Bonifaz enters race for secretary of state

Yawu Miller

In last year’s November election for mayor in Lawrence, most citizens whose names were stricken from the city’s active voter list didn’t know until three days before the Nov. 8 election — when it was already too late to re-register.

The notice, which went out to 15,000 voters, did not appear aimed at rectifying the situation. There was no mention in the letter of the fact that voters not on the rolls could still vote with provisional ballots.

When voting rights activists complained to Massachusetts Secretary of State William Francis Galvin, he declined to step into the fray, according to constitutional attorney John Bonifaz. Despite appeals to state courts, the election went ahead with little notice to the Lawrencian voters of their rights.

“It did not work,” Bonifaz said of the 2005 election. “Lawrence had the lowest voter turnout in 50 years. This is an embarrassment.”

Bonifaz, who this year has launched a bid for Galvin’s seat, took his message of voter empowerment to a mostly African American audience at the Freedom House last Friday for a breakfast meeting with Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who gave him a resounding endorsement.

Jackson told the Banner he became acquainted with Bonifaz through his work as an attorney working on voter rights cases in Florida and Ohio, as well as his work as lead counsel on a 2003 law suit against the Bush administration arguing that the war against Iraq was illegal.

“He has been consistent in Florida and Ohio working as a champion of enfranchisement,” he said. “He has been a voice in the wilderness.”

The breakfast was attended by many voting rights activists, including staff from the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, and was organized by Ron Bell of Dunk The Vote.

In his address to the Freedom House crowd, Bonifaz stressed was a need for a more active secretary of state in Massachusetts, noting that the incumbent has declined to step into the fray on high profile voting-rights complaints in Massachusetts, including the House redistricting plan that civil rights activists successfully challenged in 2003. Galvin was named as a defendant in that case.

Most recently, a coalition of activists from Boston’s immigrant communities challenged the city’s election department for its apparent refusal to provide translation services and provide adequate training for poll workers, filing a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department that ended in a settlement.

The voting rights group Boston VOTE recruited 600 volunteers to poll thousands of Massachusetts voters in the last election and found that nine percent of respondents were unable to cast a normal ballot. Of those who cast a provisional ballot, 23 percent had their votes thrown out, according to the study.

“Tens of thousands of votes were not counted,” Bonifaz said. “The secretary of state dismissed the report.”

Galvin’s inaction prompted Bonifaz to enter the race, he said.

In a telephone interview, Galvin defended his record on voting rights issues and said Bonifaz is distorting the facts.

“Mr. Bonifaz has a habit of making up fantasies to justify his campaign,” Galvin said.

For instance, Galvin says he played a role in the redistricting case.

“I appealed in court to get the districts redrawn once the court threw out the districts,” he said.

Galvin says he also committed funds for training election workers in Lawrence and helped the city of Boston train polling workers.

“Boston’s problems are much less than they were when I took over,” he said. “We forced the city to improve the quality of the people who work at the polls.”

But Bonifaz said the fact that the Bush administration-led Justice Department sued the city for Voting Rights Act violations shows that Galvin is not active enough.

“I think it’s a scandal that we had these kinds of violations occur in our state to force the Bush Justice Department to enforce the Law,” he said.

“The most important responsibility for the secretary of state is to serve as the state’s chief election official,” Bonifaz said. “Unfortunately in the last 12 years the incumbent has failed to live up to that responsibility. He has been silent on voting rights abuses. He has resisted basic electoral reform.”

Bonifaz says reforms including same-day voter registration and publicly-funded elections are needed to make the state’s voting process fair.

His suggestions met with strong applause from the Freedom House gathering, which included civil rights advocates, political activists and City Councilor Felix Arroyo, who plans to introduce a City Council resolution calling for same-day registration.

“There’s a lot that needs to be corrected,” Arroyo told the Banner. “We need to be able to resolve these issues without going to court.”

With the introduction of touch-screen voting machines in many states, it is now imperative that states change their voting laws to ensure fairness, Bonifaz maintains.

“We have to create new standards for Massachusetts and the nation,” he said. “We cannot contract with any voting companies that do not provide a paper trail, access to their source code and data within the machines and an opportunity to publicly own the machines.”

Jackson, who is leading the push for the re-authorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, told the Freedom House crowd that voting rights are endangered at the national level, citing the Supreme Court decision in the Ohio case.

“Chief Justice Renhquist told us something that is troubling,” he said. “The right to vote is not in the U.S. Constitution. It is a state right. All 50 secretaries of state are in charge of our national elections, not the people. It doesn’t make sense for the people of Iraq and Afganistan to have the right to vote in their constitution and we don’t have it in ours.”