Voting While Black: Racism in the Media Coverage of the Recount?

Look at the map of Cuyahoga County, Ohio found at the bottom of this webpage: www.votecobb.org . The areas with the greatest concentrations of African Americans are in the city of Cleveland. According to 2003 population estimates by the United States Census Bureau, 1.4 million of Ohio's 11.4 million people live here, or 11.5%. About 155,000 provisional ballots were cast in Ohio, including nearly 25,000 (16% of the statewide total) in Cuyahoga County. Under a 2002 federal law, provisional ballots are given out at a polling place if a person's name is not on the voting rolls or if there are questions about someone's eligibility to vote. Once the election is over, voting officials review the provisional ballots to see if they are valid. If they are certified as valid, then they are added to the vote totals from Election Day. Now, go back to the map and notice the distribution of voting precincts where the number of certified (accepted) provisional ballots exceeded 5% of the total ballots cast in the precinct. Note that these blue and red boxes represent people who were made to fill out provisional ballots even though they were registered to vote and were at the correct precinct. How could there be such a glaring disparity between the white and black sections of Cuyahoga County in the distribution of provisional ballots? And why would so many African Americans wait for up to ten hours in some instances to vote using provisional ballots instead of regular ballots? Unfortunately, some of Ohio's leading newspapers are looking at these disparities and accepting them as business as usual. [more]