Science > Abortion > Ohio Election Problems Highlight Urgent Need for Reform
| Topic: |
Science > Abortion |
| User: |
"james g. keegan jr." |
| Date: |
08 Jan 2005 07:46:19 PM |
| Object: |
Ohio Election Problems Highlight Urgent Need for Reform |
Published on Saturday, January 8, 2005 by Knight Ridder Newspapers
Ohio Election Problems Highlight Urgent Need for Reform
by Mark Weisbrot
The Democrats' brief Congressional challenge to Ohio's electoral votes
last week was met with howls of derision from Republican lawmakers.
"They're still not over the 2000 election, let alone the 2004
election," said Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
Well, why should they be? Why should anyone who cares about democracy
just let these things go? Many Americans don't know this, but according
to the best information available, George W. Bush lost the vote in
Florida and therefore should not have become president the first time.
A consortium of news organizations -- including the Wall Street Journal,
the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and
Associated Press commissioned an independent recount. The study was done
by the University of Chicago-based National Opinion Research Center.
The study, which examined 175,010 uncounted ballots in all of Florida's
67 counties, found that a complete recount would have given the state,
and therefore the presidency, to Al Gore. This was true no matter what
criteria were used for accepting or rejecting the uncounted ballots:
i.e., what kinds of "chads" or markings were taken as clear indication
of voter intent.
This ballot count showed Gore winning Florida by a very small margin --
between 60 and 171 votes, depending on the criteria used. But we know
from the study that he actually won by a much larger margin, because
Gore lost about 8000 votes in Palm Beach County due to the confusion
caused by the notorious "butterfly ballot." A similarly confusing ballot
cost Gore an estimated 7000 votes in Duval County.
And all this does not even count the systematic disenfranchisement of
Democratic voters in Florida by partisan election authorities. So there
is very little doubt that, in a technically clean election, we would
have had a different president for the years 2001 through 2004. This is
not something to just "get over;" this is something we should never
forget, and do whatever is necessary to make sure it never happens
again.
Did it happen again last November, in Ohio? It is difficult to say
without an investigation. The Democratic staff report of the House
Judiciary Committee found "massive and unprecedented voter
irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities
were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it
involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the
Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio."
These included a misallocation of voting machines that resulted in long
lines in Democratic areas. There was also a shortage of provisional
ballots, delayed absentee ballots, and 93,000 spoiled ballots -- and
most of the latter have yet to be examined. There were many other
irregularities that cast a cloud of suspicion over the vote in Ohio: one
of the most bizarre was the exclusion of public observers from the
Warren County tally on the basis of an alleged FBI warning of a
potential terrorist threat, which the FBI denies having issued.
The Judiciary Committee Democratic staff report also found that the
recount was not conducted properly or even legally, with precincts not
selected randomly, as required by law. Bush's official margin in Ohio
was 118,599 votes, so it is unlikely that a full and complete recount
would reverse the result. But if we were to estimate the Democratic
votes lost from all the other shenanigans, including the misallocation
of voting machines, it's not clear whether George W. Bush would have won
a clean election in Ohio, and therefore the presidency in 2004.
Some of our electoral procedures -- such as electronic voting with no
paper record -- would not pass the laugh test in other democracies. This
includes having a Bush campaign official -- Ken Blackwell in Ohio --
oversee statewide elections. At a recent press conference in which
Russian President Vladimir Putin came under fire for undemocratic
practices in his country, he retorted: "Do you think that the electoral
system in the US is without flaws? Need I remind you of how elections
were held in the US?"
It was reminiscent of the 1960s, when international criticism of the
massive disenfranchisement of black voters in the South helped build
pressure for our Voting Rights Act. With no rival superpower competing
for the hearts and minds of developing countries, most of our leaders
don't seem to care as much what the world thinks of American democracy.
But we who live here deserve better.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0108-26.htm
--
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under my name. I can post whatever I want. I even
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| User: "alaric" |
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| Title: Re: Ohio Election Problems Highlight Urgent Need for Reform |
15 Jan 2005 11:41:11 PM |
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On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 01:46:19 GMT, "james g. keegan jr."
<keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
Published on Saturday,
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