Minorities Hurt by Vote Glitches, Committee Told

Civil rights activists at a congressional hearing Saturday in Los Angeles on election reform said a growing number of ballots cast by minorities are not being counted because the voters live in areas relying on outdated punch card systems.

“We need desperately to repair the infrastructure of our democracy,” said Dan Tokaji, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

More than 200 people attended the hearing in the Los Angeles City Council chambers as the Democratic Caucus Special Committee on Election Reform held the sixth in a series of nationwide sessions on election reform.

The committee is co-chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

Los Angeles County’s error rate in counting votes with its punch card machines is four times as high as that of Riverside County, where voters use an ATM-style touch screen, Tokaji told the panel. Errors typically occur when the punch fails to completely pierce the ballot, producing the now-infamous pregnant and hanging chads.

Activists charged that many African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos were among the 4 million to 6 million citizens who a recent study found were unable to cast ballots or did not have their votes counted in the 2000 presidential election.

That study, by Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggested that punch card machines should be eliminated and replaced with optical scan technology because that system is more reliable statistically.

“Electoral reform may be the foremost important civil rights issue of the early 21st century,” said Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, House Democratic Caucus chairman.

Conny McCormack, Los Angeles County’s register-recorder, said better training for poll workers and significant federal funding for new voting technology could restore confidence in a system tainted by November’s presidential election.

She would like to replace her office’s 33-year-old punch card system but cannot afford to, said McCormack, who oversees a voting area with 4.4 million registered voters. She estimates that replacement would cost $100 million. Nationwide, officials say, a new voting system could cost $3 billion to $5 billion.

Los Angeles officials said they would like to adopt a touch screen system.

Inglewood City Clerk Hermanita Harris suggested that residents be encouraged to volunteer to work at polling places during elections as an alternative to jury duty.

“It isn’t the voter system. It’s voter education,” she said. “The Florida incident was the best education we’ve ever had.”

It is also important that poll workers have comprehensive voter registration lists, said R. Michael Alvarez, associate professor at Caltech and one of the authors of the Caltech/MIT study. He said too many people are turned away at the polls or directed to the wrong precinct.

“Poll workers are the front line of democracy,” said Steve Reyes, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, stressing the need for proper training. “Machines don’t turn people away from the polls; people do.”

Several speakers endorsed the recent suggestion of a bipartisan panel headed by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford for a national holiday on presidential election days. “Let’s give people a day off so they can spend that day doing one thing: casting their ballot,” said Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles).