The Democrats' brief Congressional challenge to Ohio's electoral votes
last week
was met with howls of derision from Republican lawmakers. "They're
still not
over the 2000 election, let alone the 2004 election," said Senator Rick
Santorum
of Pennsylvania.
Well, why should they be? Why should anyone who cares about democracy
just let
these things go? Many Americans don't know this, but according to the
best
information available, George W. Bush lost the vote in Florida and
therefore
should not have become president the first time.
A consortium of news organizations -- including the Wall Street
Journal, the
Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and
Associated
Press commissioned an independent recount. The study was done by the
University
of Chicago-based National Opinion Research Center.
The study, which examined 175,010 uncounted ballots in all of Florida's
67
counties, found that a complete recount would have given the state, and
therefore the presidency, to Al Gore. This was true no matter what
criteria were
used for accepting or rejecting the uncounted ballots: i.e., what kinds
of
"chads" or markings were taken as clear indication of voter intent.
This ballot count showed Gore winning Florida by a very small margin --
between
60 and 171 votes, depending on the criteria used. But we know from the
study
that he actually won by a much larger margin, because Gore lost about
8000 votes
in Palm Beach County due to the confusion caused by the notorious
"butterfly
ballot." A similarly confusing ballot cost Gore an estimated 7000 votes
in Duval
County.
And all this does not even count the systematic disenfranchisement of
Democratic
voters in Florida by partisan election authorities. So there is very
little
doubt that, in a technically clean election, we would have had a
different
president for the years 2001 through 2004. This is not something to
just "get
over;" this is something we should never forget, and do whatever is
necessary to
make sure it never happens again.
Did it happen again last November, in Ohio? It is difficult to say
without an
investigation. The Democratic staff report of the House Judiciary
Committee
found "massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in
Ohio. In
many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct
and
illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth
Blackwell,
the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio."
These included a misallocation of voting machines that resulted in long
lines in
Democratic areas. There was also a shortage of provisional ballots,
delayed
absentee ballots, and 93,000 spoiled ballots -- and most of the latter
have yet
to be examined. There were many other irregularities that cast a cloud
of
suspicion over the vote in Ohio: one of the most bizarre was the
exclusion of
public observers from the Warren County tally on the basis of an
alleged FBI
warning of a potential terrorist threat, which the FBI denies having
issued.
The Judiciary Committee Democratic staff report also found that the
recount was
not conducted properly or even legally, with precincts not selected
randomly, as
required by law. Bush's official margin in Ohio was 118,599 votes, so
it is
unlikely that a full and complete recount would reverse the result. But
if we
were to estimate the Democratic votes lost from all the other
shenanigans,
including the misallocation of voting machines, it's not clear whether
George W.
Bush would have won a clean election in Ohio, and therefore the
presidency in 2004.
Some of our electoral procedures -- such as electronic voting with no
paper
record -- would not pass the laugh test in other democracies. This
includes
having a Bush campaign official -- Ken Blackwell in Ohio -- oversee
statewide
elections. At a recent press conference in which Russian President
Vladimir
Putin came under fire for undemocratic practices in his country, he
retorted:
"Do you think that the electoral system in the US is without flaws?
Need I
remind you of how elections were held in the US?"
It was reminiscent of the 1960s, when international criticism of the
massive
disenfranchisement of black voters in the South helped build pressure
for our
Voting Rights Act. With no rival superpower competing for the hearts
and minds
of developing countries, most of our leaders don't seem to care as much
what the
world thinks of American democracy. But we who live here deserve
better.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research.
Center for Economic and Policy Research www.cepr.net
© 2005 Knight Ridder
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