Malfeasance of election officials- current legal definitions and what should punishment be?

[philb]

The large election protection monitoring efforts of 2004 by the EIRS system and common cause identified widespread malfeasnace and misfeasance by elections officials and pollworkers, thoughout the country- with considerable detailed evidence regarding specific SOEs, SOSs, and pollworkers(some named but many identifiable by detailed description of precinct involved and physical description). Unfortunately it seems that we have a partisan election system, and the partisanship carries over into actions of officials and even poll workers in many cases.

some questions that need consideration:
1. what is the current legal definition of malfeasance and misfeasance in various jurisdictions?
2. what is the current punishment for malfeasnace and misfeasance and why is such littel pursued by either voters or official?
3. what should be the definintion of malfeasance and misfeasance and what is the appropriate punishment of such?
4. would there be less volunteers avaiable if there was closer monitoring of malfeasance/misfeasance and more liklihood of negative impacts where malfeasance/misfeasance is found?

There were widespread systematic efforts including illegal dirty tricks and collusion by officials and poll workers in many areas to prevent large numbers of minority voters from having their votes counted.
It was documented that many times poll workers and officials took actions that resulted in clear bias in the election system, including poll workers helping disabled voters or voters having problems with machine glitches who deliberately cast the voters vote for candidates that the voter did not want to vote for.

There have also been cases where voting officials have approved ballot designs with clearly biased design, that would likely swing votes from one candidate to another- such as the current use of "butterfly like designs" in Sarasota, Fl. and the butterfly designs of several counties in Florida in 2000. These are not the only examples of ballot design flaws that introduce bias in the system.

So given that such actions by officials have the ability to change the outcomes of elections in a manner contrary to the intent of the majority of the electorate,
what should be the punishment for such actions
and why has there been little effort to enforce malfeasance regultations?

[philb]

1. For those following Sarasota D13, does it appear SOE & SOS were guilty of malfeasance, and if so

what should be the punishment.

Many voters and pollworkers allege that a lot of the ballot designs used in the Dist 13 election were clearly biased against the Democrat Jennings, of the nature of the butterfly ballots that swung thousands of votes from Gore and lost him the presidential election. Such ballot designs are well known in Florida for this reason, so SOE and SOS who chose and approved the designs should have known of the likely outcome, that being a major swing in votes from Jennings to Buchanan.

If this is documented in the audit, as expected, is this clearly a case of malfeasance?
and if so, what is the punishment under Florida law?
what should be the punishment?


Voters descritions of anomalies they saw on election day in Sarasota
from another thread

1. House race (among others) did not appear in the main voting screens but did appear in the review screen.

2.House race appeared in the main voting screens but was positioned in such a way that it was easy to miss.

3.House race appeared in the main voting screen at the bottom of one screen and then fell over into the following screen. Jennings was on the second of the two screens in a small font and was therefore very easy to miss.

4.Voter touched to select Jennings but no selection for that race showed up when arriving at the review screen.

5.Voter touched to select Jennings but Buchanan selection showed up for that race when arriving at the review

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=457470&mesg_id=457470