In 2000, the presidential election was marred by poorly punched ballots in Florida. Four years later, it was malfunctioning machines in Ohio. With record numbers of voters expected yet again, the fundamental question remains whether the US’ embattled election machinery will stand up to the pressure.
This year’s unprecedented primary turnout has already exposed cracks in the infrastructure. In Texas, lines stretched for hours and ballots ran out. Voters in Virginia were told to submit slips of paper — which were later disqualified — when ballot deliveries didn’t arrive and overwhelmed poll workers in Washington hid electronic machines because they were afraid of the contraptions.
“Right now, election officials probably identify with Sheriff Brody in Jaws, who having seen the great white shark for the first time turns to his fellow passengers and remarks, ‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat,’” electionline.org director Doug Chapin said in a recent study of voting problems.
Primary turnout broke records across the country — in Delaware and the District of Columbia, the number of voters tripled from 2000; in Florida that figured doubled. The only state with less than 50 percent turnout was New Hampshire, which lost some of its luster as the first primary state when most of the country moved theirs to early in the year.
Though nearly all election officials had taken extra precautions for yesterday — some had ordered a paper ballot for every registered voter as well as increasing the number of electronic machines — substantial fear remains that polling places won’t be able to stand up to millions of voters who want to choose between Democrat Senator Barack Obama, who could become the first black president in American history, and Republican Senator John McCain.
“The ultimate test of democracy is full voter participation,” said NAACP president Ben Jealous. “States are not completely grasping what they’re in for. In Virginia, the governor won’t even agree to printing out additional paper ballots, even though they started passing out sheets of paper during the primary because they ran out of ballots.”
Foreshadowing what could be a litigious ending to this year’s election, the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit in Virginia, demanding more electronic machines in minority neighborhoods, and extra paper ballots in case those machines are tied up by record turnout. A judge denied the request on Monday following a hearing.
Major voting problems disrupted the 2000 presidential election when poorly punched ballots and huge turnouts ignited a volatile, weekslong recount that ended with a ruling by the US Supreme Court that resulted in a narrow victory for President George W. Bush. In 2004, lines that stretched 14 hours long and malfunctioning electronic machines created havoc in Ohio, which eventually gave Bush a second term by a margin of about 119,000 votes.
Yesterday, nearly half the country would be casting ballots on a new system, the majority of them using paper cards read by optical scanners.
When it comes to election lawsuits, and there have been scores filed since the 2000 meltdown, the most likely litigious issue in this election is provisional ballots.
People at the polls who believe they have been wrongly denied the right to vote — people whose names don’t show up on registration lists, for example — have the right to cast provisional ballots.
Rules on counting those ballots sharply differ from state to state.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS