November 7th, 2006, and another election is on us. I did go and vote, as every single American should. In my opinion, if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about anything that this or any government does. You didn't exercise your right, so you shouldn't complain about what goes on. Anyway, on campus we have new electronic machines. Two electronic voting machines, and one old fashioned paper ballot. Luckily just by chance, when I was up to vote the paper ballot was open, so thats what I did. I say luckily, because I don't trust the electronic voting. It leaves no paper trail, and could be hacked and tampered with far too easily for my liking. I asked my Media Law professor what his view on electronic voting machines was, and he said "They scare the hell out of me." He pointed out about a study that was done that found out it was possible for someone to tamper with the machines and influence the vote. Not a good thing to think about. On that note, I wanted to talk about another contested election, the election in 2000. We watched a video the other day in Federal Government, and this is what I learned.
Before the election, Katherine Harris(the head of the election board in florida and sec. of state) and Jeb Bush hired a group called database technologies to scan the voter records in florida and purge the names of all convicted felons under an old law passed right after the civil war which prohibited felons from voting. The law was passed by confederate soldiers aimed at keeping black people from voting. After Database technologies(DBT) started their search through the voter records, they started getting a lot of "false positives," which were people who's name was very similiar to a convicted felons name, but they were obviously different people. This included things like felon John Smith, and non-felon John Smith Jr, or felon Ted White, born on 11/3/50, and non-felon Ted White, born on 11/3/76. They sent a letter to Harris stating that they felt the search critera were too big and they were concerned about all the non-felons being picked and taken off the voter registration lists, and in return, recieved a letter from a lawyer of Harris and Bush's, that said "we want these lists to be fairly broad and encompassing." So DBT continued with their purge of the voter registration lists, taking people off of the lists who had never seen the inside of a courtroom, but had the disadvantage of sharing a name or birthdate similiar to a convicted felon.
Also in Florida, Jeb Bush decided to take the names of 2,883 convicted felons off of the voter registration lists. These felons had been convicted in other states, served jail time, been released, had their voting rights restored, and then moved to Florida. Bush thought that they should have to reapply for voting rights in Florida, so without notice, they were removed from the voter registration lists.
After thousands of black voters (who would overwhelmingly vote democratic) showed up and found out their names weren't on the voter registration lists, groups started doing investigations into the accuracy of the DBT felon lists. One minister at a Florida Church found out that he was unable to vote, because he was convicted of a felony in 2007. This was a problem DBT had, that somehow the years of conviction coming up did not fit with the person. Either they were before they were born, or in the future, or in a year that possibly couldn't be right, such as when the person was 2 or 3 years old. After alerting the Florida Board of Elections, led by Harris, of this problem, they were told to white out any years on their lists of convicted felons that didn't make sense. So on the lists of convicted felons sent out to the voting polls, 4000 wrongly accusted non-felons could not find out the year they were supposedly arrested. A study was done on a sampling of 690 convicted felons found by DBT, and out of those 690, 33 were found to be actual convicted felons. The other 657 had their voting rights wrongly stripped.
There were also major descrepencies on the ballots. Some were very confusing, having george bush listed first on the left side, meaning you would punch the first "chad" to vote for Bush, Pat Buchannon listed first on the right side, meaning you would punch the second chad for him, and al gore listed second on the left side, meaning you would punch the third chad to vote for him. However, the arrow pointing to the chad to punch for Gore fell on the line between the 2nd and 3rd chad, leading to people at first voting for Buchannon, and then realizing what they did and punching the chad for Gore. Over 1000 ballots were thrown out in a single county because there were two votes on them. Other ballots that were thrown because they said "place a vote on every page" despite the fact that there were presidential candidates on more than one page. By voting on every page, the voter voided their own ballot. Overall, 27,000 votes were thrown out, 16,000 of them in precints that vote 98% democratic.
Harris, who maintained her impartialness as head of the board of elections by campaigning for Bush in other states, refused to expand the election deadline to finish counting the votes manually. Republicans lamented the process of manual voting recounts, and the hanging chad, dimpled chad, etc, debate, despite the fact that 2 years earlier, while governor of TX, Bush passed one of the most liberal voting recount acts ever passed, saying that manual recounts were the most accurate way to determine who had won an election. The Florida government also allowed 680 illegal absentee ballots to be counted from the army oversea, which would vote heavily rebuplican, even though they were post marked after the election, a complete violation of Florida law. When the democrats raised this issue, they were accused of trying to rob the military of their right to vote.
The case got to the Supreme Court, and they decided not to overturn Harris's order of giving the FL's electoral votes to Bush. However, it seems that the justices knew what they were doing was wrong. (On a personal note, I've been reading and researching lots of cases for my media law class, and have never seen anything like this) The supreme court put a mandate before their ruling in this case, that what they were about to say applied ONLY to the case before them, and could not be citied as precident in rulings in the future. Possibly because they knew that they were setting a dangerous precident that they did not want used in the future. That raises the question, why did they vote to end the recounts and allow Bush to be elected President, by a vote of 5-4.
Justice Antonin Scalia's two sons worked for Bush's legal team, and after the election, one of them recieved a promotion. Justice Clarence Thomas's wife worked for Bush by reading and reviewing applications for jobs under his administration, a job that would surely flourish if he was elected President. Justice Sandra Day O'Conner had stated that she would only retire under a republican president so her successor could be conservative. All three voted to stop the recounts. Even if you don't want to believe that these were their motives behind their vote, For Scalia and Thomas at least, it seems they could have recused themselves because of ties to the Bush election and administration.
Even if you supported Bush, you have to admit that there are a disgusting amount of irregularities that went into the election in Florida, and it really makes you question the validity of the "American Democracy."
Before the election, Katherine Harris(the head of the election board in florida and sec. of state) and Jeb Bush hired a group called database technologies to scan the voter records in florida and purge the names of all convicted felons under an old law passed right after the civil war which prohibited felons from voting. The law was passed by confederate soldiers aimed at keeping black people from voting. After Database technologies(DBT) started their search through the voter records, they started getting a lot of "false positives," which were people who's name was very similiar to a convicted felons name, but they were obviously different people. This included things like felon John Smith, and non-felon John Smith Jr, or felon Ted White, born on 11/3/50, and non-felon Ted White, born on 11/3/76. They sent a letter to Harris stating that they felt the search critera were too big and they were concerned about all the non-felons being picked and taken off the voter registration lists, and in return, recieved a letter from a lawyer of Harris and Bush's, that said "we want these lists to be fairly broad and encompassing." So DBT continued with their purge of the voter registration lists, taking people off of the lists who had never seen the inside of a courtroom, but had the disadvantage of sharing a name or birthdate similiar to a convicted felon.
Also in Florida, Jeb Bush decided to take the names of 2,883 convicted felons off of the voter registration lists. These felons had been convicted in other states, served jail time, been released, had their voting rights restored, and then moved to Florida. Bush thought that they should have to reapply for voting rights in Florida, so without notice, they were removed from the voter registration lists.
After thousands of black voters (who would overwhelmingly vote democratic) showed up and found out their names weren't on the voter registration lists, groups started doing investigations into the accuracy of the DBT felon lists. One minister at a Florida Church found out that he was unable to vote, because he was convicted of a felony in 2007. This was a problem DBT had, that somehow the years of conviction coming up did not fit with the person. Either they were before they were born, or in the future, or in a year that possibly couldn't be right, such as when the person was 2 or 3 years old. After alerting the Florida Board of Elections, led by Harris, of this problem, they were told to white out any years on their lists of convicted felons that didn't make sense. So on the lists of convicted felons sent out to the voting polls, 4000 wrongly accusted non-felons could not find out the year they were supposedly arrested. A study was done on a sampling of 690 convicted felons found by DBT, and out of those 690, 33 were found to be actual convicted felons. The other 657 had their voting rights wrongly stripped.
There were also major descrepencies on the ballots. Some were very confusing, having george bush listed first on the left side, meaning you would punch the first "chad" to vote for Bush, Pat Buchannon listed first on the right side, meaning you would punch the second chad for him, and al gore listed second on the left side, meaning you would punch the third chad to vote for him. However, the arrow pointing to the chad to punch for Gore fell on the line between the 2nd and 3rd chad, leading to people at first voting for Buchannon, and then realizing what they did and punching the chad for Gore. Over 1000 ballots were thrown out in a single county because there were two votes on them. Other ballots that were thrown because they said "place a vote on every page" despite the fact that there were presidential candidates on more than one page. By voting on every page, the voter voided their own ballot. Overall, 27,000 votes were thrown out, 16,000 of them in precints that vote 98% democratic.
Harris, who maintained her impartialness as head of the board of elections by campaigning for Bush in other states, refused to expand the election deadline to finish counting the votes manually. Republicans lamented the process of manual voting recounts, and the hanging chad, dimpled chad, etc, debate, despite the fact that 2 years earlier, while governor of TX, Bush passed one of the most liberal voting recount acts ever passed, saying that manual recounts were the most accurate way to determine who had won an election. The Florida government also allowed 680 illegal absentee ballots to be counted from the army oversea, which would vote heavily rebuplican, even though they were post marked after the election, a complete violation of Florida law. When the democrats raised this issue, they were accused of trying to rob the military of their right to vote.
The case got to the Supreme Court, and they decided not to overturn Harris's order of giving the FL's electoral votes to Bush. However, it seems that the justices knew what they were doing was wrong. (On a personal note, I've been reading and researching lots of cases for my media law class, and have never seen anything like this) The supreme court put a mandate before their ruling in this case, that what they were about to say applied ONLY to the case before them, and could not be citied as precident in rulings in the future. Possibly because they knew that they were setting a dangerous precident that they did not want used in the future. That raises the question, why did they vote to end the recounts and allow Bush to be elected President, by a vote of 5-4.
Justice Antonin Scalia's two sons worked for Bush's legal team, and after the election, one of them recieved a promotion. Justice Clarence Thomas's wife worked for Bush by reading and reviewing applications for jobs under his administration, a job that would surely flourish if he was elected President. Justice Sandra Day O'Conner had stated that she would only retire under a republican president so her successor could be conservative. All three voted to stop the recounts. Even if you don't want to believe that these were their motives behind their vote, For Scalia and Thomas at least, it seems they could have recused themselves because of ties to the Bush election and administration.
Even if you supported Bush, you have to admit that there are a disgusting amount of irregularities that went into the election in Florida, and it really makes you question the validity of the "American Democracy."
posted by Chris at 7:23 PM
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