Voters complain of discrimination at polls

The Michigan Daily ^ | 11/04/04 | Michael Kan

[machman]

DETROIT — In an election already marred by provisional ballot challenges, numerous reports of voter discrimination from nonpartisan poll monitoring groups underline the possible flaws in the nation’s voting systems.

Further impeding the voting process were accounts from student polling volunteers who said that ballot challengers were intimidating voters, signifying how fierce partisanship of the election permeated polling sites.

Racial slurs from election workers, missing bilingual ballots and unwarranted demands to check voter identification turned away Asian American voters across the nation, according to reports by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Learning from the lessons of the 2000 election, Margaret Fung, executive director of the legal fund, said the organization prepared for possible breakdowns at polling sites by taking measures such as contacting polling sites with records of voter discrimination to ensure they had language interpreters and provisional ballots on hand.

Despite their efforts, Fung said their exit polls of Asian Americans in eight states indicated widespread instances of voter discrimination, leaving many of the voters feeling disenfranchised. Refusals by election officials to provide provisional ballots and voters directed to the wrong polling locations were just some of the incidents that hampered the Asian American vote.

“There were racist remarks in New York City — poll workers were blaming them for holding up the lines. One of them said, ‘You Oriental guys are taking too long to vote,’ ” she said.

Although the legal fund continues to tally its exiting poll surveys and has no firm estimate for the number of incidents, Fung said repeated requests from poll workers to check identification hindered the high turnout of Asian American voters.

With their patience worn thin by the inadequacy of their voting site, many simply left without voting, she said.

“At this point, I don’t know if this had any effect on the election, but the process still needs to be fixed since it’s showing that it still can prevent people (from exercising) their vote,” Fung said.

A polling site at Cleveland Middle School in Detroit suffered some of the same difficulties, as the site had no translated ballots for Arabic speakers and lacked any interpreters. Election officer Susie Johnson said she could only resort to explaining slowly to non-English speaking voters how to vote.

“We just keep repeating what’s on the ballot until they understand,” she added.

Many non-English speaking voters managed to submit the ballot, though, with their family members functioning as interpreters.

But in other polling sites across Detroit, University student volunteers monitoring the polling sites said they not only encountered deficient polling sites, but also challengers from the Republican Party deliberately aiming to drive voters away through tactics of intimidation.

“It was quiet in some places, but in other places there was faulty election machinery and attempts by challengers to intimidate voters, and challengers at some points had to be physically removed by the police,” said LSA senior Ryan Bates, an electoral organizer with the grassroots community group Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength.

Of the Republican challengers at his polling location, Bates said all three were from Texas and intentionally hid their credentials in order to create the appearance that they were election officials. He added that they then intimidated voters by looming over them when casting ballots and interfering with their paper work, he added.

“At one point, there was a problem where a women’s ballot was spoiled, and she asked the challenger if she could have another one. And with a direct quote from the challenger, ‘This isn’t Afghanistan, you don’t get to vote twice here,’ ” Bates said.

Republicans have said their challengers monitor the elections to prevent voter fraud, and they sued Detroit officials Tuesday for allegedly barring some challengers from the polls.

Even with the end of election day, problems with the voting system still seem to be cropping up everywhere.

Starting her day of work in the morning at the U Club in the Union yesterday, LSA senior Rita Schiesser said her manager found an interesting surprise when he opened the restaurant.

“He found two metal boxes with ballots in them. … There were about 1,700 ballots in them,” she said.

The ballots were picked up by the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s office after her manager informed them, but Schiesser said she can only imagine how many ballot boxes are just waiting to be found.

The clerk’s office was unable to comment on the forgotten ballots.

[cyborg]

Sure smells from here ;-)

[Dutchgirl]

I was robbed! Robbed, I tell you!!! :-)

I'd invite you to tell it to Mary Frances Berry,
but I understand that her term as head of the US Commission on Civil Rights will be coming to an end very soon :-D

[Southern62]

A polling site at Cleveland Middle School in Detroit suffered some of the same difficulties, as the site had no translated ballots for Arabic speakers and lacked any interpreters. Election officer Susie Johnson said she could only resort to explaining slowly to non-English speaking voters how to vote.

I thought you had to be able to speak english to become a citizen - wtf is this?