In Focus This Week
Despite deadly campaign, things end peacefully in Guatemala elections
Democracy prevails as millions voice their opinion at the polls. Runoff set for Nov. 4
By M. Mindy Moretti
electionline.org
For Tito Morales Sam, this week’s Guatemalan elections were an important day not only for his country, but also for his small town of Cantel which is located in the Western Highlands of this Central American nation.
Morales, who runs a language school in nearby Quetzaltenango, arrived at his polling place at 7:15 a.m. Sunday morning. After about a 45 minute wait and using a special marking pen, Morales was able to cast his vote for president, mayor, department representatives and representatives to the Central American Parliament.
“This election was very interesting and very hard fought by the current mayor because he wanted to be re-elected for a second term and the majority of the people did not accept him, but he worked very hard for his re-election,” Morales said. “For that reason I believe my vote was very important, to give my community a new option.”
Morales also felt his vote was important because of suspicions that outside voters were brought in to boost the numbers for the incumbent mayor.
“When I was leaving, I heard that in the town there were people from other places that came to vote using false documentation and it created a serious problem within the voting area,” Morales said. “In the end, the situation was under control and those people were not allowed to vote. They were sent by the current mayor [because] he did not want to lose.”
And overall, the situation was under control throughout much of Guatemala as more than three million Guatemalans peacefully headed to the polls on September 9 to cast ballots in what had been referred to as the deadliest and costliest election cycle ever recorded in the country.
Countries from all over the world sent observers to Guatemala for what is only the third election since the peace accords were signed in 1996 ending a year’s long civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of the country’s indigenous population.
But, compared to the violence that plagued the run-up to September 9, election day itself was relatively calm. The Organization of American States (OAS) had observers in all 22 departments and although they noted some problems, overall the organization was pleased with how the elections were conducted.
“The Electoral Observation Mission of the OAS, following the September 9 balloting process, recognizes and congratulates the citizens of Guatemala for their great democratic civic spirit, as well as for their orderly, enthusiastic and peaceful participation in Sunday’s General Election,” the organization said in a statement.
With nearly all the votes counted at press time, Alvaro Colom, a business man, of the UNE party received 28.3 percent while Otto Perez Molina, a former general, of the Partido Patriota party received 23.8 percent of the vote. Noble Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum, the first Mayan woman to ever run for president was in a distant sixth place with just around three percent of the votes.
Because no candidate received at least 50 percent of the vote, a runoff election between Colom and Molina is set for November 4.
According to official numbers, more than half of the country’s six million registered voters visited one of the 13,750 newly established vote centers, with many new voters casting ballots as a result of a decision by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).
The number of Guatemalans registered to vote was 20 percent higher than it was four years ago. In addition, Guatemalans no longer needed to travel to population centers to register to vote. Most can now register in local government offices and unlike in previous years, there is no fee if a change needs to be made to a voter registration.
Nearly 5,000 polling sites were added in 2007 to accommodate much of Guatemala’s rural population — largely the country’s indigenous Mayan population, which is more than 40 percent of the total population — who were often unable to make the long journeys to polling places in the past because they had typically been located in larger population hubs.
Despite the high voter turnout, more than half a million Guatemalans were unable to vote on Sunday because unlike other countries, there is no mechanism in place for Guatemalans living in the United States to cast a ballot.
However, for those who were able to vote in-country, voter education prior to September 9 was a key component to the election. According to the World Bank, Guatemala’s indigenous population has an illiteracy rate of over 75 percent. To help those who had never voted before or may not be able to read the ballot, a voter education program was set up in the months prior to the election. Classes were conducted in rural areas throughout the country to cover the fundamentals of voting including how to put an X on the candidate of choice, voting for only one candidate per race and not invalidating the ballots by marking outside of the chosen areas.
Unlike many other nations, Guatemala takes youth voter education to a more practical level. A Youth Court was created in 1995 with the purpose of fomenting civic participation in minors. All over the country on Sunday, children accompanied their parents to vote centers and were able to “vote” right along with their parents. Although there were no hard numbers available, media reports indicate that many children participated.
However, despite the progress made by the TSE with regard to the administration of elections in Guatemala, there were some reported minor problems throughout the day. For instance, when there wasn’t enough furniture to support the ballot boxes in Huehuetenango, elections staff at the regional vote center improvised with cardboard boxes.
There were also scattered reports of people voting twice or voters not appearing on the voter rolls. In one incident in Siquinalá, Escuintla one voter arrived at the vote center and was turned away when elections staff indicated she had already voted. After further investigation it was discovered that man in a completely different region of the country had the same identification number that the voter in Siquinala had.
The Sunday election capped off an election season marred by the murders of 45 political candidates and activists. Additionally, six family members of politicians were murdered including the 16 year-old daughter of one candidate.
In the week preceding the election, 18,500 troops from the National Civil Police and 1,000 members of the police academy were called into action to patrol areas throughout the country. Eleven thousand soldiers joined the pre-election build-up later in the week and on election day there were 34,000 law enforcement officials in place to keep the peace.
Skirmishes erupted in a few polling locations, but nothing approaching the violence that plagued parts of the country before the vote. In the town of Santa Maria de Jesus, about 700 people who rejected the mayor’s re-election threatened to burn down city hall. In El Cerinal, a crowd of about 3,000 people burned a voting booth and ballots when it was suspected that the incumbent mayor was bringing in voters from El Salvador. The crowd was eventually dispersed with tear gas.
As for the mayoral election in Cantel, much to the delight of Morales and many others, the incumbent candidate was not re-elected.
“In the end, he lost and there was a big party in town that night when the change came about,” Morales said.
Writer’s Note: Each summer I travel with a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that takes inner-city children to Guatemala for a month. This summer was a particularly interesting time to be in Guatemala because the students got to see and learn first-hand about how democracy, from campaigns to election administration, works in other countries.
In Focus This Week Pt. 2
EAC Discusses “Motor Voter” Regulations
Advocates appeal for greater enforcement
By Kat Zambon
electionline.org
A meeting of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that began as a discussion of the commission’s regulatory authority under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) or “motor voter” law turned into a forum for various concerns and criticisms of the way the law is currently administered.
“As set forth in its text, the NVRA’s primary purpose is to establish procedures that will increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for federal office,” Myrna Pérez, counsel for the Brennan Center said in her testimony at the meeting. “Today’s reality is that this goal is not being achieved.”
However, the path that the EAC needs to take to start enforcing its regulatory authority over NVRA is unclear.
Juliet Hodgkins, EAC’s general counsel explained that the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) did not transfer regulatory authority of NVRA from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to the EAC. As such, EAC has not made any regulatory statements related to NVRA to date, with the exception of a March 2006 letter the EAC sent to Jan Brewer, Arizona secretary of state arguing that the state would be violating NVRA by requiring the submission of proof of citizenship with the national mail voter registration form.
“The Commission must determine whether and to what extent it will exercise its authority to regulate under the NVRA,” Hodgkins said, explaining that the EAC can choose whether to take an expansive or limited approach. However, the EAC faces NVRA challenges that the FEC didn’t, such as state laws related to voter identification, proof of citizenship and third party voter registration.
One way EAC could begin to flex their NVRA regulatory muscle would be to import the FEC’s regulations, Hodgkins said, though “transferring the FEC regulations to us is not the end of the game,” she cautioned.
In addition to testimony about the EAC’s NVRA regulatory authority, several witnesses offered general criticisms and recommendations of the law.
The Brennan Center’s Pérez suggested that the EAC collect and share the materials states use to train employees on NVRA’s requirements including syllabi, schedules. She also advocated for the EAC to use the information it already collects to make report cards so states can compare their work over time and themselves with other states.
Noting that 20 states failed to submit complete data for EAC’s NVRA report – including Massachusetts and South Carolina, which did not submit any information regarding public assistance registrations – Scott Novakowski, senior policy analyst for Demos recommended that the EAC provide DOJ with a list of states that have not complied. Novakowski said that by not reporting all of the requested information, states prevent the EAC from meeting its obligation to Congress and DOJ to help them understand NVRA’s full impact.
“After all, what good is the enforcement provision of the NVRA if states do not have to submit information that would indicate the need for enforcement?”
Disputes about NVRA’s administration are nothing new. In June, the EAC released a report on the impact NVRA has had on elections and found that 31 states reported decreases in voter registrations from 2004 to 2006 while 16 states reported increases. In a statement, Demos, Project Vote and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law called the report’s findings “disturbing” and chided the Department of Justice (DOJ) for not enforcing the law.
Election Reform News This Week
- A new analysis of the “Report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Best Practices to Improve Voter Identification Requirements Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act of 2002,” out this week by The Heritage Foundation finds that “some of the original findings of the Eagleton Institute study are unfounded.” The new, or re-analysis states that, “Controlling for factors that influence voter turnout, voter identification laws largely do not have the negative impact on voter turnout that the Eagleton Institute suggests. When statistically significant and negative relationships are found, the effects are so small that the findings offer little policy significance.”
- Plans to test Ohio’s electronic voting machines were put on hold this week when the state’s Controlling Board, which must sign off on most unbid contracts, elected to wait two more weeks to review the proposal before approving — or not — Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s request for $1.7 million to test the new machines. Republican members of the board — which is made up of six lawmakers and a president appointed by the governor — said they wanted to look more closely at the contract and get questions answered about a similar test in California. According to the Zanesville Times-Recorder, Brunner told the board that the delay likely will make it tougher for her office to complete the testing by January, the deadline she set for issuing the results to county boards of elections.
- The Rockland County [N.Y.] Board of Elections agreed this week to allow an observant Jewish couple to be elections inspectors even though they will miss a mandatory training session to observe Rosh Hashana. Offering a special Friday afternoon training session and exempting the Slotnicks if they desired was the election board’s way of trying to fix the issue. “We’re doing the best we can,” election commissioner Joan Silvestri told The Journal News. “We need these inspectors to work for us and (we) go out of our way to accommodate them, but it just didn’t work out this year because (state lawmakers) moved the primary.” Normally, primary elections are held the second Tuesday in September. This year, the primary would have fallen on Sept. 11, and state lawmakers voted to move the date to Sept. 18.
- A report issued late last week indicates that the current focus on paper trails and audits detracts from the primary barriers to voter participation. “The 2006 MyVote1 Report confirms the findings of the 2004 MyVote1 Report; far more voters are disenfranchised by a lack of basic information — poll location or registration status — than by machine error, fraud, or intimidation,” said Cecilia Martinez, executive director of the Reform Institute. The new report details the data gathered by the 866-MyVote1 Voter Alert Line during the 2006 midterm elections. Sixty-five percent of the calls to the hotline in 2006 were from callers seeking to ascertain their polling location. Twenty percent of calls were from citizens complaining about registration difficulties. The report also highlights that voting machine problems are on the rise. Such difficulties represented only 3 percent of hotline complaints in 2004, but accounted for 18 percent of complaints in 2006.
Opinions This Week
National: Holt bill, II, III, IV, Voting technology, II
Alabama: Voter registration database, Voter ID
California: Voting technology, II
Colorado: Mail ballots
District of Columbia: Voting rights, II
Maryland: Voter turnout
Massachusetts: Voter turnout
New Jersey: Voting technology, II, III
North Carolina: Paper ballots
South Carolina: 2008 elections
Utah: E-voting
Virginia: Voting Rights Act
West Virginia: Paper ballots
Some sites require registration
Grant Opportunity
Fair Elections Initiative Project 2008. The Mitchell Kapor Foundation’s mission is to ensure fairness and equity, especially in low-income communities of color. The Foundation provides general support grants to organizations that utilize nonpartisan strategies to improve voter participation or election protection. While organizations can have projects targeting the 2008 election year, their work should have a longer-lasting effect through engaging citizens or improving the democratic process on an ongoing basis. Projects with an emphasis on areas with high concentrations of people of color at risk of disenfranchisement will be considered favorably.
Job Postings This Week
All job listings must be received by 12 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday for publication in our Thursday newsletter. Job listings are free but may be edited for length. Whenever possible, include Internet information. Please email job postings to mmoretti@electionline.org
Director — Union County, N.C. Directs the operations of the Board of Elections office registering voters, maintaining voter registration records and conducting elections in accordance with federal, state and local laws and regulations. Reports to the Election Board which reviews major actions taken by the Director. Work involves planning and directing the operations of the office, planning all phases of elections and implementing plans, and preparing budget. Employee must exercise independent judgment and interpret routine policies and regulations based on training and knowledge gained through experience on the job. Employee must exercise considerable tact and courtesy in frequent contact with candidates, political party representatives and the general public. Reports to the members of the Board of Elections. Qualifications: Graduation from High School supplemented by vocational training with emphasis on civics, political science, or elections, and 6 to 9 years of experience preferably in a Board of Elections office; or any equivalent combination of training and experience which provides the required skills, knowledge and abilities. Completion of State Certification Program for Elections Officials is required. Salary: $51,683.00 – $77,525.00. Application: May be obtained and filed online or sent to: 500 North Main Street, Suite 130; Monroe, NC 28112 Deadline: Sept. 24, 2007
Elections Director — Wayne County, N.C. This position is responsible for planning, managing, conducting all federal, state, county, municipal and special elections held in Wayne County, North Carolina; administer all operations in the board of elections office including voter registration, election preparation, budget preparation, management of office personnel, precinct management, precinct official training, voter education, and GIS/Mapping services. Qualifications: The successful candidate should have a Bachelor’s Degree in Public or Business Administration, Accounting, Political Science, Information Technology, or a closely related field; and preferably two years of progressively responsible experience in conducting governmental elections, including one year in a supervisory or management capacity; OR equivalent combination of education, training and experience. Salary grade and range: $50,359 – $55,585. Application: Submit Wayne County Employment Application to: County of Wayne; Attn: Human Resources Director; PO Box 227; Goldsboro, NC 27533. Wayne County Employment Applications may be obtained from the Wayne County Human Resources Department, located at 100 Ormond Ave., Goldsboro, NC 27530 or http://www.waynegov.com/hr. Deadline: Sept. 14, 2007, 5 p.m.
Election Deputy Director III — Anne Arundel County, Md. Position is the supervisory or managerial level of work assisting an Election Director in conducting elections in local jurisdictions within the State. Employees supervise office support staff, which may include subordinate supervisors. Employees receive general supervision from an Election Director. Employees may be required to work evenings and weekends. The work may require travel throughout the State to exchange information regarding the election process and promote voter registration. Qualifications: Graduation from an accredited high school or possession of a high school equivalency certificate; four years of experience applying federal, state and local election laws and regulations applicable to conducting elections. Employees in this classification are required to be registered voters in the State of Maryland in accordance with the Election Law Article, Section 2-207(d). Employees in this classification may not hold or be a candidate for any elective public or political party office or any other office created under the Constitution or laws of this State in accordance with the Election Law Article, Section 2-301(b). Salary: $40,268-$68,626. Application: Applications may be obtained by visiting our website at: www.dbm.maryland.gov; by writing to DBM, OPSB, Recruitment & Examination Division, 301 W. Preston Street Baltimore, Maryland 21201; or by calling 410-767-4850, toll-free: 800-705-3493; TTY users call Maryland Relay Service, 800-735-2258. Deadline: Sept. 28, 2007
Management and Program Specialist — U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Incumbent will contribute to the management of HAVA payments to states, the Help America Vote College Program, and the National Student Parent Mock Election grants; support the implementation of the NVRA; contribute to the management of the EAC Language Accessibility Program; prepare information and presentations to be presented at conferences, hearings and public meetings. Qualifications: You must have one year of specialized experience at a level close to the work of this job that has given you the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities required to successfully perform. Specialized experience is evidenced by performing a variety of progressively responsible and high-level assignments or activities. B.A. or B.S., and one year of specialized experience. You must be a U.S. citizen to qualify for this position. You will need to successfully complete background security investigation. Salary: $50,703 – $86,801. Application: Applicants must submit an Optional Application for Federal Employment, OF 612, which is available online, or a resume that includes the same information. Deadline: Oct. 5, 2007.
Research Program Specialist — U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Primary responsibility will be monitoring the distribution and use of EAC’s research studies and products and assisting the Research Director with tasks related to the creation of new research studies and products. Work closely with the Research Legal Intern (in consultation with the Research Director) on various matters related to research contract procurement and administration. Additional duties and responsibilities include assisting the Research Director with monitoring research contracts for compliance with delivery schedules and ‘flagging’ and addressing any potential challenges and problems. You will also be responsible for coordinating and preparing written briefing materials for various internal and external EAC research meetings. Qualifications: Bachelor’s or higher degree in political science, public policy or a related academic field. You qualify at the GS-12 level if you possess one year of specialized experience that equipped you with the skills needed to perform the job duties. This experience must have been equivalent to at least the GS-11 grade level. Must be a U.S. citizen to qualify for this position. Must successfully complete a background security investigation. Salary: $66,767 – $86,801. Application: Applicants must submit an Optional Application for Federal Employment, OF 612, which is available online, or a resume that includes the same information. Deadline: Sept. 21, 2007