I didn't make a fuss when Bush was announced as the winner in 2000. I have my issues with the electoral college, but I think the system is too important and sophisticated to be discarded without rigorous public debate. I assumed that Katherine Harris, Florida's republican Secretary of State, was only negligibly biased, and that she reached her decision with reasonable deliberation.
But every now and again I read an article like this:
quote: Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."
By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? 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 percent were cast by black voters. In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter.
Harris didn't even launch and investigation into institutional racism at the polls before announcing a winner. I guess that's just how it goes. *shrugs* It's like all of those people who were put to death, and then we find out that they were innocent. I think Kerry is going to win by a margin, for no other reason that Bush was never supported by the electorate, by the popular vote or the electoral college.
[ June 25, 2004, 01:39 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by fallow (Member # 6268) on :
Irami,
I'm not sure I get the point of your post, but I don't think Kerry's got a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected once this contest really gets underway.
fallow
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
Ugh.
And this isn't even going into the number of black people prevented from voting at all by Jeb Bush when he, against Florida Supreme Court orders banned ex-cons from voting, then went on to classify voters by race in order to ban all those vaguely similar to the ex-cons -- one example, I believe, was a black woman named Christina Smith who was illegally banned along with one black Christopher Smith, an ex-con.
And then we get into starting/stopping issues with the Supreme Court.
But if Bush won the electoral vote, does that mean the votes of these people wouldn't matter in the first place?