[Lnc-business] Proposed amicus brief: Husted v. APRI

Fri Aug 4 08:19:36 EDT 2017

Alicia:  It cuts the other way in Ohio, with the petition being a percentage of the total vote for Governor or President, but the purge reducing the number of actually registered voters.  Bill Redpath
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On Fri, 8/4/17, Alicia Mattson <agmattson at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Lnc-business] Proposed amicus brief: Husted v. APRI
 To: lnc-business at hq.lp.org
 Date: Friday, August 4, 2017, 4:40 AM

 I
 agree that there is no clear libertarian philosophical issue
 here.  There may be times that a voter purge makes things
 harder for us, but there are times it cuts the other way as
 well.  

 Without periodic
 purges of people who have disappeared, when the number of
 petition signatures we have to collect is based on a certain
 percentage of the registered voters in a district, the
 purges keep the total registrations from perpetually growing
 to numbers which make our petition goals essentially
 unattainable.

 -Alicia

 On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 2:56
 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer at earthlink.net>
 wrote:

 Dan,
 	Thanks for writing and
 sharing your concerns. While I agree there isn't a clear
 (philosophical) libertarian angle in this case, I tend to
 think that giving the authorities more tools and discretion
 in when to purge voters from the rolls increases,
 rather than decreases, the likelihood of
 fraud.
 	I can give a personal
 example from a few years ago when I was volunteering as a
 vote counting observer during a runoff election in San
 Francisco which, although I don't know that it was a
 deliberate attempt at fraud, certainly raised questions in
 my mind about the integrity of the process. My goal as an
 observer consisted largely of trying to ensure that votes
 for him via provisional ballot were properly counted when
 possible and not improperly disqualified on technicalities,
 and while observing I noticed a case in which one of his
 voters, upon finding that his name missing from the rolls
 at his polling place, had apparently asked for a
 provisional ballot and voted. Upon consulting the registered
 voter data, an Elections Department staffer found that the
 individual had been purged from the rolls after not voting
 in the past three elections and a postcard mailed to him
 being returned undelivered. 
 	It seemed clear that
 one of two things had occurred: Either the voter was
 legitimately attempting to vote after several cycles of not
 voting for whatever reason – perhaps he had been on an
 extended vacation, or in jail, or there was simply a postal
 error, etc., or someone else was attempting to fraudulently
 vote in his name. It seemed to me that in either case the
 matter called for further investigation, but that in the
 meantime, the vote should be accepted (innocent until proven
 guilty). However the staffer processing the votes was
 planning to simply discard the ballot! When I brought the
 matter to the attention of a supervisor, I was told that
 this was the standard and proper procedure. There would not
 be any investigation or even any notification of the voter!
 I found this quite disturbing and along with other things I
 observed, it deepened my doubts about the integrity of the
 process. In hindsight I wondered whether staff really were
 following proper procedure, and probably should have tried
 to make more of an issue of it, but being there by myself at
 the time it didn't feel like there was much I could
 do.
 	The main danger of
 electoral fraud, it seems to me, is not random people
 casting illegitimate votes on a scatter-shot basis, but
 malfeasance on the part of insiders with access to the
 vote-counting process. As Josef Stalin infamously observed,
 who votes matters very little, but who counts the votes
 matters a great deal. I'm therefore inclined to feel
 that as a practical if not an ideological libertarian
 matter, it is in the Libertarian Party's interest to
 oppose anything that gives those counting the votes more
 opportunity to disqualify some of those votes.
 	I do agree that
 revenge against the bad actor(s) in the Ohio Secretary of
 State's Office would not, in itself, be a good reason to
 get involved.
 Love
 & Liberty,

                                 (((
 starchild )))At-Large Representative, Libertarian
 National Committee
                          RealR
 eform at earthlink.net

    (415) 625-FREE

      @StarchildSF

 On Aug 3, 2017, at 11:54 AM, Daniel
 Wiener wrote:
 Hello everyone,
 Regaring Nick's email
 below, is this really an issue that the LP should involve
 itself in, much less support impediments to cleaning up the
 voter rolls?  Nick's description of the case as
 "challenging Ohio's practice of purging voters from
 the rolls when they don't vote in two successive
 election cycles" is very incomplete, according to the
 legal briefs he links to.  The process ALSO requires that
 notices be mailed out to voters at their last known voting
 addresses, and only allows voters to be purged if BOTH
 criteria are met (i.e., lack of voting and failure to
 respond to confirmation notices).
 The legal dispute appears
 to turn on whether the failure to vote in recent elections
 can trigger the confirmation notices, or whether
 confirmation notices must first be sent out and then be
 supported by past failures to vote.  While that may be an
 interesting controversy based on conflicting interpretations
 of several federal laws, it hardly seems like any kind of
 fundamental Libertarian issue.  I personally don't see
 why it should matter which comes first, as long as both
 criteria must still be met.
 From a practical
 standpoint, the Libertarian Party should generally favor an
 honest and well-run system for registering voters and
 holding elections.  We should generally be in favor of
 processes which minimize the potential for voter fraud, in
 that such fraud (besides the ethical considerations) is
 likely to favor the major political parties at our expense
 (i.e., the big parties are much more likely to commit voter
 fraud than the LP is).  Purging registration rolls of
 people who are dead or have moved away or are otherwise
 ineligible to vote is one important factor in closing off
 the avenues to such fraud.
 Emotionally, we'd like
 to take on the Ohio Secretary of State because of the way
 they've screwed us in the past.  But the desire for
 revenge may not be a good enough reason to join an amicus
 brief in this particular case.
 Dan Wiener

 Nicholas Sarwark chair
 at lp.org 
 Wed Aug 2
 11:42:55 CDT 2017
  Dear All,
  The Supreme Court has
 granted certiorari in Husted v. APRI,
 challenging Ohio's practice of purging
 voters from the rolls when they
 don't
 vote in two successive election cycles, allegedly in
 violation
 of HAVA, the Help America Vote
 Act.  Background on the case can be
 found
 at: http://www.scotusblog.com/
 case-files/cases/husted-v- philip-randolph-institute/
  We have an opportunity
 to be an amicus in support of not purging
 voters from the rolls, noting especially that
 it has a negative effect
 on political
 parties that may have been prevented from fielding
 candidates for an election cycle or two.
  Our financial obligation
 would be limited to printing costs or less,
 as we've already lined up an attorney
 willing to draft the brief
 without cost to
 the LNC.
  I intend to ask the
 Executive Committee to approve joining as an
 amicus in this case, but wanted to answer any
 questions any LNC
 members have about the
 case first.  Mr. Hall is also on the list and
 may be able to answer questions that I
 cannot.
  Yours truly,
 Nick

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