Letters
from Ellen Dannin,
Ellen Dannin is Professor of Law at
Pennsylvania State University
Dickinson School of Law and the author of /Taking Back the Workers'
Law
How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights/ (Cornell University
Press 2006).
Privatization
Follies, Originally published in
Salon here from Thinking Peace.
Below is an Op Ed that the Centre Daily Times did not print.
In Praise of Optical Scan Voting
On election day 2004, I worked as an election observer in an
eastside
Detroit precinct. I saw many first time voters, including some
over 40
years old. The atmosphere was calm and determined . . . and
patriotic.
These were people who wanted their votes to be counted and to
count.
Despite all that went wrong that day, when the votes 688 votes
cast that
day were counted there were only 4 votes the optical scanner
could not
read. And there was a paper record if a recount was needed.
This precinct could have been a case study in what can go wrong.
It was
severely understaffed and underequipped. Only half the number
of
precinct workers that had been promised appeared, and there
were not
enough voting stations.
No one could be spared to stand at the door to check that voters
were at
the right precinct. As a result, long lines led up to sign in
and get a
ballot and then to cast that ballot. There could have been equally
long
lines waiting for a voting booth.
But what saved the day was having optical scan ballots. This
meant that
those who didn’t want to wait for a booth could sit on
the floor to mark
their ballots. It’s not dignified, but it’s not
even an option with
touch-screen voting. These voters could have cast their ballots
even if
the power went out. And had a recount been needed, there was
a paper
record.
Had the precinct been using touch screen voting, scarce poll
workers
would have had to cover problems with that technology. And the
lines
would have been even longer.
Whenever there was a question about a voter’s registration,
one of the
scarce precinct workers had to go down the hall to the principal's
office to call official number after number, all of which were
busy.
This left the registration tables even more understaffed and
challenged
voters waiting as much as a half hour.
The precinct workers were unfailingly businesslike and upbeat
throughout
a grueling day. They were at work before dawn and left just
before
midnight. They only got dinner about 9 pm after the last voter
left.
They ordered in pizza and got down to the work of tallying ballots
and
packing up.
But this precinct was lucky, because it had an America Coming
Together
(ACT) observer with a friend willing to spend the day at a computer
with
a fast connection. She and I both had charged cellphones that
made it
through the day. When a challenged voter was waiting for a precinct
worker to find out whether the voter was registered, the ACT
observer
called her friend. Word soon spread that we could check registrations
and either assure voters they were in the right place or get
them the
correct precinct.
Meanwhile, I reassured challenged voters, while their status
was sorted
out, that we wanted them to vote. I explained that if they voted
a
provisional ballot and this was the wrong precinct, it would
probably
not be counted. I asked them to cast a ballot that would count.
They all
wanted to do that. Fortunately, for most, the correct precinct
was only
a couple blocks away.
As with this precinct, what many precincts need is not complicated
or
expensive – a computer with a searchable up-to-date list
of voters and
precincts, a fast connection to publius.com, and a cell phone
with a
charger. The cost in dollars would be negligible. And the value
of
supporting the access to the right to vote cannot be calculated
I drove home dead tired that night, but with deep hope –
and fear – for
this country and its people.
The precinct workers did the real work, but, had it not been
for the ACT
observer, our cellphones, and her friend spending the day with
a fast
internet connection, I estimate there could have been 100 fewer
votes
cast - and they might have thrown in the towel on democracy.
This day
spent doing unglamorous work demonstrated just how critical
these
"low-level" jobs at the precincts are. Yet we treat
them as if they
don’t matter, and we risk sending the message that the
right to vote
does not matter.
