Voting Rights (3/1/2005)

President Bush has praised the courage of Iraqi voters, but seems unaware of serious voting problems in our own country. In January, Bush met with the Congressional Black Caucus, which asked for his support to reauthorize sections of the U.S. Voting Rights Act that will sunset in 2007; he lamely replied that he didn’t know anything about it! The Act guarantees that African-Americans and any other group cannot be denied the right to vote. In 1965, after decades of violence, including murder, to prevent blacks from voting, President Johnson signed the Act into law, calling it: “… a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that’s ever been won on any battlefield…” Bush should support renewal of the Voting Rights Act and acknowledge the courage of the freedom riders, who registered blacks in the South, and the black voters, who, like the Iraqis, faced torture and death for daring to vote.

President Bush also should work for election reform. The Election Protection Coalition has documented systemic failures of the U.S. electoral process and pervasive threats that disenfranchise voters. Tens of thousands of incidents of voting barriers during the 2004 election have been catalogued by The Election Incident Reporting System. Five examples:

1. Registration. Thousands of voters never received their registration cards or faced problems with voter registration systems. Florida tried to purge thousands of voters from the rolls; most were African-Americans. Ohio’s Secretary of State created onerous registration regulations. In Nevada, a company hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters apparently destroyed registration forms completed by Democrats.
2. Absentee balloting. Faulty absentee ballot distribution put many elderly and disabled voters at risk of disenfranchisement. In Broward County, Florida, over 57,000 voters did not receive their requested ballots. Ohio had similar problems.
3. Polling sites. Inadequate numbers of voting booths, poorly trained election staff, and voting machine problems caused extremely long lines, often discouraging people from voting. Some polling sites had been moved; election officials either could not or would not tell voters where they could vote. Some sites opened late and closed early.
4. Voter intimidation. Voter suppression tactics targeted many predominantly minority areas. For example: “Dirty Tricks” flyers were distributed giving wrong information about polling sites and the election date, and threatening legal action against voters. One Milwaukee flyer warned voters , “if you’ve ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation, you can get 10 years in prison and your children will be taken away.” Newly registered voters in Lake County, Ohio, received fraudulent mail claiming that voters registered by the Kerry campaign or the NAACP would be barred from voting because their registrations were invalid.
5. Vote counting. Half the states refused to count a provisional ballot cast outside a voter’s assigned precinct. Ohio’s vague standards allowed partisan election officials in one county to reject provisional ballots that could have been counted in another county. Ohio had some strange results. A precinct in Gahanna, a suburban Columbus area, tallied 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 for Kerry, although only 638 total votes were cast. Ohio punch-card machines accounted for most of the nearly 92,000 Ohio ballots that failed to record a presidential vote. But four lawyers who contested the results of the 2004 Ohio election now face penalties because Ohio’s Attorney General, representing the Republican Secretary of State, has asked the State Supreme Court to sanction the four lawyers for bringing a so-called “frivolous” challenge.

President Bush talks about spreading democracy in the Middle East and praises the Iraqi election. But what is he doing to ensure voting rights in our country? We need free and fair elections here, too.

- Judith Kohler

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