Federal Judge Rules Not to Postpone Recall Election
Feature Story by Ritu Kelotra - 8/18/2003
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled not to delay California's Oct. 7 recall election, rejecting arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union that punch-card ballots at polling stations were too defective to accurately register votes.The recall will decide Gov. Gray Davis’ fate, and if ousted, who from 135 candidates will replace him. Also on the ballot Oct. 7 is Proposition 54, which aims to bar public agencies from collecting racial data in all but a few exempted areas. A separate suit filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) specifically challenges the voting date for that measure.
According to the ACLU, as many as 8 million voters, most of whom are minorities, will have to use the ballot machines with punch-card technology – the same technology used in contested Florida counties during the 2000 presidential election.
"If the October election goes forward, we can predict with absolute certainty that every Californian's vote will not count," Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, said in a statement earlier this week. "Democracy in California should not hang by a chad."
During the 2000 presidential election, punch-card problems were also prevalent in California. In Los Angeles County, for example, use of the Votomatic punch-card system had an error rate more than four and one-half times that of neighboring Riverside County, which had modern touch-screen machines. Because of problems with the machines during that election, the ACLU had filed a lawsuit on behalf of several states’ voters, and at that time California had agreed to update its voting machines by the March 2004 presidential primary.
“The ACLU of Southern California takes no position on the Governor’s recall,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California. “Our interest is in seeing to it that every voter will have his or her vote counted accurately. Most of us are now aware of the problems associated with these voting machines and I don't believe any one of us would like to see a repeat of the Florida presidential election debacle here in the Golden State.”
The State of California has been working to replace the outdated machines, but those updates will not be complete by Oct. 7. Six California counties – Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, Santa Clara, Solano and Mendocino – still use punch-card ballots, and all have high concentrations of minority voters.
In its lawsuit, the ACLU said that using punch-card machines would "needlessly and unlawfully disenfranchise African-American, Latino and Asian-American voters."
