Every Vote
Counts,
As Long It's
Counted
March 21, 2001
"As
long as I count the votes, what
are you
going to do about it?"
-William
Marcy "Boss" Tweed, on the New York
City
ballot of November 1871
The post-election drama in
Florida illuminated the smallest details of American politics in action. After
months of photo ops and sound bites, suddenly we saw a living, breathing
process which depended on the actions of millions of ordinary people. It was
refreshing, but there was something missing in the coverage: Florida has a
shocking record of electoral crime. Satirist Dave Barry joked: "Florida's
No. 3 industry, behind tourism and skin cancer, is voter fraud." (USA
Today 11/10/00)
The 1999 Pulitzer for
investigative reporting went to the Miami Herald for "Dirty Votes: the
Race for Miami Mayor"-a series on the 1997 elections. The stories sparked
an investigation which ended with 26 arrests, conviction of the City
Commissioner, and voiding of the election. According to the Associated Press,
that race was "at least the sixth Florida election...marred by fraud over
the last decade". (AP 11/17/00.
Outright fraud is only part of
Florida's deeply troubled electoral process. Following the 1997 debacle,
Florida attempted to enact more rigorous rules for absentee voting, but was
stymied by its appalling record of discrimination against African American
voters, which has forced it to subject all election law changes to Federal
review. (Miami Herald 09/07/98)
THE FIX WAS IN(CONCLUSIVE)
Stealth is crucial to
election-rigging. Because elections occur over large geographic areas,
individual criminal acts can be widely dispersed and committed by many
individuals operating at a safe distance from the candidates. The judge who
voided Miami's 1997 mayoral election explained that candidate Xavier Suarez
"...benefited from a massive vote-fraud conspiracy, though [the judge] saw
no evidence that Suarez knew about it." (Miami Herald 03/27/98) Detecting
election-rigging begins with a search for patterns of irregularity which tend
to favor a candidate. These in turn may suggest areas for deeper investigation. Some newsworthy patterns from the Sunshine
State:
CONFLICTING DATA
An hour after the networks
called Florida for Gore, Bush campaign operatives were on national television denouncing
the projection, calling it "premature." The networks retracted their
projection, and by 2:00 a.m., reversed it, calling Bush the winner. At 4:00
a.m., the second projection was retracted. Like them or not, exit polls have
become quite reliable, and serve the valuable function of providing a second,
independent set of results. The electorate deserves an explanation, not an
apology. Voters told exit pollsters how
they believed they voted. They cannot have known how, or even whether, their
vote was counted.
DISAPPEARING VOTES
At least two locked ballot
boxes, filled with untabulated ballots, were removed from the counting process:
one was discovered in a school cafeteria and one in a hotel lobby. (NAACP Press
Release 11/08/00; C-SPAN, AP 11/11/00) Hundreds of Gore votes in Volusia County
allegedly "...disappeared from the computer count, though they reappeared
later." (Time 11/13/00)
BALLOT TAMPERING
Some voters testified that their
ballots were pre-punched. (AP 11/11/00) In Palm Beach County 19,000 ballots
were disqualified because they were double-punched. If a voter did not realize
their ballot was pre-punched, any selection other than the pre-punched hole
automatically disqualified the ballot. Ballots were discovered with tape
holding a chad in a punched hole. (Miami Herald 11/19/00). Palm Beach County
had 10,000 votes disqualified because no hole was punched.
DISQUALIFICATION SPIKE
Florida ballot disqualification
was up 16% over the last presidential election cycle. In 1996, 2.52% of ballots
cast were disqualified. This year, the rate was 2.93%. Twenty-one counties disqualified
votes at double or more the statewide rate. Total disqualified ballots was
around 160,000. (Sun-Sentinel 11/15/00) Precinct-level analysis would indicate
if the disqualification spike, representing about 40,000 more than would have
been lost at the 1996 rate, tended to benefit one candidate over another.
SKEWED RECOUNTS
If an election is clean, the
rate of error should be evenly distributed across the political spectrum.
Initial machine recounts cut Bush's lead by 46%, from 1784 to 960. (Reuters
11/11/00; Sun-Sentinel 11/12/00) Hand recounts, a source of anxiety and anger
for the Bush camp, have consistently yielded more votes for Gore. In
Miami-Dade, the canvassing board declined to make a sample hand recount. When
they relented, a 1% sample yielded 1 additional vote for Bush and 6 additional
votes for Gore. If the sample was representative, completing a hand recount in Miami-Dade
would likely have added 600 votes to the Gore column.
ABSENTEE ARGUMENTS
Republicans have called for
counting of absentee votes without postmarks, illegal under Florida's election
laws. A postmark proves that the ballot was cast on or before election day, and
acts as one more check on absentee ballot fraud. In Seminole county, election
supervisor Sandra Goard "allowed Republican workers to camp out in her
offices for as long as 10 days" to make handwritten corrections to faulty
Republican absentee ballot applications. (New York Times 11/14/00) Two
successive absentee ballots were stolen from the son of Federal District Judge
Roger Vinson. The first ballot was cast with a forged signature. The double
theft strongly suggests an organized effort. (Miami Herald 11/17/00)
Miami's 1997 election was voided
because of 4,500 fraudulent absentee ballots. (Miami Herald 08/07/98) According
to the Voting Integrity Project, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in
Arlington, Virginia, "Absentee ballot fraud is the method of choice for
stealing elections." (AP 11/17/00)
JIM CROWISM
The 15th Amendment and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 make infringement of a person's right to vote a
federal crime. Many voters, primarily African Americans, reported a pattern of
polling place intimidation and denial of the right to vote, including police
roadblocks, unduly burdensome identification requirements, polling place
workers who were hostile or from the wrong language group, illegal and
threatening poll watchers, polling places "running out" of ballots,
polls closing despite voters waiting on line well before closing time. (Time
11/13/00; Miami Herald 11/17/00)
FAMILY TIES
Theft of a US presidential
election does not seem particularly plausible. However, when there is a
possibility of foul play, it is reasonable to examine questions of motive,
means and opportunity.
Both candidates courted Miami's
Cuban exiles, a small community with regional, national and even international political
importance wildly out of proportion to their numbers. Most people know them, if
at all, as the stars of Elian, The Miniseries. The political muscle of Miami's
Cubans flows from extensive service in the cold war. They sent 5,000 foot
soldiers to the Bay of Pigs, half of whom came home. Since then, a significant minority of community members have
participated in contract work for the CIA, undertaking countless highly
dangerous off-the-books jobs, including at least one well-documented case of election-rigging
(Dominican Republic, 1962). As a group, they view the possibility of a thaw in
US-Cuba relations with stark dread.
Miami Cubans flirted with Bill
Clinton, but Elian ended that. Gore advocated legislation to keep Elian
stateside, and Lieberman put a wreath on Jorge Mas Canosa's grave. Those were
serious efforts, but did not counterbalance the Bush family's longstanding intimate
relationship with the top tier of the Miami Cuban leadership. George Jr.
offered Miami Cubans everything they could hope for when he vowed to continue
the embargo to the bitter end.
George Jr.'s election-night
statement to the effect that his brother "had just assured him that
Florida was his" may go down in history as the mother of all Freudian
slips. (New York Times 11/09/00) Voters, not brothers, deliver electoral votes.
Unless, of course, they hold positions of power which they are not averse to
misusing. Jeb was right to recuse himself from the counting process, but what
was he doing, and telling others to do, before the counting started? Jeb has a
colorful political resume. Solidly Republican Colorado gave George Jr. a tepid
51%, apparently because many hold Jeb responsible for Silverado Savings and
Loan, the worst financial disaster in that state's recent history.
Bush cousin John Ellis ran the election
desk at Fox News, and communicated directly with Jeb and George Jr. all night
long. It was Ellis who advised Fox News to call Florida for Bush, triggering
Gore's congratulation to George Jr. and a spate of botched headlines. Asked
about the appearance of impropriety, Fox Vice President John Moody replied
"I don't think there's anything improper about it as long as he doesn't
behave improperly..." (Washington Post 11/14/00)
In view of such a strange set of
circumstances, we should not have been hearing jokes about electoral crime in
Florida.
Stealing a presidential election
is no laughing matter. It is a bloodless coup d'etat.
-RLR
The writer holds an MA in
American Studies and works as a paralegal in New York City. He has 15 years of
grassroots political experience and 10 years in the legal field.
Postscript: Short History of a
Pamphlet
This piece was submitted to 20
daily papers on Wednesday, November 29. It was also submitted to The Nation,
and The New York Observer, In These Times and Z Magazine. It was faxed to the
office of Rep. Charles Rangel of New York and columnist E.J. Dionne of the
Washington Post.
Dallas Morning News op-ed editor
Bob Moos sent a polite email rejection (I regret...but we appreciate...).
Peggy Suttle, Editorial
Assistant to Nation Editor Katrina van den Heuvel said, on two successive
Fridays: "we're on deadline" and "everybody's writing about Florida".
EJ Dionne, via his secretary, said
it was too long, but good luck.
Charles Rangel wrote back to
say, "Clearly, voters in minority communities were disproportionately victimized
in the decision rendered by the Supreme Court and it is clear that we have lost
credibility as a nation in setting the standard for fairness in the electoral
process."
Stories filed since November
reinforce what is written above, particularly analyses showing that key African
American precincts in Florida suffered ballot invalidation rates of 10% (never
mind the African Americans who were simply prevented from casting a ballot).
Nationally, ballot invalidation averages 2%.
Comments?
Please email me at rich_ray@hotmail