What would you like to know about St. Joan of Arc? Do you have a story about our parish or of general interest that you think others would like to hear? For story ideas, contact Jeff Rholl, jeff@stjoan.com.
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Although it may seem as if the presidential campaign has been going on for some time(it has), the election is just around the corner, and soon the fate of our nation will lie in the hands of the voters. Or will it? Many people are questioning the election process since the debacle of the 2000 election. Hanging chads, paper trails, and spoiled votes have become new terms in our vocabulary. To better understand the election process, I sat down over coffee with a parishioner from St. Joan of Arc, former Secretary of State Joan Growe. She didn’t have much time, but she seemed eager to tell me all about the election process in Minnesota, as well as her voting philosophies.
First there was a little catching up to do. Since retiring from office in 1997, Ms. Growe has been active in various activities including serving on the board of the National Democratic Institute, of which Madeline Albright is the chair. The goal of this organization is to help foster countries who want to become democracies. Under the auspices of this organization Ms. Growe has observed elections in Azerbaijan, South Africa, Yemen, Romania, El Salvador, and other countries. I facetiously suggested that perhaps this group should be observing elections in the USA. Ms. Growe replied, “I personally don’t believe that our organization should be doing it, but I actually think that it is incredibly important this year that there be observers at polling places, particularly in certain states. They could be voters, they could be political party observers. There are a lot of organizations that are devoted to fair elections.”
When asked about the 2000 election, Ms. Growe said that people are concerned about voters voting twice, or improper registration, but the real problem, in her eyes was the infrastructure. “It was almost as if the public, without question, assumed the equipment was going to work. And the reality is that there are probably a lot of problems that exist around the country with equipment, or training of officials, or statutes, or rules, or regulations, that no one’s ever focused on. Part of the problem is that the public isn’t willing to fund the infrastructure of an election.” Growe feels it’s important for voting equipment to provide a paper trail if there is a recount. Some of the new touch-screen technology does not provide that paper trail.
In Minnesota, an elected official, the Secretary of State, is in charge of elections throughout the state. Some states, including Florida and California, allow the governor to appoint the Secretary of State. Ms. Growe’s philosophy of making it as easy as possible to vote is important, but apparently not very universal. While in Minnesota one can register at the polls, in other states it’s more difficult to register to vote. Ex-felons may not vote in some states, even though they’ve served their time. In Minnesota, once you’re a legal citizen again, you’ve gained back all of your civil rights. While part of the problem in Florida in 2000 was hanging chads from punchcard ballots, Minnesota dropped punchcards more than 15 years ago. Most of Minnesota now uses an optical scan voting method, where the voter marks a paper ballot with a black pen, and the ballot is either inserted into a machine to scan, or into a ballot box for later scanning.
But according to an article by Greg Palast on Alternet, the problem isn’t about faulty technology or bad training of election officials. Palast believes the problem is racial. According to statistics, the votes of one million African American voters in Florida were not counted in the 2000 election. In Florida's Gadsden County, the county with the highest population of African-Americans, one in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted, because of “spoiled votes.” However in neighboring Tallahassee county, predominately white, every vote was counted.
There have been steps taken to correct problems on election day. In 2002, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was created. (Visit HAVA to read all of the act.) In a nutshell, the act provides funds to replace punch card voting systems, to provide assistance in federal elections, and to set up minimum election standards for states and local government. The goal is to have all punchcard and lever machines replaced in States accepting HAVA payments by November, 2004, unless they’ve qualified for a waiver.
Diebold, who also makes ATM machines, self-service machines, and security systems, is the leading maker of touch screen voting machines. According to their website, Diebold.com, over 75,000 voting machines are currently being used across the country. Diebold contends that this is a huge advantage to visually impaired voters, and voters who don’t speak English, stating that it allows them to vote unassisted. These voting machines are being used exclusively in Georgia, and in almost every district in Maryland and Ohio. No paper ballot is involved.
Sequoia Voting Systems is another vendor in the race towards electronic voting. Their website, Sequoiavote.com, states that “Sequoia Voting Systems provides election services in more than thirty-five states and has more than 48,000 electronic voting machines deployed across the nation” and is currently the voting station of choice in Nevada for the 2004 presidential election.
However, in July 2003, Avi Rubin, Technical Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University and an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, released the results of a study exposing the vulnerability of Diebold’s electronic voting machines. Rubin points out that one of the problems involves a “smart card.” Each registered voter is issued a smart card at the voting polls. The card is used to identify the voter in the machine, and allows the voting process to begin. However these cards are not encrypted with a special code that would protect counterfeits from being created. Theoretically, an adversary could bring several smart cards to the booth and vote several times, or create a card that would allow the adversary to vote repeatedly.
Of course there are legal solutions to voting problems, and according to a July 19th article by David M. Halbfinger in the New York Times, “aides to John Kerry say the campaign is taking the unusual step of setting up a nationwide legal network under its own umbrella, rather than relying, as in the past, on lawyers associated with state Democratic parties. The aides said they were recruiting people based on their skills as litigators and election lawyers, rather than rewarding political connections or big donors.” There will be lawyers from both parities monitoring the election process. While John Kerry has put together a team of independent lawyers from around the country, the Republican National Lawyers Association had training sessions for their lawyers in early summer, and the Bush Cheney campaign will be covering 30,000 precincts with party lawyers.
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