What are your thoughts about this, Neocon?
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.
According to 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.
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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 |
