Black votes disproportionately tossed
As many as 1 in 3 minority ballots discarded in Florida election
. An analysis shows up to 1 in 3 votes in black neighborhoods of Jacksonville were discarded.
By John Mintz and Dan Keating
THE WASHINGTON POST
Dec. 3 — Heavily Democratic and African American neighborhoods in Florida lost many more presidential votes than other areas because of outmoded voting machines and rampant confusion about ballots, a precinct-by-precinct analysis by The Washington Post shows.
‘We keep talking about ‘every vote counts,’ and, boy, I feel like mine doesn’t count.’
— LON FANNIEL
Retired Marine captain from Jacksonville AS MANY as one in three ballots in black sections of Jacksonville, for example, did not count in the presidential contest. That was four times as many as in white precincts elsewhere in mostly Republican Duval County. the Post analysis, in Miami-Dade County precincts where fewer than 30 percent of the voters are black, about 3 percent of ballots did not register a vote for president. In precincts where more than 70 percent of the voters are African American, it was nearly 10 percent.
BLACK COMMUNITY CRIES FOUL
Such patterns have helped fuel questions in the black community about whether the vote was fair on Election Day. A number of African American leaders say faulty ballot machines and long lines at polling places sowed confusion among many black voters and ended up nullifying many of their votes.
Aides to Texas Gov. George W. Bush say the kinds of errors Florida voters made are typical of elections across the nation. Vice President Gore, by contrast, has placed allegations concerning disqualified black votes at the center of his appeal to hold recounts in Miami-Dade County, and he is making his case with rhetoric reminiscent of civil rights struggles. Democrats say the errors suggest a manual recount of ballots would show that Gore won Florida.
A computer analysis of election returns suggests there were anomalies in the Florida vote, particularly in African American areas. The more black and Democratic a precinct, the more likely it was to suffer high rates of invalidated votes.
Some 40 percent of the state’s black voters were new voters, and election experts say they were the most vulnerable to confusion about oddly designed ballots. Moreover, a higher percentage of blacks than whites live in counties with voting machines more prone to not registering a vote. And similarly, African American voters are somewhat more likely to live in areas where poll workers do not immediately check ballots for errors – so blacks were less likely than whites to get a chance to correct their ballots if they messed them up.
“We keep talking about ‘every vote counts,’ and, boy, I feel like mine doesn’t count,” said Lon Fanniel, 40, a retired Marine captain from Jacksonville. He fears that confusion over the ballot led him to accidentally leave two marks for president, invalidating his vote for Gore.
CONFUSION OVER BALLOTS
Florida was one of the nation’s most viciously fought battleground states, with both parties pouring in millions of dollars during the final days to get their core supporters to the polls.
It turns out that one reason for the high rate of invalidated votes this election was the NAACP’s massive get-out-the-vote effort in Florida, which brought many inexperienced or first-time voters to the polls. Black turnout in Florida set records – 893,000 African Americans cast ballots on Nov. 7, a 65 percent jump over 1996.
At times – especially when polling places were crowded and voters felt rushed to mark their votes – it appears large numbers of these new or infrequent voters were confounded by technical problems in the ballot. Florida listed an unusually high 10 presidential tickets, which contributed to confusing ballot designs in some counties.
A prime example is Duval, a north Florida county that hosts thousands of naval aviators. A ballot that perplexingly spread presidential names over two pages led to many accidental double votes, which are automatically voided. Although Bush carried the county 58 percent to 41 percent, the spoiled ballots were concentrated in African American sections of downtown Jacksonville.
In the most heavily white precincts, about 1 in 14 ballots were thrown out, but in largely black precincts more than 1 in 5 ballots were spoiled – and in some black precincts it was almost one-third. (By comparison, in the District of Columbia, fewer than 1 in 50 ballots were not counted as votes for president.)
There are several reasons why a voting machine would not record a vote. A voter may have intentionally abstained. Or the voter could have tried to vote but messed up the ballot – either by mistakenly voting for two candidates, which automatically disqualifies a ballot and is called an “overvote,” or by failing to mark the ballot cleanly (which, along with the ballots deliberately left unmarked, is known as an “undervote”).
DISCREPANCY FUELS CALL FOR RECOUNT
Gore wants the undervotes recounted, and because so many of them took place in pro-Gore precincts, his advisers are confident they could overturn Bush’s lead if a court permitted such a recount.
Bush allies say most undervotes were intentional. “We believe that in most if not virtually all so-called undervotes, individuals didn’t intend to vote for president,” said Bush spokesman Ray Sullivan.
He also said Bush did not ask for a statewide hand recount because recounts are “flawed and inaccurate,” as he said was shown in manual recounts in Broward and Palm Beach counties that showed Gore picking up votes.
Republicans note that Florida’s rate of failed ballots is lower than four other states among 35 states for which the GOP has examined data – Idaho, Illinois, Georgia and Wyoming. In those states, the spoiled ballots represent a small fraction of the winning margin for president, but in Florida the 180,000 invalid ballots were 335 times Bush’s margin.
The GOP says recounts are not needed because voting mistakes occur everywhere. Voting expert Curtis Gans said about 2.5 million voters across the nation cast presidential ballots that didn’t register as votes. Given these large numbers outside Florida, and what he believes are the inequities in all types of ballot recounting, Gans said “it’s an irrelevant exercise” to recount votes in Florida.
CRUCIAL VOTES
The Bush campaign’s Sullivan added that some of the Florida counties with high rates of invalidated ballots – he cited Hamilton, Hendry and Lafayette – were won by Bush. But Democrats point out those counties are sparsely populated and had a total of only 1,310 votes thrown out. The three counties Gore asked be recounted – Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade – had 72,000 invalidated ballots.
Senior GOP strategists say privately that a key reason the Bush campaign did not ask for a statewide recount was it feared that Gore would pick up more votes than Bush, because of the high rate of ballot spoilage in black precincts.
“The NAACP did a tremendous job of turnout in Florida,” one Republican strategist said. “But in a way they overachieved, and got people out who couldn’t follow instructions.”
The irony is that in Duval, the sample ballot designed by the Republican election supervisor explicitly instructed people to “vote all pages” on the ballot – which led thousands of people to invalidate their ballots because the list of presidential candidates was spread over two pages. The rule of thumb in election administration is that candidates for a single office should be listed in one column on one page to avoid confusion.
A case in point: Sharon Lewis of Jacksonville, who brought her 18-year-old son Ernest to their polling place. The high school senior had just registered to vote. But she was mortified when he, upon leaving the booth, told her proudly, “I voted on every page.” She said they complained to the poll workers but “they said there’s nothing we could do about it.”
“He had that ‘I Voted’ sticker on his shirt – the only kid at his school who voted,” she said. “But his vote didn’t count.”
NAACP ALLEGATIONS
“I’m proud of the turnout we had in Florida,” said Anita Davis, the NAACP’s state president. But she added, “I’m very concerned that so many of our votes were being disenfranchised. ... In a lot of Florida counties, these [black] votes have been thrown out for years, and we had no idea about it.”
The NAACP has filed formal allegations with the Justice Department saying some blacks were discouraged from voting by unfair demands for identification or long lines. But a Justice Department official said so far investigators have not found enough evidence to justify a full-fledged investigation.
“I fought for the right to have a good vote,” said Fanniel, the retired Marine captain who fought in the Persian Gulf War. “I feel like that was taken away from me.”
Election experts say inexperienced voters are the most likely to be confused when a ballot contains more than about six names for one office. Beyond that, confoundment rises exponentially with each name added to the ballot. Florida’s ballots listed 10 presidential candidates – which tied for the most with four states.
OLD EQUIPMENT
‘The only difference is the technology. That’s the dirty little secret about election machines.’
— ION SANCHEZ
Leon County election supervisor Black Floridians also were more likely to face unforgiving voting equipment. About 26 percent of black voters live in counties that verify ballots as valid in precincts as soon as they’re cast – so poll workers can immediately tell voters they disqualified ballots, and voters have a second chance to vote a valid ballot. By comparison, 34 percent of white voters live in these areas. That means white voters are more likely to have their votes counted than blacks – a point made by Gore.
“These cheap and unreliable machines are much more likely to be found in areas of low-income people and minorities and seniors,” Gore said in an interview on CBS last week.
Voters whose ballots were checked right away were using cutting-edge optical scanners, which read pen marks. The other voters were using either optical scanners that don’t check ballots instantly, or punch-card machines in which voters punch out “chads,” tiny cardboard rectangles, to make a selection.
In the 23 counties that check a ballot as soon as the voter completes it – all using optical scan gear – fewer than 1 percent of ballots did not register a choice for president, said Ion Sanchez, Leon County election supervisor. By contrast, in the 26 punch-card counties, none of which perform the instant check, about 4 percent failed to register a presidential selection, Sanchez said.
“The only difference is the technology,” said Sanchez. “That’s the dirty little secret about election machines.”
“Poor people are more likely to invalidate ballots” because of difficulty mastering punch-card systems, said Herb Asher, an Ohio State University balloting expert who studied the issue in 1978, when Ohio first used the machines. Voters in prosperous suburbs invalidated their ballots 2 percent of the time, he said, while voters in Dayton’s poor areas did so by up to 20 percent.
HIGH RATES OF DISQUALIFIED BALLOTS
For decades, 2 percent of ballots cast nationally have traditionally not recorded a presidential vote. But in Florida this year, it was 2.9 percent. In 21 of Florida’s 67 counties, the ratio of disqualified votes to total votes cast was more than 6 percent. Those with the largest numbers of both disqualified and double votes were largely Democratic and black areas. Double votes are not reviewed in hand recounts, because there is no way to discern a voter’s intent.
Gadsden County, a largely poor black rural area, had a 12 percent spoilage rate, mostly because presidential candidates were listed in two columns – and the great majority were overvotes.
Almost 2,000 voters nullified their ballots by double-voting on a ballot that listed the first eight presidential candidates in one column, and a second column listing Constitution Party or Workers World Party candidates, in what could be mistaken for a second election.
Denny Hutchinson, Gadsden’s election administrator, blamed voters, not the ballot. “Some of our high rate of presidential overvotes was attributable to so many names on that ballot,” he said. “Some people voted for every candidate. ... People didn’t prepare themselves to come to the polls.”
But Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, a black Florida Democrat, said Bush’s claim that almost all undervotes were intentional is “pure hogwash.”
“We’ve designed a voting system not understandable to many voters,” Hastings said, “and it takes fair-minded people to design one ensuring every vote counts.”
Staff writer Thomas B. Edsall contributed to this report.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
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