NEW AFRIKAN MILLENNIUM
3 NOVEMBER 2004
DATE: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 07:14:40 -0500
FROM:"Pan-African News Wire" <ac6123@wayne.edu>
November 3, 2004
THE BALLOTING
LONG LINES, SHORT TEMPERS, LITTLE CHAOS AT POLLS
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
New York Times
Lines were long, tempers were short, some voting machines malfunctioned
and a few polling places briefly replaced electronic wizardry with
cardboard ballot boxes. But America's national election seemed to run
smoothly yesterday, with no widespread reports of chaos, fraud or legal
challenges that might affect the outcome.
Caught in a huge turnout generated by a bitter campaign and polls
showing a down-to-the-wire dead heat, voters across the country often
stood for hours to cast ballots, determined to have a say in what many
regarded as a turning point for a nation at the crossroads of war and a
struggling economy.
"This year a lot of people will stand in line no matter how long,"
James Richmond said after a three-hour wait at a polling place in a
Denver bookstore, where the line ran conveniently past a poetry section
into the history aisle. "America is pretty emotionally and politically
charged," Mr. Richmond added.
Beyond books and magazines, there were cell phones and quiet
conversations to pass the time in a slow-moving line outside St.
Anthony's Church in Greenwich Village, in New York City. Volunteers
provided umbrellas for voters in lines on a rainy day in Cleveland. And
Kerry supporters in Philadelphia cooked hamburgers on a sidewalk grill
for those trapped in one polling place line.
Still, patience ran thin and there were thousands of complaints across
the country: of confusion and incompetence among election workers, of
difficulty finding polling places, of polls opening late or shutting
down early, of touch-screen machines that seemed to record votes
incorrectly or not at
all, of decades-old machines that jammed up, of partisan appeals being
made inside the 100-foot no-electioneering zone.
There was only one report of election-related violence. Two Bush
supporters in Florida filed a lawsuit, seeking damages, claiming that
they had been punched, pushed and spat upon by Democrats.
In Madison, Wis., a man trying to vote found that his identity had
already been used to cast a ballot.
And there were other serious problems. Disputes over absentee ballots
arose in at least two states. Pennsylvania Republicans filed suit in
federal court in Philadelphia seeking to prevent absentee ballots from
being counted before Friday, when names could be compared to
registration rolls. And in Florida, many Palm Beach County residents
who never received absentee ballots were having a hard time casting
regular ballots. They were only required to sign oaths swearing they
had not yet voted, but some poll workers were insisting on checking
with a supervisor whose line was constantly busy.
The Election Protection Coalition, a nonpartisan group that tracked
problems in polling places, said it had received 23,000 reports of
problems at the polls nationwide, including 1,100 about voting machines
that malfunctioned and 8,900 incidents of voters not appearing on
registration rolls.
Thousands more involved problems with absentee ballots.
Some disabled Florida voters who failed to receive absentee ballots
were turned away when they tried to vote in person. Elsewhere in
Florida, some Hispanic voters said they were falsely told the polls had
closed early, and in New Mexico some voters said callers had given them
phony information about changed polling places.
In Nevada, election officials said calls had been made to some
registered Democrats telling falsely of changes in the time and place
of balloting. Others reported visits from strangers with ballots, which
were to be filled out and handed back.
More confusion surrounded the use of provisional ballots in many
states. They were being used for the first time by voters whose names
did not appear on official voter rolls. Some states counted them
yesterday, others said they would do so only if a recount became
necessary.
Partisan poll watchers monitored balloting in Florida, Ohio, Iowa,
Colorado and other swing states, many of them lawyers watching for
chicanery. But fears that they would challenge and perhaps
disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters in perilously close races,
tipping the balance, were not borne out. Many were challenged, but
survived examination of their qualifications and had voted by day's end.
In Florida, 5,000 Republican poll watchers had been instructed to
challenge anyone whose name did not appear on the rolls, who might have
voted early or by absentee ballot and people convicted of felonies who
had not received clemency. But such challenges appeared to be
infrequent, and Allie Merzer, a spokeswoman for the Florida Democratic
Party, said there had been no egregious cases.
In closely contested Ohio, thousands of lawyers and other election
monitors for the Republicans and the Democrats appeared at polling
places across the state after being authorized by federal judges to
challenge the eligibility of voters with questionable qualifications.
The challengers appeared to be keeping an eye on each other, as well as
the voters, and there were no reports that large numbers of voters were
being challenged or denied a ballot.
Republicans had contended that they wanted to exercise challenges to
cut down on fraud, weeding out unregistered or ineligible voters, or
anyone who tried to vote more than once. They said that they wanted
only to guarantee a fair election for all. Democrats, who said they did
not intend to challenge any voters, charged that the Republican
challengers were really out to intimidate voters, especially low-income
and minority voters, who might be singled out disproportionately.
Making this argument in court, Democrats had won orders from federal
judges in Cincinnati and Akron barring challengers from polling places.
The judges held that fraud-prevention measures were already in place
and that aggressive challenges might cause chaos and intimidate some
voters. But the
Republicans appealed, and an appellate court in Cincinnati overturned
the rulings early yesterday. Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme
Court agreed, clearing the way for the challengers.
In Iowa, election officials and voters were congratulating themselves
by late afternoon for having a smooth Election Day, despite what was
expected to be a record turnout of 1.4 million voters. Thousands of
lawyers had volunteered to help if trouble arose, but most were
"sitting around twiddling their thumbs," said Jean Hessburg, executive
director of the Iowa Democratic Party.
There were no reports of major problems at polling places in Minnesota,
although there were scattered complaints of malfunctioning voting
machines and electioneering too close to the polls.
There were similar complaints in New Mexico, but no major disruptions
were reported at the state's 1,400 polling places
The voting in New York City's 6,090 election districts went slowly but
smoothly for the most part. There were long lines at nearly all the
polling places, and it often took more than an hour to cast a ballot.
Some polling places opened late. There were scattered voting-machine
breakdowns, and in some cases election workers seemed more confused
than the voters.
At a polling place at 45 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, things got off
to a shaky start. Voters began lining up at 6 a.m., but the poll did
not open until 7 a.m., an hour late, according to Jim Jordan, 34, who
works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. By then, the lines
snaked down Wall Street to the to the statue of George Washington
outside Federal Hall.
Five election workers finally appeared, but seemed not to know what to
do, said Louise Burley, an inspector for the Board of Elections. She
gave them a quick tutorial. Then, as things got started, one of the two
voting machines - devices that dated from the early 1960's - broke
down. Frustrations
mounted. "People were a little upset," Ms. Burley said.
For two hours, until technicians fixed the broken machine, the election
workers resorted to another, older technology: paper ballots stuffed
through a slit in a cardboard box marked: "Official Ballot Box." Sharon
Felder, 46, who lives in the neighborhood, waited only a half-hour in
line. "This is the most important election of my lifetime," Ms. Felder
said. "It's worth the wait."
By early afternoon, the New York Public Interest Research Group
reported 1,500 calls from voters seeking information on polling
locations or complaining about long lines, late openings, ill-trained
election officials and voting machine malfunctions. The Board of
Elections had 75 technicians to
repair machines in all five boroughs.
In Newark, 200 people were turned away by election officials at one
polling place in the morning, mostly because their names were not on
voter registration lists. The 200 went to an Election Day law clinic
where five Superior Court judges heard their cases and issued orders
that permitted nearly all of them to cast their ballots.
There were also false alarms. In Philadelphia, Republican poll monitors
looking for any sign of irregularities complained that voting machines
already had thousands of votes on them when the polls opened at 7 a.m.
Election officials and prosecutors rushed to investigate, but
discovered that the Republican operatives had mistakenly read numbers
from a counter that records every vote ever cast on a machine - not the
one that was to record yesterday's tally.
And in Mount Laurel, N.J., a polling place at the Fleetwood School was
closed by the police for two hours after election officials found a
white powder on the floor. The unsolved anthrax attacks of 2001, which
killed five people and injured 17 others, leaped to mind. But the
suspicious substance
turned out to be common table salt, the police said, and voting resumed
at 11 a.m.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Rick Lyman in Milwaukee;
Diane Cardwell in St. Louis; Ralph Blumenthal and Katie Reckdahl in New
Orleans; Abby Goodnough in Miami; William Yardley in Jacksonville,
Fla.; Kirk Johnson in Denver; Nick Madigan in Las Vegas; Tom Zeller Jr.
in Albuquerque; Stephen Kinzer in Minneapolis; Ford Fessenden in
Cleveland; Michael Moss in Des Moines; Matthew L. Wald in Allentown,
Pa.; Kate Zernike in Philadelphia; and Brian McDonald, Thomas J. Lueck,
John Schwartz and Michelle O'Donnell in New York.
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