Choices: Election 2004: The Recount in Context

The Recount in Context

Published on Monday, December 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Recount in Context
by Phil Tajitsu Nash and Emilienne M. Ireland

In Ohio, New Mexico, and New Hampshire, where there were widespread reports of voting irregularities on Election Day, some people are saying that the votes have been counted and that it is time to move on. Others are saying that the cost of a recount is too high, and that dollars should be saved by not performing a recount. Still others assert that “everyone does it,” or “don’t recount if it doesn’t affect the outcome,” or “stuff like that just happens” during a hard-fought campaign.

Unfortunately, to move on without making sure that every vote was counted and every failure of the system was documented would be a crime against democracy. Like the thousands of others who fought to guarantee the right to vote over two centuries, we must bear witness and protest when the vote of even one of us is unjustly denied. We owe that much to our ancestors, many of whom died to win our right to vote.

To understand why the recount process is important, we should remember that this is but the latest chapter in the centuries-long struggle to achieve one-person-one-vote democracy in this country. There is no right to vote guaranteed in the United States Constitution, so struggles have taken place in every state and in Congress, which has passed several laws applicable to every state.

When this country was founded, only white men with property were routinely permitted to vote, except for the four states where freed African Americans could vote. For white men who didn’t happen to own land, for almost all women, and for all other people of color, there was no right to vote.

By the time of the Civil War, most white men were allowed to vote, whether or not they owned property, thanks to the efforts of those who championed the cause of frontiersmen and white immigrants. The widespread use of restrictive literacy tests, poll taxes, and even religious tests, however, meant that many poor white men, as well as most white women, people of color, and Native Americans still could not vote.

In 1866, the 14th Amendment to the federal Constitution was passed, granting citizenship to the former slaves and changing them in the eyes of the law from 3/5 of a person to whole persons. Then, in 1869, the 15th Amendment granted the right to vote to black men, with most women of all races still unable to vote.

1869 also marked the beginning of "Black Codes," or state laws that restricted the freedoms of African Americans. Among the freedoms restricted was the freedom to exercise the right to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, hiding the locations of the polls, economic pressures, threats of physical violence, and other strategies to suppress the African American vote were either explicitly specified in the Black Codes or flowed from them.

Initiatives to promote voting for women have been traced back to the 1770s, but the modern movement for a vote for women traces its beginning to the historic Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, attended by supporters of a Constitutional Amendment to allow women to vote. While their movement was slowed during the Civil War years, the two major suffragist organizations united after the war and pushed forward with a movement that culminated, after many difficult years, in the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

In the case of Native Americans, some became American citizens if they gave up their tribal affiliations in 1887, but many did not become United States citizens until 1924. Many Western states, however, continued to deny the right to vote through property requirements, economic pressures, hiding the polls, requiring that they be “civilized,” and condoning physical violence against those who voted.

Asian Pacific Americans were considered "aliens ineligible for citizenship" since 1790, and interim changes to naturalization and immigration laws gave the franchise to some but not all immigrant Asian Pacific Americans. Nevertheless, because citizenship is a precondition of voting, immigrant Asian Pacific Americans did not vote in large numbers until after the immigration and naturalization laws were changed in 1952 and 1965.

Asian Pacific Americans born on American soil, like other native-born Americans, were considered American citizens and had the right to vote. Nevertheless, when 77,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were put in American concentration camps during World War II, they were summarily stripped of their right to vote without being accused, much less convicted, of any crime.

Today, minority youths are far more likely to be given a felony conviction for comparable crimes than white youths, and states such as Florida routinely purge the voter rolls of convicted felons, who are not granted the right to vote in that state. Unfortunately, overzealous state officials have been known to also strip others from the voter rolls, who do not find they have been disenfranchised until they show up on election day. Also, in a contradiction that shows the continuing interconnection of race and voting in this country, convicted felons, who are disproportionately minorities, are counted as living in the district where they are imprisoned, which adds to the clout of an elected official who is not accountable to them.

Each Latino subgroup has its own history regarding the right to vote. For Mexican Americans, as just one example, those in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas were supposed to get voting rights along with American citizenship in 1848 at the end of the Mexican American war. Unfortunately, they did not receive full voting rights until 1975. Like other minorities, property requirements and literacy requirements kept Latinos from voting, and violence and intimidation were used against many who dared to exercise the right to vote.

Among recent developments in the struggle for voting rights were the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1970 (which provided language assistance to minority voters who did not speak English fluently), and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (which provided for ballot and poll access for those with disabilities).

After the 2000 election, the nation was confronted with the disgrace that over a million ballots were never counted in the presidential election, and numerous allegations of fraud were raised in Florida and elsewhere. The Supreme Court stopped the counting, leaving many voters with their votes uncounted and their most fundamental right - denied.

In 2004, Green, Libertarian, and independent presidential candidates are taking the lead in Ohio, New Mexico, and New Hampshire (a state won by John Kerry). These “third party” candidates understand that this recount is not just about victory for George Bush or John Kerry. It is a continuation of the work of generations of patriots who took seriously the notion that for every one person there should be one vote.

Phil Tajitsu Nash and Emilienne M. Ireland are co-authors of “Winning Campaigns Online,” and the CEO and President, respectively, of CampaignAdvantage.com.

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