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Election 2006: Pollwatching in Miami-Dade

By Nancy Hendrick

With our "Voter’s Rights" handouts, complaint forms, the Election Protection hotline number, and signs in English and Spanish saying "You Have a Right to Vote", Lanora and I were set to greet voters at Biscayne Elementary in North Miami Beach. With our water bottles, lawn chairs, and cell phones, we formed part of a national cadre of poll-monitoring volunteers for Election Protection (EP).

Election Protection, which was created in the aftermath of the 2000 election, when an estimated 4 million voters were disenfranchised, had a massive field effort of 24,000 non-partisan volunteers for the 2004 election. In 2006, EP (originally an offshoot of People for the American Way but now also working with the NAACP and other groups), mounted a smaller effort to focus principally on Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (with smaller efforts in over dozen other states).

The election integrity effort of EP now goes on year-round, working with election supervisors in key states and in the courts. The poll workers at our assigned precinct knew of EP’s work and welcomed our presence. One of the 70-something matrons working at the polls that day apologized for Florida in 2000, adding that “Bush didn’t win”.

The EP summary data (www.ep365.org) shows that there were significant problems with this November’s elections in over a third of the states, with the most complaints coming in from Ohio and Pennsylvania, but also significant, multiple problems of one sort or another elsewhere:machine malfunction or vote switching; unusual delays; being directed to wrong precinct by bogus "official" calls; intimidating tactics against Latinos, etc. The immediate response to the delay problems by advocacy groups resulted in the extension of voting hours in some, but not all, states, where unusual delays had occurred.

Shades of 2000, the story breaking as of mid-November is that Election Protection has asked for a re-vote of the congressional race in the former district of Katherine Harris (the Florida Secretary of State the year of Bush’s first run), because the number of voters in a touch-screen setting who did not cast a vote (per the computer tally) seems too high. There was a drastic under-count of votes in the Sarasota County Congressional race this election (13 percent in this county, with much lower under-vote results in neighboring counties in the same district), suggesting vote tampering in the electronic process. Numerous voters contacted EP and other groups to report, for example, that the Sarasota County machines were not showing their congressional representative choice on the final "summary" screen. As with the pattern of 2004 voter anomalies, the count in Sarasota as it now stands gives a victory to the Republican candidate, by a narrow margin. The Democratic challenger for this House of Representatives’ seat, Christine Jennings, has filed a lawsuit, while People for the American Way is holding a hearing in Sarasota to receive complaints.

Ethnicity and Voting

Voter intimidation and suppression tactics in recent elections have been focused on progressive communities, such as students, African-American voters and increasingly the Latino electorate. The Miami community is a prime place to consider the impact of ethnicity, as the city is very multi-cultural and multilingual. While there is a base of non-Hispanic whites and African-Americans among its long-time households, there has also been a heavy influx in recent decades of retirees from the Northeast, Cubans, Haitians, and other minorities from the Caribbean and elsewhere in Latin America. Among the working population there are also many other transplants from around the country and a large gay sector.

EP has developed the Hispanic-oriented voter project of "Democracia USA," active in Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere. The project’s director, Jorge Mursuli, stresses how Hispanic-Americans make up probably the most vulnerable voter sector, and how good access to voting information is key for their participation. For example, the Miami paper had mistakenly reported that you had to show your voter card to vote: I was able to answer one Spanish speaker’s inquiry about this and tell her she could vote with other I.D. How many other voters stayed home needlessly, based on a misplaced voter card, is unknown. (Similar I.D. requirements were impacting voters in Arizona and elsewhere.)

2008

Mursuli (director of Florida EP as well as Democracia USA), pointed out to me that on Nov. 8, the day after the election, the right wing isn’t going to like what happens in the next two years. He believes we will see a full range of Machiavellian machinations to raise barriers to the full franchise of progressives and certain minorities, and that we need to be prepared.
Just as Mursuli would have liked to have 600 Florida precincts monitored (rather than fewer than 200), EP aims to have as many volunteers in 2008 as in 2004, about 24,000. Likewise, he would have preferred to have more field volunteers to canvass communities with "Voter’s Rights" information prior to Nov. 7. He hopes that the Pacific Northwest, as well, can be aware of the political potential of its Hispanic citizenry and help work for that group’s full enfranchisement in 2008.

What Now?

It is unclear how much of the suppression, intimidation, or vote tampering efforts against progressive and minority voters is orchestrated in some organized way versus the result of local initiative. It does seem possible that non-partisan efforts of EP and others can discourage some of these machinations and certainly be in the field to document abuses when needed for legal challenges.
It will take more than two years to undo the damage of the Bush regime. In 2008, we will not want to be sorry if once again the results of the presidential race or the composition of Congress have been altered by dirty tricks. It’s worth our while to support election integrity advocacy groups now and consider field monitoring in 2008.

To Do More:

1. HR 550 would mandate voter paper trails and expanded audits. All of Oregon’s representatives as well as Rep. Pelosi are co-sponsors. Ask your representative for action on this resolution in the new Congress.
2. Donate to Election Protection (Google on "Donation Form EP365").
3. To read more: Jacob Fenston did two Alliance articles on election integrity, (www.theportlandalliance.org), including info on the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition. Robert Kennedy Jr. covered the 2004 race and hacking issues in two great Rolling Stone articles. Thom Hartmann has posts on Common Dreams and Truth Out Web sites.

Nancy Hendrick has written previously for The Portland Allinace.