Advocates push to ensure voter equity

By Cynthia Lee

When California voters go to the polls on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, they will have the support of concerned citizens to ensure that the process goes smoothly and their votes are counted.

Non-English speakers will find help at Los Angeles-region polling places, where volunteer poll monitors recruited by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the nation's largest legal organization serving Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities, will make sure that language assistance — such as translated sample ballots — is available, as required by law. Should L.A. voters run into problems getting ballots or exercising other voting rights, legal expertise will be immediately available via a hotline to be set up for poll monitors and manned by volunteers with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

And as the ballot count begins on Tuesday night, advocates with the African American Voter Registration, Education and Participation Project will be evaluating the impact of its efforts in registering or re-registering 100,000 African-American voters in California since 2002; 25,000 of those registered were signed up in preparation for the upcoming vote.

These and other efforts are being mounted to combat a history of inequity among people of color, speakers noted at a Jan. 26 UCLA conference, "Coloring the Vote: Race, Politics, and Disenfranchisement." Students, faculty, staff and community members learned how minority voters have been disenfranchised in past elections, even though the landmark Voting Rights Act, adopted in 1965, has been renewed four times since.

"The United States has yet to hold fully free and fair elections"

"In spite of the inequities that the Voting Rights Act has eliminated, we know that the United States has yet to hold fully free and fair elections," said Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, dean of the Graduate Division, She opened the daylong conference, which was co-sponsored by UCLA's American Indian Studies Center, Asian American Studies Center, Chicano Studies Research Center and Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.

Participants heard about past and present challenges to minority voting from attorneys from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other civil rights groups; legal experts on voting rights; and Assemblyman Mike Eng and State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas, both who represent districts with large concentrations of minorities. Wrapping up the conference were the four directors of the sponsoring centers: Chon A. Noriega, Hanay Geiogamah, Darnell M. Hunt and Don T. Nakanishi.

Unfortunately, the electoral system, election irregularities and outright voter fraud continue to determine the results of important elections, Mitchell-Kernan said. "Some Americans lack the right to vote. Others lack the opportunity. And still more lack the motivation to participate in the process."

Both the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina Primary were held on Saturdays, making voting inconvenient for those who work on Saturdays. Who does that affect? Mostly those in the lower-middle class, many of them minorities, Mitchell-Kernan noted.

In 48 states, those who are convicted of a felony are disenfranchised forever, even after they have served their time and are out of the prison system. And since people of color, who do not experience equal justice under the law, are more likely to serve time in prison, such laws weaken the voice of communities of color, she noted.

While one could argue that those in prison, on probation and on parole might be denied the rights of a citizen, what about those who have served their time and paid their debt to society, she asked. "They can get jobs and raise families, but their right to vote will never be restored."

Researchers who have looked at how this group might have voted suggest that seven out of 10 of these former inmates would vote Democratic in most elections, she noted. "In a nation where people of color are more likely to spend time in prison and often do not experience equal justice under the law," she said, "this apparently race-neutral criterion" hits disadvantaged communities the hardest.

Election 2000: Millions of votes not counted

The most egregious example of disenfranchisement was uncovered by BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast, author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," (2002), in which he documents the disenfranchisement of thousands of African Americans in Florida in 2000.

"The nasty little secret of U.S. democracy is that in the last presidential election 3,006,380 votes were cast and never counted," said Palast, who searched raw data from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission.

While a large number of those were challenged and not counted, more than 1 million were found to be spoiled by glitches — hanging chads, faulty punch card machines and the like. "It happens. It's gonna happen in any election," Palast said. "The question I have, and the point of this conference today, is who gets glitched."

Statisticians with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission divided the spoiled ballots into white and black majority precincts. "If you are African-American, the chance your vote will get spoiled, glitched, lost, rejected, challenged and not counted is 900% higher than if you are a white voter," Palast said.

If you are a Hispanic voter, the risk you run is 500% higher. For Native Americans, the risk is over 2000% higher. About 86% of the votes that were spoiled were cast by voters of color.

Of the total 3 million votes not counted, 80% were cast by minority voters, Palast said. "In 1965, we officially ended voter apartheid in America (with passage of the Voting Rights Act), but what we're replaced it with … is vote-counting apartheid."