It was almost fitting that the College Republicans got a taste of what it was like to live in St. Louis City.
Last night at the joint meeting between the Student Senate and the House of Governors, the College Republican representative accused Senator Dan Schniedermeier of not submitting all the voter-registration cards filled out by students during the recent Voter Registration Drive earlier this semester. The event was an SGA-supported event.
The CR’s complaint?
When some of their members got to the polls, they were told they were not on the list of registered voters and therefore could not vote.
Fortunately, such an obnoxious suggestion of a conspiracy was knocked down by SGA moderator Phil Lyons, who personally attested to Schniedermeier’s submission of ALL of the registrations. The reason it is funny is because the CR’s friends experienced the same frustration and violation of democracy that people all over the city were experiencing.
The protocol to vote for such individuals who don’t find their names where they should was to go to the Election Board Office downtown and vote there. When arriving, those dejected Americans found the line wrapped around the building. It was for this reason that the NAACP asked a court to extend the hours for voting. It was this court’s agreement that inflamed Republicans, on our campus and around the state, who claimed that the Democrats were trying to steal the election.
Well, I guess our CRs have the answer to their question about how a court could keep the polls open. It was to allow for those screwed by the Election Board’s mistakes to vote. Just as the CRs were unable to, so were hundreds of city inhabitants.
What happened here was a case of democracy being confused for partisan politics. Suddenly, it is OK to use past voting trends to decide whose vote will be allowed to count and whose will be fought in court. In Florida, there is nothing wrong going on, and polls show that common Americans know it.
More people than not, in a number of polls, want the process to continue until we can know-to the best of our knowledge- who really won.
Hand counts ARE the best way to find out. Yes, machine counts are valuable, but as news show after news show has mentioned, the machines carry with them a margin of error. That margin of error is greater than the error received by a hand count. Therefore in close counties, a hand count would be the best indicator.
Bush doesn’t like hand counts because in the past week they have been eroding his lead. The Republicans are trying to tell the public that the Gore campaign is just trying to count and recount until they get their numbers.
The fact is, counties in the panhandle of Florida that have been extremely close have hand counted and found more votes for Bush.
Yet, the Bush camp knows that in the end, other counties will not, and therefore they choose to ignore those beneficial counties and attack the hand-count system.
I don’t think this is an inherently Republican issue. I think that if the numbers were the other way, I would probably be arguing the same points that the Republicans are arguing now.
Everybody wants their candidate to win, and whatever seems to help your candidate, you support. That is not to say that politicians, myself, or the Republicans are evil for feeling that way. It is very natural, and it is the emotion that many Americans are feeling.
But it does suggest a problem. The way a vote is counted is in the law. It is untested and uninterpreted law, but it is there. The law is being followed and held within the law is democracy. We have structures to get our country through the close times, and those structures are being followed.
My whole concern is that democracy with a little “d” is being marred because it is being labeled as Democratic, with a big “D.” If you support the system that will best erase doubt from the minds of the candidates and the electorate, you must be a Democrat.
Being a Democrat makes you partisan, and therefore no one has to listen to you because you are biased.
This is a lie and a falsehood. These structures allow us still plenty of time. I apologize to all of those Bush supporters who are nervous by the narrowing gap, but actually suggesting that the structures of democracy should be ignored because your candidate is feeling the heat is not a legitimate argument.
I say we let the counties and the law work the process. Then, and only then, can we best say that we have the president truly elected through the structures in place (never mind the discrepancy between the EC and the popular vote) and get on with being the strongest nation in the world.
