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If we don't have a fair voting system, we don't have a democracy
December 22, 2004 ( politics )
The Daily KOS posts links and graphics driving home the point that this was not an election, it was a ruse.
Quoting:
In battleground states such as Florida and Ohio, obviously, concerted efforts were underway before and during election day to undermine Democratic turnout as much as possible. What is most telling about these various efforts is how similar they were in various states; a perusal of both Ohio and Florida via voteprotect.org shows surprising consistency among some types of complaints.Among the more common reports in both states:
* Phone calls and flyers telling voters that their polling places had changed, when in fact they had not. Other reports cited people standing outside the polling places themselves, falsely redirecting some voters to other precincts.
* Intimidation efforts (such as anonymously distributed flyers) aimed directly at the minority community, implying for example that minority voters would be scrutinized for illegal activities if they were to vote.
* Precinct "observers" challenging voters for unnecessary identification and being generally disruptive, especially towards minority voters. In Florida, some Republican observers even carried papers with pictures of voters who were to be challenged; in Ohio, there is a sketchy report of two black voters in Shaker Heights being arrested after being singled out as having active warrants by election "challengers". Certainly, if nothing else, unnecessary ID challenges helped contribute to long lines in urban polling places.
* Longtime voters finding themselves inexplicably removed from the voting rolls, and having to cast provisional ballots, as a result of state "purging" of the rolls. In some areas, the "affidavit" lines for casting provisional, HAVA-required ballots were themselves an additional hour long, or longer, in addition to whatever time the voter had already spent in the original precinct lines; needless to say, the reports are filled with instances of voters turning away without voting.
The Cuyahoga county reports from voteprotect.org, especially, read like a (dark) comedy of errors; one would surmise, from reading the reports, that this particular county had never before successfully conducted an election. Besides the endemic reports of very long lines and generally glacial pace of voting, which from reports appears to have been a problem even in the morning hours, especially noteworthy are reports from several precincts of minority voters being asked for ID, while white voters were allowed to vote unchallenged.
Posted by griffjon at December 22, 2004 03:36 PM
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