Kerry won. Here's the facts.
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I
don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called
American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the
deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed
Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also
defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third
gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask,
"Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question,
"Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.
Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards
for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was
predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled
Rotten," November 1.]
Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to
report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and
new.
The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called
"spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is
voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube
tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you
believe it ... it has never happened in the United States, because the total
never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the
spoiled vote.
And not all vote spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report,
come from African American and minority precincts. (To learn more, click here.)
We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at
least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count. That's because the
official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855 spoiled votes.
In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where
the hole wasn't punched through completelyleaving a 'hanging chad,'or was
punched extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians
investigating spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the
ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To read the report
from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here .)
And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of ballots thrown
out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday's election) will
have been cast by African American and other minority citizens.
So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because unlike last time,
Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards with the
not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz).
Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the vote-spoiling
punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell,
wrote before the election, the possibility of a close election with punch
cards as the states primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity.
But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed up to the
result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating Democratic votes.
When asked if he feared being this year's Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that
Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed her a seat in Congress.
Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's office,
notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported. Hmm. But we know
that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a democracy-damaging
1.96 percent. The machines produced their typical lossthat's 110,000
votesoverwhelmingly Democratic.
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I
don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called
American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the
deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed
Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also
defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third
gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask,
"Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question,
"Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.
Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards
for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was
predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled
Rotten," November 1.]
Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to
report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and
new.
The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called
"spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is
voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube
tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you
believe it ... it has never happened in the United States, because the total
never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the
spoiled vote.
And not all vote spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report,
come from African American and minority precincts. (To learn more, click here.)
We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at
least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count. That's because the
official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855 spoiled votes.
In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where
the hole wasn't punched through completelyleaving a 'hanging chad,'or was
punched extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians
investigating spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the
ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To read the report
from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here .)
And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of ballots thrown
out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday's election) will
have been cast by African American and other minority citizens.
So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because unlike last time,
Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards with the
not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz).
Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the vote-spoiling
punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell,
wrote before the election, the possibility of a close election with punch
cards as the states primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity.
But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed up to the
result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating Democratic votes.
When asked if he feared being this year's Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that
Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed her a seat in Congress.
Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's office,
notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported. Hmm. But we know
that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a democracy-damaging
1.96 percent. The machines produced their typical lossthat's 110,000
votesoverwhelmingly Democratic.