters don't have to show anything at all. In Georgia and Florida, gun permits don't help; all voters must show a state or federal photo ID at the polls. In Indiana, residents who attend state schools can use their student IDs in many cases, but students who attend private schools cannot. The laws have been established to prevent voter fraud, but some experts worry that voter suppression will result. "There is very little evidence of widespread voter fraud," says R. Michael Alvarez, co-director of the Caltech/mit Voting Technology Project. "Imposing these additional barriers doesn't seem terribly justified."

How big a barrier? A 2001 study found that 6% to 10% of the voting-age population lacks driver's licenses or other state-issued IDs. The most reasonable worry is that many local ID requirements are not well known to voters, which could lead to significant numbers of people leaving the polls frustrated on Election Day without casting their ballot. That should not happen: in all states, voters without IDs are permitted to cast a provisional ballot. But in many states, for the ballot to count they must bring a valid ID to election officials within days after the election, proving that they are the person they claim to be.

7. Confusing Rules, Bad Information

As election day nears, dirty tricks surface. Flyers are left on cars telling Democrats that they should vote on Wednesday, not Tuesday. Anonymous automated phone calls warn people that they will be arrested at the polls or that their polling places have moved. The impact of such gambits is usually small, and in an increasing number of states, such tricks are punishable by law.

A more insidious type of misinformation starts months earlier with local officials. Last March, the president of Colorado College in Colorado Springs received a letter from the El Paso County clerk, Robert Balink, warning that out-of-state students cannot register to vote if their parents claim them as dependents in another state. This was false. The registrar of elections for the area around Virginia Tech issued other confusing messages to students there, obliquely suggesting that their parents' tax status could be jeopardized based on vague state-board-of-elections guidelines.

A widely circulated anonymous e-mail warns voters that they will be turned away from polling places if they wear a barack obama button or a john mccain T shirt. This is true in only a minority of states. In Virginia, for instance, wearing a candidate's T shirt or button can get you tossed from a polling place. After agreeing to the policy, Virginia Board of Elections officials said decisions about what to do will be subject to the interpretation of local poll workers and judges - which is a pretty good metaphor for the controlled electoral chaos that is about to unfold all over America in a few short days.

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With reporting by Marti Covington and Maya Curry / Washington.

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Rolling Stone - Block the Vote

October 20, 2008

By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST

"I don't think the Democrats get it. All these new rules and games … could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."Rolling Stone Magazine is making this important investigative story available on the net in its entirety, free of charge.

Read this excerpt, then read it all on-line at RollingStone.com. Or download it all, with the Kennedy-Palast voter guide, Steal Back Your Vote, at StealBackYourVote.org.

“The new registrations thIn state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

These 7 steps come from the website: Steal Back Your Vote. You can watch it too...

STEP 1: DON'T DON'T DON'T mail in your ballot!! Absentee ballots are often not counted for the weakest of reasons. Furthermore, there are new rules in many states that you must photocopy your ID and send it with the ballot. However, they often don't even tell you that. So HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of absentee votes will not be counted for this reason.

STEP 2: VOTE EARLY ...VERY EARLY! Many states are already allowing you to vote. Do it NOW. That way if you're not listed on the voter roles, you have plenty of time to get your complaint heard.

STEP 3: REGISTER AND THEN REGISTER AND THEN REGISTER! There is a TON of purging of voter rolls going on. It's not enough to think you're registered. Double check twelve times. You can check online at www.votersunite.org/info/RegInfo.asp . Once you're done with that, go register. ...Then go register.

STEP 4: DO NOT FILL OUT A PROVISIONAL BALLOT if your vote is challenged!! In 2004 the Republicans challenged a ridiculous number of voters. The voters were then told by a sweet little lady at a table that their "provisional ballot" would be counted, BUT IT WON'T. Don't listen to the little old lady!! DEMAND that poll judges make the judgement ON THE SPOT. Demand a call to the supervisor of elections. If you have to, go home and come back with a better form of ID.

If you need help, call ELECTION PROTECTION at 1-866-OUR-VOTE . And help those around you when you're at the polling place. Look for people having trouble. Call the number for them. Tell them not to fill out a provisional ballot!

STEP 5:STEP AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER! Walk out your front door and get active!! Volunteer to help with the campaign. Or ignore the campaign and do something on your own. It's as simple as printing out these ELECTION PROTECTION steps and leaving them at people's doors. Hell, you could hand then out outside the polling places. Don't sit still or this election WILL be stolen. And go to a swing state if at all possible.

STEP 6: FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS VOTE WITHOUT FRIENDS! Don't go to vote alone. Bring friends!! Lots of them or only one of them. Make it a date. Arrange to have lunch with everyone after you vote. Whatever it takes. And have your election protection phone number WITH YOU (1-866-OUR-VOTE).

STEP 7: IT AIN'T OVER 'TILL IT'S OVER! If the election is indeed stolen, don't throw in the towel! The day after is CRUCIAL! Three words need to be chanted over and over again: COUNT EVERY VOTE. For example, in 2000 Al Gore lost because of a Supreme Court decision that was 5-4 against him. Imagine if he had won that court decision. But if half of America had not chanted COUNT EVERY VOTE after election day, we would never have gotten to the Supreme Court. Half of America could've thrown in the towel on election night, but thanks to people in the streets, it was fought to the end.

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Economy Stretches Gender Gap in Obama's Favor

By Claire Bushey - WeNews correspondent

(WOMENSENEWS)--The economic crisis has been stretching the voting gender gap in favor of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.

Polls from mid-October show women, already more inclined to vote Democratic, embracing Obama with growing vigor, a trend that political analysts attribute to an economic crisis that is leaving women feeling acutely vulnerable to threats to their jobs, health care and financial stability.

A Gallup poll from Sept. 7, the day the federal government took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, found female registered voters favoring Obama by 49 percent compared to 42 percent for his rival, Republican Sen. John McCain.

Following a six-week period when bad economic news dominated the headlines, that lead of seven percentage points widened to 16 points, according to an Oct. 26 Gallup poll. Women favored Obama 54 percent to 38 percent. Men, by contrast, were split almost equally between the two candidates.

"He's going to need that women's vote in order to win," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick.

The Obama campaign is courting donations from women as well as votes. It held a fundraiser Oct. 10 and 11 in Chicago billed as the National Women's Leadership Issues Conference, where panels included Democratic stars like Robert Rubin and Madeleine Albright. About 1,000 women paid $2,500 to attend. A $28,500 donation guaranteed a meeting with Oprah Winfrey.

Women Write Checks for $75 Million

Women have given Obama more than $75 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington research group which tracks money in politics. Men donated almost $122 million.

McCain received $34 million from women and almost $88 million from men, according to the center.

If past patterns continue, more women will turn out than men in a year when voters, in general, are expected to turn out heavily. Women have voted in higher numbers in every presidential election since 1964, and they've voted at higher rates since 1980. In 2004 about 60 percent of women older than 18 voted, compared to 56 percent of men.

Women's greater trust in Obama's approach to the economy was echoed by the Economists' Policy Group for Women's Issues, a network of more than 40 economists from across the country. On Oct. 23 the group released a report card on the two candidates' positions on 10 economic issues critical to women. Obama earned an overall B grade; McCain earned a D.

The group formed in 1992 to evaluate the presidential candidates that year, and this is the first time they've released a report card since that election. Robert Drago, a professor of labor and women's studies at Penn State University, said the group felt the economic crisis had crowded out discussion of women's issues.

Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who helped grade the candidates, underscored that point. "We're tired of hearing about the Joes, as in Six-Pack and Plumber," she said. "We want more attention (paid) to the Joannes; the women in our economy who typically earn less money and shoulder more family responsibilities than men."

Grade Gap on Equal Pay

In the specific category for pay and employment equity McCain earned an F for voting against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which would expand the amount of time a worker has to sue for employment discrimination. The act would have countermanded the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling that Goodyear Tire employee Lilly Ledbetter waited too long to sue her employer, even though for years she didn't know the company paid her male counterparts more.

Obama voted for the act and supported other anti-discrimination legislation, but because he lacks a comprehensive plan to promote pay equity, he earned a B.

The group gave out few As, but Obama did receive two for his positions on domestic violence and reproductive rights. McCain's highest grade was a C-, which he earned in two categories: health care and nontraditional families.

McCain's paucity of initiatives to alleviate poverty merited a D grade. Obama received a B for wanting to expand early childhood education, the earned-income tax credit and opportunities for affordable housing.

McCain and Obama received a D and a B+, respectively, for their support of paid sick leave for workers. No federal law requires paid time off, but a handful of states and municipalities have instituted policies that are creating a patchwork of varying benefits. The nonprofit advocacy group 9to5, National Association of Working Women is trying to pass a paid-leave measure on Election Day in Milwaukee, where it is based. California, Washington state, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are among those that already have similar laws on the books.

Trying to Seal the Deal

The Obama campaign was trying to capitalize on its edge with female voters in the last week of the election.

Becky Carroll, field director of Women for Obama, the campaign's national initiative to reach out to female voters, said the campaign has been targeting female voters through woman-to-woman phone banks, house parties thrown by supporters and the heavy use of female surrogates at campaign events such as New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and "Sex and the City" star Cynthia Nixon.

The campaign also encouraged women to vote early to sidestep last-minute complications that could prevent them from voting, like a sick child on Election Day. Carroll emphasized that early voting allows women to "vote around their own schedule and their own time."

The initial interest McCain generated among women by choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has subsided, Walsh said. "Women are saying, 'What about these economic issues? What about my survival?' And that's what they're going to vote on."

The widening gender gap stands to reason in light of women's distribution within the economy, said Susan Carroll, a senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics. (She is not related to Becky Carroll of the Obama campaign.)

Women account for almost two-thirds of minimum-wage workers and are more likely to head households alone.

In August, before the worst economic news arrived, 58 percent of women were already saying they were "very concerned" about the job market, compared to 38 percent of men, according to a survey released by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

"Whether I've spoken with women in New Mexico or Indiana or Wisconsin or Florida or Colorado, they're all asking the same questions," said Women for Obama's Becky Carroll. "They all wake up in the morning with the same concerns. They're worried about their family. They're worried about their jobs. They're worried about retirement security and the cost of health care, and they want specific answers about how the candidates will address these issues."

Claire Bushey is a freelance journalist based in Chicago.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org

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Vote watchdogs warn of troubles on election day

Lawsuits have already been filed over efforts to purge rolls and challenging voter identification laws. 'This one is the meltdown scenario,' one activist says.

By Carol J. Williams and Noam N. Levey

October 30, 2008

Los Angles Times

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles -- Counting down to an election day expected to draw a record-shattering turnout, voting-rights watchdogs are sounding the alarm that a repeat of the Florida fiasco of 2000 could occur in any of a dozen battleground states.

Lawsuits are already flying in many of these states.

Voting rights advocates in Colorado, to take just one example, told a federal judge Wednesday that the names of nearly 30,000 voters were recently purged from the state registry in violation of federal law and ought to be restored by election day. In a compromise, those voters will be allowed to cast provisional ballots.

Across the battleground states, where Democrats had a 2-1 advantage in new registrations, voting-rights groups contend the eleventh-hour verifications demanded by Republican officials are attempts to disenfranchise the new voters.

The flood of millions of first-time voters could lead to crowded and contentious polling places across the country, triggering last-minute identity checks that could deny ballots to those whose names or addresses don't match other government records.

"This one is the meltdown scenario," said Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of the Ad vancement Project founded by civil rights lawyers to pursue racial justice.

Common Cause, the American Bar Assn., the League of Women Voters and a phalanx of other public interest groups are urging states to ensure that the polls are adequately staffed to handle an onslaught bolstered by millions of newly registered voters.

Voting advocates are worried about its effect in states like Virginia, which has one of the lowest ratios of voting machines to registered voters.

"Voters will simply walk away if the lines are too long," warned Susannah Goodman, who directs the election reform program at Common Cause, a campaign reform group based in Washington. "They don't want to, but they may have a job they have to get to, and they have to go."

Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act in 2002 in response to the Florida debacle two years earlier. The law provided $3 billion for new equipment and statewide registries, but the sheer volume of new voters has overwhelmed efforts to verify their eligibility.

Litigation brought in recent weeks in Ohio, Georgia, Florida and Colorado may serve to alert voters that they may be challenged. But in many states, the verification methods have created more obstacles than they have removed.

In Florida, an aggressive "no match, no vote" standard has been applied to question whether more than 10,000 of those who have registered since Jan. 1 should be given ballots despite discrepancies between their registration information and other government records, said Tova Wang, vice president for research at Common Cause.

Voting rights groups, both nonpartisan and Democrat-aligned, have compiled lists of vulnerable voters and tried to track them down.

"We're engaged in protecting voters from being disenfranchised by virtue of typos and clerical errors," said Adam Skaggs, an attorney with New York University's Brennan Center for Justice.

He said that the likelihood of fraud has been "vastly inflated" and that discrepancies are overwhelmingly the result of innocent mistakes or outdated voter registries.

In Montana, authorities recently sought to drop 6,000 voters from the rolls because of address changes, including soldiers deployed to Iraq, Skaggs noted.

A Brennan Center study of ballot designs found problems in North Carolina, where voters who choose a one-touch straight-party option on voting machines may not notice that the presidential race isn't included and requires a separate vote. In Ohio, the candidates for the top office are split between two pages, which could lead some voters to invalidate their ballots by choosing one on each.

In Georgia, the voter registry has been scrutinized for potential noncitizen entries, and thousands of people -- most with Latino names -- have been flagged for identity checks if they seek to cast a ballot.

Lawsuits challenging election officials' plans to deny ballots in cases of mismatches in at least six states have been shot down by the courts. But appeals are in the works, and concerns over access persist in most of the states analysts consider a toss-up.

"I think we're still going to see a lot of problems, in part because some voters aren't going to find out until election day that they've been dropped from the rolls," said Rick Hasen, a professor of election law at Loyola Law School. "I expect this to happen in Florida, where they had a very aggressive no match, no vote policy."

Citing news reports from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Florida, the community activist group ACORN warned last week that Republican officials in those states had hinted at intentions to scan foreclosure filings to identify voters who are no longer living at the address on their registration.

"This shameless challenge adds insult to injury to those who have been hit hardest by the economic crisis," said ACORN, which itself has been accused of fraudulent registrations.

In response to the flood of early voting problems, the Obama campaign, Cable News Network and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have set up hotlines, with CNN fielding more than 15,000 calls since opening its phone bank on Oct. 15.

While legal challenges loom over denied ballots and voting machine breakdowns, legal experts said they doubted the electoral vote count would hinge on a single state this time, as occurred in Florida in 2000, when 537 votes separated George W. Bush and Al Gore.

"The good news story is that it's very unlikely in any given year that you're going to have such a close outcome," said Edward B. Foley, an Ohio State University law professor. Just in case, he has developed a proposal for a nonpartisan arbitration tribunal that could be an alternative to ceding that role to the Supreme Court.

The two presidential campaigns are also preparing to deal with lawsuits over the outcome by joining nonprofit and pro bono attorneys who are fanning out by the thousands to monitor the polls.

The Obama campaign has been urging supporters to vote early as a way to avoid problems. "We think for the most part local election officials have done a good job," said Jenny Backus, a campaign spokeswoman.

The McCain campaign has focused in recent weeks on attacking ACORN's voter registration efforts. But spokesman Ben Porritt said the campaign had confidence in most local election officials. "For the most part, these things are handled properly," he said.

While attention has zeroed in on perceived attempts to deny ballots to certain voters, seasoned election monitors point out that such infringement is rare and usually the result of unintentional human error in a system reliant on lay volunteers.

More pleased than apprehensive over predictions of historic turnout, League of Women Voters President Mary Wilson said the nonprofit was concentrating in the final days on ensuring polls have enough workers and equipment, and was seeking to downplay the obstacles so as not to discourage voters.

"It does no good to be talking about barriers to voting when we're this close to the election," she said.

Wilson hailed the improvements in voter registration procedures mandated by the Help America Vote Act but lamented the unanticipated complications imposed by the verification regime.

"A person can leave off a digit from his driver's license, or a woman who gets married and uses her maiden name as a middle initial -- they're not going to match," she said. "Couple that with the fact that the Social Security Administration itself says 28% of the time there's not going to be a match with its data entry and you can see that some of the things HAVA brought to us turn out to be barriers in their implementation."

One benefit of the voting reform law, she added, has been the provisional ballot for voters who show up at the polls only to learn their eligibility is in question. These ballots will be counted if voters confirm their identity within 48 hours, whereas many of those challenged in previous elections were turned away.

Courts including the U.S. Supreme Court have so far ruled against screening efforts that could deny access, allaying activists' worst fears.

"I was really scared," said Wendy Weiser, who heads the Brennan Center's voting rights project. "Now, I am cautiously optimistic, or maybe just mildly apprehensive."

Williams and Levey are Times staff writers.

carol.williams@latimes.com

noam.levey@latimes.com

Gap Between the Sexes

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Some insurance executives expressed surprise at the size and prevalence of the disparities, which can make a woman’s insurance cost hundreds of dollars a year more than a man’s. Women’s advocacy groups have raised concerns about the differences, and members of Congress have begun to question the justification for them.

The new findings, which are not easily explained away, come amid anxiety about the declining economy. More and more people are shopping for individual health insurance policies because they have lost jobs that provided coverage. Politicians of both parties have offered proposals that would expand the role of the individual market, giving people tax credits or other assistance to buy coverage on their own.

“Women often fare worse than men in the individual insurance market,” said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee.

Insurers say they have a sound reason for charging different premiums: Women ages 19 to 55 tend to cost more than men because they typically use more health care, especially in the childbearing years.

But women still pay more than men for insurance that does not cover maternity care. In the individual market, maternity coverage may be offered as an optional benefit, or rider, for a hefty additional premium.

Crystal D. Kilpatrick, a healthy 33-year-old real estate agent in Austin, Tex., said: “I’ve delayed having a baby because my insurance policy does not cover maternity care. If I have a baby, I’ll have to pay at least $8,000 out of pocket.”

In general, insurers say, they charge women more than men of the same age because claims experience shows that women use more health care services. They are more likely to visit doctors, to get regular checkups, to take prescription medications and to have certain chronic illnesses.

Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group that has examined hundreds of individual policies, said: “The wide variation in premiums could not possibly be justified by actuarial principles. We should not tolerate women having to pay more for health insurance, just as we do not tolerate the practice of using race as a factor in setting rates.”

Without substantial changes in the individual market, Ms. Greenberger said, tax credits for the purchase of insurance will be worth less to women because they face higher premiums.

The disparities are evident in premiums charged by major insurers like Humana, UnitedHealth, Aetna and Anthem, a unit of WellPoint; in prices quoted by eHealth, a leading online source of health insurance; and in rate tables published by state high-risk pools, which offer coverage to people who cannot obtain private insurance.

Humana, for example, says its Portrait plan offers “ideal coverage for people who want benefits like those provided by big employers.” For a Portrait plan with a $2,500 deductible, a 30-year-old woman pays 31 percent more than a man of the same age in Denver or Chicago and 32 percent more in Tallahassee, Fla.

In Columbus, Ohio, a 30-year-old woman pays 49 percent more than a man of the same age for Anthem’s Blue Access Economy plan. The woman’s monthly premium is $92.87, while a man pays $62.30. At age 40, the gap is somewhat smaller, with Anthem charging women 38 percent more than men for that policy.

Todd A. Siesky, a spokesman for WellPoint, declined to comment on the Anthem rates.

Thomas T. Noland Jr., a senior vice president of Humana, said: “Premiums for our individual health insurance plans reflect claims experience — the use of medical services — which varies by gender and age. Females use more medical services than males, and this difference is most pronounced in young adults.”

In addition, Mr. Noland said, “Bearing children increases other health risks later in life, such as urinary incontinence, which may require treatment with medication or surgery.”

Most state insurance pools, for high-risk individuals, also use sex as a factor in setting rates.

Thus, for example, in Dallas or Houston, women ages 25 to 29 pay 39 percent more than men of the same age when they buy coverage from the Texas Health Insurance Risk Pool.

In Nebraska, a 35-year-old woman pays 32 percent more than a man of the same age for coverage from the state insurance pool.

Representative Xavier Becerra, Democrat of California, said that “if men could have kids,” such disparities would probably not exist.

Elizabeth J. Leif, a health insurance actuary in Denver who helps calculate rates for Nebraska and other states, said: “Under the age of 55, women tend to be higher utilizers of health care than men. I am more conscious of my health than my husband, who will avoid going to the doctor at all costs.”

“Many state insurance laws require insurance policies to cover complications of pregnancy, even if they do not cover maternity care,” Ms. Leif said. Insurers say those complications generate significant costs.

Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, asked, “How can insurers in the individual market claim to meet the needs of women if maternity coverage is so difficult to get, so inadequate and expensive?”

Cecil D. Bykerk, president of the Society of Actuaries, a professional organization, said that if male and female premiums were equalized, women would pay less but “rates for men would go up.”

Mr. Bykerk, a former executive vice president of Mutual of Omaha, said, “If maternity care is included as a benefit, it drives up rates for everybody, making the whole policy less affordable.”

The individual insurance market is notoriously unstable. Adults often find it difficult or impossible to get affordable coverage in this market. In most states, insurers can charge higher premiums or deny coverage to people with health problems.

In job-based coverage, civil rights laws prohibit sex discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says employers cannot charge higher premiums to women than to men for the same benefits, even if women as a class are more expensive. Some states, including Maine, Montana and New York, have also prohibited sex-based rates in the individual insurance market.

Mila Kofman, the insurance superintendent in Maine, said: “There’s a strong public policy reason to prohibit gender-based rates. Only women can bear children. There’s an expense to that. But having babies benefits communities and society as a whole. Women should not have to bear the entire expense.”

And that expense can be substantial.

In Iowa, a 30-year-old woman pays $49 a month more than a man of the same age for one of Wellmark’s Select Enhanced plans. Her premium, at $151, is 48 percent higher than the man’s.

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Vote For (     )

Read Article on NYTimes.com

New York Times

November 2, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Here’s what strikes me this election eve: I can’t remember a presidential campaign that was so disconnected from the actual challenges of governing that will confront the winner the morning after. When this election campaign began two years ago, the big issue was how and for how long do we continue nation-building in Iraq. As the campaign comes to a close, the big issue is how and at what sacrifice do we do nation-building in America.

Unfortunately, you’d barely know that from the presidential debates. Watching them in the context of the meltdown of the financial system was like watching a game show where the two contestants were kept off-stage in a soundproof booth and brought out to address the audience without knowing the context.

Since the last debate, John McCain and Barack Obama have unveiled broad ideas about how to restore the nation’s financial health. But they continue to suggest that this will be largely pain-free. McCain says giving everyone a tax cut will save the day; Obama tells us only the rich will have to pay to help us out of this hole. Neither is true.

We are all going to have to pay, because this meltdown comes in the context of what has been “perhaps the greatest wealth transfer since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917,” says Michael Mandelbaum, author of “Democracy’s Good Name.” “It is not a wealth transfer from rich to poor that the Bush administration will be remembered for. It is a wealth transfer from the future to the present.”

Never has one generation spent so much of its children’s wealth in such a short period of time with so little to show for it as in the Bush years. Under George W. Bush, America has foisted onto future generations a huge financial burden to finance our current tax cuts, wars and now bailouts. Just paying off those debts will require significant sacrifices. But when you add the destruction of wealth that has taken place in the last two months in the markets, and the need for more bailouts, you understand why this is not going to be a painless recovery.

The Bush team leaves us with another debt — one to Mother Nature. We have added tons more CO2 into the atmosphere these last eight years, without any mitigation effort. As a result, slowing down climate change in the next eight years is going to require even bigger changes and investments in how we use energy.

Given that Times columnists are not allowed to “formally” endorse candidates and given that the context of this election has changed so much from the policy positions the candidates started with, all I can suggest is that you vote for the candidate with these character traits:

First, we need a president who can speak English and deconstruct and navigate complex issues so Americans can make informed choices. We have paid an enormous price for having a president who could not explain and reassure us during this financial meltdown. We wasted a huge amount of time pretending that we could punish Wall Street without punishing Main Street — when, in fact, they are intricately intertwined.

A major money market fund — Reserve Primary — failed in September because the extra interest it offered customers derived, in part, from the $785 million in high-yielding Lehman Brothers commercial paper and notes it was holding. Depositors who told their congressmen to just let that greedy Lehman Brothers fail were shocked to discover this meant that their own money market would be frozen. No, we don’t need a president defending greed on Wall Street, but we do need one who can explain that we are all in the same boat, that a leak at one end can sink everyone and that while we must regulate, we don’t want to kill risk-taking and the rewards that go with that — which are essential to growing our economy.

Second, we need a president who can energize, inspire and hold the country together during what will be a very stressful recovery. We have to climb out of this financial crisis at a time when the baby boomers are about to retire and going to need their Social Security and eventually Medicare. We are all going to be paying the government more and getting less until we grow out of this hole.

Third, we need a president who can rally the world to our side. We cannot get out of this crisis unless China starts consuming more and unless Europe keeps lowering interest rates. Everyone is interconnected, and everyone is still looking to America to lead.

So, bottom line: Please do not vote for the candidate you most want to have a beer with (unless it’s to get stone cold drunk so you don’t have to think about this mess we’re in). Vote for the person you’d most like at your side when you ask your bank manager for an extension on your mortgage.

Vote for the candidate you think has the smarts, temperament and inspirational capacity to unify the country and steer our ship through what could be the rockiest shoals our generation has ever known. Your kids will thank you.

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The Mindset in the Middle of the Storm

Read Article on NYTimes.com

by Peter Baker

New York Times, Sunday, November 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — Leave it to Jon Stewart to cut to the chase. Interviewing Senator Barack Obama last week as the campaign rolled toward its conclusion, the host of “The Daily Show” observed that being president today looks considerably less appealing than when Mr. Obama launched his candidacy two years ago.

“Is there a sense that you don’t want this?” Mr. Stewart asked. “That you may look at the country and think, ‘You know, when I thought I was going to get this, it was a relatively new car. Now look at it!’ ”

Mr. Obama laughed and gave an earnest answer about having an impact, but did not really address the larger question. Just why would anyone want this job, anyway? What is it about the psyche of would-be presidents that makes them wake up in the morning and think it would be gratifying to take on the troubles of the world, to assume responsibility for the lives of 300 million Americans at a time when their lives are so precarious?

And particularly now, in this moment of maximum crisis. Millions are in danger of losing their homes. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. The national debt is skyrocketing. The Taliban is rampaging through Afghanistan. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed shambles. The country is still at war in Iraq and trying to avoid it with Iran and North Korea. Russia has invaded a neighbor. And much of the world hates us.

“This is an unprecedented mess,” said Ted Sorensen, the former counselor to President John F. Kennedy. By many measures, no incoming president will have inherited quite such a sack of trouble in decades. Yet neither Mr. Obama nor Senator John McCain has expressed second thoughts.

“You have to not only have a sense of confidence but a pretty big ego — you have to almost be a fanatic,” Mr. Sorensen said. “You have to look at yourself and everybody else running for the office and think not only are you as good as they are but you and your ideas are better.”

And that you can fix what nobody else can fix. The ambition and drive that propel politicians to high office at a time of tribulations may convince them that the country’s deep problems are simply successes waiting to happen.

“Part of self-confidence is believing you have special gifts and how selfish of you not to use them to full capacity,” said Alvin S. Felzenberg, a University of Pennsylvania scholar and author of “The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t).” “It’s not a job for ordinary mortals. It may have been fairer in the Middle Ages to have them walk over hot coals than what we put them through now.”

Of course, this is not yet the hot-coals part of the program. For two more days, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain can still enjoy the affirmation of the crowds. To see either on the campaign trail last week surrounded by fans proclaiming everlasting love was to taste the elixir of adulation that attracts politicians to the presidency even now.

“That’s a pretty heavy trip,” said Dr. Jerrold M. Post, a professor of political psychology at George Washington University. “The nature of the relationship between leaders and the people around them is very important. It’s a very heady experience and something happens when you become president.”

Yet even in the best of times, the presidency can be an enormous burden. Every American soldier killed abroad, every house foreclosed on at home, every monster storm from the Gulf of Mexico to the Indian Ocean ultimately becomes his responsibility.

Increasingly, that burden has come to define the job as much as the glamour. Parents get that. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll in 2006 found that only 41 percent of mothers and fathers would want their child to grow up to be president, compared with 58 percent who would not. And that was before things got as crazy as they are now.

Think about those before-and-after pictures of presidents leaving office. Let’s look back at how the vast majority in the modern era have left the White House. President Kennedy was assassinated. Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon were driven from power. Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were repudiated by the voters. Bill Clinton departed after his most intimate personal failings were excavated for public examination. George W. Bush is leaving as the most unpopular commander in chief in the history of polling.

Perhaps the only president lately who left office reasonably intact was Ronald Reagan, who recovered from the Iran-contra scandal and found himself revered as time passed. “The thing about Reagan is he was not stuck on himself,” said David M. Abshire, a special counselor to Mr. Reagan and now the president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. “He was not an ideologue. And his sense of humor was always on himself. In dealing with him, I was never dealing with a big ego.”

Those who think the office does not wear down presidents do not see them with their guard down. Critics consider President Bush immune to the devastation of the war he launched, but he has met privately with hundreds of relatives of slain soldiers, many of whom later described him weeping and genuinely anguished by their pain.

For all that, Mr. Bush still has that gene that makes presidents want to be president even in dark moments. He told aides and business people this fall that if the financial crisis was going to happen, he was glad it happened on his watch so he could put the country on a path to improvement by the time his successor takes office.

In some ways, Mr. Obama has expressed similar sentiments. His advisers said they warn him every day that he may be winning a pile of manure if he beats Mr. McCain on Tuesday. But they also hope that things are so bad, they can only get better.

Mr. Obama’s answer to Mr. Stewart suggested that he sees an opportunity for an ambitious program, that when people are struggling for answers they are less resistant to change. “I actually think this is the time to want to be president,” he said. “You know, if you went into public service thinking that you could have an impact, now is the time where you can have an impact.”

Ultimately, Mr. Felzenberg said, the motivation may come down to posterity. Every president sees himself on Mount Rushmore. “Maybe you have enough gumption to think you can defy the gods and come out intact,” he said. “I guess you have an opportunity for immortality. People like me still talk about Lincoln and Jefferson as if they were still living now and in a way they are. Every time we talk about them, we bring them back to life.”