Huh?
Electoral problems prevented many thousands of Ohioans from voting on Nov. 2. In Columbus, bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters turned away without casting ballots. It is unlikely that such “lost” voters would have changed the election result — Ohio tipped to President Bush by a 118,000-vote margin and cemented his electoral college majority.
To make sure that I understand, they are asserting that the impatience of voters is an electoral problem? Give me a break. Me and the Mrs. waited in line for about 45 minutes to vote. We considered it our duty to do so we braved the wanton inconvenience to be heard.
Also, the impatient voters could not have swayed the election by the WaPo’s own assertion. This is a story that isn’t a story.
December 15th, 2004 at 2:54 pm
I disagree. The purpose of elections is to find out who the people support. If 15,000 people didn’t vote because of avoidable inconvenience, we get a distorted outcome– i.e. one that does a worse job of reflecting the support of the people.
It’s low-impact, but still important to me.
December 15th, 2004 at 3:15 pm
That’s not an electoral problem though. It’s an electorate problem.
December 15th, 2004 at 4:44 pm
Well, see, if you read beyond the fifth paragraph and get all the way to the sixth and beyond, you’ll see that the “story” wasn’t that specific example; it was that there were lots of systemic problems statewide. The Columbus example was merely illustrative. It may have been a relatively poor illustration, but to present it as if it were the whole story (or even the main thrust of the story) as you have, is disingenuous or at best inaccurate.
December 15th, 2004 at 4:46 pm
And, SU, there comes a point — when the lines are hours long and not minutes long — where this is an electoral problem.
December 15th, 2004 at 5:11 pm
Evidence of attempts to manipulate the outcome of a vote should be cause for concern even if they can’t be shown to have actually affected the outcome. Voter fraud is illegal, after all.
What you are failing to recognize is that lines were not 45 minutes or an hour long, but several hours long. People were ordering pizzas. More importantly, as in Florida in 2000, such problems happened in Democrat-leaning areas. In Republican areas, there were enough machines to keep lines modest. Statistically, then, this adds up to vote manipulation, even if you can blame individuals at the proximate level for being “impatient”.
December 15th, 2004 at 5:44 pm
Tom, you should know that the lede to stories are typically the point they’re making. And the story led with the poor people waiting in line. Heck, I’m surprised they didn’t call the rain an electoral problem. The WaPo called waiting an electoral problem. Period. And it’s BS. That is not disingenuous nor is it inaccurate.
Kevin, it’s more an election commision problem if you ask me. Failing to plan for such lines is an affront to voting and the election commission in those cases should be fired.
Veery, I don’t disagree assuming that it was intentional and not just poor planning.
December 19th, 2004 at 12:59 pm
A bunch of shit happened in Florida in 2000 about which you could make that same “intentional or poor planning” query. Within about a year, it was clear that it was intentional poor planning, but by then no one cared anymore. Then HAVA made it easier for the head state official to intentionally plan a poor election without having to get a bunch of county officials to go along with their poor plans.
The same intentionally poor plans showed up in Georgia in 2002 and Ohio in 2004. Small, independent media and their readers know what’s going on, and when someday a Republican gets cheated by a Democrat Secretary of State, the corporate media will figure out real fast how fucking simple it is to put enough voting machines in precinct to handle the expected turnout.
It’s also easy to build reliable, secure, and transparent electronic voting machines. Everyone will know that too the minute a Democrat tampers with the unverifiable vote tally on a Diebold machine. Until that day, however, it’s a story that’s not a story.