A Crime Against Democracy
By Stuart Comstock-Gay
Published December 21st 2004 in www.tompaine.com
Electoral
votes have been submitted by all states and the national news media has
moved on, but a test of U.S. voting rights continues in Ohio. After the
Ohio delegation to the Electoral College cast its votes for President
Bush last week, election officials in Ohio counties began the recount
of votes cast in the election. Concerns about the integrity of the 2004
election continue to surface. Something's wrong with this picture.
We
at the National Voting Rights Institute on behalf of Green Party
Candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party candidate Michael
Badnarikare providing legal representation in the recount effort. We
also want to find out what went wrong. Because clearly things went
wrong. And whether in the end they are serious enough to change the
outcome of the election, they create a cloud over the elections of 2004.
Too
many commentators continue to claim the recount effort is the result of
bad losers. Some have even gone so far as to say that if the
Republicans lost, there would be no recount that Republicans play
fair.In fact, concern about "fairness" is in part what is driving the
recount. These commentators overlook the fact that this effort is not
only about verifying the outcome of the vote. More importantly, its
about ensuring accountability of a highly fallible elections process.
As
long as any votes are miscounted, misplaced or misdirected, our
elections cannot be said to be properly working. And with an electoral
system that provides no consistency in how votes are countedand some
election officials hostile to a full accountingthere remains work to be
done to restore voters' faith in the system.
What Went Wrong On Nov. 2
The
number of complaints in Ohio numbers thousands upon thousandslines into
the hours at polling places; shortages of poll workers and machines;
electronic voting machines that malfunctioned; voters being required to
show identification even though they were not first-time mail-in
registrants; erroneous purges of voters from the voter rolls; and
voters who requested absentee ballots but never received them and were
nevertheless barred from voting in person. In one precinct in Franklin
County, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave George W. Bush 3,893
extra votes out of a total of 638 votes cast. In addition,
approximately 93,000 ballots were not counted and Ohio election
officials may have improperly disqualified thousands of 155,000
provisional ballots cast.
Now the problems are escalating. In
Hocking County, Ohio, Deputy Elections Director Sherole Eaton describes
a troubling incident on December 10, three days before the recount was
to begin. An employee of the Tri Ad company came into the office to
check out the tabulator and computer and prepare voting officials for
the recount, so that the count would come out perfect and we wouldnt
have to do a full hand recount of the county. He asked which precincts
would be recounted, and made sure to focus on them. Voting machine
expert Doug Jones from the University of Iowa believes this threatens
the integrity of the entire recount. Now Congressman John Conyers has
asked the FBI to investigate this incident.
Whats Going Wrong With The Recount
But
thats only the tip of the iceberg. With the recount underway, we learn
that counties are handling the process in different ways, depending on
the whims of county officials. Every county was instructed by the
Secretary of State to do a recount of 3 percent of the votes, followed
by a hand recount of every vote if there any discrepancy appears. Some
counties, however, have said they would do their recounts by machine
only, and not by hand. Some have made space for observers, and allowed
them to review voting polls and other materials. Some counties have
kept observerswhether from the Green Party, Libertarian Party, DNC or
Republican Partyout of the counting rooms entirely.
And this
only after some elections officials tried to stop the recount in its
tracks. Delaware County sued NVRI, Cobb and Badnarik, seeking to stop
the recount, even though the law was followed. He said the recount was
too expensive and frivolous. Delaware County has finally decided to
conduct a recount, but only after a series of hearings.
On
January 5, Congress will receive the votes of the electoral college
votes and the electionfor all intents and purposeswill be considered
concluded.
Meanwhile the Ohio recount will continue well into
January. As of this writing, results are not in, but we expect full
recounts in most counties.
It is shocking that the cherished
right to vote, which should be a major issue in this country, has
become an invisible one. Even in the Ukraine, there will be a new
election because of widespread irregularities in the presidential
election. As the Supreme Court stated over a century ago, the right to
vote is "a fundamental political right, because preservative of all
rights." Now, more than ever, we must fight for this right.