Election Safety (9/12/2006)

The midterm election is only 8 weeks away, but is it safe or is it rigged? Consider:

Although Al Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court decided its outcome, not the voters. The Court stopped the Florida recount, thus selecting Bush. In the 2004 national election, a tight race in Ohio determined the winner, but was it rigged? Robert F. Kennedy Jr, writes in “Rolling Stone”: “Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted—enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.” Kennedy further documents that, to secure a Bush victory, Ohio Republicans purged thousands of eligible voters from the rolls; did not process cards generated by Democratic voter registration drives; shortchanged Democratic precincts in allocated voting machines; and illegally derailed a recount.

Kennedy admits that voting irregularities do happen, but “2004 was decidedly partisan bent. The president’s party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004.” For example: nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots or received them too late; Sproul and Associates, a consulting firm hired by the Republic National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, shredded Democratic registrations; and malfunctioning machines in New Mexico failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots. The federal election commission reported that as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment; that’s about one vote for every 100 cast.

And again for this mid-term election, suspicion is rampant. A New York Times June 7 editorial states: “If there was ever a sign of a ruling party in trouble, it is a game plan that calls for trying to win by discouraging voting.” Voter registration drives bring poor people, minority groups and less educated voters into the process, but Florida passed a law which seems designed to do the opposite. This law fines a group $250 for every voter registration form that’s filed later than 10 days after its collection, and $5000 for every form that is not submitted, even if events, like a hurricane, are beyond the group’s control. As a result, the Florida League of Women Voters, having registered voters for 67 years, decided it could not afford to keep doing so and sued. A federal court blocked the new rules. Washington State prevents people from voting if the secretary of state’s office fails to match voter registration information with government databases. But, a mismatch can occur through a simple typing error. Colorado imposes criminal penalties on volunteers who slip up in registration drives. Even worse, U. S. Justice Department decisions in Alabama, Ohio and Texas election cases, giving Republicans control of the election process, seem to be more concerned with twisting results than with ensuring lawful elections.

And then there are the voting machine irregularities. Zachary Goldfarb documents, in a Washington Post column, that a single person could swing an election because three major electronic voting systems in use have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities that allow a hacker to change the outcome! The vulnerabilities can be overcome by audits and paper trails, yet only 26 states require paper trails, and fewer than half of those require regular audits.

Ironically, while Bush brags about so-called free elections in Iraq, our own election process is in doubt. Will voters have our say this November? That depends on whether citizens are encouraged, and then allowed, to vote, and if our votes are honestly recorded and counted.

- Judith Kohler

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