OPINION: The struggle to fix voting process never seems to end

By Tonyaa Weathersbee
Times-Union columnist

If the Iraqis are underwhelmed at the speed in which their American occupiers are restoring lights and civility to their country, I wonder how they'll feel when the time comes for assuring democratic elections there.

Right now, I don't have high hopes for that process -- especially in light of the cautionary tale that is unfolding on our shores.

Two years after the 2000 Florida presidential election fiasco thrust phrases like "hanging and dimpled chads" onto the nightly news, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. Among other things, the act gives states federal money to upgrade its voting systems -- which has helped many counties to eliminate antiquated punch card ballots. It also provides money to states for voter registration and education, and to bolster access for disabled voters. And while most changes are supposed to be in place by next year, 2006 is the deadline.

But for some voters, that will be too late.

A federal appeals court in California recently overturned a decision by a three-judge panel in the same circuit that delayed that state's Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election until March. But that panel didn't base its decision on legalities surrounding the recall, but on the fact that some voters might be limited in making their will known.

Six counties in California still use the punch card system -- a system that even election officials in that state have acknowledged as being obsolete and unacceptable, and a system that civil rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union believe could disenfranchise about 40,000 poor and minority voters.

And here in Jacksonville, in the first case of its kind to go to trial in the United States, three disabled voters got their day in court last week. They and the American Association of People with Disabilities are suing Elections Supervisor John Stafford under the Americans with Disabilities Act. They charge that Stafford's office violated that act when it purchased optical scanning voting equipment in 2001 and didn't bother to buy touch-screen machines.

Touch-screen machines, while expensive, offer visually impaired people an opportunity to vote independently because they are easily adaptable to audible features that direct voters to the right button. The machines also offer quadriplegics and other severely disabled persons a better chance to vote confidentially by allowing them to vote by wielding an instrument in their mouths to gently touch the screen.

One of the plaintiffs, Pam Hodge, is blind. She complained about having to pay $20 for a cab ride to vote at the downtown elections office after she was unable to get assistance at her Southside precinct.

City lawyers deny that the plaintiffs were discriminated against. A spokeswoman for Stafford's office said that it plans to move to a "more accessible technology," for the disabled by 2006.

I just know Stafford's office is going to move quicker than that. There's an election coming up next year.

Now I can understand why voting problems still persist. For starters, the Help America Vote Act only provides $3.9 billion for states to revamp their voting systems. It is one thing to mandate change, but it is quite another to adequately pay to see to it that change occurs.

And with states experiencing record budget shortfalls and other miseries -- the kind of misery that is driving California's recall effort -- I doubt if many of them will have enough money to take up the slack.

But I find it ironic that while President Bush is asking for $87 billion to rebuild Iraq and mold it into our image of what a functioning democracy should be, our own country, the world's shining example of a representative democracy, only has a sliver of that money to help see to it that folks like Hodge are able to vote with the same dignity as everyone else.

I find it ironic that we have to struggle to make our voting process work for people in places like California and Jacksonville, yet we somehow believe we can make that process work in Iraq; in a country that has no history of democratic politics and is driven by religious factions, tribes and at least 2,000 clans.

Of course, Bush administration officials have warned that achieving democracy in Iraq will be a long and costly process. Anyone could have guessed that. But here in America, we know the drill. We know that voting is at the heart of what democracy is all about, yet we still won't make the investment to help all of our citizens get it right.

And that's a shame.

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