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REVERE THE RIGHT TO VOTE
cracy was no more — until the 1700s, when America tried it on
for size.
Democracy has its perks. Believe me, there is nothing
I like more than my right to free speech, the authority to practice
any religion and to print these words in the press. I appreciate
that I would enjoy the right to a speedy and fair trial, should I
ever have to have a trial, and I love that I cannot be forced into
involuntary servitude.
But my absolute favorite part of living in this democratic
nation is simple. I relish and revere my right to vote.
When November comes around, I appreciate the fact
that I have the right to cast my ballot. And cast it I will, with
fervor.
But apparently, there are a number of citizens, both men
and women, in this country who won’t follow suit.
According to a U.S. Census Bureau report on voting and
registration in the 2000 Presidential election, 186 million people
were eligible to vote (meaning they were older than 18 and citi
zens of the United States) but only 130 million were registered.
Of those 130 million, only 111 million voted.
It gets worse.
In 2002, during the Congressional elections, of the 193
million people eligible to vote, only 128 million voted. Forty-six
percent of the eligible U.S. population votes. Less than half.
When reading statistics like these, I wonder what people
are talking about when they extol themselves as “patriotic"
citizens? How, exactly, are nonvoting citizens “patriotic” when
they aren’t even performing the single, most-important duty of
their citizenship?
By voting, you are hiring or firing elected leaders who
are supposed to be working for you. You can cancel out the vote
of someone you don’t agree with and actively make the world a
better place for you or your children or grandchildren or whoever
will be shouldering the brunt of policy decisions.
If people who are capable of voting don’t vote, they are
allowing someone else to make decisions for them. Essentially,
they are letting the minority rule.
What Americans need to do is extract themselves from
political parties and base their votes on issues that are important
to them. If you don’t want the country to go to war, vote for the
guy least likely to go to war. If you want cheaper health care,
then by all means vote for the guy most inclined to create it.
BY LACEY B. HOYER
In less than two months the 2004 Presidential election
will be upon us. Two more months of wearying mud-flinging and
rhetorical promises stand between then and now. I only hope I
can make it.
I can’t even glance at a newspaper or turn on the tele
vision without being bombarded by “Cheney Attacks Kerry*
‘ Kerry Berates Bush," Republicans Concoct Scathing Rumors
About Democrats," “Democrats Howl Like Unhappy Banshees
About Cheney’s Attack On Kerry," and so on and so forth.
My God. What is this — adult politics or toddler temper-
tantrums?
In front of my eyes politics, and the intelligent debates
and platforms that should accompany politicians, have devolved
into mindless, testosterone-charged sporting events. The purpor
ted leader of our country and his arch-rival seem to be standing
in the middle of a field screaming trash-talk at each other and
just barely refraining from blows. Meanwhile, American citizens
line the field and pack the stands, throwing garbage and attack
ing their opponent’s supporters. Eventually all structure will
collapse and everyone will be reduced to violence and swear
words.
Well, so it goes.
In a perfect world, democracy would stand strong and
people wouldn't be part of political parties — they would choose
their candidates for the values and issues each held important.
Unfortunately, our world is far from perfect, more middling to
bad than anything else. Instead of even having the slightest clue
about what a politician’s platforms are, many citizens put them
selves into party categories and stick there like glue. I know
certain Republicans who don’t approve of what Bush is doing
with Iraq or the economy or abortion. But they still vote for him
because he is “on their side,” which means that because they
are all Republicans, they must band together, whether they
agree with his policies or not.
This is not democracy, this is not what America is all
about! Democracy, as you may well know, is a form of govern
ment in which the people hold the power and exercise that
power through a system of representation and voting. (Demo
cracy is also defined as having an absence of hereditary and
arbitrary class distinctions or privileges, but don’t tell that to the
President. It would break his little, corporate heart.)
The soul of this country is rooted in democracy, and
democracy is rooted in the ability of the people to elect their
candidates based on policies and to “fire” leaders who aren’t
doing their jobs. However, democracy seems to be floundering.
Many people aren’t voting for leaders based on policies, but
instead vdtintj for whoever happens to be on their team — good
or bad. And. As the brick that broke democracy’s back, a large
number of Americans aren’t voting at all.
Before I tell you why voting is important, let me tell you
a little tale about the history of our government system.
The Roman Empire was the first government to employ
democracy, back around 509 BC. After a revolution against a
monarchical government, a republic was set up, with a senate
and all sorts of other positions for leaders to hold. The goal of
this was that no one person could have too much power.
However, the Roman Republic was never really a demo
cracy, because there was a “client system” in place. A “client"
was a loyal supporter of a powerful Roman family. In return,
the patron of the client could reward or punish him. Clients were
required to support that family in everything they did, especially
NATALIE TURNER (WWW.OREGONWOMENVOTE.COM)
when they ran for political offices. At elections, it is thought that
people voted exclusively along family loyalty lines.
Eventually, Rome set up a standing military and travel
ed far and wide to expand their empire. Because the politicians
were so involved with the swelling empire, they neglected to
tend to the food shortages, homelessness and other sorts of
chaos that abounded in Rome. Eventually, the senate stopped
running elections, an emperor took absolute control and demo-
If you don’t believe in one issue or another, then make
the intelligent choice and vote for the corresponding politician.
Don’t make your decisions as if you are supporting a sports
team. Otherwise, you are simply giving politicians more power
to ignore the people. By not voting, you are allowing politicians
to choose a dictator who makes decisions that benefit him and
his cronies.
I won’t cry doomsday and go on about how America’s
democratic government is crumbling, but I do know that people
need to become more involved and concerned with how the
government is run.
This is your country. If you want to be patriotic or sup
port the troops currently fighting overseas, then appreciate the
freedoms available to you. Vote. Vote for what’s important to
you and vote for the enduring power of our democratic nation.
Lacey Hoyer spent the past summer as an intern at
the Daily Astorian, from which her article is reprinted. She and
her twin sister Megan are bom and bred Astorians, daughters
o f Teresa and Kerry Hoyer. Lacey and Jaspar Devereaux (also
a lifelong Astorian, son o f Sam Devereaux and Elizabeth Nikkila)
were married this summer. She is a senior at the University o f
Oregon and will graduate with a degree in journalism.
1 MILLION BLACK VOTES DIDN’T COUNT IN 2000
BY GREG PALAST
In the 2000 election 1.9 million Americans cast ballots
that no one counted. “Spoiled votes" is the technical term.
The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About
one million of them, half of the rejected ballots, were cast
by African Americans although black voters make up only
12% of the electorate.
This year it could get worse.
These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the
mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports
coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business
in Florida from the last go-round.
How do you spoil two million ballots? Not by leaving
them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed
machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It’s easy to
lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your
vote lost.
While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida
for BBC television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game
was played — with black voters the predetermined losers.
Florida’s Gadsden County has the highest percentage
of black voters in the state — and the highest spoilage rate.
One in eight votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many
voters wrote in “Al Gore.” Optical reading machines rejected
them because “Al" is a “stray mark."
By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital,
vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The differ
ence? In Tallahassee's white-majority county, voters placed
their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray
mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.
In other words, in the white county, make a mistake
and get another ballot; in the black county, make a mistake,
your ballot is tossed.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission looked into the
smelly pile of spoiled ballots and concluded that, of the 179,855
ballots invalidated by Florida officials, 53% were cast by black
voters. In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times more likely to
have a vote rejected as a white voter.
But let’s not get smug about Florida’s Jim Crow spoilage
rate. Civil Rights Commissioner Christopher Edley, dean of
Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley, took the Florida study
nationwide. His team discovered the uncomfortable fact that
Florida is typical of the nation.
Philip Klinkner, the statistician working on the Edley
investigations, concluded, “It appears that about half of all
ballots spoiled in the USA — about one million votes — were
cast by nonwhite voters.
This “no count," as the Civil Rights Commission calls it,
is no accident. In Florida, for example, I discovered that techni
cians had warned Governor Jeb Bush’s office well in advance of
November 2000 of the racial bend in the vote-count procedures.
Herein lies the problem. An apartheid vote-counting
system is far from politically neutral. Given that more than 90%
of the black electorate votes Democratic, had all the “spoiled"
votes been tallied, Gore would have taken Florida in a walk,
not to mention fattening his popular vote total nationwide. It is
not surprising that the First Brother's team, informed of impend
ing rejection of black ballots, looked away and whistled.
The ballot-box blackout is not the monopoly of one
party. Cook County, Illinois, has one of the country's worst
spoilage rates. That’s not surprising. Boss Daley’s Democratic
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machine, now his son’s, survives by systematic disenfranchise
ment of Chicago's black vote.
How can we fix it? First, let’s shed the convenient
excuses for vote spoilage, such as a lack of voter education.
One television network stated as fact that Florida’s black voters,
newly registered and lacking education, had difficulty with their
ballots. In other words, blacks are too dumb to vote.
This convenient racist excuse is dead wrong. After that
disaster in Gadsden, Florida, public outcry forced the govern
ment to change that black county's procedures to match that of
white counties. The result: near zero spoilage in the 2002 elect
ion. Ballot design, machines and procedure, says statistician
Klinkner, control spoilage.
In other words, the vote counters, not the voters, are to
blame. Politicians who choose the type of ballot and the method
of counting have long fine-tuned the spoilage rate to their liking.
It is about to get worse. The ill-named “Help America
Vote Act,” signed by President George W.Bush in 2002, is push
ing computerization of the ballot box.
California decertified some of Diebold Corporation's
digital ballot boxes in response to fears that hackers could pick
our next President. But the known danger of black-box voting is
that computers, even with their software secure, are vulnerable
to low-the spoilage games: polls opening late, locked-in votes,
votes lost in the ether.
And once again, the history of computer-voting glitches
has a decidedly racial bias. Florida's Broward County grandly
shifted to touch-screen voting in 2002. In white precincts, all
seemed to go well. In black precincts, hundreds of African
Americans showed up at the polls with machines down and
votes that simply disappeared.
Going digital won’t fix the problem. Canada and Sweden
vote on paper ballots with little spoilage and without suspicious
counts.
In America, a simple fix based on paper balloting is
resisted because, unfortunately, too many politicians who under
stand the racial bias in the vote-spoilage game are its benficiar-
ies, with little incentive to find those missing one million black
voters' ballots.
Greg Palast is a BBC investigative reporter and writes
for the UK Guardian newspapers and is the author of The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy. He wrote this article for the San
Francisco Chronicle.