Stealing Liberty: How Politicians Manipulate the Electorate

Crisis, The, Jan/Feb 2005 by Overton, Spencer

We know the outcome of the 2004 election. By winning the swing state of Ohio by 2 percent of the votes cast, George W. Bush retained the presidency. Nationwide, Bush received 58 percent of White votes, while Sen. John F. Kerry received 88 percent of Black votes.

But there is a deeper story. Although we are told that the American people govern our nation, increasingly it seems that the electorate is merely clay to be shaped by partisan officials and party operatives. Rather than voters selecting politicians, during the 2004 election politicians in effect selected voters.

Shaping the Electorate

In the lead up to the 2004 election, political operatives embraced a menu of strategies - from redrawing district lines to outright deception - to shape the electorate. For example:

Texas Redistricting. In 2003 Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) orchestrated an unprecedented mid-decade redrawing of Texas election districts in order to pick up additional Republican seats in the U.S. Congress. By drawing districts that snaked hundreds of miles across various counties, Republicans drained African American and Latino voters from integrated Democratic districts and replaced them with enough White Republican voters to outnumber the remaining White Democratic voters. As a result, DeLay converted a 32-member Texas congressional delegation evenly divided between the parties into one in which Republicans enjoyed a 10-seat advantage after the 2004 election.

Challenging Voters. Two weeks before the 2004 election, Ohio Republicans announced plans to deploy 3,600 poll watchers on Election Day to challenge the eligibility of voters in select precincts. Legitimate voters in challenged precincts would be more likely to face long lines and erroneous challenges than would voters in unchallenged precincts. In response to a lawsuit, a federal district judge banned the challengers from the polls, finding that only 14 percent of new voters in predominantly White precincts would face a challenger, while 97 percent of new voters in African American precincts would face one. But early in the morning on Election Day, two members of a three-judge appellate panel - both White Republican appointees - overruled the district court and opened the door to the targeted challenges. The lone dissent was filed by R. Guy Cole Jr., an African American judge appointed by President Clinton.

Punch-card Ballots. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, several studies established that punch-card error rates were more than three times higher in African American precincts than in others. In response, the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 allocated almost $4 billion for the replacement of punch-card machines and for other reforms. But four years after Florida's "hanging-chad" fiasco, more than 10 percent of Americans still live in areas that use punch-card machines. In Ohio, 70 percent of voters used punch-card machines, including those in urban areas such as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Canton and Akron. Punch-card machines produced most of the nearly 92,000 Ohio ballots that failed to record a vote for president -1.6 percent of the total cast.

Provisional Ballots. Federal law gives registered voters the right to cast a provisional ballot if their names do not appear on the voting rolls. But about half of the states refused to count a provisional ballot cast outside a voter's assigned precinct. And even within a single state like Ohio, nebulous standards allowed partisan election officials in one county to reject provisional ballots that could have been counted in another county.

Felon Disenfranchisement. Across the United States approximately 550,308 African Americans have completed their prison sentences but still cannot vote. In Florida, 16 percent of African Americans are disenfranchised as a result of having served time. While Florida does not automatically restore voting rights of exfelons, state law does allow offenders who have been released to petition a clemency board headed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush to restore their voting rights. But state officials have obstructed this process. For example, in July 2004 a court found that the state violated Florida law in failing to give a one-page clemency hearing application form to almost 125,000 offenders released from prison between 1992 and 2001 and ordered the state to give such forms to all soon-to-be released prisoners. Even those who apply for a hearing, however, may be in for a wait. Gov. Bush's clemency board hears only about 200 cases a year, and just before the 2004 election the board had a backlog of 8,000 cases.

Deception. A week before the 2004 election, flyers appeared in Milwaukee falsely stating that individuals could not vote if they or a family member had ever been convicted of any offense - even a minor one. In Lake County, Ohio, newly registered voters received mail falsely claiming that voters registered by the Kerry campaign or the NAACP would be barred from voting because their registrations were invalid. In Nevada, a company hired by the Republican National Committee to register Republicans was accused of destroying registration forms completed by Democratic voters. Reports of similar deceptive practices occurred in a number of other states, including Alabama, Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and West Virginia.