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• Friday, June 2, 2006 09:07 PM

  Fraud or not, investigation and change are necessary

  Dissecting the data regarding the 2004 election in Ohio is a laborious and difficult task. It is easy to get mired in statistics and counter arguments and lose sight of the most important point: whether or not fraud was committed, massive irregularities were reported and thousands of people were disenfranchised.

  Whether or not these irregularities were deliberate, they must be investigated and measures instituted such that these problems are less likeley to occur in the future. It is essential to the fabric of our democracy that everyone eligible citizen who wishes to vote is able to do so without hindrance and that their vote is counted accurately.

  Without an eyewitness or a smoking gun, it is not possible to prove that the election was stolen. Every article Manjoo has written on that subject seems to demand a non-existent smoking gun. He misses the point that there needs to be an investigation into these election irregularities. The sooner the better. And, intentional or not, the nightmare of Ohio 2004 must never be repeated.

  Meanwhile, even as Manjoo discounts the evidence presented in Kennedy's article his own conclusions are less than airtight. For example, Manjoo claims that:

  Scrubbing the voting rolls of people who hadn't voted in prior elections isn't an arbitrary move. It's the law. Here's the relevant section of the Ohio code, 3503.19, which states that a person who "fails to vote in any election during the period of two federal elections" shall have his registration "canceled."

  Following the link that Manjoo provided, here is the complete section from the Ohio code (emphasis added):

  The registration of any elector identified as having changed his voting residence to a location outside his current county of registration shall not be canceled unless the registrant is sent a confirmation notice on a form prescribed by the secretary of state and the registrant fails to respond to the confirmation notice or otherwise update his registration and fails to vote in any election during the period of two federal elections subsequent to the mailing of the confirmation notice.

  In the section that Manjoo left out of his article it is quite clear that not voting in two prior elections is not sufficient to remove a voter from the rolls. A confirmation notice must also be sent. If voters were purged in Ohio simply for failing to vote in two prior elections, that would indeed be in violation of the law, just as Kennedy indicated.

  Manjoo has written extensively on this subject for Salon, always reiterating his arguments and coming to the same conclusion. I implore Salon to assign another journalist to this topic to take a fresh look.

  And I want to remind everyone that the 2004 debacle indicates that all is not well with our election process. Regardless of whether the cause was fraud or incompetence, we must change the process so that these irregularities are less likely to occur in the future.

  —Lori Read Lori's other letters
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