<x-charset UTF-8>I don't think the problem is as much the lack of uniformity as it is the
bureaucratic arrogance of many local elections officials and elected county
government officials. Too many of them have the narrow view that their
system of voting, or running elections, of maintaining equipment is better
than everyone else's and everyone else's problems will never happen to them.
In reality, we had the equivelant of Florida 2000 in a gubernatorial
election in California in the 1980s. It involved hanging, dimpled and
pregnant chads in Fresno County. We learned from that experience and fixed
the problem. Reality says the same thing most likely happened in a number of
jurisdictions over the years but went unnoticed until Florida 2000. The same
thing probably is true now of electronic voting machines, ink-a-dink and
everything else. The problems are trivialized and shrugged off as
inconsequential until the jump up and bite us some day in a major way. Right
here in L.A. County, with the ink-a-dot system, we heard complaints of pens
out of ink, people who thought they marked their ballots only to find them
black, etc. Yet our normally forward thinking elections office is saying it
was just a few cases out of milllions of ballots. So, even if there was
uniformity in the methods of voting, we would still need to be concerned
with the human factors.
Larry Levine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lowenstein, Daniel" <lowenstein@law.ucla.edu>
To: <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 5:24 PM
Subject: RE: Is it Possible Kerry Lost Ohio Because of Punch Cards?
No, we cannot all agree that voting mechanisms need to be
uniform throughout a state. Even less can we all agree that a
nationally-imposed manner of voting would be desirable. Among the policy
justifications for not having uniformity is that different systems may make
more sense in different situations; variation is desirable as a means of
facilitating innovations that may lead to improvement; a nationally-imposed
uniform system might lead to the detachment of national from state and local
elections, which would seriously affect turnout in the latter; and the
enormous cost of replacing perfectly adequate systems in most of the country
should not be borne simply to satisfy the preference for uniformity of a
handful of ideologues.
Best,
Daniel Lowenstein
UCLA Law School
405 Hilgard
Los Angeles, California 90095-1476
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu on behalf of Marty Lederman
Sent: Thu 11/4/2004 3:43 PM
To: Rick Hasen; election-law
Cc:
Subject: Re: Is it Possible Kerry Lost Ohio Because of Punch Cards?
Well, whether or not he's correct about the actual numbers, can we all
agree that it is inexcusable that voting mechanisms are not uniform
throughout a state? And, more particularly, that there is no justification
for a state tolerating a much higher degree of discarded or unreadable votes
in particular precincts -- typically correlated with class and/or race?
(Indeed, as Rick has often argued, it's a scandal of sorts that, after 2000,
there is not a federally imposed uniform nationwide "manner" of voting for
federal office.)
I would go further and argue that if the equal protection rationale of BvG
is taken at all seriously, then it is surely unconstitutional for a state to
permit some counties to use voting methods that are foreseeably far less
reliable and accurate than those used in other counties. This was, in
essence, the heart of the claim raised in the ACLU litigation in the
California recall election. I thought it was a good argument then (I worked
on the case), and I do now. But even if you disagree -- if you believe
either that BvG's equal protection rationale was a bunch of hooey or that it
can somehow be limited to the particular "facts" of that case -- is there
any policy justification for the disparities that continue to exist, other
than the actual, inadequate "reason" (namely, that some counties are poorer
than others)?
----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Hasen <mailto:Rick.Hasen@lls.edu>
To: election-law <mailto:election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 6:05 PM
Subject: Is it Possible Kerry Lost Ohio Because of Punch Cards?
Is it Possible Kerry Lost Ohio Because of Punch Cards?
So alleges Greg Palast here
<http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0> . I have no idea of
Palast's numbers are correct, and in particular whether he has lumped
together both votes lost by the punch card machines and deliberate
undervotes. I haven't seen any undervote figures yet for this election. I'd
appreciate hearing from others who have some data to evaluate this kind of
claim.
--
Rick Hasen
Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow
Loyola Law School
919 South Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211
(213)736-1466
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org
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