Department of Justice affirms right of states
to throw away provisional ballots

  Right to Vote amendment all the more vital

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                         Contact: Andrew Kirshenbaum, Program Associate Wednesday, October 20. 2004                         (301) 270-4616 or [email protected]

TAKOMA PARK, MD ���  This election, millions of voters run the risk of casting votes that may be discarded due to state policies. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) provides for provisional voting so that voters not on the official list of registered voters in one jurisdiction may still cast a ballot. However, in a recent brief, the Department of Justice supported the right of each state to determine how to count provisional ballots, raising the spector of voter disenfranchisement. The fact that every state will exercise this power differently results in an inherently unequal electoral system. 

Currently, 17 states will count provisional ballots even if the voter is voting in the wrong precinct. However, 28 states including Florida and Ohio, two high-profile battlegrounds, will count ballots only if they are cast in the correct precinct. 

  ���This could drastically limit the number of votes that actually get counted��� say FairVote Executive Director, Robert Richie. ���Such state discrepancy is problematic especially in Florida where voting locations have been forced to move because of the hurricanes. The ability to cast a ballot and have that ballot correctly counted should not be based upon state policy but on one���s right as an American to participate in the democractic process���.  

The Department of Justice recently affirmed that the right to vote is NOT guaranteed by the Constitution by publishing a brief supporting the individual state ability to set electoral policy. 

DOJ spokesperson Mark Corallo made the following statement to the Washington Post: "Congress made an explicit decision not to disturb states' long-standing authority to determine how ballots are to be counted, and the United States believes that courts must respect that congressional decision.���

By siding with the state ability to independently determine how provisional ballots are counted, the Department of Justice affirmed that the individual citizen does not have a federally protected right to vote.

The Center For Voting and Democracy believes that citizens should have a federally protected right to vote.  The Center supports Congressman Jesse Jackson���s proposal to add a right to vote amendment to in the U.S. Constitution.  Such an amendment would make voting a right citizenship.  It would empower Congress to set national electoral policies all states would have to follow to ensure that each vote is counted and counted correctly.

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