Carter: Fair vote in Florida unlikely...again.

[Mercutio]

In a Washington Post editorial, former President Jimmy Carter says, among other things,

The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair.

Reuters article on same

And just to prove it is an international story, the AlJazeera version.

 

[BPSCG]

I think we should make Jimmy Carter a JREF Honorary Troll, with oak leaf clusters.

 

[varwoche]

I'd interested if there is evidence supporting this claim of Carter's:

Several thousand ballots of blacks were thrown out on technical grounds in 2000 and a "fumbling attempt" had been made recently to disqualify 22,000 blacks -- likely Democrats -- but only 61 Hispanics who were probably Republicans, as alleged felons, he added.

 

[Skeptic]

Funny, Carter had no problem at all instantly declaring Chavez' elections in Venezuela "fair"...

Perhaps Gov. Jeb Bush should use Chavez's methods, like gunmen firing into crowds of opposition supporters, or government-controlled counting stations, for Florida to satisfy Carter's exacting standards.

Then again, this is the same Carter who praised Yasser Arafat as a patient man of peace, so...

 

[epepke]

I'd interested if there is evidence supporting this claim of Carter's:

There is, and I've read news clippings, but I can't find a reference.

Several months ago, the State of Florida reviewed a list of possible felons but automatically omitted Hispanic-looking names.

 

[CBL4]

The most significant of these requirements are:
A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place. Although rarely perfect in their objectivity, such top administrators are at least subject to public scrutiny and responsible for the integrity of their decisions. Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process.

Uniformity in voting procedures, so that all citizens, regardless of their social or financial status, have equal assurance that their votes are cast in the same way and will be tabulated with equal accuracy. Modern technology is already in use that makes electronic voting possible, with accurate and almost immediate tabulation and with paper ballot printouts so all voters can have confidence in the integrity of the process. There is no reason these proven techniques, used overseas and in some U.S. states, could not be used in Florida.

The problem in 2000 election started with the fact that Katherine Harris was the co-chair of the Bush campaign AND the official decider of election protocol. The new election head, Glenda Hood, was appointed by Jeb Bush and was an electoral college elector for GW Bush in 2000. Do you think she may be biased?

To repeat what Carter said - States need "A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place."

CBL

 

[crimresearch]

The problem in 2000 election started with the fact that Katherine Harris was the co-chair of the Bush campaign AND the official decider of election protocol. The new election head, Glenda Hood, was appointed by Jeb Bush and was an electoral college elector for GW Bush in 2000. Do you think she may be biased?

To repeat what Carter said - States need "A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place."

CBL

Actually, the problems started when the overwhelmingly Democratic elections supervisors screwed up the votes, and the partisan members of Jeb's administration wouldn't certify the results...its called checks and balances.

If Carter can find enough non-partisan people in Florida to run an honest election, good for him.

As it stands right now, the same people are still pretty much in place, with the same problems guaranteed to pop up again.

 

[Linda]

I think Carter is right on. The complaints he lists have been evident in Florida for several months now, and add to the situation that in many Florida counties, we've gone to the touchscreen ballots that leave no paper trail, and I'm sure we're going to be screwed up again. The Miami Herald has been detailing the problems for some time now.

It's possible parts of Florida won't even have their power back on by election day, and a lot of precinct polling places have been destroyed, and who knows how many poll workers will bail out due to personal problems dealing with the hurricanes.

Glenda Hood may have been a terrific Mayor of Orlando, but I'm not happy with the way she's running her Secretary of State office.

 

[varwoche]

The problem in 2000 election started with the fact that Katherine Harris was the co-chair of the Bush campaign AND the official decider of election protocol. The new election head, Glenda Hood, was appointed by Jeb Bush and was an electoral college elector for GW Bush in 2000. Do you think she may be biased?

To repeat what Carter said - States need "A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place."
CBL

This makes me curious how electoral commissions are structured in other states. The potential for unfairness/corruption is obvious.

 

[CBL4]

Actually, the problems started when the overwhelmingly Democratic elections supervisors screwed up the votes, and the partisan members of Jeb's administration wouldn't certify the results...

Followed by the Democratic appointed Florida Supreme Court supporting Gore. Followed by the Republican appointed US Supreme Court supporting Bush. Also, in Republican counties, the elections supervisors were just as partisan. Disgusting partisanship was shown at every levels.

its called checks and balances.

Not really. Checks and balances implies shared authority. Bush won because the Republican had more partisans at the highest level.

The Florida debacle occurred because:
1) The margin of victory was much smaller than both the margin of error and the number of questionable votes.
2) There was no clear way to count votes.
3) There was no unbiased person or group involved.

Number 1 cannot be prevented and probably will not be repeated. Carter calls for a predetermined common vote counting methods and for a non-partisan electoral committee. These are necessary to provide legitimacy when the margin of victory is tiny.

CBL

 

[CBL4]

Originally posted by varwoche
This makes me curious how electoral commissions are structured in other states. The potential for unfairness/corruption is obvious.

I was curious and I checked Oregon and Washington. In both of these states, the Secretary of State is the chief election officer. Oregon prevents the SoS from taking an active role in election campaigns as Harris did in Florida. This clearly does not prevent partisanship but makes it a little less blatant.

I do not think Florida is special in most ways. They just had the unfortunate combination of Harris and Jeb Bush having the most say in elections. When you throw in chads, butterfly ballots and a margin of victory of approximately zero, it was a recipe for disaster. Because of the 2000 debacle, Florida just receives more scrutiny when something goes wrong.

In a repeat of a case like this, I would prefer the league of women voters to any elected or selected official.

CBL

 

[Luke T.]

I was curious and I checked Oregon and Washington. In both of these states, the Secretary of State is the chief election officer. Oregon prevents the SoS from taking an active role in election campaigns as Harris did in Florida. This clearly does not prevent partisanship but makes it a little less blatant.

I do not think Florida is special in most ways. They just had the unfortunate combination of Harris and Jeb Bush having the most say in elections. When you throw in chads, butterfly ballots and a margin of victory of approximately zero, it was a recipe for disaster. Because of the 2000 debacle, Florida just receives more scrutiny when something goes wrong.

In a repeat of a case like this, I would prefer the league of women voters to any elected or selected official.

CBL

Florida had the unfortunate circumstance of being a close race. I doubt any state would survive the same scrutiny Florida has been subjected to.

 

[Luke T.]

http://www.glennbeck.com/news/08092004.shtml

What you did not hear reported was that the Florida 2000 election was not a startling anomaly. National studies on the issue demonstrated ballot-spoilage rates across the country range between 2-3 percent of total ballots cast. Florida's rate in 2000 was 3 percent. In 1996 it was 2.5 percent.

This same study revealed that the number of ruined ballots in Chicago was 125,000, compared to 174,000 for the entire state of Florida. Several states experienced voting problems remarkably similar to those in Florida. But the closeness of the 2000 election in Florida placed it dead center in the ensuing electoral storm.

The Commission's report failed to note that elections in Florida are the responsibility of 67 county supervisors of election. And, in all but one of the 25 counties with the highest ballot spoilage rates, the election was supervised by a Democrat-the one exception being an official with no party affiliation. In fact, most of the authority over elections in Florida resides with officials in the state's 67 counties, and all of those with the highest rates of voter error were under Democratic control.

Of the 25 Florida counties with the highest rate of vote spoilage, in how many was the election supervised by a Republican? The answer is zero. All but one of the 25 had Democratic chief election officers, and the one exception was in the hands of an official with no party affiliation.

The majority report argues that much of the spoiled ballot problem was due to voting technology. But elected Democratic Party officials decided on the type of machinery used, including the optical scanning system in Gadsden County, the state's only majority-black county and the one with the highest spoilage rate.

And the felon list?

Whites were twice as likely as blacks to be placed on the list erroneously, not the other way around.

 

[BPSCG]

I do not think Florida is special in most ways.

Tend to agree with you. The 2000 election was a "perfect storm". Most presidential elections have one or more states whose contests are breathtakingly close. Florida wasn't the only one in 2000; New Mexico was also razor-thin.

But New Mexico alone wouldn't have determined the outcome, because Florida has a lot more electoral votes at stake. And, in the same way, Florida would not have mattered if, say, California had gone for Bush. And California would not have mattered to Bush if Gore had been running away with 350+ electoral votes.

But here we had a "perfect storm" of events:

1) An election where the electoral vote was so close that any of several states could tip it either way, and ;
2) A very close election in one of those states.

If Bush had won California, the vote-counting would have gone on in Florida, and there might have been recounts to determine congressional races, but nobody would have made a big deal over it. Historians would later note that Bush had won Florida by one of the narrowest margins ever, but it would be a freak-show kind of statistic, of interest only to Jeopardy contestants.

Might be interesting to do some research to see how many times there have been states where the winning margin was 1/100 of one percent or less. I'll bet Florida 2000 wasn't the first.

 

[a_unique_person]

Funny, Carter had no problem at all instantly declaring Chavez' elections in Venezuela "fair"...

Perhaps Gov. Jeb Bush should use Chavez's methods, like gunmen firing into crowds of opposition supporters, or government-controlled counting stations, for Florida to satisfy Carter's exacting standards.

Then again, this is the same Carter who praised Yasser Arafat as a patient man of peace, so...

Nice diversion but.... nothing to do with Carters criticism.

 

[varwoche]

http://www.glennbeck.com/news/08092004.shtml

Who is Glenn Beck?

 

[a_unique_person]

http://www.glennbeck.com/news/08092004.shtml



And the felon list?

Whites were twice as likely as blacks to be placed on the list erroneously, not the other way around.

This whole 'felon' business is a crock, anyway. The idea notion is non-democratic and open to error and abuse.

The figures he quotes

The Commission completely ignored the bigger story: Approximately 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida on November 7, approximately 68 percent of whom were registered Democrats. The Miami Herald discovered that, "among the felons who cast presidential ballots, there were "62 robbers, 56 drug dealers, 45 killers, 16 rapists, and 7 kidnappers. At least two who voted were pictured on the state's on-line registry of sexual offenders."

And what of the rest? After you discard teh robbers, dealers, etc, the usual suspects, the vast majority of 'felons' may be excluded from voting for reasons that are usually reserved for the vast minority of offenders.

 

[Meadmaker]

I did some reading about the "felon list" problem, and it was a very real problem, but it is unfair to blame Katharine Harris for it.

The real problem occurred when people were erroneously removed from the voting roles because they were mistaken for people who were convicted felons. Ironically, this occurred because Florida had had a razor close Senate race a few years earlier, and it had been noticed that so many ineligible voters cast ballots that the election could have been swayed by the results.

So, the legislature passed a law saying that the voting roles had to be purged of felons. Oh, and one more thing, it had to be done by a private contractor, because everyone knows that private contractors are always more efficient and better than government workers. Right?

The private contractor did a lousy job. That's right, friends. This part of the Florida election problem was brought to you by inappropriate privatization.

As with the election itself, Ms. Harris was just following the law.


(For context, I voted for Gore, and in my mind there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he should have won Florida, and the Presidency. However, no one "stole" the election. Gore just had the worst luck imaginable. It was very close, and every break fell Bush's way. Bush won on a technicality, but he won.)

 

[BPSCG]

Nice diversion but.... nothing to do with Carters criticism.

But everything to do with Carter's qualifications as an expert on fair elections.

 

[rikzilla]

(For context, I voted for Gore, and in my mind there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he should have won Florida, and the Presidency. However, no one "stole" the election. Gore just had the worst luck imaginable. It was very close, and every break fell Bush's way. Bush won on a technicality, but he won.)

Thanks for being the very first Gore voter that I've ever heard this from. Rational,...sane,....and you say you're a Democrat? I knew there had to be a few out there!

Actually my opinion of the mess of 2000 matches yours exactly..(except for the "Gore should have won" part) The official, (and unofficial) recounts don't support your contention. But I do believe you're right on the mark for putting it down to luck...Gore just didn't have any.

-z