Elections – The Most Important Right
In Florida’s 13th Congressional District Vern Buchanan, the G.O.P. candidate, is narrowly defeating Christine Jennings, the Democrat.
The problem is that the official vote count isn’t credible. In much of the 13th District, the voting pattern looks normal. But in Sarasota County, which used touch-screen voting machines made by Election Systems and Software, almost 18,000 voters — nearly 15 percent of those who cast ballots using the machines — supposedly failed to vote for either candidate in the hotly contested Congressional race. That compares with undervote rates ranging from 2.2 to 5.3 percent in neighboring counties.
The most important right American citizens have is the right to vote. It is the right from which all other rights derive, and it is the right we are risking blood and treasure overseas to promote. We should not allow this right to be taken for granted. I sent Christine Jennings $50 to help her fight for a fair election.
16 Responses to “Elections – The Most Important Right”
So… when are we going to get those paper receipts?
The local newspaper, the Orlando Sentinal, has an article about this HERE.
Unless the Florida courts step in – which they probably won’t – the ball is in the House of Representatives’ court. The House has two options.
1) It can refuse to seat Buchanan and seat Jennings instead.
2) It can refuse to seat Buchanan and demand a new election be held. Barring that, it will leave the seat unfilled.
3) It will make a deal and seat Buchanan in return for a nationwide ban on paperless machine ballots.
I have no idea what is going to happen here. The state will look at the machines in question to determine if they are broken. I worry that FL election officials will declare the machines “valid” and move on. There is just no plausible explanation for the massive undervote on that one race in Sarasota County. There is tons of anecdotal evidence about the election not coming up on the screen at all, or the selection not recognized.
I was rather astounded when I read some of the early quotes from the possible winner along the lines of, “Well, I guess if you don’t win fairly, you sue. That seems to be my opponents strategy.” I’m sorry, but it’s pretty clear that something didn’t work properly, and any good representative should not already be in spin mode but instead be patiently waiting for a proper investigation to make sure that the people got the person they wanted. If your only instinct is to spin to keep the possible power, and not a desire to make sure that the basic right of voting was properly exercised, then you don’t deserve to be in power.
Related to printed receipts, when I voted here in Honolulu this year, I had the choice between the regular paper ballot and one brand new electronic voting machine, which I tried out. What’s notable about the machine here was that it automatically printed a paper receipt on a little roll which it instructed me to review as well as the screen before making the decisions final. It seemed relatively painless.
pacatrue- that is the way electoral disputes should be handled, but ever since 2000, a squad of lawyers from each side descend on the district in question. The “winner” tries to establish legitemacy by putting a transition team in place and moving into their new offices in Washington, so that they’ll be harder to displace if they lose in lower court. The “loser” takes the disputed results as far in the court system as they can, in the hopes of getting a favorable decision.
Elrod is right, that once Florida officials have certified one of the candidates as the winner, they are not likely to change course and admit there was any problem with the election. I’m sure like Buchanan, they are just hoping the problem will disappear with time, and that the Democrats will forget about it. I’m just glad not to be a Florida voter!
Would it be so outrageous and unprecedented to hold a new election there?
Maybe it would be the wake-up call that actually wakes people up!
It’s not just Florida. A New York Times article (LINK HERE) says:
Paul,
Can you offer examples where a court – federal or state – has ordered a do-over in an election to a Federal position? I would have serious doubts whether a Federal court has authority to grant that kind of relief, let alone a state court.
Re Elrod’s comments, as I understand extant caselaw, the House cannot refuse to seat Buchanan. The House may judge the qualifications of its members, but it cannot decide what those qualifications should be: it can only judge whether the candidate meets the qualifications (age, citizenship, residence) set out in Article I §2. Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 550 (1969) (“in judging the qualifications of its members, Congress is limited to the standing qualifications prescribed in the Constitution”); U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995) (“If the qualifications set forth in the text of the Constitution are to be changed, that text must be amended … [A]fter examining Powell‘s historical analysis and its articulation of the basic principles of our democratic system, we reaffirm that the qualifications for service in Congress set forth in the text of the Constitution are fixed, at least in the sense that they may not be supplemented by Congress”) (internal quotation marks omitted).
It seems to me that if it can be objectively established that an election clearly did not reflect the intentions of the voters then the pressure would be on the Congress to act.
The SCOTUS may then have to rule on this language in the Constitution: “Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members…”
SFAIK, the Constitution has no provisions for holding a “re-do” election. It’s not a solution I’m very sanguine about, since the potential for abuse is high.
The Constitutional remedy – again, as I understand it – is to take the challenge to the US House of Representatives. I’m not sure how one decides whether the current House gets the hot potato, or the new session. This is obviously a fraught issue, since the current House will seat the Republican candidate and the next one is likely to seat the Democrat. Maybe that’s something the SCOTUS would wind up deciding.
Has the House ever seated the “loser” of an election for any reason?
I seem to recall something like this did happen in the Vietnam/Watergate era, but I don’t know enough to get anything from Google.
I think it’s a bad idea, by the way. The new Democratic majority should not use its fresh authority to add one more member to itself. That would just poison the atmousphere.
By the other way–your threads here have been just great so far, Paul!!
The issue for me is independent of who the particular winner is of this particular election.
Voters need to be reassured that elections are fair or we risk increasing abivalence or worse.
The 2000 election controversy was a shock. We need to restore faith in the integrity of our system.
ps Thanks for the kudos.
As a voter in the Florida 13th i don’t find the number of undervotes (which is now less then 18,000 btw after a recount) as improbible.
The race was rather nasty and its not out of the realm of possibility for people to just not vote in the race.
Now the fact most of them are in the same precinct(s) that part is a tad odd
People pass on voting particular offices all the time. You don’t call new elections unless fraud or machine error can be conclusively demonstrated. “Either we win or they cheated” has become quite a mantra for some, but sometimes you just get beat in a close race. And sometimes the voters screw up and bad ballot design results in problems. But unless there’s a machine error or a crooked count, there won’t be a new election.
Had it gone the other way in the recount, Jennings would not be complaining.
The discrepancies in this election exceeded my personal threshold for what I could consider reasonable margins of error and so I contributed money to help advance the investigation. If a court and/or the Congress agrees that the will of the people has been thwarted I hope there is a do over to assure that the people of that district have the representative they vote for.
I can understand that for many this discrepancy is modest and inconsequential.
Tully,
You say that people pass on a particular office all of the time. Proof, please. Especially that they would vote on less consequential offices on a ballot that includes a congressional election. And it is also extremely odd that the pattern is so far out of synch with nearby (presumably demographically similar) counties.