I just received a mailout from Diana Kerry through the Americans Overseas for Kerry list, in which she discusses her disappointment in the result of the election, and, equally importantly, in the failures of the absentee ballot system and the support for expat voters in general:
Poor customer service, inaccurate, conflicting and outdated information, blocked websites, last minute rules changes and all the rest: it was an unmitigated disaster. As a result, many voters saw their absentee ballot requests wrongly denied, and a large number of duly registered voters did not receive ballots from their States in time, or at all. Based on preliminary results collected reported by local election officials, perhaps as many as 30% of registered overseas voters did not return their ballots in time to have them count. A great many of you have been effectively disenfranchised during this election, either deliberately or through blunders, bureaucratic negligence, and worse. Whatever the reason, depriving you of your vote, never mind how you intended to cast it, is wrong.
I’d also like to acknowledge that I know many Americans abroad felt my brother’s concession Wednesday morning was premature, as all the absentee votes in Ohio and elsewhere had yet to be counted. Please rest assured that thanks to the data available from local election officials, the Kerry-Edwards campaign was aware of scale of remaining uncounted absentee ballots, and conceded only after it was abundantly clear that even a massive overseas vote in favour of the Democrats would not have made a difference. And despite that, we are still going to make sure that every overseas vote—military and civilian—is counted, as the law required. As for possible vote-counting fraud, let me simply say that I hope we have learned out lesson about un-audited black-box voting.
Regarding that last piece, I know there has been a lot of talk on the web about vote tally irregularities, but I haven't seen anything that's seemed too much more than circumstantial yet, and I think that unless someone has been caught with their hands in the cookie jar at a high level and in a way which irrefutably would change the balance of the electoral votes, there is a huge danger of coming off sounding like sore losers - even Salon is saying there's not much to go on. However, I do think that next time round, there will be even more attention focused on the process - and I do hope we have a paper trail in the next election.
I still maintain it's worth looking into. I would say the same if Kerry had won. With the advent of the paperless voting future becoming a reality, let's keep an eye on the process no matter who's in charge of it.
And I do still think evidence will continue to arise about irregularities on the part of the GOP. I don't care if I look like a sore loser--these actions should be noted and brought to the attention of the public. I agree not much has surfaced of real significance but I'm still keeping my eye on the story anyway and we'll see where it leads.
Posted by: Maryann | November 10, 2004 at 11:02 AM
There were also irregularites on the part
of the Democrats. Let's be forthcoming about that fact; both sides were engaged.
Why there would be a no paper trail with Our
votes is beyond me. That should have been
a no brainer especially with all of the issues and concerns about voting.
What knotheaded beauracrats came up with that idea?
Posted by: Chrish | November 10, 2004 at 07:26 PM