Voting process needs uniform standard

Daytona Beach News-Journal    07 November 2004
Last : November 07, 2004

 

The memory of the 2000 Supreme Court decision that put George W. Bush in the White House still hangs over Florida residents. Many are grateful that the state won't see a repeat this year of the humiliating court battle that dragged on for months.

That doesn't mean the nation's elections system is failsafe. This election fell far short of the lofty ideals voiced in the landmark Bush v. Gore decision. Yet, there's little confidence that Congress or individual states will act to correct the flaws that became so evident in this election.

That failure ignores the mandate of Bush v. Gore. The majority decision speaks clearly of the duty to steer clear of any actions that might value one person's vote over another. In fact, the Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court on just that point by allowing each county to set its own standards for reviewing ballots to determine a voter's intent, the state court was opening the door for one person's ballot to be counted while another's was not.

Two years before this election commenced, it was obvious that there would again be disparities in the way votes were tallied.

As punch-card voting machines fell from favor, many local elections officials opted to purchase new touch-screen voting terminals that didn't produce a verifiable paper trail. Even more disturbing, these machines have been shown to be unreliable, vulnerable to both tampering and incompetence.

But the problems identified in Bush v. Gore go beyond vote-tallying to the fundamental principle that voters must be treated equally. In the weeks before the election, it became apparent that this wasn't happening.

Early voting is a clear example. In some Florida counties, early voting was available in a dozen or more locations, and hours extended into the night and over weekends. In other counties, early voting was only available in one location (as was the original plan in Volusia County). In Florida, as in other states, people waited three and four hours to cast their ballots early.

This election also saw the return of another, far more insidious threat to democracy: Race-based vote suppression. In 2004, as in 2000, minority voters were targeted with tactics designed to keep them from the polls. The first sign of trouble in Florida was the flawed list of voters to be purged produced by a private vendor a list that disproportionately targeted black residents and virtually excluded Hispanics. Secretary of State Glenda Hood first defended, then abandoned, the purge list. In other parts of the country, political parties sought to have polling places removed from predominantly minority neighborhoods or conducted voter-intimidation campaigns that recall the Jim Crow era.

Those problems didn't seem to get much attention from leaders. Nor is there much concern over documented cases of fraud, such as the reported attempts to trick Florida college students into signing change-of-address forms that relocated their polling place and might have cost some their opportunity to vote on Election Day. That tactic might never have come to light if not for the fact that one of the victims was the stepdaughter of Ion Sancho, Leon County supervisor of elections.

Nor was there much investigation into the failure of Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to account for several thousand absentee ballots that were requested but not mailed until a few days before the election.

Those are just Florida's problems. Across the nation, more emerged such as the Ohio voter-registration drive in which workers discarded registrations of non-Republicans.

Even when everything went smoothly, there were still gaping and obvious inequities. For example, Florida "closes the books" 30 days before an election, meaning any voter registered after that will miss a chance to vote. Other states have walk-up registration where voters can sign up and vote on the same day. California has already purchased, evaluated and decertified as unreliable the same touch-screen machines used in several Florida counties.

Ann McFall, the incoming supervisor of elections in Volusia County, has said she intends to do more to make voting easier and more accessible. Peggy Rae Border, Flagler County supervisor, is also careful to be responsive to voters' needs. But not all Florida counties nor all states have the benefit of innovative, responsible leaders.

It's obvious that this country is far from the equal standards discussed in Bush v. Gore. And it is becoming clear that the only way to reach the high bar set by that decision is to institute national voting standards that go beyond the 1965 Voting Rights Act, by laying out the minimum procedures and safeguards for a fair and equitable election.

It might not be a popular notion especially since the party in power has benefited from election irregularities. But there is no disputing that election reform is the right and moral thing to do.