In just a couple of days, dozens of hours, hundreds of minutes, thousands of seconds, Election 2008 will arrive. At 12:01 am on November 5, 2008, Election 2010 will begin, with hints of Election 2012.
Already, voting is taking place nationwide, thanks to a mix of early voting, vote-by-mail (especially in Oregon), and absentee ballots. Nearly everyone I know plans to vote, from here in California to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., from the small towns and cities in Minnesota to the rural precincts of Georgia and Alabama. I even hear tell there’s someone in Zambia who was itching to cast their ballot from abroad.
In 2000 and 2004, we had rather rocky elections, thanks to hanging chads and malfunctioning voting machines. Thankfully, I don’t think we’ll have to worry too much about little bits of hole-punched paper this time around, but the machines are a whole ‘nother story. Add to that the running battle in the Corporate Media lately over voter registration fraud, voting fraud, and vote suppression, and it’s possible it will be a mess again, especially if the actual tally is anywhere near close (right now, the polls suggest it will be a decisive Obama victory, but as a friend puts it, “The only thing that actually counts is the vote on November 4, not the polls.”).
At this point, based on what’s happening so far, the only way Obama can lose is if one (or both) of two things happen: 1) the closet racists don’t vote for him, because there’s no way they can ever bring themselves to vote for anyone who’s not a white man, and their numbers are overwhelming in a number of key states, or 2) the Republicans cheat and game the system.
The first is unavoidable; Obama will certainly not attract the votes of racists, openly declared or not, but I’m pretty sure a good number of them wouldn’t have voted for him anyway, even if he was white. It doesn’t help that a lot of misinformation has been spread. For example, I’m not sure McCain successfully changed misconceptions about Obama during his rally in Lakeville, Wisconsin, when he tried to rebut one woman’s contention that Obama is an “Arab. That’s just one of the politest terms, too. It’s been pretty ugly this fall.
The second is another train wreck about to happen (and if certain press reports are to be believed (and I believe they are most likely accurate). A lot of articles have appeared on smaller newsites, blogs, and other independent forums, but even CNN has reported on concerns about voting machines. In West Virginia, machines have been reported to be “vote-flipping,” where Democratic votes were changed to Republican picks. This is apparently happening in Texas and Missouri as well; in Tennessee, the opposite is happening, where votes are flipping from McCain to Obama. This is very disturbing, and should be an issue of concern to all parties.
Earlier this year, South Carolina experienced difficulty with voting machines, when they couldn’t be turned on at all– this was during a Republican primary, so it’s not a partisan issue. These problems aren’t new either, as anyone who’s been paying attention to elections since the machines debuted knows. This Op-Ed from The Independent (a British newspaper) mentions the 2004 election in Florida as an example, along with a video of vote-flipping witnessed in West Virginia from this year. Already, there’s been noises about possible legal action based on the voting machines’ performances in various states around the nation.
It’s not just the machines. The brouhaha over ACORN (voter registration is just a small part of what they do, incidentally), while blatantly partisan, did bring up an important point: even though no actual voting fraud happened (as much as the Republicans would like you to believe otherwise), some registrations were obviously faked. Not every Republican is playing along with the story; in Florida, Governor Charlie Crist abandoned the partsan meme and deviated from the choir by saying, ”I think that there’s probably less [fraud] than is being discussed. As we’re coming into the closing days of any campaign, there are some who enjoy chaos”
Most articles (and partisans hurling charges) neglect to mention that ACORN is alerting election boards when they submit false registrations. But even when registrations are false, these registrations must, by law, be turned in. Additionally, as this article notes, workers are paid for the registrations they submit, so more registrations equals more pay. This is a problem that should be fixed, and ACORN, among other voter registration groups (whether Republican, Democrat, Green, or what have you) has a responsibility to try to resolve this issue. The burden is also on us to develop a better system for voter registration so that voter registration groups don’t have to continually waste time collecting and reporting bogus forms.
Far more insidious (and dangerous to my way of thinking) is voter suppression. An article earlier this month in The New York Times (here’s a link for non-NYT registered readers) discussed purging of voter rolls, vote suppression, and other efforts to manipulate the election.
Quite a few attempts to deny voters their right have popped up in the Corporate Media. Thankfully, a lot of these tries have been stopped in their tracks. I’m especially proud to note that partisanship was not a concern in Montana, as this editorial by Republican Lieutenant Governor John Bohlinger demonstrates; he spoke out against the attempt by the Montana Republican Party to purge the rolls of 6,000 voters, including decorated veterans of our armed forces. Even though it has largely been the GOP who has pulled these shady, illegal, and unpatriotic moves, there’s still a few proud, principled Americans who are willing to preserve the rights of all, partisan affiliations be damned.
Still, quite a few right-wingers are hellbent on constantly manipulating elections in this country: even though this quote is from 1980, what conservative Paul Weyrich stated then is sadly true even today for many malicious individuals:
“I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
The “leverage” he speaks of is the leverage the right-wing wields in each and every election.
So how do we prevent this? How do we preserve one of the fundamental elements of American republicanism, of our “brand” of democracy? The first step is to reform how elections are operated, how ballots are designed, and how votes are cast. If the IRS can successfully collect taxes each and every April 15, we can successfully complete an election with minimal disruptions. If banks and credit unions can manage to disburse cash and record transactions each and every time customers use an ATM, surely election equipment could be effectively designed (not that we need to use machines– what’s wrong with good, old-fashioned paper??).
But the most important step is to enshrine the right to vote. We have constitutional protections against discrimination concerning voting, we have government legislation granting suffrage to women, we have explicit language about 18 year olds, and there’s quite a bit about the rights of electors in the Electoral College, but there’s nothing underneath these constitutional amendments that explicitly outlines what most people assume is a right: the right to vote.
Perhaps it’s time for another amendment to the Constitution: the No Vote Left Behind Act. Regardless of each citizens’ ideology, everyone should be allowed the right to vote, and there should be penalties encoded for those who would dare to destroy this right.
