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TomPaine.com
December 13, 2004
The
Election Ran Smoothly, Didn't It?
by Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.
The
judgement is now in from the advocacy groups who monitored the 2004
election. A new report released last week substantiates many of the
concerns raised on TomPaine.com and elsewhere. To see the report, click
here. Today, Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., D-IL, argues that the lesson of
2004 is that our right to vote is not secure��we need a federal right to
vote with standards and the enforcement of those standards by the
attorney general of the United States, rather than the patchwork,
chaotic and unequal administration by states that we now have.
Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., is a Democratic congressman from Illinois.
It was a heated campaign and George W. Bush handily defeated
John Kerry. America demonstrated that its democracy is still the
best in the world. And it was a relief 2004 wasn't a repeat of
2000. The 2004 election ran smoothly��didn't it?
Well not quite. A preliminary review issued by a coalition of
groups��including People for the American Way, the NAACP and the Lawyers
Committee for Civil Rights Under Law��concluded, "the myth that the
2004 elections ran smoothly has become conventional wisdom for pundits
and politicians, but nothing could be further from the truth."
Shattering
the Myth: An Initial Snapshot of Voter Disenfranchisement in the 2004
Elections argues that "In addition to the long lines and
unreasonable waiting times that kept many people��disproportionately
urban minority votersvfrom being able to vote, the top five problems
overall were registration processing, absentee ballots, machine errors,
voter intimidation and suppression and problems with the use and
counting of the new provisional ballots mandated under new federal
law."
Many problems surfaced before Election Day. Just as Katherine
Harris��Florida's Secretary of State and a co-chair of the Bush-Cheney
Campaign in 2000 used various means of suppressing the minority vote��so
did Ken Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State and co-chair of the
Bush-Cheney Campaign. Blackwell absurdly proposed accepting only
completed voter registration forms printed on 80-pound card stock
instead of regular printing paper. Katherine Harris' replacement
in Florida, Glenda Hood, attempted to implement another "felon
purge" based on a faulty database until exposed by the press.
Voter suppression in minority communities was again evident:
flyers and phone calls advertising Election Day as November 3 instead of
November 2; threats that if you illegally vote you could be imprisoned
and your children taken away; and if you voted in other elections during
2004 you couldn't vote for President.
Why can we land people on the Moon, machines on Mars and transfer
trillions internationally, but can't figure out how to run efficient,
accurate and fair elections? What's wrong?
Just below the dysfunctional U.S. election system there's a very basic
democratic question being discussed or fiercely debated among academics,
civil rights leaders and politicians from both political parties. The
question? Is the individual right to vote even guaranteed in our
Constitution?
Bush v. Gore (2000) said, "the individual citizen has no
federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of
the United States." Thus, the simple answer appears to be
"no."
Others, Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe among them, argue that
the "equal protection" and "non-discrimination in
voting" clauses of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
respectively and Supreme Court precedents since Brown (1954) can be
construed to grant the individual citizen the fundamental right to vote
in the Constitution.
The current Constitution allows state legislatures��not individual
voters��to select electors to elect the President through the Electoral
College. This is what Florida's legislature threatened to do in
2000 if Gore had won the most popular votes. It would be
especially wise for Democrats but, indeed, anyone who believes in
democracy, to see the value of adding an individual voting rights
amendment to the Constitution and no longer allow "states'
rights" almost absolute control over our election process.
Last July��during a Q & A session at the RainbowPUSH Coalition
Convention in Chicago��former President Bill Clinton, after careful
questioning, acknowledged, constitutionally, we have a voting system
largely based on "states' rights" and he supported adding an
individual voting rights amendment to the Constitution.
On August 6, at the UNITY: Journalists of Color Convention, Roland
Martin asked President George W. Bush: "In your remarks you said
that 8 million people in Afghanistan registered to vote, and as you
said, exercised their God-given right to vote...That may be a right from
God, but it's not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution...And in this age
of new constitutional amendments, will you endorse a constitutional
amendment guaranteeing every American the right to vote in federal
elections?" President Bush responded: "I'll
consider it."
I'm convinced that if Congress had the will, under our current
Constitution, it could do much more to strengthen the administration of
a unitary voting system, and protect and fully count all votes. Most
Americans are unaware, however, that, nationally, according to a joint
study by Cal-Tech and MIT, somewhere between four and six million votes
were not counted in 2000 because many states had similar problems to
what occurred in Florida. My state of Illinois was the worst.
Ohio is the Florida of 2004 but nationwide massive voting problems were
again very evident.
But I'm unconvinced, absent a voting rights amendment, that any
solutions to our most pressing voting rights problems will be universal
or sustainable. How can we achieve equal protection in 13,000
separate and unequally administered voting jurisdictions? We
can't!
For example, I was born in South Carolina, raised in Illinois and went
to college in North Carolina. While a resident in each of those
states, the simple fact that I'm an American entitled me to
representation by two Senators and a Representative. However, while
working in Congress I live in DC where American citizens��with the same
obligation to pay taxes and willingness to fight and die in defense of
our nation��experience taxation without voting representation in
Congress. They are equal American citizens in obligation but treated
unequally politically. They've tried political enfranchisement through a
constitutional amendment, an "equal protection" and
"non-discrimination in voting" lawsuit, and statehood through
the Congress, only to be rejected. An individual voting rights
amendment would give them equal citizenship status and entitle them to
equal representation in Congress.
Most Americans are aware that in 2000 Florida removed over 50,000 voters
claiming, erroneously, they were ex-felons. Nationally, nearly
five million ex-felons, who have fully paid their debt to society, are
permanently barred from voting. As a legacy of slavery, such laws
are disproportionately in the South where 53 percent of African
Americans live. Only a voting rights amendment can overcome many
states determination to exclude them.
Without an individual voting rights amendment, any law Congress passed
would only apply to federal elections, not state and local elections.
And if the individual right to vote is already in the Constitution, why
didn't it take precedent over Florida's arbitrary December 12 deadline
to count all the votes? In my view, constitutionally, states'
rights overruled the individual's right to have their vote counted.
Finally, wouldn't individual voting rights be stronger and more
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