Welcome to the Machine
It is about time someone with strong name recognition took on the Ohio voting problems of the 2004 election. RFK's article in Rolling Stone could be an historic document. It could also become a footnote. It seems the mainstream media is already working to defuse the situation and argue for the official view. Will this story get legs or will it get buried?
One thing that gets mentioned in most news reports on Ohio '04 is the 12 hour wait in Gambier, where Kenyon College is located. That 12 hour wait is a true anomaly, or a statistical outlier. In reality, the media focus should be on the hundreds of polling locations where the wait was 3 to 4 hours. This is the real scandal, because this caused hundreds, probably thousands to leave the polls and caused mass disenfranchisement. The Gambier students received nationwide publicity while it was happening, as such; they were all empowered to stay and finish voting, which they did. In effect the Gambier incident distracted away from the massive creation of lines in the inner city, and the disenfranchisement it engendered.
I was working "Get out the Vote" on Election Day on the west side of Columbus in a mixed race lower-middle income neighborhood. Another person and I formed a team to call on two precincts that voted at Bishop Hartley High School in a neighborhood called the Hilltop. Later that evening, we were stopped on the street by a man who we had talked with earlier that morning. He told us that he had been in line at Hartley for over three hours, and he had to leave because he had to pick up his children. Therefore, the inexcusably long delay denied this man his right to vote. It is one thing seeing snippets on TV news; it is quite different thing being there. I saw with my own eyes 21st Century Disenfranchisement due to long lines, in part caused by reallocation or misallocation of voting machines.
The Hartley location had two Wards voting, and in past elections each Ward had four voting machines. I was surprised to see that on Election Day '04 - when record turnout was expected - each Ward was allocated only three machines. It was also reported that machines from some urban locations were shifted to suburban locations, and that another seventy-two machines were out of commission, sitting sin warehouses or on trucks.
As one may expect, polling stations in more affluent neighborhoods had lower wait times. I live in a suburban location in the same county, and our Wards had four machines, and about one-hundred-fifty voters per machine. I cannot cite an exact number of voters per machine in the inner city, but I expect it was in the neighborhood of two-hundred to two-hundred-fifty per machine. Therefore, voting is much like many things in America today: Equality for all, but some people are more equal than others. Unequal distribution of voting machines is a modern means of disenfranchisement.
Written by: OhioDem1
Editted by: REB 84
QuestionItNow Blogs
One thing that gets mentioned in most news reports on Ohio '04 is the 12 hour wait in Gambier, where Kenyon College is located. That 12 hour wait is a true anomaly, or a statistical outlier. In reality, the media focus should be on the hundreds of polling locations where the wait was 3 to 4 hours. This is the real scandal, because this caused hundreds, probably thousands to leave the polls and caused mass disenfranchisement. The Gambier students received nationwide publicity while it was happening, as such; they were all empowered to stay and finish voting, which they did. In effect the Gambier incident distracted away from the massive creation of lines in the inner city, and the disenfranchisement it engendered.
I was working "Get out the Vote" on Election Day on the west side of Columbus in a mixed race lower-middle income neighborhood. Another person and I formed a team to call on two precincts that voted at Bishop Hartley High School in a neighborhood called the Hilltop. Later that evening, we were stopped on the street by a man who we had talked with earlier that morning. He told us that he had been in line at Hartley for over three hours, and he had to leave because he had to pick up his children. Therefore, the inexcusably long delay denied this man his right to vote. It is one thing seeing snippets on TV news; it is quite different thing being there. I saw with my own eyes 21st Century Disenfranchisement due to long lines, in part caused by reallocation or misallocation of voting machines.
The Hartley location had two Wards voting, and in past elections each Ward had four voting machines. I was surprised to see that on Election Day '04 - when record turnout was expected - each Ward was allocated only three machines. It was also reported that machines from some urban locations were shifted to suburban locations, and that another seventy-two machines were out of commission, sitting sin warehouses or on trucks.
As one may expect, polling stations in more affluent neighborhoods had lower wait times. I live in a suburban location in the same county, and our Wards had four machines, and about one-hundred-fifty voters per machine. I cannot cite an exact number of voters per machine in the inner city, but I expect it was in the neighborhood of two-hundred to two-hundred-fifty per machine. Therefore, voting is much like many things in America today: Equality for all, but some people are more equal than others. Unequal distribution of voting machines is a modern means of disenfranchisement.
Written by: OhioDem1
Editted by: REB 84
QuestionItNow Blogs
posted by Ohiodem1 at
6/05/2006 11:08:00 PM
1 Comments:
Good work OhioDem,
I have to give you lots of credit for putting in the time to help other Americans excersize their right to vote.
I suspect this was the first time for many. Let's hope that the Dems push real hard to ensure those lines will be much shorter this year.
By
REB 84, at 11:36 PM, June 07, 2006
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home