On Nov. 2, in East Cleveland, Ohio, Peggy Allen, 63,
voted for the first time. "It makes me feel good," she said. "Like I did something for the country."
Mrs. Allen's daughter, Sandra, who was also a first-time voter, had been assured that her parents would be allowed to vote at home if they couldn't make it to the polling booth. She waited until 8:30 PM, after the polls were closed, before a poll worker agreed to take the Allen's vote. This was a happy Ohio tale.
Or was it?
Look at these two maps. The first shows the blue/red distribution. Note the concentration of blue voters on the right, near Mrs. Allen's part of town.
Now look at the second map showing the precincts where the spoilage rate of ballots exceeds 3%.
Turns out, there's a pretty good chance Mrs. Allen and many, many more from East Cleveland didn't really vote at all. Their votes were tossed.
But disproportionally spoiled ballots are only the tip of the iceberg in Mrs. Allen's part of town.
As the Washington Post reports in tomorrows December 15 issue, "In Cleveland, poorly trained poll workers apparently gave faulty instructions to voters that led to the disqualification of thousands of provisional ballots and misdirected several hundred votes to third-party candidates."
As for those disqualified provisional ballots:
Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Ohio, decided to strictly interpret a state law governing provisional ballots. He ruled that voters must cast provisional ballots not merely in the county but in the precise precinct where they reside. For cities such as Cleveland and Cincinnati, where officials long accepted provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, the ruling promised to disqualify many voters.
I am extremely tired of Ohio and news from Ohio. It is exhausting to keep caring about it. And the frequent reposting of stories on it in the Diaries reflects a level of discoordination that a bunch of individuals, each and unto themselves, can only reflect.
But every time I think we should just let it go and live on to fight another day, I think of Peggy Allen, casting her ballot for her first time at age 63, only to have it thrown in the trash.
Peggy Allen's vote is as important as the vote of any Senator voting on a piece of healthcare legislation.
The degree to which voting issues require our exhaustive attention is proportional to the degree with which, a) our voting system is flawed and, b) how hard it is to aggregate enough information to know just how flawed it is.
Making History
What Kossaks should realize is that we're actually making history here. Folks have seen the need and advocated for a citizen elections committee for years. A body of citizens whose sole function it is to oversee and guarantee the integrity of the citizen's vote.
As annoying as it is, what you're seeing here and across the internet is the first incarnation of that. It's not pretty. Instead of a nationwide, coordinated system, we have blogs and diaries.
And instead of being backed by the press who long ago stopped representing the interest of the average American, we're on our own.
But never in the history of U.S. elections has there been such light thrown on the process of voting and having your vote counted. The fact that the mainstream media is blocking it out makes it all the more striking. All of this information, most of it credible, some of it not, is now being aggregated into a searchable database open to all. The value of this cannot be overstated.
The revolution that is the internet is now manifest in the public getting a first glimpse, through literally thousands of people's reporting from all across the country, of how utterly corrupt and broken our electoral system is. Slowly, a picture emerges and resolution obtains: our democracy is not what we thought it was.
The process of fixing the process is never going to be pleasant. But we should never lose sight of what's at stake here: people like Mrs. Allen's right to choose who governs this country. A right, I would be remiss in not mentioning, people killed and died to acquire.
There's not a single thing more important to our national experience right now. Whether it changes the outcome of this election or not.