From the Archives: Georgetown philosophy professor Jason Brennan explores ethics of voting

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on July 31, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Georgetown philosophy professor Jason Brennan explores ethics of voting

“Every day you see the same message: ‘get out the vote, get out the vote, get out the vote,’” says philosophy professor Jason Brennan.

“What if all the sentiments underlying that were just wrong?” he asks. What if they “could be shown to be wrong pretty easily?”

According to Brennan, his new book, The Ethics of Voting, shows those underlying sentiments to be, in fact, wrong.

Brennan, an assistant professor of business and philosophy at Georgetown University, summarized his book at a Cato Institute forum on July 21. After his presentation, he spoke with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about what motivated him to write The Ethics of Voting, how the book has been received by academics, and his new research on private behavior and the common good.

Brennan has long been interested in the topic of the ethics of voting.

Is voting special?

“Growing up,” he said, “I kept hearing, over and over again, the American civic religion [says] that voting is special, that political participation is special, that serving in the military makes you an especially good person.”

These claims were not satisfying to Brennan, he explained.

“I never found myself gripped by that,” he said. “I always wondered: What were the grounds underlying that? Why did people believe it?”

He also discovered, he continued, that “at the same time, there’s a kind of interesting philosophical question about what you should do in situations where we as a group are doing something bad but that your individual input doesn’t make a difference. That happens a lot in politics.”

Those two different but related things brought him to this topic.

Is voting rational?

He had read some of the literature about voter behavior but George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan’s 2008 book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, provided extra stimulus to write his own book.

“After reading that, I asked myself, suppose he’s right that voters are irrational. What does that mean about what they should do?”

The answer is not simple, he said. One cannot simply say, “Well, if they’re rational they shouldn’t vote, because individual votes don’t make a difference.” Instead, “it’s actually a real philosophical puzzle as to why it would even matter at all [with regard to] what an individual does and why they should vote well or not.”

Caplan’s book, Brennan said, was “like the last straw” in how it “pushed me over the edge to have to write something more about the philosophy behind” the ethics of voting.

Reaction from scholars

Brennan has received feedback from other academic philosophers, as well as from political scientists. Most of it has been positive.

Jason Brennan at Cato Institute, July 2011

The reaction he has had from philosophers, he said, “has been overwhelmingly very positive. Even if they disagree with the conclusions -- and many of them do -- what they’ve tended to like about it is that it takes on common sense. What it does is start with rather simple, plausible premises and leads to counterintuitive results. Philosophers tend to like that.”

Moreover, he added, “what a lot of philosophers have recognized, too, is that there are just a lot of unfounded assumptions about how politics works and what we should do. At the very least, I’m being a devil’s advocate in challenging” those assumptions, and that challenge makes philosophers “recognize that common sense [claims] about voting need to be justified, if they are justified” at all.

The reaction of political scientists, he said, “has largely been the same,” but faculty in political science departments who do political theory, “which is sort of philosophy but done in political science,” have a tendency “to be more skeptical because they tend to have a much more strongly emotional attachment to democracy than philosophers do.”

Private behavior as a public good

Brennan is now conducting new research on how private behavior contributes to the public good, something “that ended up being a major premise even in this book.”

He explained that “we can express civic virtue anywhere: by running a good business that helps people [and] makes them richer, by coming up with inventions, by making art, and so on.”

All these things, he said, help “promote the common good. They’re doing as much good as politics is doing, perhaps even more.”

The practical effect of this for individuals is that, “if you’re a person who is publicly spirited and you want to promote the common good, that doesn’t mean you have to get out of the market and go to the forum,” Brennan explained. “It might instead mean you should stay in the market and work there.”

Giving two prominent examples, Professor Brennan pointed out that “Thomas Edison did a lot more for us with his inventions than he ever would have done as a voter. Michelangelo did a lot more with his art than he ever would have done as a voter.”

He concluded by noting that “private civil society is really important for promoting the common good. If civic virtue is about promoting the common good, then private civil society might be the way to do it.”

Brennan wrote The Ethics of Voting while he taught at Brown University; it was published in April by Princeton University Press.

From the Archives: Virginia elections board halts changes to voter registration form

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on August 12, 2015. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site is scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Virginia elections board halts changes to voter registration form

Virginia's State Board of Elections (SBE) has withdrawn a controversial proposal for revising voter registration forms in the face of widespread criticism by election officials and the public.

As explained on the political web site Bearing Drift by Brian Schoeneman, former secretary of the Fairfax County Electoral Board, the proposal included “fundamental changes to the material omissions policies that are codified in Virginia law and that help to both prevent fraudulent voter registrations and to provide law enforcement with information they may need to prosecute registration fraud.”

The proposed changes would have eliminated the requirement that potential voters check boxes next to statements regarding their statuses as eligible American citizens and non-felons. Instead, they could simply sign a general statement at the bottom of the form attesting to their eligibility, saying that nothing disqualifies them from registering to vote.

Objections
SBE meetings are generally quiet affairs that draw little attention from the press or public, but last month’s meeting in Midlothian attracted a standing-room-only crowd and unrelentingly negative comments about the proposed changes in the form. Members of the General Assembly encouraged their constituents to attend the meeting and also to register their objections on line. (There were eventually 1,259 comments about the proposed regulatory changes.)

In an email message distributed to electoral boards and general registrars dated August 11, SBE chairman James Alcorn wrote: “As Chair of the Board, I have reviewed the public comments submitted regarding the voter registration application and associated regulations. (http://goo.gl/UqgvWg) In response to the substantive concerns raised, I am pulling the proposal from the Board’s September agenda.”

The proposal, Alcorn explained, “needs substantive work before the Board can review any potential changes and this issue requires more time for proper analysis. I am asking staff of the Department of Elections to work in a collaborative fashion with the broader elections community to develop any future changes to the voter registration application and associated regulations.”

Applications denied
Alcorn also explained the scope of the problem that the Board was trying to address:

“Since 2011, Virginia general registrars have denied over 100,000 voter registration applications due to missing information. A person’s ability to register to vote should be judged on their legal qualifications and not on their ability to complete an administrative form.”

That problem, he said, “persists and we should work together to make it easier for all qualified Virginians to participate in the electoral process.”

Alcorn invited electoral board members and registrars to submit their “ideas about how to address this issue that affects too many Virginians.”

Further study
Finally, the SBE chairman indicated that the proposal will be studied further to determine what action should be taken, if any.

“To facilitate this discussion,” Alcorn said, “I am asking the Department of Elections to conduct an analysis on the rejection of voter registration forms; to provide findings to the Board at a future meeting; and to release the data and findings via the Department’s website so it is easily accessible to all stakeholders.”

Revisions to the voter registration application form and other types of forms are probably inevitable. For instance, the absentee ballot application, which has become particularly unwieldy as more and more excuses are approved by the General Assembly, will eventually need to be changed. This is even more likely as such documents gravitate to on-line rather than paper forms.

If this decision by the SBE to halt the revision of the voter registration form shows anything, it is that when citizens and public officials raise objections loudly and voluminously, those criticisms are heard and heeded.

SUGGESTED LINKS

Charlottesville write-ins reveal voters’ allegiance, impishness
Four priorities for election law reform in Virginia discussed by VEBA legislative chair Robin Lind
Virginia's top elections official Nancy Rodrigues says 'elections have changed forever'
Georgetown philosophy professor Jason Brennan explores ethics of voting
Porn king Larry Flynt defends free speech in Charlottesville

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/virginia-elections-board-halts-changes-to-voter-registration-form

Practical effects of the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling

(This article appeared originally on Virginia Politics on Demand on June 25, 2013.)

Coby Dillard has already summarized what the U.S. Supreme Court did, and did not, do in its ruling Tuesday morning in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General, in striking parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (as reauthorized by Congress in 2006).

What I would like to explain is what practical effect this will have on voting in the Commonwealth of Virginia, one of the nine states covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, requiring pre-clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice for virtually all legal and regulatory changes in voting procedures and elections.

With a few exceptions, all counties and cities in Virginia must seek permission from the federal government before making any changes in the way they conduct elections. The most recent exception is Hanover County, which was "bailed out" of the pre-clearance requirement, as explained in a news release posted by the Department of Justice on Monday:

The Justice Department announced today that it has reached an agreement with Hanover County, Va., that will allow for the county, a covered jurisdiction under the special provisions of the Voting Rights Act, to bail out from coverage under these provisions. Bailout will exempt Hanover County, along with the town of Ashland, from the preclearance requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The agreement is in the form of a consent decree filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and must be approved by the court....

“In the department’s view, the county has met the requirements necessary for bailout. We reached this conclusion after thoroughly reviewing information provided by the county as well as information gathered during the Department’s independent investigation,” said Matthew Colangelo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We appreciate the county’s cooperation in the resolution of this matter.”

The bail-out process has always been an option for localities covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, but it is expensive and time-consuming and requires the attention of numerous officials from the Electoral Board to the city or county attorney. The Electoral Board in Charlottesville (on which I serve) has considered applying for a bail-out several times over the past few years, but the expense -- the equivalent cost of a general election, or more -- plus the fact there was no guarantee of success deterred us from initiating the process.

That said, a Huffington Post headline today -- "The Last Voting Rights Act Bailout Ever Went To Hanover County, Va." -- suggests that the bail-out question is moot, unless Congress comes up with a formula that meets constitutional muster and restores Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, so that the pre-clearance provisions of Section 5 can again be implemented.

On a practical level, ending the pre-clearance requirements will make it much easier for election officials in Virginia to do their jobs. While much attention has been paid to how the Supreme Court's ruling affects things like congressional and other legislative redistricting or statewide voter ID laws, the ripples of Shelby County v. Holder will be felt in countless tiny ways on topics that seldom make the headlines.

For instance, every time a polling place is moved from one location to another, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required us to seek permission from the Justice Department, a process that had to be approved at least 30 days prior to the move's taking effect. (In reality, permission had to be granted even earlier, because of the cascade of tasks that must be completed before election day, including the commencement of absentee voting, sending out voter registration cards with new information, posting advertisements in newspapers alerting voters about the changes, etc.)

To give you a sense of how detailed this pre-clearance process could be, consider this example. Some Charlottesville voters currently cast their ballots in the cafeteria of Johnson Elementary School. If we needed to move the voting location to the school's library down the hall, we would need Justice Department pre-clearance.

Buying new voting machines, making technical adjustments to precinct boundaries, moving the office of the General Registrar -- all these had required pre-clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Each of those items required action by the Electoral Board, the General Registrar, the City Attorney, and (in most cases) City Council. They took time and energy away from other tasks that need to be done to assure fair, transparent, honest, and efficiently-run elections.

I will leave to others to debate the political implications of the Supreme Court's decision Tuesday. As for the practical effects, the Court has removed a tremendous burden -- some might even say nuisance -- from the shoulders of election officials across the country. For that we can be grateful.

How did Charlottesville untie its June 11 primary election?

(This article appeared originally on Virginia Politics on Demand on June 17, 2013.)

While last [June]'s primary elections were ho-hum throughout most of the Commonwealth of Virginia -- only 144,435 voters cast ballots in the Democratic contest for lieutenant governor, or 2.6 percent of possible registered voters -- the situation was different in Charlottesville, which had the most crowded ballot among Virginia's 134 counties and cities.

While a handful of localities had primary contests for the House of Delegates, Charlottesville was the only city with several local offices on the ballot. In addition to the top-of-the-ticket choices for lieutenant governor and attorney general, Charlottesville's Democratic voters also chose among candidates for commonwealth's attorney, commissioner of the revenue, and city council. (There were no Republican candidates on the ballot. The local GOP nominated two candidates for City Council, Mike Farruggio and Buddy Weber, in a late-April mass meeting.)

Charlottesville City Council candidate Wes Bellamy speaks to news media after his defeat

 Incumbent Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman beat former Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Deaton in a landslide. (Chapman was first elected in 1993, when he defeated Deaton narrowly in a Democratic caucus. He has never faced a general-election opponent.)

Newcomer Todd Divers more narrowly defeated fellow newcomer Jonathan Stevens for the party nod for Commissioner of the Revenue. (They were both seeking to succeed retiring Lee Richards, another incumbent Democrat who never had a general election opponent.)

Chapman will again be unopposed in November but Divers will have two independent candidates running against him, Taneia Dowell and John Gunter.

The real fireworks came in the City Council race, which was not decided until Friday afternoon because of an exact tie between two candidates on election night.

There were five candidates seeking two nominations by the Democratic party. One was incumbent Kristin Szakos, who took first place handily.

When the results for Charlottesville's nine physical precincts were tabulated, it looked like the second-place finisher would be Bob Fenwick, who had 1,025 votes while third place was held by Wes Bellamy, with 1,006 votes.

City Council candidate Bob Fenwick speaks to news media after his narrow win was announced

All that was left to tally were the 201 ballots cast in the Central Absentee Precinct. Of those, 178 voters had cast their ballots in person on the eSlate electronic system and 24 paper ballots had been returned by mail. (One of those paper ballots was disqualified, so only 23 were counted.)

As the memory card with the machine totals was inserted into the tally computer, we knew the race would be close between Fenwick, who had twice before run as an independent candidate for City Council, and Bellamy, a first-time candidate. Little did we know how close it would be.

After the electronic absentee votes were added to the total, the count was Fenwick, 1,081, and Bellamy, 1,080. If nothing else, we knew a recount was a distinct possibility.

All that was left were the hand-counted paper absentee ballots. I watched over the shoulder of one of the election officials as she read the numbers off the statement of results so they could be added to the spreadsheet of all the other votes. Reading ahead, I exclaimed aloud, "Oh my god! There's going to be a tie."

Indeed, Fenwick received another 7 votes and Bellamy another 8 votes, so that they were tied: 1,088 to 1,088. What would happen next?

Well, there were still provisional ballots to be counted. There were five from Walker Precinct that we were fairly sure would qualify because they had been cast when there was a malfunction of the electronic pollbook early in the morning of election day. There were three others that we knew about, plus one or two "provisional ID" ballots that were issued because the voter failed to bring an acceptable identification document to the polls pursuant to the new voter ID law that took effect in 2012.

We learned at the canvass the next day that there were a total of 12 provisional ballots.

In the meantime, we were exploring the possibilities for what would happen if the election turned out to be an exact tie. It turns out Virginia election law is quite clear about this, which comes as a surprise because so much else about the code is rather muddy.
§ 24.2-674 says:

If two or more persons have an equal number of votes for any county, city, town, or district office, and a higher number than any other person, the electoral board shall proceed publicly to determine by lot which of the candidates shall be declared elected.

The term "by lot" is not specifically defined, but it is generally meant to be any game of chance, usually a coin toss but the category also includes drawing straws, a roll of dice, a hand of poker or blackjack, or even rock-paper-scissors.

When the canvass met on Wednesday morning, we had to move from our usual location in a small conference room in the voter registration office to a much larger room in the basement of City Hall. Observers from the Democratic party -- including local chair Jim Nix -- and both the Fenwick and Bellamy campaigns were there. The local news media were there in force: both TV stations, three local newspapers, and at least one radio station sent reporters and photographers.

They all had to sit through the tedium of the canvass -- which I described to Ed Sykes of NBC29 as akin to "watching paint dry" -- as we checked the paperwork from all the precincts. In the process, we found two discrepancies that had not been recorded on election night that had not affected the outcome of any race. It was not until 11:00 a.m. that we opened the main event, the provisional vote precinct. That is what everyone -- candidates, party officials, and journalists -- was waiting for.

In the event, we found seven regular provisional ballots and disqualified one of them because the voter was registered in Albemarle County. Six of them were accepted as valid and we counted the votes. Bob Fenwick picked up three more votes and Wes Bellamy received none. The count now stood at Fenwick, 1,091; Bellamy, 1,088.

At that point, it became necessary to discuss what we would do with the remaining four provisional ballots, which had been cast because the voters, whose names were properly on the pollbook, had shown up at their precincts on Tuesday without appropriate identification.

The law says that those voters have until noon on the Friday following the election to present their IDs to the electoral board. They can do so in person, by fax, by U.S. Postal Service, or by commercial delivery service but not by having it delivered by a third person (such as a family member.)

Wanting to speed up the process as much as possible, the Electoral Board readily agreed to the suggestion that the four voters be contacted by telephone or email to remind them that they had the opportunity to bring their IDs to the office.

Later in the day, a local talk-radio host complained that this was "coddling" the voters and that making those telephone calls might even be illegal, and wondered what the State Board of Elections would have to say about the Electoral Board's action.

The propriety of the Electoral Board's directing the general registrar to make these phone calls is unquestionable. There is a section of the administrative code of Virginia, 1VAC20-60-60, which states plainly:

The electoral board or general registrar may attempt to contact an individual who has voted a provisional ballot when required by § 24.2-643 of the Code of Virginia and remind the individual that he is permitted to provide a copy of a form of identification as specified in subsection B of § 24.2-643 of the Code of Virginia to arrive no later than noon on the Friday after election day. However, there shall be no requirement that the electoral board or general registrar contact such individual.

The statutory authority for this provision is found in § 24.2-103 of the Code of Virginia.

That said, it should be pointed out that this is all new territory for election officials. The voter ID law took effect on July 1, 2012. (A new one will supersede it on January 1, 2014.) There was never a need prior to the November 2012 election to even consider telephoning voters about their missing IDs. The form each voter fills out on the envelope containing a provisional ballot, however, includes a space for a telephone number, so even without the clear guidance set out in the administrative code, the implication by the design of the form is that the State Board of Elections intended that the phone number be available for use by Electoral Boards and registrars.

Even so, callers to that radio program were complaining as late as Monday afternoon about the "dubious" practice of the Electoral Board to request that phone calls be made to expedite the completion of the canvass and election process.

When the board reconvened on Friday afternoon at 1:30 p.m., the crowd of observers was slightly thinner than it had been on Wednesday, but there were still more people present than at a "normal" canvass. Three of the four voters had provided an ID, so their votes would be counted.

In the end, Bob Fenwick received two more votes while his nearly-equal opponent, Wes Bellamy, received none from the provisional precinct. Fenwick ended up the winner by five votes, 1,093 to 1,088, and Bellamy graciously conceded and said he would not seek a recount, which would be within his rights as a losing candidate when the difference between the two was less than 0.5 percent of the total. He explained that, having observed the Electoral Board's canvass, he trusted the accuracy of the results.

All in all, the 2013 Democratic primary election in Charlottesville brought a lot more tension and excitement than had ever been anticipated or wanted. (The election official's prayer: "Dear Lord, we don't care who wins, as long as it's by a big margin.") Still, having seen a precise tie on election night, observing the rare occasion of an election decided "by lot" would have been an unforgettable event, one that is unlikely to happen again in Charlottesville for a long, long time.

As for the rest of the Commonwealth, a tie is still a mathematical possibility. So watch out.

NOTE: Virginia Politics on Demand contributor Rick Sincere has served on the Electoral Board for the City of Charlottesville since March 2004.

Debate and dissension on GOP's future will continue

College Republican National Committee's report on Millennial voters

(This article originally appeared on Virginia Politics on Demand on June 6, 2013.)

Like it or not, members of the Republican party and the conservative movement are engaged in a strenuous debate about the party's (and the movement's) future. The various factions of the movement that were first brought together under James Burnham's "fusionism" in the 1950s have split apart, reorganized, reconfigured, split again, redefined themselves, and reunited on numerous occasions over the past six decades.

Taft vs. Eisenhower, Goldwater vs. Scranton, Reagan vs. Bush (yes, Reagan vs. Bush), and Mitt Romney vs. practically everybody else were just the figureheads in a struggle that has included traditionalists, libertarians, isolationists, internationalists, anti-Communists, country-club Republicans, Eastern liberal elites, fiscal hawks, social conservatives, and all manner of single-issue advocates on topics ranging from the Second Amendment to free trade to sexual permissiveness to home schooling ad nauseum.

A few weeks ago, the Republican National Committee published its lengthy post-mortem analysis of what went wrong for the Republican Party in the 2012 presidential election. The results of the RNC's survey were not encouraging, and its prescriptions for improvement met with a range of responses from "meh!" to outrage.

This week, the College Republican National Committee brought out its own 95-page report on why the GOP fails to connect with the Millennial generation of voters aged 18 to 29. Among its findings: 58 percent of this age group get most of their news about current affairs from Facebook, while only 21 percent get their news through either talk radio or NPR. For fully a quarter of this cohort, the fact that the GOP is hostile toward marriage equality is a "deal breaker" -- they won't vote for Republican candidates regardless of their views on other issues.

As the Cato Institute's David Boaz summarizes the CRNC's report,

young voters are very much against excessive government spending (though they do support higher taxes on the wealthy) and are strongly in favor of gay marriage. They want to reform entitlements but see the Republican party as “closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.”

Yesterday on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, the last GOP candidate elected to be lieutenant governor in the deeply-blue state of Maryland, gave his take on the current discussions:

The old way doesn't work. The old strategies don't work. I think Reince Priebus proved that. Surprisingly, he didn't learn from me when I was chairman that you can't go back to the old model, and you cannot have a strategy that has a conversation with a 21-year-old, you know, African-American entrepreneur at the same time you're having that conversation with a 35-year-old mother, white mother of two.

So, you know, the reality is the reality. You're not going to change that. So adapting, recognizing that those core ideas of individual liberty, opportunity, responsibility, freedom, matter to people. Now how they translate that in their everyday life is up to them, but we can lay out some broad policy views and principles that they can then pull into their lives and say, oh, yeah, I like the idea of, you know, having the freedom to choose where to send my kids to school and what that means for me as a parent, how that empowers me as a parent, versus being stuck with the old model of having to go to the failing school in the neighborhood because it's in the neighborhood, and I live in that district.

So those are the types of opportunities and choices that I think are valuable to voters that I think the party needs to talk about and not losing sight of the fact that you raised about the numbers. In fact, I think that's the incentive to get off of the old stick and recognize the new opportunities.

In response to a listener's question, Steele specifically addressed how the GOP can win the votes of young people:

Millennials are changing the way we do politics. They deconstruct those old institutions. They break them out into pieces. And so their response to a problem is we can build an app for that.

We can create a universe of people that can generate action and activity around a particular issue without necessarily relying on these old institutions and these old strategies. We can bring something fresh to feeding people, clothing people, employing people. And I think that that's going to be very definitional for both parties. I think is uniquely opportunistic for the Republican Party to grab that energy that was just released in the report, for example, that came out this week from the [College] Republican National Committee - that talks about these words and these terms that are very important to people and how we translate that.

Steele also had advice for Republican candidates running in Democratic areas:

[T]here's a way which I think Republicans in blue states do win, and I always say it: Just be yourself. Our values, our ideas, our principles align with voters when we lay them out for them in an open, honest way, without trying to cherry-pick or make them like us.

You know, Republicans should run in the communities as they find them, not as you want them to be or think they are. And the moment you sort of get past that pretense and that falsehood that, you know, everybody, you know, is with you because they're with the other guy, you can have a conversation about the things that matter. You can have a conversation about the things that matter to people, as opposed to matter to your party.

Virginia is the first post-2012 state where the GOP can test new messaging techniques and improve upon ways in which the Obama campaign capitalized on social media. Whether the Republican ticket in the Old Dominion wins big or loses big, there will be lessons to be learned -- as long as we're willing to pay attention.

And as far as "like it or not"? I like it.

Pew study finds Virginia absentee ballot rejections declined

The Pew Charitable Trusts elections initiative has been crunching the numbers across all 50 states to compare statistics on voter registration rates, voter turnout, and the numbers of absentee and provisional ballots that are accepted or rejected.

In its snapshot of Virginia (published September 19), Pew focused on the change in absentee ballot acceptance rates between 2008 and 2012:

The number of domestic absentee ballots rejected in Virginia declined from 2008 to 2012. Of the approximately 423,000 absentee ballots cast in 2012, 2,278, or 0.5 percent, were rejected. In 2008, the rejection rate among the nearly 550,000 absentee ballots cast was 1.3 percent.

What this suggests is that voters are being more conscientious when filling out their absentee ballots -- making sure that there is a witness signature, for instance, and providing a proper and current address -- and election officials are being more conscientious about examining ballot envelopes when they arrive.

By comparison, the 2012 absentee ballot rejection rate in West Virginia was 0.2 percent (26 out of 13,792 ballots); in Pennsylvania, it was 0.7 percent (1,845 out of 248,561); in North Carolina, it was 1.1 percent (2,237 out of 205,078); and in Michigan, it was 0.6 percent (8,049 out of 1,259,902 absentee ballots returned).

Pew's infographic of Virginia's 2012 voting statistics is here: Virginia-PewSnapshot

(This article was originally posted on Virginia Politics on Demand on October 1, 2013.)

Reflections on an Election in Gabon

Today voters in the Central African country of Gabon will go to the polls to elect a successor to President El-Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba, who died in May at the age of 73.

It is the first time in more than four decades that Omar Bongo will not be on the ballot -- though his son, 50-year-old Ali-Ben Bongo, is seeking the presidency himself, along with 22 other candidates.

The elder Bongo became president in 1967 upon the death of Leon Mba, Gabon's first post-independence head of state. At the time, Gabon's constitution provided for the succession of the presidency through the vice president and Bongo happened to have recently been elevated to the that office, after serving for a decade in a variety of bureaucratic positions. The Gabonese constitution now calls for a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the death or resignation of a president.

In his 42 years in office, Bongo presided over a remarkably stable country, by African standards. It is one of the few sub-Saharan countries that never had a violent change of government, and political unrest was rare in the Bongo years.

Bongo ruled, sometimes harshly, and, for the first 20 years or so, through a one-party state apparatus. When democratic changes began sweeping through Africa in the early 1990s (not coincidentally, following the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of Washington-Moscow machinations in Africa), Bongo saw the writing on the wall and oversaw the transition to a multi-party state.

A canny politician, Bongo understood well the adage, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." He co-opted opposition politicians by giving them cabinet positions and other perks. It's no accident that Gabon is said to have more cabinet officials per capita than any other country in the world. The CIA publication, World Leaders, lists 36 cabinet positions, including four deputy prime ministers and a "Min. of Social Affairs, National Solidarity, & the Protection of Widows & Orphans, in Charge of the Fights Against AIDS." The country's population is 1,514,993 -- you do the math.

In 1998, I was in Gabon during the presidential election and had the opportunity to interview two of the international election monitors who observed the process. The Metro Herald of Alexandria published my interview on March 19, 1999, and here it is:

REFLECTIONS ON AN ELECTION IN GABON

Richard Sincere
Exclusive to The Metro Herald

Last December The Metro Herald’s Richard Sincere went to Gabon, in. Central Africa, to observe that country’s second democratically-conducted presidential election since its new constitution took effect in 1991. In 1993, the incumbent president, El-Hadj Omar Bongo, won reelection with 51 percent of the vote against a field of 11 challengers. In 1998, Bongo was again reelected, this time with nearly 67 percent of the vote in a field of eight candidates.

According to GERDDES-Afrique, an international organization that works for the advancement of democracy in a Africa, “GERDDES-Afrique was pleased to coordinate election observation in Gabon by an experienced group of international monitors from Africa, Europe, and North America. Over 170 observers arrived in the days before the election to see for themselves the functioning of Gabon’s democracy. To this end, they attended campaign rallies sponsored by all the candidates; they spoke with members of the government and with officials of opposition parties; they were briefed by their own countries’ ambassadors stationed in Gabon; they visited polling places, monitored the news media, and listened to the concerns of voters.

“Monitors came to Gabon from West, Central, and Southern Africa and from as far away as Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Observers included ambassadors and other diplomats, jurists, former heads of state, professors of law and political science, business executives, journalists, and political party officials.”

After some time to reflect on the election process, The Metro Herald (TMH) was able to talk to two of the international observers, Canada’s Troy Lanigan and Julian West. They were half of a a team that also included University of Sherbrooke Professor Charlotte Lemieux and former British Columbia legislator Nick Loenen. Following are their responses to The Metro Herald’s questions.

* * *

TMH: Please briefly describe yourself (place of residence, political affiliation, profession, relevant experience).

Lanigan: My background is in political advocacy. I have a degree in political science and economics, have traveled extensively throughout Europe and the former Soviet Bloc. I’ve worked professionally on campaigns and for various organizations in both Canada and the United States for the better part of 12 years. Currently, I reside in Victoria. British Columbia, and am employed full-time by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation by serving as National Communications Director and a spokesman in British Columbia. I also chair the Electoral Change Coalition of British Columbia (ECCO-BC), a multipartisan group of parties, groups, and individuals dedicated to changing the province’s first-past-the-post voting system through a referendum.

West: I live in Ladysmith, British Columbia (on Vancouver Island), where I am organizing chair and Elections BC delegate, Green Party of British Columbia, and Elections Canada delegate, Green Party of Canada. Professionally, I am a mathematician (Ph.D., MIT 1990), and since 1995 instructor at Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, BC, and adjunct professor at the University of Victoria. In addition, I am a founding director of ECCO-BC and author of several documents on electoral reform.

TMH: What were your expectations before arriving in Gabon?

Lanigan: To tell you the truth, I really had no idea . . . Gabon would be hot/humid with a lot of black people speaking French in relatively poor conditions . . . that our job as observers was serious and that we would be trained and prepared to do a job.

West: From the limited information I was able to uncover about the country before the trip, I had the impression that it was sufficiently well-off to qualify as a “middle-income” country, virtually the only one in the whole of Africa which was not classified as “poor.” Perhaps naively, I assumed that this implied a certain level of social and political development as well, particularly having read about “relatively free” elections held there in the 1990s. (I’m not unaware that there were until recently a significant number of socialist countries classified as middle-income or higher—but these days I sort of assume that economic development and political development go hand-in-hand.)

TMH: Were these expectations accurate? if not, why not? (Feel free to elaborate.)

Lanigan: As far as Gabon went, our day trip to Lamberene [where Dr. Albert Schweitzer lived and worked] was the highlight … as far as the “observer” business went I had no idea how unorganized everything would be and even when something was half organized it was all [conducted] in French. If not for the books and manuals [we had received in advance], we would have had absolutely no background or grounding prior to the election.

Having said that, I’m glad we learned quickly to ignore scheduled meetings and took the opportunity to meet various campaign workers, attend rallies, and the like. Those encounters we interesting and valuable.

I should add that we got to see and do everything we imagined possible and that did exceed my expectations.

West: Yes and no. I would say that the general levels of education and social and political awareness among the Gabonese I encountered (admittedly a distorted sample, as it tended to be the sort of people one meets in luxury hotels, opposition radio stations, and so forth) were markedly higher than I expected. People seemed genuinely to know what was up with regard to the state of the country and the government. At the polling stations (more reflective of the general population) there was a frank enthusiasm for the democratic process and an air of seriousness about the whole project. This was refreshing.

On the down side, the general state of infrastructure and access to facilities in general was quite depressing once we left the bord de mer [seaside] in downtown Libreville [the capital city of Gabon]. Likewise, the social infrastructure was weak. I didn’t see the University myself but I had the sense it did not have much social impact on the capital. The media seemed underdeveloped. Perhaps this is what you’d expect in a country of only 1.3 million, but I think it would be desirable to see the emergence of a politically independent newspaper (and radio) rather than ones obsessed with the government and the opposition view of politics.

We saw a great many schools and although these were barren, they were clean, and I at least got the impression that schooling was available throughout the country. I also got the impression that this was true for girls as well as boys, and this is perhaps the most important social-development indicator for Third-World us countries.

TMH: How did you pursue your responsibilities as election observers? (For instance, did you attend political rallies, visit party headquarters, talk to voters, read local newspapers, etc.?)

Lanigan: It was never clear what our “responsibilities” were, so we made a lot of it up as we were going along. We did all these things: visited party headquarters, met candidates, attended rallies, spoke with foreign media. (I didn’t have a lot of one-on-one conversations with locals or read local papers because of language barriers, but our team certainly did.) We even had one of the Bucherons organizers come to our hotel to discuss list irregularities. We had a couple discussions with the Canadian Ambassador related to the election as well. I thought we used our time wisely and took in as much as we could.

West: We attended four rallies, although they were uniformly so late in starting that we really only stayed for the speeches at one. These were for the candidates Mba Abessole, Kombila, and Bongo. There was a fourth, but it was sparsely attended and we did not stay long. Following the Abessole rally, which was well attended and for which we were able to observe the entire rally from beginning to end, we were invited to visit the opposition radio station, Radio Soleil, which was being used as a party headquarters for the RNB.

I bought essentially every newspaper I could lay my hands on. Although I didn’t have time to read them all, I did go through all the headlines and read a number of the more relevant articles. I feel I got a general sense of the state of the media, which reminded me strongly of state-controlled publications I had seen elsewhere, such as the China Daily and the former Daily News in Hungary.

I wish I had been able to talk with more voters, but we did encounter quite a lot at the polls, and were able to talk briefly with cab drivers, hotel waiters, etc.

TMH: In your observations, did it appear that all candidates were able to put their case to the voters in a reasonably free and fair fashion?

Lanigan: In one sense yes. We attended a large Abessole rally in which there were military present. They were very friendly, the point of joking with the crowd and rally organizers. There was no intimidation by the military, only the intention to keep the event orderly. There was no restriction on materials distributed or what was said.

In another sense no. There is no question that the incumbent used the power of government to his advantage. On the first day we were there we heard a bunch of sirens and came out of the market to see what was up. It was the state police clearing the street to escort a bus load of Bongo supporters—just one of several examples including Bongo posters exclusively on government buildings, and money coming out the you-know-what, etc.

At one opposition rally they were complaining that the election commission had denied them a rally down by the water front even though Bongo was holding a rally in the same location.

So yes, there was openness, we saw several rallies and advertisements to suggest there was no harassment or intimidation but at the same time opponents of Bongo had the deck stacked against them.

West: Yes. I have no doubts at all about this aspect of the election. In fact, I would say that with regard to equal access to the electorate, this election far exceeded anything I have ever witnessed in Canada or the United States.

TMH: Did you observe any attempts by the government to inhibit or obstruct participation by political activists of an party? Did you see any examples of police or army intimidation of voters or activists?

Lanigan: Yes, I believe there was intimidation at voting stations. In areas of low support for Bongo, there would be a disproportionate amount of military (riot gear, gas canisters, the whole nine yards). One of these stations didn’t get around to opening until past 1:00PM [and] impatient voters left. Four hundred people registered to vote and only four ballots in the box! By “intimidation” it is not necessary to bust heads. We verified in conversation with people that they were intimidated by the military presence. In a couple of places I too was uncomfortable. Julian has more specifics on the different types of military present in different areas, which is important to understanding “intimidation.”

West: I saw a very heavy army presence at the polling station in Lalala which was the focus of an extended discussion in the British [observer team’s post-election] report. Late in the afternoon, I witnessed several ballot boxes containing fewer than 10 ballots from an electoral roll of 500, and one which was entirely empty. I put this down to the army presence—the ballot is not secret if yours is the only one in the box, so no one wants to cast one of the first ballots. In Canada, when a box contains few ballots it is mixed with another box before the count, to preserve the secrecy of the vote. I witnessed that this was not the case in Gabon—boxes were opened and counted in public with as few as half-a-dozen ballots in them. It would have been an easy matter to track which names were crossed off the list as having voted, and therefore to disprove a voter’s claim that he or she had voted a certain way.

The British team observed that another reason for the low turnout at this location was that the station had been moved with inadequate notice to the electors (likely in violation of the election law).

That both these things took place in a known opposition stronghold is a real cause for concern. After the close of polls, we encountered an angry mob who pointed to the situation in Lalala as evidence that the count was being rigged, conducted behind closed doors by army troops rather than openly. Half an hour later, we saw a truckload of riot troops headed south towards Lalala.

TMH: On election day itself did the polling stations operate at or below your expectations? Did it seem that the voter lists were accurate? Were any voters turned away from the polls without having an opportunity to vote? Did you see any voters attempt to vote more than once?

Lanigan: For the most part the polling stations exceeded my expectations I was really struck by the earnest and sincere conduct of the poll officials. Although some arguments broke out over rules and duties of various actors (especially party scrutineers) that was in my view more a function of education and not ill intent.

Yes, there was one outrageous example of a poll president refusing to allow a registered voter to vote because the man looked like he was from Mali. The military did not intervene even though a fight very nearly broke out. We reported the incident immediately. The man should not have been refused a vote. Also, several people were turned away because they were not on the list, they told us the election commission said it was not necessary to re-register if you were on the list in 1993. Apparently everyone had to reregister.

No one I saw attempted to vote more than once.

I have no idea if the voters’ lists were accurate. The opposition parties don’t think so. I really don’t know how we could know this despite our requirement of comparing lists posted outside to the lists held inside by the poll president.

West: In Libreville, I mostly saw disorder, with many stations which had not opened by late morning.

We heard numerous complaints about “doublants” and names missing from the electoral rolls. A person who had registered might be missing from the rolls, or missing a voter’s card, or both. One voter showed us two voting cards which he claimed were both issued to him, one under his French name and one under his African name. We also met polling-station officials who had similar documentary evidence of “doublants.” However, I am generally inclined to accept that this was due to bookkeeping errors rather than fraud. I say this for two reasons.

First, the fact that the recommendations of the advance observer teams that more care be taken around electors lists were not followed—this practically guaranteed that errors would occur. Second, the number of inaccuracies in the lists was not astonishing by Canadian standards—errors of this kind will simply occur when managing a database of hundreds of thousands of voters.

TMH: Were you able to observe the transport of ballot boxes from polling places to the electoral commission? Did they seem to be handled in a secure fashion? Were there any opportunities for fraud or mismanagement at this stage of the process?

Lanigan: No, I did not see the transport of boxes. We were al caught in a small riot immediately after some polls closed. A group of opposition supporters furious that some names were not on a list turned on us. (It frankly seemed to have more to do with a hatred of Bongo than it did any process irregularity. They got even angrier when they realized we didn’t speak French.) Anyway, we finally got back to the car when they surrounded it and started shaking it. To make a long story short, at that point in the evening we had things other than the transport of boxes on our minds.

However, the counts we did see appeared very genuine. We have asked the Ambassador to track down final poll results and we will verify against our own records before submitting our report.

West: No. I was not able to observe this. This is my major concern about the electoral process. Although I believe the campaign was fair and the vote was free, I have no personal evidence to inspire confidence in the count.

I was able to witness the count of half-a-dozen boxes. However, unless I can cross-check the numbers I witnessed with a published list, I have no way of knowing that the vote-totals were not simply fabricated.

I have asked the Canadian ambassador to help me obtain this list, but I have not had a response. In addition to the detailed poll-by-poll list, I would also need some reliable assurance that most of the ballots were dealt with in the way I observed—an open count subject to public scrutiny. If, on the other hand, most were counted behind closed doors, then I can say nothing about the fairness of the election. The exemplary openness and access to media would be beside the point.

TMH: Did you observe any irregularities or mismanagement that might have had an effect on the outcome of the election?

Lanigan: Yes, excessive military presence in what appeared to be select polling areas, either incompetent or corrupted election officials opening the polls at 1:30 in the afternoon (voters left).

West: See my earlier comments about rural areas where turnout was very high (probably above Canadian levels of 65-70 percent) contrasted with urban, opposition-dominated areas where turnout approached zero. Whether this was intimidation, fraud, or mismanagement, it surely had an effect.

TMH: if you were to make suggestions for improving the electoral process in Gabon, what would they be? (Please be as specific as possible.)

Lanigan: Work on ways to build public confidence surrounding the voters list. Just about everyone we spoke to had very little faith in it. Relax on the military already . . . Good question, see what the others say, and I’ll think some more on it.

West: Honestly, I endorse all the recommendations made by the advance team of observers. I was able to see that many of these were not followed, to the overall detriment of the process.

TMH: Would you be willing to serve as an election observer again, in Gabon or in any other country?

Lanigan: Absolutely . . . do you know of any other opportunities in Africa or elsewhere?

West: With the greatest pleasure, in any other country. (Well, at this point perhaps not in Yemen, or maybe Congo. But pretty well any other country.)

TMH: Do you have any other comments on your experience during the Gabonese presidential election?

Lanigan: Yes, “crab facie” is fantastic local dish. I don’t understand why everything is so expensive, even for the locals. Their electoral system (French run-off)—despite some of the pitfalls of process—is far more democratic than Canada’s. Thank you for this opportunity of a lifetime. 1 will never forget it.

West: I once spent four months in Hungary as an undergraduate student. After the program we were asked to write down some comments for the benefit of future participants. Any words I could find fell short of what I wanted to say, so I probably never completed the form at all. One of my buddies, David Wagner (now an associate professor at the University of Waterloo), simply wrote: “an incredible experience.” This became the quotation used on all the publicity posters for the program for the next decade.

Here is my comment on Gabon: “an incredible experience.”

The three photos featured above were taken by me and appeared in The Metro Herald in 1999, in black-and-white. The captions have been modified to reflect the year they were shot.

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Fifth District Recount Continues

The recount for the Fifth Congressional District of Virginia (known by its judicial name of Goode v. Perriello) has been continuing today at the Albemarle County Circuit Court in Charlottesville.

The second phase began at approximately 9:10 a.m. when the recount court convened to accept the paperwork from the 22 counties and cities in the district. (In each jurisdiction, recount officials met yesterday to review tally tapes from DRE -- electronic -- voting machines, to re-feed optical and digital scan ballots through their respective machines, and to hand-count certain ballots.)

Ten minutes later, the three judges -- Judge Tim Sanner from Albemarle County, Judge Gary A. Hicks from Henrico County, and Judge Jane Roush from Fairfax County -- recessed to allow five recount teams to review the materials.

Each team was made up of one member from the State Board of Elections, one member from a state-retained accounting firm, and one representative of each of the parties involved in the recount.

Three "floor teams" reviewed the materials first. If any problems -- even something as seemingly unimportant as a missing label on an envelope -- were encountered, the floor team turned over the materials to an "appeals team" for review. (The appeals team included James Alcorn of the SBE and lawyers from the Perriello and Goode campaigns.) Generally, once the appeals team passed on a county or city's report, it was then turned over to the "summary team," which is adding up the numbers, creating a spreadsheet, and readying the results to turn over to the judges' panel.

If, however, the appeals team is unable to resolve an issue, that matter is sent to the judges for review and decision. As of the time I had left the courthouse, nothing had been sent to the judges.

There may be a problem from at least one jurisdiction, however: There is a discrepancy in the Central Absentee Precinct of Halifax County. Because I do not fully understand the issue, I would rather not describe it here. I will say that it might be as simple as a clerical error or it could be something more serious.

Keeping all that in mind, it appears that the paperwork from most of the counties and cities in the Fifth District has been in good order. This is due to the attentiveness and competence of the election officials chosen by the two parties to act as recount officials in their home jurisdictions.

Yesterday in Charlottesville we began the recount at about 9:00 a.m. and finished by 3:35 p.m. It could have lasted much longer -- and, early in the morning, before the teams of recounters got into an efficient rhythm, it looked like we might be working until 6:00 o'clock or later -- but it didn't. Both recount officials and observers were diligent, asked intelligent questions when necessary, and took their roles seriously.

You can see some video reports on the Charlottesville recount at the NBC29 web site.

From what I was able to see by the time I left the courthouse at 2:15 p.m., there will not be a sufficient number of votes shifting to make a difference in the ultimate winner of the race. For myself, however, I am far more interested in the process -- which to many people might be akin to watching paint drying or grass growing, but which I find fascinating -- than in the outcome.

By the way, for those who might have participated in the recount (whether candidates Perriello and Goode, the many attorneys, SBE officials, local election workers, or observers from the campaign), I have created a few mementos of the occasion that can be found at CafePress, here. Now you can proudly proclaim: "I survived the 2008 Fifth Congressional District recount in Virginia!" on a ceramic travel mug, teddy bear, or t-shirt.

I will be discussing the recount tomorrow morning on Joe Thomas' program on radio station WCHV-AM. Joe, who was a recount observer both yesterday and today, invited me to talk about the process during the 8:00 o'clock a.m. hour. WCHV is found at 1260 on the AM dial. (Do they still say it that way?)

Update: As expected, Democrat Tom Perriello was declared the winner over incumbent Republican Virgil Goode. The margin of victory was 727 votes. The total number of votes for Perriello was 158,810 while the number of votes for Goode was 158,083.

Election Day 2008 Photoblog and Write-In Report

Perhaps the most surprising result from Charlottesville's precinct reports this year is that there were no write-in votes for Waldo Jaquith. Is the ur-blogger losing his touch with the hometown electorate?

This lacuna may be no accident. The overall write-in totals were small, indicating that voters took this election very seriously with regard to all three races on the ballot. There were 71 write-ins for President, including 26 for Ron Paul, 12 for Hillary Clinton, and one for certified write-in candidate Brian Moore. Others receiving write-in votes for President included Joe Schriner (3 votes), Michael Bloomberg, Henry Clay, Frank D. Roosevelt, Marcy Kaptur, Colin Powell, Mitt Romney, Bill Richardson, Leslie Dishannon, Kerry Dooley, John L'Etoile, R. D. Patrick Mahoney, Scott Elmer Moeller, John Paul, Joe Schneider, Optimus Prime, and McCain But Never Palin.

The candidates who had ballot status received these votes in Charlottesville (all unofficial totals): Barack Obama (15,537); John McCain (4,057); Chuck Baldwin (26); Bob Barr (86); Cynthia McKinney (17); and Ralph Nader (61).

In the U.S. Senate race, which was won by former Governor Mark Warner, someone cast a write-in vote for "MARKWARNER" (one word, all caps). Warner edged out his chief rival, former Governor Jim Gilmore, by 16,313 to 2,907. Glenda Gail Parker received 105 votes, and Libertarian Bill Redpath got 143.

Other write-ins in the Senate race in Charlottesville were John Galt (who is John Galt?), Congressman Ron Paul, Delegate Bob Marshall, Krishna Kishore, Barack Obama, Larry Joseph Sabato, David Bartok, Ryan Coughlin, Sahara Ghafari, Duncan Baker II, Al Lopez Jr., Diane Garrett Moeller, Matt Toner, Sean Shanks (3 votes), Prolife, Mary Smith, Greg Moritz, Michael Francis Moore, Geri Wilkins, and the initials "JP" and "W." There were 31 write-in votes in this race.

The race for Fifth District member of the U.S. House of Representatives currently stands at a dead heat, but Tom Periello beat incumbent Virgil Goode handily in Charlottesville: 15,754 votes for the Democrat to 3,715 votes for the Republican. (Again, all these totals remain unofficial until after the Electoral Board completes its canvass and the State Board of Elections certifies the vote.)

There were 39 write-in votes for this race in Charlottesville, with John Galt making a return appearance, as well as musicians Jerry Garcia, Andre Young AKA Dr. Dre, and Soulja Boy. Two-time congressional candidate Al Weed received two votes. Others receiving write-in votes were UVA President John Casteen, former UVA basketball coach Pete Gillen, and 2007 Libertarian state senate candidate Arin Sime.

Odd votes in this race included Amethyst Initiative, which refers either to a drag queen performing at Club 216 or the group of college presidents seeking a national debate about the drinking age, and the author of Das Kapital, Karl Marx, as well as perennial write-in candidate Mickey Mouse.

Additional names on the write-in list were Rear Admiral James J. Casey USN (ret), Antoinette Garza, John Devor, Brian Bristow, Tim Lewis, John Norton Moore, Oliver Kuttner, Brice McKeever, Geoffrey MacDonald, Erich Forrest Moeller, Elizabeth Boyd, Fred Schneider, and Eddie Smith.

Someone named William Wilder was written in for all three offices (president, senator, and congressman). Another voter took the time to write in "none of the above" in all three races. (The handwriting matched each time.) Several blank write-in votes were recorded, as well as variations like "none" and "none of them."

Although not all the figures have been analyzed, it appears that Charlottesville voters chose at a ratio of better than 3 to 1 to use the eSlate electronic voting device instead of the paper ballot fed through the eScan digital scanner. Even when lines for the eSlate were much longer and voting a paper ballot would have speeded the process for them, voters chose to cast their ballot on the DRE. I plan to write about this live Election Day experiment, which has been fascinating from the moment we decided to purchase the Hart Intercivic eScan equipment to supplement our eSlates, which we have used in Charlottesville in every election since May 2002.

I took quite a few photographs around Charlottesville during the course of the day. There were musicians at several precincts, who entertained voters as they stood in line waiting to reach the voting booth. Here are some scenes from Election Day 2008:

Recreation Precinct eSlate voting machines await voters minutes before the polls opened at 6:00 a.m.

Indicators of the choice of voting methods available to Charlottesville electors

The first wave of voters arrives at Jefferson Park Precinct at 6:00 a.m.

Our hardworking election officials at Jefferson Park Precinct

Voters line up in Recreation Precinct

Reporter Jennifer Black prepares to go on the air for WCAV-TV

Local headquarters of future President Barack Obama

A sentiment expressed not just on the First Amendment Chalkboard, but by write-in voters, too

Jazz trumpeter John D'earth and his band entertained voters at Recreation Precinct

A voter arrives at Recreation Precinct

Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris looks happy in anticipation of a big victory

The Charlottesville Tomorrow crew outside Walker Precinct

Feed the pig, feed the pig

Outside Venable Precinct, another band of merry musicians serenades waiting voters

NBC29 reporter Claire O'Brien interviews a political activist outside Venable Precinct

Hmm ... I guess not ...

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