Widespread Ballot Woes In Chicago
Over a month after Election Day, voting procedures are still being examined in many parts of the country.
Instead of Florida, which has been the epicenter of election issues, Illinois has come into the spotlight. One in six ballots in the presidential election was thrown out in many black precincts of Chicago, while almost every vote was counted in some of its suburbs.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that voters in Chicago's Cook County confronted an array of complications, including a lengthy and confusing ballot - 21 pages with 400 candidates. They also used punch-card voting machines that can be difficult to operate, according a precinct-by-precinct analysis of the vote.
The Nov. 7 election also was the state's first presidential election since elimination of the "straight party" vote, which let people vote for an entire slate of candidates with one punch. And the GOP-led state Senate blocked Cook County from using a device on its machines that would alert voters to mistakes and give them a second chance to cast valid ballots.
In Cook County, the rate of disqualified ballots ranged from one of every 20 ballots in precincts that are less than 30 percent black to one of every 12 in those that are more than two-thirds black, the newspaper found.
Chicago had 51 precincts where at least one of every six ballots lacked a vote for president. Ninety percent of the people who lived in those areas are black or Hispanic, and they voted overwhelmingly for Al Gore, the Democratic candidate.
Black leaders said the greater the concentration of black voters, the higher the rate of votes that don't count.
"The shame is that in the 21st century we thought we had gone beyond this, but we know now we're going to have to make it a priority," said Thomas C. Adams, field director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's National Voter Fund.
Other states had similar voting problems.
In Atlanta's Fulton County, which also uses punch-card voting machines, one of every 16 of its presidential ballots was invalidated. But Cobb and Gwinnett counties, two largely white and Republican-leaning neighbors that used more modern voting equipment, had a rate of one in 200, the Post reported.