One of the great responsibilities we have as citizens of the USA is the responsibility to take part in the shaping of our country through the electoral process. We have the responsibility to elect leaders to represent our points of view to the rest of the nation and to the world. However, when the candidate(s) that we voted for does not win, that is voter disappointment and not voter disenfranchisement.
When you don’t go to the polls to take part in the process as 40% of the country’s eligible voters didn’t do, you do not stand on very solid ground stating your disenfranchisement. These individuals showed their apathy on November 2nd and their hypocrisy on November 3rd.
Now to further escalate their hypocrisy and to appease the conspiracy theorists certain members of Congress have chosen to object to the election results. In fact, Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-D) dedicated her objections to the Ohio elections to king conspiracy theorist Michael Moore’s propagandamentry “Fahrenheit 911”. They are attempting to echo the issues of the 2000 election in Florida and repeat the perception of similar problems in Ohio. This time though there is the acknowledgment that they are not trying to overturn the election, but simply trying to bring to light election irregularities.
Being an election judge in Maryland, I was able to see first hand a great deal of the election process and take part in that. Below are three main points from the objection to the Ohio election results.
The State of US Elections by John Nichols
"[B]ased on the evidence of voter disenfranchisement, flawed or corrupted voting machinery, and inappropriate procedures for counting and recounting votes in Ohio”
THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ON THE CONYERS REPORT--PRESERVING DEMOCRACY-- WHAT WENT WRONG IN OHIO--FOLLOWS:
• There were widespread instances of intimidation and misinformation in violation of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, Equal Protection, Due Process and the Ohio Right to Vote.
• The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters.
• Mr. Blackwell's failure to articulate clear and consistent standards for the counting of provisional ballots resulted in the loss of thousands of predominantly minority votes.
These members of Congress are taking evidence that people didn’t vote in certain areas and attributing that to violations of civil rights rather than voter apathy. I would not presume to assume that it was apathy rather than intimidation, but since there were so many get out the vote efforts across the country on bipartisan levels, I find it hard to believe that people were prevented from getting to the polls to vote if they so desired. This is not republican apologeticism, but the use of common sense. There is a level of cynicism that exists here that many people need to see the worst case scenario rather than the most likely one.
The allocation of the voting machines is done by the specific counties themselves. The counties being disputed or focused on are democratically run counties and thus there is no one to blame for the allocation of the machines than the democrats themselves. Furthermore, the unprecedented long lines played right against the first objection to voters being disenfranchised and prevented from voting. It also says more about the 30 second attention span of Americans and their lack of patience than it does about voters being prevented from fulfilling their responsibility to their country. Don’t take our democratic republic for granted!
The final objection is regarding the counting and recounting procedures. Part of the reason for margin of error percentages in these counting procedures is because of human error. Even in Maryland, where we use electronic voting there is still an element of human counting. Every time you rely upon human elements you will have a margin of error because we are not perfect and this is an untraceable error. When there are computer errors, which yield a much lower percentage you can usually trace it back to the source and log the error. Electronic voting systems have paper and audit trails; it is false to say that they don’t. I performed these audits myself in the printing of the reports and tallying of votes from the machines at my own polling location.
If we were to remove more and more of the human element in the counting of votes and move away from antiquated technology that requires a hole to be punched in cardboard, we would have a much more reliable voting system. We would also have a better ability to trace errors when they occur and repair the system.
Finally, the largest problem I see with voter fraud is the inability to require identification from voters. Very general information is asked for the most part that anyone with access to the internet could find out about people. This does not ensure the voter is who they say they are. If we want the election system to be transparent, then we must require that your identity can be truly verified. This makes people squirm because the ACLU has them convinced this is a violation of their civil liberties in some way.
We need to take responsibility for our electoral process and participate in productive ways. This objection while trying to shed light on election irregularities, focused on the wrong things and at the wrong time. Perhaps the overwhelming defeat of their objection by the Congress (Senate 74-1 & House 267-31) will help these democrats to see their points of view are out of step with America, and help them to focus on the real issues. We can only hope.
Posted by price at January 7, 2005 11:14 AM