Despite the widespread belief that the California recall election went off without a hitch, researchers examining the votes after the fact found that 384,000 ballots had no vote recorded on the question of whether Gov. Gray Davis should be recalled.
A majority of those "missing" votes came from counties using the notorious punch card ballot machines - the same faulty machines that 65 percent of Missourians continue to use. Is Missouri setting itself up to be next in line in the ongoing saga of Election Day controversy and messy litigation?
In Los Angeles County where punch cards are still used, about 175,000 ballots - that's 9 percent of county's vote total - recorded no vote on the recall question. In Alameda County, which uses electronic machines, only 0.7 percent of votes cast did not have their vote on the recall recorded. While surely some voters intentionally decided not to vote on the issue, the variation was, in the judgment of researchers, mostly due to the disparity in the machines.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued California before the election, warning of this very problem. It ultimately lost the case, decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court. As a result, there is still no definitive answer to whether using inferior machines in some parts of a state but not others violates the Constitution. If the recall election had been at all close, there is no doubt several lawsuits would have been mounted on the constitutional grounds of equal protection.
In 2000, Missouri was the site of tremendous controversy and litigation over voting in the presidential election, rivaled perhaps only by Florida. Three years later, 37 of Missouri's counties still use punch card ballot machines, while 70 counties use optical scan machines, which have performed far better than punch card machines in accurately recording votes. The state's official plan for election reform indicates that it does not intend to ever require local election authorities to participate in the federally funded program to replace punch card machines.
Since Missouri votes so early - its presidential primary is Feb. 3, right after New Hampshire's - it is likely that all or most of the nine candidates presently running for the Democratic nomination will still be in the race. Doesn't that increase the possibility that the margin of victory may be very slim? In the 2000 general election, fewer than 79,000 out of almost two and a half million votes cast in Missouri separated George Bush and Al Gore. If the margin is similarly close in the 2004 general election, a losing candidate may well be inclined to sue.
Although the Help America Vote Act provides funding for the replacement of punch card ballot and lever voting machines, many jurisdictions in many states still will be using the older mechanisms in 2004. Some states simply are invoking the law's waiver provision to wait until 2006 to complete the replacement process. Other states are mired in debates over what type of machines to buy, mostly differing on whether computerized systems are secure.
According to the Election Reform Information Project, only 12 of 27 states that have punch card ballot machines have committed to replacing them - ever. A succession of elections and numerous studies have now shown that punch card machines are inaccurate and their use discriminatory. Missouri must pledge to rid the state of them as soon as possible.
But Missourians ought to go beyond that and follow the example of the state of Georgia. Unlike Florida, when Georgia purchased new electronic voting machines in 2002, it did so uniformly across the state, with every county obtaining the same voting equipment.
Because every Georgia voter would be using the same new machine in the 2002 mid-term elections, the state was able to conduct a uniform statewide education campaign through the media, without worrying that a voter from any given county might receive misinformation applicable only to another county's voting technology.
The state also mailed to every registered voter a color brochure with instructions about how to use the new machines. The state only had to develop one poll worker training program, and these workers could be trained in a uniform fashion all across the state.
The election was, according to Georgians, a great success. In the 2000 election in Georgia, the number of ballots recorded as having no vote was 3.6 percent. For the 2002 U.S. Senate race, the figure was a historically low 0.86 percent.
California is often referred to as the nation's trend-setter. When it comes to the 2004 elections, Missouri should follow Georgia's lead instead.
Tova Wang is a senior program officer and democracy fellow at The Century Foundation, New York.
It was easy to miss the box with THE QUESTION. I think that many of the people were so eager to vote for their candidate that they just plain forgot to vote on THE QUESTION. I don't think they can pin this one on the punch card ballot.
-PJ
Every psy-op maneuver was included in that phrase ...
9 ballots of the residents of (fill in the blank), population 16 .. were found to have not been filled in for the question. Consequently the majority of (aforementioned community) combined with a simular percentage of another podunk community made up A majority of the entire state vote.
The votes are not "missing" but ignored or refused.
The issue of punch cards is worthy of note, so they become "notorious".
The rest of the article was built on all of these 'points'.
There is, of course, only one possible conclusion: people in L.A. are dumber than people in Oakland. That's why the Raiders moved back.
Seriously, my precinct used paper ballots (with a pen to mark the choice), so I can't say that I know how the computerized ballots work. But I'll bet the screen showed only one decision per page, allowing you to focus on each task at hand, and insuring you at least consider each one. On the other hand, a paper ballot has many decisions on a single page (or in this case, two) so it would be easy to miss the first one. It doesn't change the fact that it was the voter's own damn fault for not voting properly.
and how many freepers were putting notes up that they forgot to punch recall and went straight for voting for Arnold???? many of those could have been yes, and many no. it is fair!
Although now we use scantron(Fill in the circle like a multiple choice test).