Tomorrow is a significant day for America—national Election Day—a day on which we, as citizens of this country, exercise the quintessential right conferred upon us in a democracy: voting. Through voting, we have power to choose our representatives and to change what is wrong with our government and its institutions. Voting is vital to an open society, and so we are launching this series of blog posts on the topic from key thinkers and activists.

We will inaugurate the series tomorrow with a piece by Open Society Foundations president Aryeh Neier, who, in the course of his career, has played a role in this critical civil rights issue.

Over the year, the series will take a close look at multiple issues related to the 2012 elections, which will be unprecedented in many ways:

• It will be the first presidential election to follow the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, allowing corporations to spend freely on elections.
• It may include a changed Electoral College.
• It will be the first national election to follow the rapidly proliferating restrictive election laws.
• It may be the first election to have 1 million individuals at the polls challenging voters’ right to cast ballots.

Voters need to be aware of and understand the ramifications these changes will have on them and to have the tools necessary to cast their ballots correctly. Restrictive identification and citizenship requirements are proliferating in state legislatures; states are cutting back on early voting and early registration; polling places in predominantly minority communities are being eliminated. These new restrictions could affect over 5 million voters in 2012.

In today’s polarized political climate, it is difficult to protect the right to vote against these reversals.  As a result, knowledge will be one of our most important tools. With the right information, fewer voters will be disenfranchised by the new suppressive laws and practices.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “There can and should be no argument: every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.”

Surveillance by Camera and Video

Organizers from the Tea Party and other groups in St. Paul, Minnesota, announced last week that they were offering a $500 reward to vigilantes for turning in people who are successfully prosecuted for voter fraud. The coalition is also organizing “surveillance squads” to photograph and videotape (read: intimidate) people trying to exercise their Constitutional right to vote. Tea Party organizers in Harris County, Texas, are using similar tactics even while conceding they violate local law. In Wake County, North Carolina, voters have complained that observers are “[standing] behind the registration table (where they're not allowed) and tak[ing] pictures of the license plates of voters using curbside voting (also not allowed).” Tea Party members have also begun challenging voter registration applications and announced plans to question individual voters at the polls whom they suspect of being ineligible.

Surveillance by Smartphone

An organization called the American Majority has developed a smartphone application for tracking incidents of so-called voter fraud. When a user launches the application, the phone’s GPS sends a report to a tracking database. Users are encouraged to use the phone’s camera, which the app automatically opens, to collect photographic evidence of the “fraud,” which is clearly an intimidating act and a violation of voters’ privacy.

Trickery to Dilute the Black Vote

In Harris County, Texas, a flyer is being circulated in black neighborhoods purporting to be from the black Democratic Trust of Texas. The flyer falsely claims that "when you vote straight ticket Democrat, it is actually voting for Republicans and your vote doesn't count" and that a vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White is a vote for the entire Democratic ticket. The flyer is clearly illegal and designed through trickery to deprive black voters of the right to vote.

Intimidation of Minority Voters

In Texas, a citizens group called the King Street Patriots has launched an initiative called True the Vote that has already come under fire for intimidating poll watching practices at early voting sites in predominately black and Latino precincts. Poll watchers are alleged to have followed voters after they checked in, hovered over voters as they cast ballots, looked over voters’ shoulders to see who they voted for, and provided misinformation about voting procedures.

Harassing Latino Voters

A group affiliated with the American Majority, Minnesota Majority, sued Minnesota officials in federal court last week for not allowing Minnesota Majority members to wear "I.D. me" buttons at the polls. The group has made unfounded charges that non citizens have been voting. Minnesota does not require ID at the polls with a couple of exceptions. Not to be outdone by Minnesota actions, last week a mass email sent in the name of Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio urged individuals to join an army of “VOTER FRAUD PREVENTION VOLUNTEERS to STOP ILLEGALS FROM STEALING THE ELECTION!” (capitalization theirs). Both tactics are clearly designed to motivate people to go out and harass minority voters.

Suspicious Fire

In late September, a suspicious fire destroyed nearly all of Harris County’s 10,000 electronic voting machines. Harris County encompasses Houston, the third largest city in the nation. Open Society Foundations grantee Advancement Project is working to mitigate the situation and protect minority voters.

Every American has the right to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Any form of discrimination, intimidation or challenge to voters without adequate basis is illegal and improper. There is just too much at stake for people to be denied their right to choose their leaders.

In a decision that could undermine the integrity of federal and state elected institutions, a divided Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruled that the First Amendment guarantee of free speech means that corporations can spend unlimited sums to help elect favored candidates or defeat those they oppose. The ruling reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between special interests and electoral politics.

U.S. Programs grantees Doug Kendall of the Constitutional Accountability Center and Susan Liss of the Brennan Center for Justice spoke at OSI on the implications of the ruling.  Both Doug and Susan were involved in the litigation, have spoken and written about the issues involved before and since the decision, and are deeply engaged in finding solutions to the problems the ruling engenders.

The directive is comprised of four main components centered on very simple but important themes:

• publishing information;
• creating a culture of openness;
• improving data quality;
• updating policies to allow for greater openness.

Each section tasks agencies and other key offices with specific goals, complete with deadlines and clear requirements that the public be informed and permitted to participate in almost every project.  The directive also requires agencies to set up their own open government websites to showcase their transparency efforts, within 120 days.  These sites must include information about compliance with records management requirements, address FOIA request backlogs, and inform the public about declassification programs.

The Office of Management and Budget will regularly check on the agencies’ innovations in implementing the “transparency, participation and collaboration” participation by publishing an Open Government “Dashboard,” within 60 days, that will allow the public to see the best data sets and also to view OMB’s evaluations of how each agency is doing – and how the executive branch is progressing overall – toward greater openness, collaboration, and participation for accountable and responsive government.   If the directive works as intended, it could change the public's relationship with government.

The directive reflects (in great detail) the efforts of Open Society Institute grantees such as OMB Watch, Project on Government Oversight, OpenThe Government.org, the Sunlight Foundation, and the Union of Concerned Scientists that developed a blueprint for transparency policy in the new administration last year.  That blueprint, “Moving Towards a 21^st Century Right to Know Agenda [pdf],” formed the basis for most of the directive’s provisions.  These grantees were consulted throughout the process of developing the directive by officials, and have been asked to remain engaged as implementation progresses.