LEST WE FORGET:
THE BUSH PUSH IN 2004: the
spectacular debut of computerized voting in Florida 2000 and 2002 anticipates
the HAV sweep (the “Help
By Fredda Weinberg
(profiled in Words July 2003) and edited with too many “asides” by Marta Steele
"Somebody's
going to have to say, "This is the way we do it.' . . .
It's
not going to be like sitting around the fire and singing Kumbaya."
--
who used
the same touch screen system as did Brower and
"Every
day matters."
--Hillsborough
County Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio, anticipating election 2002
Reactionary forces quietly at
work, reversing civil rights and privacy precedents, have become more than
participants in the election system.[1]
They now own it.
In retrospect, it’s easy to trace the
first steps to the mid seventies, when an ambitious, obscure political
operative first started taking over the levers from unsuspecting citizens. [The
Powell manifesto[2] came out in the early seventies
–ed.] Where “our kind” of votes count – because “we” decide whose get
counted. But this is years before the
notorious Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris got her reward for fixing
George W’s victory … and she was only following her predecessor’s plan.
[Katherine Harris was elected {?} congressional representative of the
Sandra B Mortham [Secretary of State in
Since leaving the Secretary of State’s office, the highest
election official as it was then constituted, Sandy Mortham
put the two most populous, heavily Democratic counties in
But let’s return to the aftermath of
the election debacle of 2000, when ballots counted by hand were mocked by
Republican “spinmeisters” and optical scanners were
operated more carefully in affluent, white counties than in poor, black
ones. Electronic voting was promoted as
the solution – touch screens that are fun to press and which, conveniently,
leave no receipt [that is, “paper trail,” written record –ed.] to count
later. A month after Mortham
became a lobbyist (that is, February 2001) for the Florida Association of Counties, a
lobbying group, she
negotiated an endorsement arrangement with a manufacturer of touch screen
voting machines, with impeccable Republican connections, to compensate the
association for all those extra ES&S (Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Nebraska) machines sold. The timing of the endorsement was also peculiar:
the iVotronics machines weren’t yet approved by the
then Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, but was there any doubt they would
pass her inspection?
David Leahy, the supervisor of elections
in Miami-Dade County, who wasn’t sure in [early December] 2000 if GOP
operatives staging a mini-riot outside his office affected the canvassing
board’s decision not to continue with a court-ordered manual recount, said at
the time he would ignore the inappropriate relationship between the committee
and the commission-generous Nebraska company and recommended ES&S touch screens to his county
commissioners. In neighboring
And Then Came the 2002 Elections …
On primary election day 2002, 200
of those 5,040 machines in Broward malfunctioned, or maybe the poll workers
didn’t insert the activating card correctly.
The polls workers were certainly a factor in the chaos, keeping
locations closed in some places until all the machines were started, neglecting
to offer some voters a paper ballot. (Remember who considers a manually counted
ballot a problem). 300 out of 3,000
trained workers failed to show up altogether.
At the end of the day, workers failed to properly harvest votes from
some machines. Some refused to stay late
after Bush extended voting hours, saying they wanted more money. Out of 110, 24 polling places opened late and
35 failed to stay open until
Even a Congresswoman Was Turned Away …
No such apologies in Miami Dade.
U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek couldn’t vote early, and poll workers didn’t follow
procedures spelled out in a new Miami-Dade training manual, which instructs
them to contact the main elections office in the case of a computer glitch;
poll workers told her and the others to leave. The reason: The lone elections
department laptop containing voter information had malfunctioned, preventing
poll workers from verifying which voters were eligible or what type of ballot
they should get.
Some of the voters with her left in frustration.
But Meek persisted, presenting her driver’s license and photo identification
because she didn’t have her new voter registration card with her.
That wasn’t good enough, Meek said she was
told.
‘They said, `Your name isn’t on the roll.
You can’t vote,’ ‘’ Meek said. ``The staff didn’t try to call downtown. They
were just turning people away.’’
And If You Think That Was Bad …
The worst was seen at Precinct 507 in
''Voting in Miami-Dade reminds me of being
in a third-world country,'' said retired teacher Wilhelmenia
Jennings, 85, who came to vote with her 92-year-old sister, Witlean
Butler. Both were turned away.
Emotions in black neighborhoods were high
early. Gospel radio station WMBM 1490-AM was flooded with alerts from Broward
and Miami-Dade voters shortly after the
A
''One of [the poll workers] said the
batteries were put in wrong. That's no excuse,'' Range said. ``I expected that
things would go relatively smoothly. I expected a glitch or two but not a
precinct down for several hours with no relief in sight.''
One key factor in the opening wave of
Miami-Dade's tumult: Poll workers originally were told to turn on the new iVotronic touch-screen machines by inserting a ''master
activator'' and keeping it in place for one or two minutes. But when they
arrived at the polls early Tuesday, poll workers -- many of whom already were
baffled by the original instructions -- found four pages of new instructions
dated September 3. Now they were told to keep the activator in place for six
and a half minutes -- 23 minutes for special audio booths used by the visually
impaired. Many of the 6,500 poll workers said they did not receive or have a
chance to read the new instructions, and others did not follow them. They
prematurely yanked out the activators, blacking out voting machines from one
corner of the county to another.
''It was a hellacious day'' said
Mary Cross, a poll worker in charge of a Pinecrest
precinct where 8 of 12 machines refused to boot up until after
The county commission’s
response? They’ve hired the Washington,
D.C.-based Center for Democracy, which has never been called on to work in an
election on
And Sandra Mortham,
Jeb Bush’s onetime running mate and current member of
his Florida Energy 2020 Commission, which examined deregulation while the
lights were going out in
So keep an eye on Sandra Mortham. You may
have lost your right to vote, but her next target is your right to a day in
court. She’s positioned ….
Copyright 2003 wordsunltd.com. All rights reserved.
[1] Re HAV and other repressive measures currently wreaking havoc across our poor country –ed.
[2] {posted
[3] Per The Miami Herald