LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA September 24, 2003

An 11-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals met to 
reconsider the judicial decision stopping the October 7th recall 
vote of Governor Gray Davis. The judges unanimously decided to 
permit the vote to continue as originally scheduled.

On September 11, 2003, a federal appeals court panel had decided 
that the recall election should be postponed because of the 
continued use of punch-card ballots in the Californian electoral 
process.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, the Southern 
Christian Leadership Conference and the Southwest Voter 
Registration Education Project had gathered their forces to 
stop the recall election. They brought in attorney Mark 
Rosenbaum to argue their case for the postponement of the 
October 7th election.

Mouthpiece Mark Rosenbaum argued that moving ahead with the 
election posed a risk of potential discrimination against poor 
and minority voters who may have difficulty with the punch-card 
ballots.

The Fox News website stated in a story, "Lawyers for civil rights 
groups that wanted to stop the election argued that a statistical 
study showed 40,000 poor and minority voters might have their 
ballots excluded if punch-card ballots are used in the Oct. 7 
election."

--- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97131,00.html


COMMENTARY

The argument behind this case had rubbed me wrong since the 
story originally broke. 

Here is the deal. 

The presidential elections in Florida in November of 2000 proved 
that punch-cards are prone to errors. 

Never before has it been so well-known that all of our voting 
systems are known to have an intrinsic error rate in the 2-4% 
range. No matter the voting system, there is an error rate to 
be factored into the equation. 

Honestly, how many of us had really ever considered the 
likelihood of a certain percentage of our ballots ending up 
in the trash bin?

The civil liberties groups, who purport to protect the right of 
the disadvantaged and the minorities, have made the argument that 
the poor and the minorities cannot be trusted to know how to use 
the punch-card ballots properly, and therefore, their votes may 
not be counted. 

The thing that offended me about this argument is that the 
groups who are supposed to be fighting for the rights of the 
disadvantaged and the minorities are assuming that the people 
that they are trying to protect do not have the basic common 
sense to make sure that their votes will be counted.

To hear the argument of attorney Mark Rosenbaum, one would have 
to come to the conclusion that the people he is arguing to 
protect are simply too stupid to cast their votes properly. Mr. 
Rosenbaum's clients fight against discrimination in every day 
life, yet they give merit to the argument that the people for 
whom they are dedicated to protect should be thought of as less 
than capable of having the common sense ability to protect their 
own voice! 

Did Mr. Rosenbaum's clients really believe that they were serving 
the best interests of their constituents by suggesting that we 
the people should have looked down upon the intelligence of 
their constituency?

Who is to say that the people who have fouled up the ballots 
are the disadvantaged poor and the minorities? Can that idea 
be proven? How could they make that argument with a straight 
face and a restful conscience? Who is to say that the 
disadvantaged and the minorities are really the ones messing 
this electoral process up? 

What about that rich guy who is in a hurry to get in and get 
out of the voting booth? What about that suburban mother who is 
hearing her children scream a fit in the background while she is 
trying to vote? What about the average Joe who has 30 minutes for 
lunch and wishes to cast a ballot during lunch --- thinking ahead 
to what he will order from the drive-through, while he is in the 
voting booth? Could it be that they are really the ones leaving 
the "hanging chads" on the ballots? 

Sure, punch-cards are less than ideal. Yet the fact that most 
voting systems have an error rate of 2-4% is even more disturbing. 
Are my own votes being counted? Who is to say? 

I have been in a hurry while in the voting booth, myself. I even 
know that a couple of years back, I screwed up and voted for the 
wrong person. I know that because I remember the conversation I 
had with one of the voting monitors about it. If I was to throw 
away the ballot and get another one, I would have screwed up 
everyone's vote at that location. It's funny you know --- I am 
neither poor nor a minority. I am actually educated --- and yet 
I screwed up my own vote at one time.

If you haven't yet figured it out, I am offended by the fact that 
the people sworn to protect the poor and the minorities of our 
country have taken to the argument that their constituencies 
cannot be trusted to cast a ballot correctly using a punch-card 
system.

Jay Leno and the other comedians have jokes galore about voters 
who foul up this simple electoral process.

The plaintiff's in this case desired for us to assume that their 
constituents are the ones who are fouling up in the voting booth. 
The civil liberties groups, who fight for the right's of the 
disadvantaged poor and minorities, wanted us to believe that we 
should really be laughing at their constituency. 

That is just wrong! Pure and simple!