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Rick Scott

Voter Fraud & Florida, Again

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After a contentious recount, Bill Nelson has conceded the senate race to Rick Scott. Before the recount, both President Trump and Rick Scott said, without evidence, that the election had been tainted with widespread fraud. Trump even advanced the bizarre claim of voters changing clothes in their cars to vote again.  As this is being written, the election has come to an end without any evidence of voter fraud or other electoral misdeeds. To be fair, there were problems in some counties—especially Broward. There were also problems with ballot design, but this did not seem to favor any particular candidate. Good ballot design is difficult, but it should be something that enjoys bipartisan support—since such design flaws would generally seem to provide no advantage to either side. Rather importantly, as has long been the case, felons were not permitted to vote—thus disenfranchising about 1.5 million citizens.  This race-driven policy has been, in part, undone in this past election, which might change elections to come. But, let us return to the allegations of fraud.

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Given that there has been no evidence of fraud or other illegalities, it might be wondered why Trump and Scott pushed their lies so hard on the national stage. One obvious reason is that the untrue claim of voter fraud has been a stock talking point for the Republicans for a long time. As such, it makes sense that Trump and Scott would parrot this party line—it has become something Republicans just seem to say. Interestingly, both Trump and Scott made these accusations in the face of their own victories, so one could say that Trump and Scott said they won fraudulent elections. In the case of Trump, he was enraged that he had been thrashed in the popular vote while winning by the electoral college (something he had railed against in the past).

It should be noted that the Democrats have a narrative of voter suppression which they present at least as often as Republicans cry out about voter fraud. But, there is a difference: voter fraud is infinitesimal while voter suppression has a meaningful impact on elections.  In the case of Scott, he was clearly worried that he might lose, which leads to a second likely reason.

Second, Scott had an excellent practical reason to raise the specter of fraud: there was a chance that he might lose the election. Presumably he hoped that this would benefit him in the realm of public opinion or otherwise yield some advantage in achieving victory—perhaps by ending the vote counting early. To be fair to Scott, Democrats bring up voter suppression when they are losing (or have lost). But, as noted before, Scott and Trump have never been able to provide evidence of voter fraud, but there is clear evidence of voter suppression. The most obvious examples in Florida are the racist law excluding felons from voting and Scott’s Kafkaesque process for restoring voting rights. Scott has openly claimed the process is arbitrary and the available information shows that Scott favored restoring voting rights to whites and Republicans.  Florida has about 1.5 million felons who could vote, so Scott’s control over the restoration voting rights gave him considerable power over elections. As such, while fraud did not cost him the election, his control over felon’s voting rights helped him achieve victory.

Third, the deceitful narrative of fraud is used to “justify” various efforts aimed at voter suppression. By bringing up claims of voter fraud before a national audience, Trump and Scott can help fuel voter suppression across the country. The fact that they provide no evidence seems to be irrelevant, those that fear voter fraud are clearly motivated by emotion rather than evidence. When the Republicans try to suppress votes in the future, they can refer to the fraud that never was in Florida to help get laws passed and “justify” them to the public. This leads to the point of why crying fraud matters.

For those who believe that citizens should be able to freely exercise their just right to vote, using the specter of voter fraud to justify the suppression of voters would clearly be wrong. After all, it is a lie used to justify robbing citizens of a fundamental democratic right. In fact, the right to vote is the defining right of a democracy. There is also the obvious moral problem with lying.

Another problem is that such false claims can undermine the faith of citizens in the election system and hence democracy itself. This can drive down participation—people who think that their vote will not be counted or will be washed away in a tide of fraud might be less inclined to vote. The United States already has low voter participation, in part because the process is often made difficult by various laws and, of course, by the inefficiency and disorder of many elections. Given the available technology, the fact that elections are run so badly would suggest that this is a feature and not a bug. The attack on voting can also be used to pave the way towards non-democratic systems as people lose faith in the democratic process.

It might be objected that cries of voter suppression are also damaging. On the one hand, it could be argued that such accusations could lower turnout and undermine faith in the system. On the other hand, voter suppression occurs and the efforts to counter voter suppression aim at encouraging people to vote and making it easier for legitimate voters to vote. As such, when people bring up voter suppression honestly and oppose it, they are helping democracy and not harming it.

It can also be objected that voter suppression is a liberal myth. However, the evidence for voter suppression is quite strong. The American Bar Association offers a run through of various voter ID laws, noting their impact. In terms of hard data on the impact of laws, researchers at Tufts and Harvard are working on a system to sort this matter out. Georgia, where the person in charge of the electoral process just won the governor’s race, is a paradigm example of voter suppression. And, I have often noted, the laws against felons voting are intended to suppress African-American voters and do so quite effectively. My home state of Maine allows felons who are still in prison to vote. While I like to think of my home state as enlightened, it is also worth noting that Maine did not have a minority population to suppress.

There are also the facts that the laws that are supposed to be aimed at voter fraud are aimed at something that rarely happens and that they do not really address the fraud that does occur. As such, one has to infer that either the Republicans are stupidly and badly trying to stop a problem that is not really a problem with methods that do not work or they are trying to suppress Democratic voters. The best explanation seems clear.

Naturally, I am open to evidence and arguments against my views. If there is strong objective evidence of significant voter fraud and strong objective evidence that the methods used to address it are effective, then I will change my position. Also, if there is strong objective evidence that voter suppression is a myth and that there are no unreasonable barriers to voting, then I will change my position on voter suppression.

 

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Voter Fraud in Florida?

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Florida struggles with elections like an alligator struggles to swallow a moose. This was established in 2000 and re-affirmed with a vengeance in 2018. As this is being written, the race between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson has gone into a recount. To make matters even more theatrical, Rick Scott has, without evidence, accused Nelson of trying to commit fraud. Trump and his Grima Wormtongue Lindsey Graham have also been, also without evidence, making accusations of voter fraud.

At last, proof of voter fraud!

To be fair to those worried about voting shenanigans in Florida, Broward Country (the epicenter of the controversy) has a long history of election issues, including an incident in 2012 in which 1,000 uncounted ballots were found a week after the election.  In another incident in 2004, 58,000 mail-in ballots were not sent to voters who requested them; although the matter was eventually addressed. As such, voters are right to be worried about whether their votes will be properly counted or not. But, the situation in Broward seems to be more a matter of incompetence as opposed to a brilliant Machiavellian plot to rob Scott of the election. At the time I am writing this, no evidence of fraud has appeared—but that could change.

While I certainly hope Rick Scott loses, I believe in American democracy and hold that a legitimate election requires two conditions be met. First, that every citizen has the opportunity to vote and that the vote is properly counted. As such, I oppose voter suppression and disenfranchising felons (although I do support disenfranchising those guilty of treason). I am also obviously for competently run elections. The denial of the right to vote is an attack on the foundation of democracy and destroys political legitimacy, as I have argued in other essays. Second, that those who are not legitimate voters are not permitted to vote. As such, I am obviously opposed to voter fraud. However, as I have argued elsewhere, the methods used to combat fraud must be directed at actual fraud, must be effective against fraud and must not deny legitimate voters their right to vote. Based on the best available evidence, voter fraud is like the harms of excessive exercise—it does occur but is incredibly rare. In contrast, efforts to suppress and deter voting are like obesity—a real and prevalent problem. As such, I worry far more about voter suppression than fraud—but I do worry about both.

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The situation in Broward, as of this writing, does not seem to involve any fraud on the part of voters. However, the history of this county and the current situation both provide grounds for worry. As such, I have no opposition to an objective investigation of the counting of votes to ensure that there are no shenanigans. While I hope Scott loses, I do not want this loss to come through voter suppression or fraud. While a utilitarian argument could be made against my view, I would rather Scott win a completely aboveboard (no suppression and no fraud) election than lose due to fraud committed against him. I do, of course, think that Scott has, as governor,  been suppressing voters (the most offensive and egregious example is his arbitrary and  Kafkaesque tribunal for restoring voting rights to felons). As such, there would be a certain poetic injustice in his finding his suppression efforts defeated by fraud. One could make the argument that if the Republicans are already engaged in voter suppression, gerrymandering and other shenanigans, then the Democrats would be justified in engaging in their own shenanigans. The Republicans cannot, obviously enough, argue for any principles about fair elections and the will of the people—they do all they can to rig the elections in their favor. To use an analogy, the Republicans are cheating at cards and crying because they might lose despite the cheating and claiming this is because the other person is cheating.

The moral problem is, of course, that fighting suppression with fraud would derange the electoral system even more—though, as noted above, a utilitarian argument could be made in favor of using morally problematic means to achieve the desired consequences. One could also argue that without voter suppression in Florida, Scott and other Republicans would almost certainly have lost—there are about 1.5 million voters who have been disenfranchised for being felons and, as the Republicans know, they would tend to vote for Democrats if they could vote. As such, whatever the Democrats might be doing, they would at worst merely be making the game “fair” by offsetting the voter suppression with voter shenanigans. While this does have some appeal, it is also morally problematic—it is not known for sure how those votes would have been cast, so “voting” for them through fraud would not be counting their votes. The morally correct solution is, obviously enough, to prevent both suppression and fraud.

From a legal standpoint, Scott has the clear advantage in this situation: voter suppression is, in general, perfectly legal. For example, while disenfranchising felons was developed as a weapon against black suffrage by white supremacists in response to the 15th Amendment it is still the law in Florida and some other states. Likewise for other shenanigans like gerrymandering, voter ID laws, restricting polling locations and days and so on. It, of course, helps that the Republicans, in general, write the laws that make these legal.  In contrast, voter fraud and election fraud are (and should be) illegal. So, if Scott can find evidence of voter or election fraud in Broward, he can use this to his advantage. This leads to the matter of why he is already crying fraud without any evidence.

One obvious explanation is that this is a stock talking point for the Republican party and is used as a justification for voter suppression. By crying fraud and scaring people, he builds support for policies and laws that suppress voters. Another explanation is that he is hoping to turn public opinion in his favor as part of a strategy to deal with the possibility that he lost the vote. If he can cast enough doubt on the election, he could win in the courts what he could not win at the ballot box. Unfortunately, the history of Broward does lend his accusations a degree of credence. But, by making accusations without evidence, he is also damaging democracy and potentially undermining the already weak faith in the electoral system in America.

 

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Performance Based Funding

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Florida A&M University from State Capitol, Tal...

As a professor at Florida A&M University, I am rather familiar with performance based funding in higher education. While performance based funding is being considered or applied in numerous states, I will focus on my adopted state of Florida (it is also present in my home state of Maine).

On the face of it, performance based funding can sound like a good idea: state universities are funded based on performance, so that good performance is rewarded and poor performance is not (or punished). As a competitive athlete (though less so with each passing year), I am accustomed to a similar model in running: those who run better at races get rewarded and those who run poorly typically go home with nothing (other than the usual race t-shirt and perhaps some bagel chunks). This model seems fair—at least in sports. Whether or not it is right or sensible to apply it to education funding is another matter.

One obvious point of concern is whether or not the standards used to judge performance are fair and reasonable. In Florida, the main standards include the percentage of graduates who have jobs, the average wages of those graduates, the cost of getting the degree, the graduation rate within six years, the number of students getting STEM degrees (STEM is hot now), and some other factors.

On the face of it, some of these standards are reasonable. After all, a university would seem to be performing well to the degree that the students are graduating after paying a reasonable cost and getting well-paying jobs. This, of course, assumes that a primary function of a university is to create job-fillers for the job creators (and some job creators). In the past, the main factors for determining funding included such things as the size of the student population and what resources would be needed to provide quality education. Universities were also valued because they educated people and prepared people to be citizens of a democratic state. But, now that America appears to be an oligarchy, these values might be obsolete.

Another point of concern is that the competitive system in Florida, like most competitive systems, means that there must be losers. To be specific, Florida has nine state universities competing in regards to performance based funding. The bottom three schools will lose roughly 1% of their funding while the top six will receive more money. This means that no matter how well the nine schools are doing, three of them will always be losers.

This might be seen as reasonable or even good: after all, competition (as noted above) means that there will be winners and losers. This can be seen as a good thing because, it might be argued, the schools will be competing with each other to improve and thus all will get better—even the losers. This, obviously enough, seems to bring a competitive market approach (or Darwinian selection) to education.

The obvious question is whether or not this is a proper approach to higher education. The idea of public universities fighting over limited funding certainly seems harsh—rather like parents making their nine children fight over which six gets extra food and which three will be hungry. Presumably just as responsible parents would not want some of their children to go hungry because they could not beat their siblings, the state should also not want to deprive universities of funding because they could not beat their fellows.

It might be contended that just as children could be expected to battle for food in times of scarcity, universities should do the same. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures and not everyone can thrive. Besides, the competition will make everyone stronger.

It is true that higher education faces a scarcity of funding—in Florida, the past four years under Rick Scott and a Republican legislature have seen a 41% cut in funding. Other states have fared even worse. While some scarcity was due to the economic meltdown inflicted by the financial sector, the scarcity is also due to conscious choice in regards to taxing and spending. So, going with the analogy, the parents have cut the food supply and now want the children to battle to see who gets a larger slice of what is left. Will this battle make the schools stronger?

Given the above, a rather important point of concern is whether or not such performance based funding actually works. That is, does it actually achieve the professed goal of increasing performance?

Since I serve on various relevant committees, I can say that my university is very concerned about this funding and great effort is being made to try to keep the school out of the bottom three. This is the same sort of motivation that the threat of having one’s food cut provides—the motivation of fear. While this sort of scenario might appeal to those who idealize the competitive model of natural selection, one obvious consequence is that the schools that fall into the bottom three will lose money and hence become even less able to compete. To use the food analogy, the children that lose the competition in the first round will have less food and thus be weaker for the next battle and so on. So, while “going hungry” might be said to motivate, being hungry also weakens. So, if the true goal is to weaken the bottom three schools (and perhaps ultimately destroy them), this would work quite well. If the goal is to improve education, things might be rather different.

It might be countered that the performance based funding is justified because, despite my argument, it will work. While academics are often accused of not being “practical” or in “the real world”, we do tend to do a reasonably good at figuring out whether or not something will work. After all, studying things and analyzing them is sort of what we do. In contrast, politicians seem to be more inclined to operate in “realities” of their own ideologies.

David Tandberg of Florida State University and Nicholas W. Hillman of University of Wisconsin-Madison recently published a study assessing the effectiveness of performance based funding. They concluded that performance based funding “more often than not” failed to effect the completion of degrees. Of considerable concern is that when it did have an effect it tended to lower graduation rates. Assuming this study is accurate, performance based funding (at least as implemented) is ineffective at best and likely to actually negatively impact the professed goals.

It should be noted that Florida State University is very safely in the top six schools, so Tandberg is presumably not motivated by worries that FSU will fall to the bottom. The study, can, of course, be challenged on the usual grounds for critically assessing a study—but mere accusations that professors must be biased or that academics are incompetent hold no water.

Since I am a professor at Florida A&M University, I might also be accused of bias here.  FAMU is an HBCU (one of the historically black colleges and universities) and has long had a mission of providing educational opportunities to students who have faced severe disadvantages. While overt racism is largely a thing of the past, FAMU students rather often face serious economic and preparatory challenges (thanks largely to poverty and segregation) that students from other backgrounds do not face. Some of my best students face the serious challenge of balancing part or even full-time work with their academic lives and this can be very challenging indeed. Because of this, students often take longer to graduate than students at other state universities—especially those whose students tend to come from more affluent families. These economic disparities also impact the chances of students getting jobs when they graduate as well as affecting the salary paid in such jobs. Roughly put, the effects of long-standing racism in America still remain and impact my university. While FAMU is working hard to meet the performance standards, we are struggling against factors that do not impact other schools—which means that our performance in regards to these chosen standards might be seen as lacking.

As might be imagined, some will claim that the impact of past racism is a thing of the past and that FAMU should be able to compete just fine against the other schools. This would be ignoring the reality of the situation in America.

Performance based funding of the sort that currently exists fails to achieve its professed goals and is proving harmful to higher education and students. As such, it is a bad idea. Sadly, it is the reality.

 

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DePARCCing

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Official photo of Florida Governor Rick Scott
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While education has always been a matter for politics, the United States has seen an ever increasing politicization of education. One reason for this was the financial meltdown—with less revenue the states and federal government had to make cuts. As usual, education was a target of opportunity for such cuts. Another reason is that the education system is now regarded as an exploitable resource with excellent opportunities for money-making. Making the system ripe for harvest involved a concerted effort to demonize educators and the education system. It also involved a concerted push for assessment and standardization. The assessment that is being advanced is the sort that is provided by well-paid contractors, such as standardized tests. The standardization, in addition to the tests, includes having a standard curriculum to make it easy for the private sector to monetize education.  This was all done under the guise of reform.

Florida’s former governor Jeb Bush helped bring about the Common Core State Standards for the public education system, so it is somewhat ironic that current Florida governor Rick Scott wants to remove Florida from this system.

The governor has made it clear that he wants Florida to ditch the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). He is not, of course, abandoning assessment—that is a lucrative business for private contractors. As such, his plan is to have “competitive bidding” to determine the new assessment method. Naturally, the schools will not be allowed to create their own assessment—money is too precious to waste on public schools when it could go instead to private sector contractors.

Speaking of money, Florida had been selected to be the “fiscal agent” for PARCC, but Scott informed the Education Secretary of the United States that Florida would no longer have ties to PARCC. It might be wondered why the governor would pass up the opportunity to be a fiscal agent. Fortunately, the answer is rather straightforward: a large part of Scott’s base is made up of Tea Party members. Apparently, the Tea Party membership believes that the Common Core and PARCC are federal impositions. The Tea Party (thanks to anti-government rhetoric put forth by certain conservative pundits and, ironically, some conservative politicians) tends to be against the federal government (although generally not against government programs like Medicare). As such, they are against both Common Core and PARCC.

One rather obvious problem with the claim that Florida should bail because of the federal involvement is the fact that the Common Core was developed by the National Governors Association, not the federal government. That is, the states developed the core and this, oddly enough, should match up with the Tea Party values. I am not sure if the Tea Party (and perhaps Rick Scott) are confused in this matter or not. In any case, Scott needs the Tea Party support to get re-elected and hence he is ditching PARCC and the Common Core in hopes of keeping their votes. This has led to something of a conflict in the Republican Party. Some Republicans, like Jeb Bush, have been strongly backing the Common Core and certainly want the states to adopt it. However, if the Tea Party ire at Common Core and PARCC spreads, there might be a change in this support.

Oddly enough, I am also suspicious of the Common Core and PARRC. However, this is not due to a fear of the federal government (other than the NSA and drones). Rather, it is because of concerns with the academic impact of Common Core and PARRC. Ironically, I might well find myself allied with the Tea Party on some aspects of this matter.

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Stealing the Vote

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English: Rep. James Moran's (D-VA 8th)Congress...
English: Rep. James Moran’s (D-VA 8th)Congressional Portrait. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Patrick Moran, the son of Democratic Representative Jim Moran, was “stung” by a Project Veritas “operative.” The “operative” attempted to talk Moran into a scheme that would amount to voter fraud. Moran eventually said he would “look into it.” As might be imagined, this is being trumpeted as evidence of a conspiracy on the part of Democrats to commit voter fraud. Moran claims that he thought the “operative” was mentally unstable and was just humoring him. However, Moran resigned from his position in his father’s organization.

While Moran should have simply rejected the offer, it is understandable that he would humor someone. After all, people often try to be agreeable-especially when they think the person they are interacting with is unstable.  In my own case, I have spoken with unstable people who have suggested odd things (such as using philosophy to defend the earth against aliens) and I have sometimes actually said “I’ll look into that” when, of course, I was merely humoring someone who might suffer emotional damage from any other response.

While the police are investigating the matter, there is a rather reasonable question as to whether or not he actually did anything wrong (or illegal). In terms of wrong doing, the main question is whether or not Moran was seriously considering the plan and intended to engage in such a wrongful act.   As such, one important question is whether or not there is any evidence that Moran was in the process of acting on his alleged agreement to engage in this action. If he was merely humoring someone he regarded as unstable, then such an “agreement” would hardly constitute a moral misdeed (except insofar as he did not put a stop to someone else suggesting wrongdoing).

Moran was right to resign. After all, politics is a harsh business and anyone who gets caught on tape saying something this bad should remove themselves from the political realm until they can either learn to remain silent or spin things better. Naturally, if Moran actually intended to engage in this wrongful activity, then he should be punished appropriately. Attacking the integrity of the vote is an assault on the foundation of the democratic state.

Continuing with the subject of attacking the integrity of the vote, Doug brought to my attention the fact that hoax letters are being sent to white, registered Republicans who are regular voters in my adopted state of Florida. These letters question the citizenship of the recipient and also ask for personal information such as social security number and drivers license number. While the citizenship questioning part does smell of voter intimidation (or retaliation against the official letters sent out by the state questioning peoples’ citizenship), the fact that the letters also ask for such information suggests that it might also be an identity theft scam. It could, of course, be both.

Given that I have consistently opposed attacks on voters from the right, I also condemn this attempt which might be an attack from the left (or just a identity theft scam or some sort of retaliation against Rick Scott). My position is that any attacks on the integrity of the voting process is wrong-regardless of whether it comes from left, right or center.  I am not going to play the usual game of “well, the other side does it too” or “the other side does it more.” After all, that is just a fallacious appeal to common practice or two wrongs   make a right.  I will simply condemn all such attacks and urge that efforts be taken to address them-whether they are in the form of a hoax letter or in the form of trying to suppress voters using the power of the state.

 

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Voter Suppression in Florida

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English: The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald ...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Governor Scott has gained considerable notoriety in his tenure as governor. Most recently he set out to purge Florida’s voter lists of non-citizens. While I agree with the stated objective (to ensure that only those eligible to vote are allowed to vote) I have serious concerns regarding the methodology. Not surprisingly, I am not alone in this. In fact, Florida’s election supervisors have declined to resume the purging of voters.

One of my main concerns with the method is that the list that was used seems to be inaccurate. If people are to be purged from the roll of eligible voters, it is obvious that the list used for the purging must be accurate. If it was simply a matter of a defective list, then my concern would be mainly limited to ensuring that the checking process is accurate. However, there seem to be other factors involved here.

One key point of concern is whether or not the purge is actually aimed at voter fraud. After all, the existing proper studies of this matter have shown that the incidence of voter fraud is microscopic. Given the penalties for fraud, the ease with which non-citizens would be caught, the fact that illegals would probably not put themselves on a government list that is likely to be checked, and the fact that voter turnout is generally low it seems reasonable to infer that the the percentage of non-citizen voters would be very low.

In the case of Florida, the original list was 182,000 suspects. This was narrowed down to 2,70o and the governor recently claimed that there were almost 100 non-U.S. citizens on the voter rolls and that over 50 of them voted. The list of 2,700 suspects turned out to have 500 U.S. citizens.  It is certainly good that the list was checked-after all, if the list had simply been applied without a thorough review (and the numbers are assumed to be accurate), then about 5 citizens would have been impacted for every non-citizen.  More interestingly, even if it is assumed that the numbers are correct, then out of 182,000 original suspects only 100 non-citizens were registered. This is 0.055%. Assuming that about 50 of them voted, then this would be 0.027%. Applying Scott’s findings to the entire population of voters, the incidence of illegal voters is, not surprisingly, microscopic.

The obvious reply is that even a microscopic percentage of voter fraud is unacceptable and that the voter rolls need to be accurate. While this does have some appeal, there is the obvious concern of whether addressing such a microscopic problem is actually worth the cost-both in terms of the expense and the harms done by legitimate voters being hassled and intimidated. Given the microscopic nature of the problem, it might be suspected that there is another factor (or factors) driving the purge.

If the purge was motivated solely by the desire for an accurate voter list, it should have impacted all voters roughly equally. However, an analysis of the data by the Miami Herald revealed that “Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted…” Republicans and whites were largely given a pass in this purge.

One obvious reply is that Hispanics are more likely to be illegally in the United States than other ethnic groups. However, one concern is that while Hispanics are about 13% of the 11.3 million registered voters in Florida they were about 58% of those flagged as potential non-citizens. As such, it would seem that Hispanics were dis proportionally targeted by the purge. Since Hispanics tend to vote somewhat more for Democrats (and Obama enjoyed considerable Hispanic support in 2008) this suggests that the purge is not aimed so much at ensuring that illegals do not vote but to suppress the Hispanic vote.

In the case of Democratic and independent minded voters being most likely to be targeted, there cannot even be the pretense of an argument that they would be more likely to be n0n-citizens. As such, the targeting of these voters would strongly suggest a political motivation to the purge.

It could be countered that the Miami Herald’s analysis is in error or that the results were unintended. While this would be a rather implausible counter, Scott has also pushed other policies that seem to be clearly aimed at voters who are somewhat more likely to vote Republican that Democrat.

In addition to the purge, Scott has also established a new policy that prevents early voting on the Sunday before election day. While one might wonder how this would address voter fraud, it is an established fact that African-American voters turn out to vote early after the Sunday church services. As such, it seems reasonable to believe that this policy is aimed directly at lowering the African-American turnout. Given that African-Americans tend to support Obama and vote Democrat, it certainly makes sense to consider that the intent of this policy is voter suppression.

It might be replied that this early Sunday voting must be prevented so as to reduce voter fraud. This is, obviously enough, and absurd reply. It would be rather odd to claim that early Sunday voting is the venue of choice for voter fraud.

A more plausible reply is that this policy would not prevent African-Americans from voting-after all, they can still vote. They just could not vote when many of them have been accustomed to vote. While this would, no doubt, have a negative impact on voter turnout this would presumably be a matter of choice-after all, the voters could simply vote on another day.

The obvious counter to this is that there is no acceptable justification for eliminating early Sunday voting. After all, it would have no impact on fraud and the sole plausible explanation for the policy is to reduce African-American turnout.  In fact, it has a certain Jim Crow feel to it.  As such, this policy should not be tolerated.

A third matter of concern is that Scott also decided to impose a policy under which voter registration organizations that failed to turn in the registaration forms within 48 hours would be subject to stiff fines. While 48 hours might seem to be a reasonable amount of time, the policy caused the League of Women Voters to suspend their voter drives. When this policy was stopped by a federal injunction, they resumed their voter drive.  Without such drives, new voter registration would be reduced (some estimate by 20%).

The justification for this policy is, of course, that it supposedly will reduce voter fraud. However, it is not clear that it would have any such effect.  After all, if the fraud occurs at the potential voter’s end (that is, the form is completed fraudulently), then the time limit will have no effect on this. If the fraud is being conducted by the voter registration group, presumably they would have no qualms about faking the dates on the forms as well, thus rendering the 48 hour limit pointless.  Presumably this policy would prevent any fraudulent activity that would require over 48 hours to complete-but it is not at all clear what this might be.

There is also the obvious concern that the 48 hour policy is a solution in search of a problem. After all, groups such as the League of Women Voters do not appear to be hotbeds of fraud. Rather, they have performed important community service by encouraging and assisting citizens in regards to this basic right.

Given that in the last presidential election newly registered voters tended to vote more for Obama than McCain it might be suspected that this policy was aimed at suppressing these new voters. If so, this policy is certainly wrong.

It might, of course, be the case that Scott was actually only concerned about eliminating voter fraud and simply ended up handling matters in an inept way that created the appearance of a concerted and systematic effort at voter suppression. If so, his actions could be attributed to ignorance and incompetence rather than to being motivated by malice. However, either option is rather bad.

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