Advance Lawsuits Helped Avert Problems at the Polls
Nearly a dozen lawsuits filed in advance of the election over voter eligibility helped avert major problems at the polls yesterday.
Election law specialists noted the suits and said the election went relatively smoothly, despite long lines and complaints about broken voting machines, paper ballot problems and dirty-tricks voter advice, the Washington Post reports. A few last minute lawsuits challenging election procedures were filed in Philadelphia, Indianapolis, New Hampshire and Ohio, but the presidential election was not in doubt.
The New York Times proclaimed the election of Barack Obama a “national catharsis” and “a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago.” Obama needed 270 electoral votes to win and he attained 338, according to the newspaper’s count early Wednesday. Democrats gained at least five seats in the Senate, possibly four seats shy of the filibuster-proof 60 they had sought.
Doug Chapin, director of a group that monitors election administration called Electionline.org, told the Post that fears of a repeat of the troubled 2000 election were not realized. “From the national view, we just haven’t had the kind of breakdowns people feared,” he said.
Voter turnout percentages were estimated to be the highest in a century, producing long lines at the polls, the New York Times reports in a separate story.
Jonah Goldman, a lawyer with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Times that the system wasn’t prepared for the onslaught. “The problem remains that we have a system that is set up for low turnout, which is why there were such long lines, ballot shortages and machine breakdowns,” he said. “Unfortunately, anything short of a major meltdown in voting is portrayed as a success.”
Long lines were the chief complaint among more than 60,000 calls fielded by lawyer-staffed hotlines organized by the Election Protection Coalition. The most complaints came from New York, followed by California, Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio.
Other complaints concerned misinformation campaigns. Several minority and college-age voters received fliers and automated phone calls telling them to vote on Wednesday, to vote by phone, or to be prepared for arrest on unpaid parking tickets if they showed up to vote, the Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.).
The Post reports a U.S. attorney in Missouri is investigating a text message that read, “All Obama supporters, due to the long delays, are asked to wait and vote tomorrow.”
