Saturday, January 08, 2005

Places to go, people to see...

but here's something to chew on until I get back.

I have to admit that I wasn't immune to the notion that the challenge to the Ohio electors had a certain element of grandstanding. Sure, I knew there were problems, but there were problems in lots of places, not the least right here in the upper left, with the seemingly interminable obstructionism by Republicans determined to seat their own Governor without counting all the votes.

Media Matters offers a list culled from the executive summary of the Conyers report on the Ohio election, though, and things really were that bad. There's not enough to overturn the result, I'm afraid, but there's certainly more than enough to justify the Congress pausing for a couple hours to reflect on what went wrong and what can be done about it in the future.

It seems that dueling election reform bills will soon be in the hopper. We need to get behind one or the other, or distill them into a single proposal. Election reform should be near the top of the Democratic Congressional agenda (nothing trumps defending Social Security from the Republican attempt to destroy it when there is no crisis. Blocking Ken Blackwell's political ambitions belongs somewhere on every Democrat's priority list, too.

Need proof? Here's the list.
The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters;

Ohio secretary of state and Ohio Republican Party co-chair J. Kenneth Blackwell's decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters, again predominantly minority and Democratic voters;

Blackwell's widely criticized decision to reject voter registration applications based on paper weight may have resulted in thousands of new voters not being registered in time for the 2004 election;

The Ohio Republican Party's decision to engage in pre-election "caging" tactics, selectively targeting 35,000 predominantly minority voters for intimidation had a negative impact on voter turnout;

The Ohio Republican Party's decision to utilize thousands of partisan challengers concentrated in minority and Democratic areas likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of legal voters, who were not only intimidated, but became discouraged by the long lines.

Blackwell's decision to prevent voters who requested absentee ballots but did not receive them on a timely basis from being able to receive provisional ballots likely disenfranchised thousands, if not tens of thousands, of voters, particularly seniors.

Widespread instances of intimidation and misinformation in violation of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, Equal Protection, Due Process and the Ohio right to vote.

Improper purging and other registration errors by election officials that likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide.

A total of 93,000 spoiled ballots where no vote was cast for president, the vast majority of which have yet to be inspected.

Blackwell's failure to articulate clear and consistent standards for the counting of provisional ballots resulted in the loss of thousands of predominantly minority votes.

Blackwell's failure to issue specific standards for the recount contributed to a lack of uniformity in violation of both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clauses.

The voting computer company Triad has essentially admitted that it engaged in a course of behavior during the recount in numerous counties to provide "cheat sheets" to those counting the ballots.

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