National Election
Racial Justice Lawsuits Aim to Make Sure Every
Vote Counts
When the U.S. Supreme Court halted the manual recount of votes in Florida in its December 12, 2000 decision, the ACLU registered strong disagreement with the Courtās action. But despite its unfortunate result, the decision in Bush v. Gore did make it clear that every vote must be given equal weight under the Constitution.
The ACLU and other civil rights organizations are now taking the Supreme Court at its word. Lawsuits were filed in Georgia, Illinois, and Florida, on behalf of African-American voters who were prevented from having their votes counted by systematic irregularities in the voting process.Georgia: On January 5
th, the ACLUās Voting Rights Project filed the first post-election challenge (Andrews v .Cox) to a stateās electoral process in state court on behalf of seven African-American voters in DeKalb, Fulton, and Cobb counties in Georgia. The complaint alleged that voters in some Georgia counties were 10 times more likely than others to lose their right to vote because of a "fatally flawed" system. It characterized Georgiaās voting system as "a hodgepodge consisting of antiquated devices, confusing mechanisms, and equipment having significant error rates even when properly used."Georgia law currently allows the use of various mechanisms to record votes,
including paper ballot, voting machine (lever), vote recorder (punch card machine), electrical scanning systems, and certain electronic voting systems. The ACLU found a high level of error ö 4.7 percent ö in punch card machines, used in predominantly African American counties, as compared to the 2.1 percent error rate for optical scanners. The complaint asks the court to block the state from conducting future elections "using machinery that fails to correctly and accurately record every vote cast."Illinois: On January 11th, the ACLU of Illinois filed a case (Black v. McGuffage) in federal court on behalf of three African-American voters alleging
that inequalities, highlighted by the use of the error-ridden punch card voting system, resulted in a disproportionate number of ballots from precincts with high racial minority populations going uncounted in the presidential election. The court challenge followed the release of official results in Chicago showing that more than 70,000 legally cast ballots were not counted.A Washington Post analysis found that in those Cook County precincts where the population was comprised of less than 30 percent persons of color, the percentage of uncounted ballots averaged just 4.9 percent. But in those precincts where racial minorities comprised more than 90 percent of the voting population, the percentage of uncounted ballots exceeded nine percent. The lawsuit asks the court to enter a permanent injunction prohibiting the state of Illinois from conducting future elections using the punch card system.
Florida: On January 10th, the ACLU, along with the NAACP, the Lawyersā Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and several other groups filed a lawsuit (NAACP v. Harris) in the federal court in Florida challenging the discriminatory and unequal voting policies and practices in the stateās electoral system. Filed on behalf of the NAACP and 24 individual African-American and Haitian-American voters, the lawsuit stems from an investigation conducted by the NAACP in the weeks following the election. The investigation identified disparate and unfair voting practices across the state that resulted in the invalidation of a disproportionate number of ballots cast by black voters for President, the wrongful purge of black voters from official voter lists, a failure to properly process registrations of black voters, and the establishment of unjustifiable barriers to black voters. The complaint asks for a range of remedies designed to repair a system that is fatally flawed.
Oregon: There have been no lawsuits filed in Oregon because of narrow vote margins, as there were in Florida. If the vote count in a presidential election had been that close in Oregon, there would have been a mandatory manual recount statewide.
There are only five counties in Oregon that use punch card ballots: Clackamas, Lane, Linn, Polk and Washington. County officials cite the budget squeeze as the obstacle preventing the conversion to the more accurate optical scanners.
In his statement announcing the filing of the Florida case, ACLU Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro said, "What we witnessed in Florida during the past election was a national embarrassment. It is simply no longer possible for the nation to ignore the deep, disturbing, and discriminatory flaws in the electoral system that have now been revealed to all of us in excruciating detail."