November 5, 2008
Voting Problems: "Much Ado About Nothing"
The Feared Voting Problem Meltdown Never Really Materialized
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(AP)
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(AP Photo/Steven Senne)
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(AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
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(Kurt Sung/CBS)
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(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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Play CBS Video Video Election Night Recap Senator Barack Obama enjoyed a landslide victory on election night. "The Early Show" recaps the highlights of this historic event.
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Video 2008 Election Webcast "Only On The Web:" Katie Couric hosts an exclusive online web show on the night of the 2008 presidential election, as Barack Obama marks a historic victory.
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Video Campaign 08 Rewind Katie Couric takes a look back at this historic election night with the culmination of Barack Obama as the projected 43rd president of the U.S.
Registration problems, voting machine malfunctions and long lines hindered balloting in some polling locations in five key states as a record 100 million voters cast their ballots yesterday. But the feared voting problem meltdown that John McCain said threatened “to destroy the fabric of democracy,” and Barack Obama believed may be used “as an excuse for the kind of voter suppression strategies… seen in the past” -- never really materialized. Despite yesterday’s early morning hysteria from voting rights groups about conditions on the ground in Virginia and Pennsylvania, Obama’s huge margin of victory, coupled with a much more efficiently run election, kept problems sporadic and inconsequential. Overall, the election went smoothly, with small brush fires here and there.
With a highly-mobilized election monitoring network -- represented by more than 100 civil rights groups bird-dogging the process nationwide -- many of the early morning problems quickly dissipated. Even with nearly 50,000 calls to its national hotline, the Election Protection Coalition, conceded late yesterday that the bulk of these problems involved confusion over polling locations, registration anomalies and long lines. Machine malfunctions, which occurred predominately in Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey and Florida, posed more of a problem for untrained poll workers than for actual voters.
In Minnesota, where early reports of voter fraud, police intimidation and lines around the blocks surfaced yesterday, it soon became clear they were more fiction than fact, with Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie confirming that his office “received no reports whatsoever of fraudulent voting occurring.” Even in what was expected to be the hotly contested state of Colorado, concerns about the misuse of provisional ballots, showcased in PSA’s by the Brennan Center for Justice just days before the election, didn’t pan out.
From our investigative team in the field, here’s how it actually played out in some crucial battleground states:
In Virginia, thousands of complaints about an over-taxed taxed voting system - characterized by long lines and broken machines -- raised red flags as the battleground state was targeted as a problem. Election officials took swift action to reallocate voting resources to alleviate any bottlenecks so by the time the morning rush was gone, precincts in Richmond and Hampton Roads visited by CBS News, turned up nothing more than idle machines, brief lines and happy, determined voters. By midday the glitches were resolved and Virginians delivered a big win to Obama, the first Democrat to win in the state since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Virginia Election Board officials attributed the early mess to the fact that voters descended in droves on the polls before dawn.
In Florida, a state that was under the microscope eight years ago, watchdog groups were sending out constant media alerts claiming there were “long lines” and “massive” machine malfunctions. But from the ground, the view was much different. A CBS News crew visited about a dozen key polling locations in three southeast counties on Tuesday. The conclusion, lines were short… in stark contrast to wait times of as much as 7 hours at some of the same polling locations days earlier. In fact, one of our own CBS News producers waited 4.5 hours in Miami-Dade County to vote just two days ago. We were also on hand, when the polls closed, to witness the “mass rush” predicted by certain watchdog groups… another concern that didn’t materialize. As for the machine breakdowns “all over the state,” CBS News found the problems were quickly resolved.
In Ohio, the headline was “no lines.” Voters went to the polls expecting long waits and headaches, but both concerns were unfounded. An hour before the polls closed in Cuyohoga County, the scene of major machine malfunctions and long lines in 2006, only two of the nearly 1,500 precincts were reporting problems. Statewide, perhaps the biggest problem was voter identification, with some poll workers in various locations providing provisional ballots if the address on their ID card did not match the state voter roll - something NOT required under Ohio state law. Confined to certain precincts, however, it neither disenfranchised voters nor affected the results, according to state officials.
By CBS News Investigative Unit
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
More From CBS News Investigates
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
"The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).
According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country''s leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.
To return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters."
******************************************************** when your white hood is removed, all will see your bigoted white skin. You are being left behind to stew in your own hatred, while millions of Americans of all colors have evolved and have done what they believe is the best thing for their country and for future generations.
Posted by louiville2
LOL! Wonder if I can get the money I paid a black to work for me but then recieved no work??? Where''s my reparations ***!
But as far as Voter Fraud in key states I suspect we will never know even if they do know. Just one cheat spawns millions.
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Posted by theblackman9
You were a slave MAN you must be old!
Who makes up these reports of long lines when there aren''''t any? Who makes up these reports of voter irregularities when there aren''''t any. After voting for over 40 years, I have never seen long lines or suspected any irregularities wherever I have voted. The poll workers have always been polite, serious, and diligent. The voting has always been without incident.
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Remember than anectodal data has limited value. Just because you, personally, have not had problems, doesn''t mean that others had the same experience.
There were no shenanigans because we were watching, ready, prepared to react to any problems. The price of freedom is vigilance. Bravo to all the volunteers, phone workers, and lawyers who kept the election fair and honest this time. It was nice for a change.
However, there were tremendous efforts within 90 days of the polls to purge voter records. The vigilence of watching the 50 states'' Secretary of States and court cases that followed probably only partially protected the voters.
How do we find out how many provisional ballots were used and how many ballots were rejected? We need to watch the provisional ballots because they''re used to suppress the vote and the voter doesn''t even know it.
I got to my polling place at 6am, when it opened. I waited 1 and 1/2 hours to vote and was vote number 393, so apparently there were nearly 400 voters ahead of me.
IMPEACH OBAMA!!
IMPEACH OBAMA!!
Posted by robert2237 at 10:07 PM : Nov 05, 2008
Why not wait to criticize until he actually does something you don''t like ? Why not give him a chance and withold judgement for awhile, rather than crying about how the whole country will "suffer" ? Maybe you are WRONG in your expectations. After all, the majority of Americans DISAGREE with you and are extremely happy Obama is our next President! Most of the rest of the world is happy about it too.
Second, I do think there were some voting problems. Take a good long look at Georgia, where there have been major problems with the machines for ages.
- by tallyman2008 November 5, 2008 8:27 PM EST
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See all 20 Comments''No News'' on THIS subject is ''Great News''