Why are Kerry supporters on LBO-talk so lacking in motivation as to require round-the-clock discussion of disputable polls in a tight race before they can make up their minds to show up? If they want to win, they should be getting ready to not just vote on November 2 but also fight in the streets for several days, weeks, or maybe months after election day, rather than leaving the battle to the Democratic and Republican battalions of lawyers.
While it is not clear which evil will triumph in the end, what is clear is that the outcome of the election, not just polls, will be disputed, and we won't be sure who won for several days, weeks, or maybe months after election day. Even after one candidate concedes, the election may be still seen as illegitimate by the rank and file on the losing side. The question is what they will do in that event.
Are rank-and-file Democrats willing to take the presidency by mass mobilizations in the streets even if John Kerry, like Al Gore, concedes? I doubt that they have the guts to do that, but I'll be happy to be proven wrong and see the US enter into a full-blown legitimation crisis.
Cf.
<blockquote>Legal battles could cloud outcome in swing states Fraud allegations and lawsuits over voting equipment Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau Saturday, October 23, 2004<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/10/23/MNGKA9F73L1.DTL>
. . . Legal disputes over new and old voting equipment, conflicting court rulings on provisional ballots and allegations of voter registration fraud by both parties are increasing the chances the presidential election could be decided in the courts once again.
Four years ago, determining a winner took 36 days of legal wrangling and a controversial Supreme Court decision. This year, lawyers for both major parties and affiliated groups have started earlier, filing preemptive legal challenges to voting rules in states across the country.
For voters who fear a repeat of the Florida recount, there are reasons to be concerned:
-- In Ohio, a state that polls show is split between President Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry, more than 70 percent of registered voters will use the same type of punch-card voting machines that introduced the nation to such terms as "hanging chad."
-- In Florida, which replaced all of its old machines with electronic devices, a Democratic congressman has filed suit alleging the new machines aren't secure from tampering because they don't give voters paper receipts.
-- Federal and state judges in five battleground states have made different legal interpretations about whether provisional voters -- those whose names don't appear on voter rolls -- will be able to cast ballots if they show up at wrong polling places.
"I'd say there's a 100 percent chance we'll have problems in key states," said Daniel Tokaji, an election law professor at Ohio State University in Columbus. "In every election, we have problems, and those problems will be compounded this time around because of all the changes that have taken place.
"The million-dollar question is whether those problems will be so substantial as to put the results in question," he said. "The answer to that really hinges on how close it is. If it's close in key swing states, we will see controversy and we can expect to see lawsuits that may delay a final result."
The anticipated tightness of the election has led both parties to amass teams of thousands of lawyers to scrutinize voting at polling places and prepare for the possibility of a recount in one or more battleground states.
The Democratic National Committee, through its Voting Rights Institute, has assembled 10,000 lawyers, and the Kerry campaign has raised more than $3 million for legal expenses. Republicans contend they have lawyers monitoring 30,000 election precincts around the nation. . . .
Election law experts said politics clearly is a motive behind the legal challenges filed by both parties, but the lawsuits also are exposing major flaws in election procedures that should be fixed before Nov. 2.
"Election law has become part of political strategy," said Richard Hasen, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. But he added, "That doesn't mean the suits aren't valid."
The biggest concern now -- what some are calling the "hanging chad of 2004" -- is provisional ballots. Congress, in response to the disputed Florida election, passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which required that all voters who show up at the polls and whose names do not appear on the voter rolls be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots were to be set aside and counted later -- and only if the voter was found to be legally registered.
But the law left unclear how states should implement the new rule. As a result, in 28 states, including Florida, election officials will not count provisional ballots if they are cast at the wrong precinct. Officials in those states said they will try to direct those voters to their correct polling place.
Democrat-affiliated groups filed suit in several states, alleging that the rule discriminates against poor and minority voters, who tend to move more often and are more likely to drop off the rolls. Courts in Florida, Missouri and Colorado backed the decision of state election officials, but federal judges in Michigan and Ohio overruled election officials and ordered that provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct must be counted. The latter rulings are under review by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Legal experts said the provisional ballot issue could shape the outcome in a close race -- and likely trigger post-election lawsuits by parties or by voters whose ballots were not counted.
"Think of Florida, where the margin of victory (in 2000) was 537 votes," said Sean Greene, research director of the Election Reform Information Project, a nonpartisan group. "What if we have a case where you have 1,000 provisional ballots that were discounted for being in the wrong precinct. What if this number is larger than the margin of victory?"
Legal experts are also concerned about the confusing patchwork of state voter registration and identification rules. More states than ever before -- 17 -- are requiring voters to show identification at the polls. Legal battles in Colorado, New Mexico and other states are being fought over who must show IDs to vote. . . .
Legal experts anxious about a repeat of the Florida recount will be watching Ohio, where a delay in buying new voting equipment means that voters in much of the state -- including the largest county, Cuyahoga (which includes Cleveland) -- will use outdated punch card machines. A CalTech-MIT study found that an estimated 1.5 million votes were lost because of punch cards in the last election.
"In Ohio alone, we are probably talking about at least 50,000 votes (lost) in the 2000 election," said Tokaji, who has been involved in the ACLU's efforts to get rid of punch card ballots. "It probably will be an even greater (loss of votes) this time around."
But unlike Florida, which had very ill-defined standards for counting punch cards in 2000, Ohio has a simpler "two-corner" standard -- meaning that if two corners of the chad have been punched out, it counts as a vote. Still, the ACLU has filed suit, alleging that the state's use of punch cards will disproportionately hurt voters in minority areas.
In Ohio, Democratic and Republican lawyers also plan to exploit a little-used, 51-year-old statute that allows the parties to be inside polling places and challenge the eligibility of voters.
Hasen, of Loyola University, said he believes possible voting glitches or delays at the polls to check the eligibility of voters -- combined with a big turnout -- could force judges in some areas to extend polling hours, as a judge did in St. Louis on election day in 2000. Tallying all the provisional ballots could take days or weeks. . . .</blockquote> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>