The Nationwide Impact of California’s Recall Election
September 26, 2003
The Washington, D.C., region was hard hit by Hurricane Isabel last week, with well over a million people left without power, water or both. The storm devastated businesses and homes from North Carolina through Pennsylvania with high winds and high water levels. While power will not be restored to some people until Friday, over a week after the storm, experts are already estimating the losses to families and businesses in the billions of dollars.While many of us could not watch the news on television on Tuesday, we did use our battery-powered radios to hear that the California recall election was on again for Oct. 7, after the full 9th Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals overturned the ruling of a three-judge panel that had called for a delay in that election.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the latest news is that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which had brought the case because it believed that the use of punch-card ballots violates the Equal Protection cause of the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act, has decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. With no appeal pending, this removes the final legal roadblock to the recall election.
“We have reluctantly decided to accept the Ninth Circuit’s decision,” said Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. “We, like most Americans, can only hope it won’t turn into another Florida debacle.”
According to a Washington Post report, Ehrlich said the use of outdated voting technology in counties such as Los Angeles County creates “racial and geographic disparity.” She added that the ACLU will continue to press the issue of voter disenfranchisement in future elections, including the 2004 presidential race, but would not attempt to further delay the California vote in court.
Now that the California recall election is on again, what issues does it raise that affect APAs on a nationwide basis? State Assemblywoman Judy Chu (D-Alhambra) outlined some of the things Gov. Gray Davis has done for APAs in California in AsianWeek on (Sept. 11). AsianWeek writers Emil Guillermo, Randall Yip and others have explored the impact of Proposition 54, another item on the Oct. 7 ballot, on which would ban state and local governments from collecting certain racial information. This recall, however, has implications that will affect APAs far beyond California.
An old civil rights adage is that “justice delayed is justice denied.” The corollary to that saying, which applies to this situation, is that justice rushed or justice carried out incompletely also is justice denied. What we are seeing in California is the utter failure of our two party winner-take-all political system to fundamentally fix itself in the wake of the debacle we saw after the 2000 presidential election. The potential undercounting or spoiling of minority ballots that was alleged in the ACLU suit in California applies as well to many other states. For example, The Washington Post reported last week that although many states have worked hard to upgrade their punch-card systems, enthusiasm for election reform has waned substantially. The Bush administration and Congress have been slow in setting up a federal commission to oversee the election reform effort, and have not provided as much money to pay for the changes as the states were promised under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
“The states are really walking alone on the road to reform,” said Doug Chapin, director of the Election Reform Information Project, in the Sept. 16 online edition of The Washington Post. Chapin, said, “The states have really moved forward on their end of the bargain, but the federal government has yet to do that.”
When Congress enacted the reform legislation, it provided $650 million to the states, half of which was to be used to replace punch-card and lever-machine equipment with more modern, electronic devices. Congress later appropriated $833 million more for election reform efforts, far less than the $1.4 billion that was authorized in the legislation for the current fiscal year.
But, according to Chapin, only the initial $650 million has been turned over to the states. The remaining money that has been appropriated cannot be disbursed until state plans on how to use it are approved by a new Election Assistance Commission that was created by the law. The commission does not yet exist, however.
Two weeks ago, President Bush announced his intention to nominate the four members of the commission, but the nominations have not been submitted to the Senate for confirmation. Meanwhile, Congress appears ready to give the states only half of the money authorized for election reform efforts during the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The law authorizes $1 billion, but both the House and Senate appropriations measures that are being debated contain only $500 million for election reform.
According to a Washington Post report, House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), a co-sponsor of the 2002 legislation, has said that full funding of the Help America Vote Act is essential. “If we fail to do that, then we are failing democracy at the most fundamental level. California’s recall postponement must not be a bad omen for the rest of the country in next year’s national election.”
HAVA authorized spending a total of $3.8 billion over four years. Noting that that is about the same amount that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said it costs to maintain U.S. troops in Iraq for one month, Chapin of the Election Reform Information Project said, “You can see the kind of tradeoffs they’re struggling with.”
According to a recent report by the Election Reform Information Project, 26 states use punch-card systems in some voting precincts, but just 12 have decided to replace them, usually with electronic touch-screen devices. Unfortunately, the precincts that continue to use antiquated equipment usually overlap with the precincts where poor and minority voters go to the polls.
Reach Phil Tajitsu Nash at asianweek(AT)nashinteractive.com.
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