|
The Day After ...
By Murshed Zaheed
Posted on Wed Nov 03, 2004 at 03:22:16 PM EST
There is much to think about today. Before we go any further our deepest gratitude goes out to the thousands of our own volunteers and election monitors, as well as to thousands and thousands of poll watchers, volunteers,and poll workers from all over the country who put in some much passion and energy to avert a recount scenario of 2000 national elections. Thankfully we will not have to go through the agony and uncertainty of the 2000 election aftermath. However, if we are to hold ourselves up as the standard bearer of democracy we must hold ourselves to a higher standard of breathing a sigh of relieve for not having to go through another nightmarish scenario of Florida 2000. The fact remains that just by doing a quick review of news reports from all across the country, it seems that little has been done to improve our election system since 2000. In close elections around the country, media scrutiny once again reveals that the problems of 2002 remain unfixed. For example, in Florida, it was reported that 6,020 touch screens were removed, with votes already cast to be believed to be retrievable. In Volusia County, a memory card failed and 13,000 votes had not been counted. Insufficient training of poll workers resulted in long lines and confusion about provisional ballots. Precincts, such as Hialeah, opened thirty minutes late. In New Orleans six voting machines had mechanical problems after a polling commissioner had accidentally turned them off and they could not be restarted. There were also reports that poll workers were sufficiently trained on the use of provisional ballots, and some individuals were not allowed to vote until 9 a.m. In Mauldin, South Carolina one polling location was forced to switch to paper ballots as a result of equipment failures. In Essex, Maryland, on election judge left the polling place because he "forgot something" and voters were left to vote by provisional ballot. Ohio Voter, Sarah White was among the many that wished to vote in her county and had not received absentee ballots. White was told that ruling against granting provisional ballots to those that requested absentee ballots was required to prevent double voting. White filed suit in Toledo hoping to have a provisional ballot as an option to voters. Federal District Judge David A. Katz rule in favor of White's appeal and ordered that election official to issues provisional ballots to those who requested it and claimed to be eligible to vote. And, we are sure we can find many more similar reports from all across the country. As we move on, we along with our friends in many other like-minded organizations representing all political spectrums are going to continue to work diligently to seek improvements in our flawed election system. We are now focusing on our first task in this project to improve our voting process, which is to use all the information we have collected and produce a detailed analysis of what took place and what we need to do improve it, so that all parties can be satisfied with the final outcome and be confident in the integrity of our democratic process.
Tags: Action for Elections (all tags)
You are not logged in.
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account just by filling out the form below. It's quick and free.
|
