Posted on 11/04/2002 3:15:39 PM PST by knighthawk
WASHINGTON - Florida's election fiasco in 2000 did not shock some U.S. political activists; they don't see it as a threat to U.S. democracy but as a promise of things to come. It may be both.
Even before polls open for Tuesday's mid-term congressional election, the Democrats are preparing legal challenges to overturn results they dislike.
So the winners might not be known for days or weeks after voting ends, just as it took Al Gore five weeks -- until Dec. 13 -- to concede defeat two years ago.
Republicans and Democrats are again running neck and neck. Republicans need to pick up only one seat to regain control of the Senate, and Democrats need only six to seize the House.
A little successful cheating here or a legal challenge there might flip the election one way or the other. And there are 36 state governorships up for grabs, too.
The New York Times reported last weekend the Democrats "plan to deploy 10,000 lawyers at polls in a dozen states with close Senate or House races."
Why? Terry McAulifffe, the party chairman, gave his answer in a recent statement. "Republicans are again trying to prevent people from voting at the polls," he claimed, adding there was a "possibility of this high level of disenfranchisement being extended to election day, and corrupting the integrity of the results."
Janet Reno, Bill Clinton's attorney-general, and Carrie Meek, a Democratic congresswoman, have filed suit to prevent Republicans from stationing 450 observers at polls in Miami-Dade County, Fla., where dimpled chads and other electoral arcana loomed large in 2000.
The plaintiffs say Republicans want to disrupt voting in Democratic precincts. The Republicans counter they want to check election laws are not broken.
There are tougher battles and more extensive chicanery in marginal states such as Minnesota, a pick-up target for the Republicans. The Democrats lodged several legal complaints this month about absentee ballots in the state, and secured a victory on Thursday when the state Supreme Court ordered election officials to mail new forms to all absentees printed with the name of Walter Mondale.
The Democrats chose Mr. Mondale as a replacement candidate for Senator Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash last Friday.
Republicans had argued that absentees who had already voted for Mr. Wellstone should have their votes discounted. The court didn't buy it, but it denied the Democrats another request -- that all votes for Mr. Wellstone be transferred automatically to Mr. Mondale.
If Mr. Mondale loses, Democrats are expected to launch a suit alleging absentees were bamboozled by getting two ballots.
Speaking of plane crashes, there's another battle in Missouri, where Senator Jean Carnahan is probably more vulnerable than any other Democratic member of Congress. She replaced her husband on the ballot two years ago when he was killed in a plane crash, and she won a squeaker against then-senator (now Attorney-General) John Ashcroft.
Her victory was instantly notorious. Polls were kept open extra hours in several Democratic precincts, and among the many improper voters there was 13-year-old Ritzy Mekler. Ritzy is a springer spaniel.
Up in Michigan, the Detroit News reported recently there are an astonishing 150,000 too many people on the city's electoral register. The city denies it. The true number of eligible voters is about 450,000, which means there could be 33% too many voter cards in circulation. Put another way, one in four of the cards may be held by people not entitled to them.
One of the dramatically absent voters in Detroit is Kathe Beddow, who has been dead eight years. Her card was mailed out as usual this year.
And there will be eyebrow-raising voters elsewhere. In Wisconsin, Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts recently took them to a residential home for the mentally handicapped. They played bingo with residents, handed out 25¢ as prize money, and then took players into another room for civic education about how to fill out absentee ballots. Republican requests for a federal investigation were denied yesterday.
According to voters in Maryland, Republicans themselves coerced mentally deficient voters in a borough race in the last election cycle.
In other words, there is skulduggery all over the electoral map. And like so much skullduggery, much of it is in court.
Fair's fair perhaps: With the U.S. legal system hopelessly infected with politics, perhaps it was inevitable the political system would become hopelessly infected with lawyers.
I could be wrong but IIRC Mel Carnahan's name stayed on the ballot and "he" won. The Governor then appointed Jean to serve until the next regularly scheduled election, i.e. tomorrow.
Correction: Republicans are again trying to prevent dead or otherwise ineligible people from voting at the polls.
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