Travellers’ Blog Entry No. 35

The trauma of the chaos-election eight years ago in the U.S. is still far from being overcome - and a repeat of that can not be excluded. Also, this year's Presidential election could soon return to the courts. The risk factors: court processes because of 'phantom voters', a huge number of voters - and the error-prone election machinery.

A brief review of the last electoral chaos: Al Gore and George W. Bush struggled throught the counting of the presidential election in Florida for weeks. Bush finally gets the victory granted by court order - with just 537 votes ahead.

For the upcoming election tomorrow between Barack Obama and John McCain experts now expect new problems. The question is not IF there will be voting and counting problems. The questions is how big and how far they will be.

"I'm sure that there will be difficulties on Election Day," says the professor and election law expert Richard L. Hansen of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "One can only hope that the result does not just fail." For such a case, both parties already have a whole army of lawyers in position to challenge the results if necessary. Experts have identified three problem areas:

1. an unprecedented high turnout could overwhelm the polling stations
2. the election machinery could again have 'technical problems'
3. the dispute over the validity of some votes could employ the courts.

A few days ago, several civil rights groups presented a study entitled "Is America ready for the election?" Their clear answer: no. In ten out of 50 states the experts registered substantial shortcomings in the electoral preparations and thus the potential for chaos on election day, among the ten states are 'key states' such as Virginia, Texas and Colorado. Even the "Brennon Center for Justice", the Faculty of Law at the University is alarmed.
The conclusion from the study: That there will be problems on Election Day, is beyond question.

The greatest risks also include the expected rush to the polling stations. This year, approximately nine million new voters are registered, there are significantly more voters than expected in 2004 when about 120 million U.S. citizens made their votes.
Even at that time many voters had to spend hours waiting in front of the polling places to give their votes.
Normally, in the U.S. the participation is about 50 percent, in some districts 80 percent expected this year. "Many polling stations and election volunteers will limit the reach of their resilience," predicts the expert Doug Chapin of Washington's Pew Center. The website www.saveourvotes.org meanwhile expects hour-long waiting times for the state of Maryland.

One of the biggest uncertainties in this election is, once again, the election machinery.
According to a study of the University of Iowa, about 80 percent of U.S. voters will cast their votes on one of those computers. After the election debacle in Florida in 2000, when many ballots with old-fashioned punch devices were labeled unclear, many states had purchased modern voting machines - but these are already out of operation, now, because of their vulnerability and risk of fraud.

This year, large states like California and Florida have new machines, where each vote on a paper is printout to be documented. In case of disputes and problems that should make a later counting easier. Independent experts see in this as a big step forward.
Only in six states smaller touch-screen machines, which are used like an ATM, will operate. Critics warned repeatedly that computer hackers can penetrate these systems and could change the results.

There can arise further problems on election day: The voter's identifying. The current dispute revolves mainly around the activities of the leftist group 'Acorn', which has been struggling for decades that socially disadvantaged individuals and minorities can register as new voters. The Republicans claim, that the group used voter lists with fake data and signatures and gave them to the authorities. The judiciary determines and the Republicans talk about electoral fraud on a large scale, because of these 'phantom voters'.
If the election on 4 November will be, as expected, a close thing, the election will be decided weeks later - by courts.