Could Florida Happen Again?
By Ken St. Onge
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 – A court could end up determining the winner of the presidential election if John Kerry or George W. Bush fail to win by a significant margin in enough states to guarantee an Electoral College victory, said a panel of experts assembled at the National Press Club Friday to discuss the possibility of a repeat of 2000..
“Could Florida happen again? I get that question all time,” said Doug Chapin, executive director of the non-partisan electionline.org. “I think the answer is ‘yes,’ but not for the reason most people expect.”
Chapin said public scrutiny of the presidential election – the first following the 2000 recount and the first under the recently enacted Help America Vote Act – will be very high and could amplify any incident where voting practices are questioned.
Such scrutiny could lay the foundation for a recount or lawsuit in states where either candidate’s margin of victory is small, Chapin said.
That scenario may be likely, as recent polls indicate that the winner in several battleground states, particularly Ohio, is too close to predict.
In such a scenario, the use of “provisional ballots,” created in the aftermath of 2000 to help avoid allegations of disenfranchisement, would take center stage, said Chapin –just as hanging chads and butterfly ballots did in 2000.
Provisional ballots are given to voters whose registrations cannot be immediately verified at a polling place. This measure provides for a voter to receive a provisional ballot, bearing his identification, which would be stored separately from regular ballots.
Those ballots are subject to verification by election officials, but would not be counted unless their total exceeds either candidate’s margin of victory.
Provisional ballots are being used in Massachusetts. Lawrence City Clerk Bill Maloney said his office finalized the city’s master list of registered voters Friday afternoon. He said he expects a large voter turnout of 29,000 people in the city’s 24 polling places.
“I think we’re seeing more reform in the last four years than we’ve seen in the last hundred,” said Paul DeGregorio, a member of the United States Election Assistance Commission. That group, established by the Help American Vote Act, has distributed $1.5 billion to 44 states to reform voting procedures.
“We are determined to serve voters in a non-partisan way,” he said.
“This will be the most important election of our lifetimes,” said Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, an advocacy group that deals with civic participation and civil rights issues. “We are not just electing a president. [The winner] will have a number of Supreme Court appointments.”
Neas said his group has formed an “Election Protection Coalition” to provide 25,000 poll monitors and 6,000 lawyers nationwide, focused mostly on predominantly minority precincts, to assist voters who feel their registrations have been unfairly challenged.
Calling the action “Freedom Fall,” Neas compared Tuesday’s endeavor to the “freedom summer” of 1964 where activists went to the South to register African-American voters.
Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign, disagreed that the outcome of the election will be challenged in a court. “I am of the belief that lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place… history doesn’t repeat itself exactly,” he said.
He dismissed Democratic allegations of Republican attempts to disenfranchise voters. He said that Republicans are concerned with maintaining the integrity of the voting process and avoid situations where “Dick Tracy, Daffy Duck, Jive Turkey and Mary Poppins are all registered to vote and, come to find out, Poppins isn’t even a United States citizen.”
Despite the looming possibility of litigation and the close margins in many battleground states, all except Chapin said the outcome of the election will probably be decided by Nov. 3.
But that doesn’t mean it will be without controversy,
“The woods really aren’t any drier that they were four years ago,” Chapin said. “Just a lot more people have matches.”
