By: M.J. Andersen:
DID PAUL HAMM win the gold medal or didn't he?
Olympic fans have gone from a clear narrative involving an angel-faced
come-from-behind hero to a tale of statistical error. You could argue
the conclusion either way:
Hamm's South Korean rival was the victim of judging errors that, once
corrected, placed him first in the men's all-around gymnastic
competition. On the other hand, he delayed too long in objecting.
Olympic rules prohibit late changes in results. And anyway, deductions
the judges should have applied still would have kept the South Korean
from winning.
It is a debate that smarts, a debate that will never end. And yet,
despite the exacting stakes, this was only an athletic contest. Imagine
if the prize were, say, the presidency of the United States.
Many will say they don't have to imagine; they saw this dilemma for
real four years ago. We ended up with something like a statistical dead
heat, with charges and countercharges of voting irregularities, the
whole thing cut short by a divided Supreme Court.
Americans accepted the result. But this year, they will be less willing
to roll over. The bad news is that we appear headed for an equally
close call. And not only are voters less willing to trust this time
around; the voting systems in place are, if anything, less trustworthy.
Without decisive action to make the vote credible, the nation could
face an explosion that renders everything else about this campaign
moot. Like the booing crowds that rattled the gymnastics venue this
week, Americans could decide to withhold their consent.
Consider:
Some 98 million votes, about 5 in 6, will be cast on electronic systems
that can be rigged, according to a lengthy analysis in the Aug. 16/23
issue of The Nation.
About a third of these electronic votes will be on touch-screen
machines that leave no paper trail. That makes about 3 in 10 votes
unrecountable. In Florida, which determined the 2000 winner, about half
the votes will be cast on such machines.
The electronic vote will largely be administered by four private
companies that use secret codes to count ballots, codes they will not
open to independent scrutiny. Three (Election Systems and Software;
Diebold Election Systems; Hart InterCivic) have close ties or have
given lopsidedly to the GOP.
In 2000, a purge of felons from Florida's voter rolls improperly
disenfranchised 50,000 voters (enough to change the outcome). Recently,
a judge forced the state to disclose its latest felon list: Rife with
mistakes, it overwhelmingly targeted blacks, and left
Republican-leaning Hispanics alone.
Claiming to investigate fraud, armed Florida troopers recently entered
the homes of elderly blacks active in get-out-the-vote drives.
A New York Times study found that in 2000, Florida counted hundreds of
questionable overseas ballots (e.g., un-postmarked) as legal. The
flawed ballots were far more likely to be counted in Republican
counties.
A New York Daily News report asserts that hundreds of people registered
in both New York and Florida have illegally voted twice in an election.
Although a GOP smear campaign against him certainly did not help,
veteran Max Cleland, who lost his Georgia Senate seat in 2002, may have
been harmed more by insecure electronic voting machines. Several were
stolen before the election; 67 unprotected memory cards, used to make
Diebold-ordered programming changes, vanished Election Night. A week
before the vote, a poll showed Cleland leading 49-44.
You do not have to be paranoid to fear for the integrity of the coming
vote, however. The federal Help America Vote Act, of 2002, was supposed
to let voters with unclear eligibility fill out provisional ballots.
These can be counted once questions are resolved.
But in Chicago, in March, nearly all provisional ballots were thrown
out, often because poll workers said voters had come to the wrong site.
California voters were thwarted, because polling places simply ran out
of provisional ballots.
In June, a new rule under the act that certain voters must present an ID apparently disenfranchised some South Dakota Indians.
Perhaps worse, a recent Washington Post study of New Mexico, where
electronic balloting is state-of-the-art, suggests that the greatest
danger to the November vote is programming mistakes by undertrained
election workers. These could cause serious miscounts (as they did in
New Mexico's 2000 balloting). There would be no way to reconstruct the
results.
Bills pending in both the House and Senate would require paper trails
for touch-screen machines. The idea is such a no-brainer it is stunning
to think that it has been opposed. The voting-machine companies say
"trust us"; whatever happened to "trust but verify"?
One option is for voters to request absentee ballots, which most states
allow without requiring a stated reason. But clearly, much more must be
done.
Election workers must be vigorously trained; independent security
experts should ride shotgun on electronic voting machines. Valid
recount strategies must be found.
And the public must get involved. It seems bizarre that the United
States, of all places, should require Jimmy Carter-style election
monitoring. Yet that is where we stand.
Citizens who wish to help might start by contacting Common Cause or the
League of Women Voters. Those who remain unconvinced might reflect on
the horrid ambiguity of Paul Hamm's victory, and consider how
nightmarish the same stamp of illegitimacy would be for the next
president.