Election Law

It is ironic.

The right wing political movement espouses a non-intrusive central government, recommending that we allow most things to be decided locally - in short that local knowledge is often best.

It is ironic because during argument before the US Supreme court in 2000 (Bush v. Gore) - the argument the Democrats felt the Republicans had to make was that somehow not uniformly counting ballots between states or even counties was harmful to Bush more than Gore - an argument that of course wouldn't be successful. So, instead they argued that citizen X in county X, was disenfranchised because his/her vote wasn't counted, while, under the same rules, citizen Y in county Y - was counted.

The CONSERVATIVE Supreme Court 'bought' this argument - and Big Brother never had a bigger day.

The SCOTUS knew what it had wrought, and in it's ruling included that the Bush v. Gore decision was ONLY applicable to that ruling. However now, here in Minnesota, that ruling is being used to justify doing something which ought to offend the right to its core - it is being used to say that the decisions of local election officials (TWICE) were wrong, even when in some cases that second review only determined a ballot to be ineligible because of the objection of one side or the other (between Coleman and Franken) - as reported during the current Coleman election contest trial by local election judges. Further, the Coleman side has contended that the judges not only got it wrong twice, including those ballots the where campaigns were allowed to overrule the officials and discard votes - but that the count and recount review of ballots got it so manifestly wrong that they simply cannot be trusted.

Let's deal with the first part - in Bush v. Gore, the fundamental problem I have with the decision is this. Republicans across the south (and Dixiecrats too), have created unequal voting processes - they have for decades put shoddy, unreliable machines in too few numbers in poor precincts. In Florida, they attempted to sidestep rules in order to include military absentee ballots which were undated, but didn't want undated other ballots included (neither should have been in my opinion). What's worse though is that Katherine Harris, with Jeb Bush's tacit approval, threw 14,000 voters off the roles (illegally or so it is reported by a separate investigation AND by the company who did the work - they advised Harris such conduct was probably illegal - following the 2000 election that investigated concluded exactly thus - it was not legal or proper for Harris to have done this) What Harris did was dump 14,0000 (approx) mostly poor and mostly black voters - because their names were 'kinda' similar to that of felons - again despite being warned about the very very high likelihood that many thousands of voters would be disenfranchised. In short, they setup a highly unequal system - argue that local decisions matter - and then used the fact that human judgement - on ANY rule set - will vary, to argue that an unequal system is unconstitutional. After 2000, however, they then (in the FL legislature) opposed meaningful reforms which would have leveled the playing field in Florida to ensure adequate and even capability machines were provided across the state in proportion to the voting population of the counties.

The biggest offense (to me) is the essential suggestion that local officials could not rule uniformly 'enough' to be trusted. This process has been the norm and case throughout this country's LONG history of free and fair elections. It's the height of hypocrisy that the right - which champions local wisdom normally, will say perfect uniformity is required whenever it's convenient or serves their purposes. If they had suggested that the SAME local official in a county or recount process decided the exact same looking ballots differently, I'd have to agree the process was flawed, but that's not the case. What happened in Florida was that one person's judgement of what a 'hanging or dimpled' chad meant - vis a vis the rule of 'clear voter intent' was different that some other judges. That, in and of itself, is NOT wrong, not at all. You cannot possibly legislate enough, create enough rules, to create perfect and uniform decisions when those decisions are made by human beings with discerning minds. The allowance of those officials to judge locally was tossed out by Justices and politicians who otherwise argued vehemently FOR local authority, the wisdom of the common man, and especially for UN UNIFORM voting practices.

In Minnesota now, Bush v. Gore - and its ludicrous 'equal protection' stance are being used to try to effectively toss out the local decisions, including, and this may be the best part, offering up in court ballots that local officials may have accepted but the contestant - COLEMAN - had tossed out by his recount team. Meaning, we're trying to determine fairness based upon ballots NOT wrongly rejected by local officials, but instead by highly partisan operatives - so, just like in Bush v. Gore, the court made one standard for the recount, which apparently now is figuring out lead to problems. Rather than understanding and agreeing EACH county (where the recount was conducted) doubtless acted differently, but still uniformly within its own process - thus neither candidate was likely affected disparately, instead the court is saying "because it was imperfect, we have to decide how broadly we'll recount AGAIN." Of course remember that NO candidate is likely to be more affected than the other to any meaningful extent, as the standard - as long as it's applied evenly within the county or recount center, will remove roughly equal numbers of votes, unless one side wants to try to argue that their side is more 'dumb' than the other about how to vote - I will laugh out loud if someone makes that point. Instead, what's argued is that if the vote would have been accepted in Sherbourne County - by a subjective opinion of an Election Judge, but is rejected by a subjective decision by a different judge in Ramsey, well, then that decision, in one way or another, is flawed. Apparently, in order to be fair, there must be PERFECT AGREEMENT between judges (hundreds of them) making subjective decisions on objectively even acceptance rules - the kinds of decisions which are made hundreds of thousands of times across the country. Put it another way, if the Court agrees, this will require perfect uniformity in any manual decision process (or so it would seem) on EVERY national election - or at least on any that are close. If not, go to court, and have the government intervene for you to require perfect uniformity. Big Brother, thy name is neo-con group think.

Of course, this is nonsense to require - for if you do, if you buy this equal protection poppycock invented by an irresponsible and HIGHLY partisan SCOTUS in 2000 - doing exactly what they said you should NOT do in their first decision re: Bush v. Gore(meaning engage in retractive rules making) - you basically say NO FURTHER LOCAL COUNT WILL EVER BE VALID, EVER. Each time any counting of absentee or other human involved counting occurs, the loser will be perfectly within their rights to challenge based on equal protection. In fact, all past elections which were close enough to allow manually counted votes to matter - ARE ALREADY IN QUESTION - we will, should we go down this road, indict to a small degree, the election process in this country which outside of the Jim Crow/Tammany Hall eras, has been a model of electoral fairness. And we will do it without ever fixing the flaws in mechanical voting processes of disparate services and access. In short, we'll fix what isn't broken, demean our faith in people, and leave unfixed that which should be fixed. Welcome to the duplicity of 'local governance' as mouthed by the ultra-right.