10.31.08
Election chaos feared
RG mail
National Post Election chaos feared in U.S.
Perfect storm brewing as record voter turnout predicted
Peter Goodspeed, National Post
The ghost of Floridas hanging chads may return to haunt U. S. voters.
The pending presidential election, just days away, is already filled
with allegations of voter fraud, intimidation and flawed voting
machines.
Widespread complaints of incompetence, manipulation and theft threaten
to snarl the Nov. 4 vote count, and some say it could even turn
election day into weeks-long legal challenges.
With polls showing Barack Obama and John McCain neck-and-neck in a
half-dozen crucial swing states, election day controversies could
determine the outcome of the vote.
Sky-high voter interest, coupled with changes in voting machines,
record numbers of new registrants in many places, and new procedures
including voter identification rules in some states will mean voters
and election administrators could have a long day on Nov. 4, said Doug
Chapin, director of electionline.org,a non-partisan election reform
watchdog. Many polling places will hit capacity and poll workers will
be tested. Results from some counties could take longer than usual.
The question is no longer exclusively, Will the system work? Rather,
it is Can the system handle the load, he said.
In anticipation of voter chaos, in fact, both Republicans and
Democrats have hired armies of lawyers to monitor election day and
prepare Florida-style legal challenges to the results of any close
race.
In Florida itself, the Democrats have almost 5,000 lawyers to monitor
precincts, help voters turned away at the polls and litigate disputes
that might go to court.
At the heart of much of this confusion is the fact that U. S.
elections are governed by inconsistent rules and a patchwork of
individual state laws that invariably end up in court.
But this year, there is growing fear that in addition to the regular
clerical errors, lost applications and challenges to peoples voting
rights, election officials may simply be overwhelmed by what is
expected to be a record number of voters.
Another perfect storm may be brewing, only this one has the potential
to combine a record turnout with an insufficient number of poll
workers and a voting system still in flux, warns a study released last
week by the Pew Center on the States.
States are reporting record registration figures. Maryland now has 3.4
million registered voters, up about 10% over 2004. Indiana boasts
470,000 new voters since the 2006 congressional election, and Ohio,
which George W. Bush won by only 118,000 votes in 2004, expects to
have 665,000 new voters.
Long lines are predicted on voting day. Many states have urged voters
to avoid crowded polling stations by casting their ballots by mail or
voting early.
Some experts have predicted as many as a third of all U. S. voters
will cast their ballots before election day. The U. S Postal Service
expects to handle up to 31 million mail-in ballots and Oregon, for the
third time in its history, intends to conduct its election entirely by
mail.
The record turnout of first-time voters will give officials a lot of
administrative headaches, but it has also unleashed a bitter round of
conflicts over residency and citizenship requirements, Republican
complaints of voter fraud and Democratic claims of systematic voter
intimidation.
In these final few days, there has been an increase in the frequency
of yard signs being defaced, flyers going out advising one side to
vote a day later than the real election day, others threatening that
those with unpaid traffic tickets could be jailed if they turn up at
the polls on election day.
In Chicago, Beth Nudelman received voter registration material in the
mail for her dead pet goldfish, Princess.
In Alabama, scores of voters have been labelled convicted felons, who
are ineligible to vote, based on incorrect government lists.
In Wisconsin, tens of thousands of residents suddenly became
ineligible because of inconsistencies between their voter registration
cards and state motor vehicle and social security databases.
After the voting debacle of the deadlocked 2000 presidential election,
Congress passed a new Help America Vote Act, which provided states
with millions of dollars to upgrade voting equipment and procedures,
and create centralized databases to check voter registrations.
Thirty-one states will be testing those new databases for the first
time this year. So far, the experience has been a disaster.
As the databases are implemented, they check voters names against
state drivers licence and Social Security records to determine
eligibility. But frequent typographical errors, the misspelling of a
name, the use of a nickname or an error in a digit on an official
record can disqualify a voter.
When the Social Security Administration in Ohio received requests to
confirm 741,000 voter files recently, it found 289,603 were
non-matches that would disqualify a voter. Only most of the errors
were the result of typographical errors, not voter fraud.
Those discrepancies could create a nightmare scenario on election day,
because the Help America Vote Act also introduced the concept of
provisional ballots.
Under the law, voters whose eligibility is challenged can cast a
provisional ballot, which is set aside to be counted later after a
voters qualification is cleared up.
Tony Wang, of the voter rights group Common Cause, predicts that
provisional ballots may easily become the hanging chad of the 2008
election.
With Files From News Services
———
DIRTY TRICKS OR FREE SPEECH?
– A phony flyer bearing the state of Virginias logo has turned up,
saying that all Republican party supporters and independent voters
supporting Republican candidates shall vote on November 4th as
prescribed by law. Those supporting Democrats in the battleground
state shall vote on November 5th, it said. Similar flyers in
Philadelphia warn that anyone with unpaid traffic tickets or
outstanding arrest warrants could be jailed if they turn up at the
polls on election day.
– Vandals in northern Virginia pasted a letter S on yard signs so they
read Osama-Biden, in an attempt to link the Democrat and running mate
Joe Biden to Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
– In Ohio, a 20-year-old white woman claimed she was attacked by
assailants who carved a B (for Barack) on her cheek in anger at her
John McCain car sticker. She later admitted fabricating the story.
– Voters in key swing states have been swamped with ideological
mailings and ads, including: the DVD from the Clarion Fund called
Obsession: Radical Islams War Against the West, which has been mailed
to 28 million people; ads from the left-wing group, BraveNewPAC.org,
warning that a McCain administration would eliminate birth control for
women and the letter from the future from the Christian group Focus on
the Family, warning of an America in 2012 where pornographic magazines
are openly displayed.
— by Kerry Sheridan, Agence France-Presse