Incredible Things Are Happening In Ohio (I)

I'd boil down all the recent developments to two things:

1. The level of attention to and outrage about gross violations of African Americans' civil rights seems to be mounting to a renewal of the public will to address racial discrimination in at least some of its forms.

2. All of our worst fantasies about possible tampering with electronic voting machines are becoming more certain every day.

Below, I'm focusing on item 1. Item 2 is in my next post.
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It may have taken some white people getting to see the gross displays of racism in this election to effect the sea change I'm hoping has really come, but this is what it took before. That was one of the important tactics of the Civil Rights Movement—bringing the realities of racism onto television screens across America and making average citizens see the truth about injustice in their land-of-the-free. White activists who turned out to protect the vote on election day got a bitter taste of what it was that they were protecting against. Listen, for example, to Susan Truitt, founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE) in Ohio, testifying at the Conyers hearing in Washington lat week.

Why were they there too long? They didn't have enough voting machines. They were intentionally suppressed in their vote. I personally saw a man come to the polls with an IV in his arm because he had been in the hospital, an elderly African-American gentleman. His family took him out of the hospital, took him to the Driving Park Precinct on the east side of Columbus so that the man could vote, because he was refused an absentee ballot in the hospital. I saw that with my own eyes.

I talked to people who spoke of their wait, of how they had to go pick up children, of how they had to return to their jobs. I received a call when I was at the call center for Election Protection: a man had been fired because he waited in line to vote.

This is despicable. This is not America. This is not the America that we are promised. This is not the America that we dream of, and this needs to be stopped now.

(UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES JUDICIARY COMMITTEE DEMOCRATIC FORUM: PRESERVING DEMOCRACY -- WHAT WENT WRONG IN OHIO? [pdf 192 KB], Wednesday, December 8, 2004, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C., 63-64)

Here is an excerpt from the call to arms from National Voter Fund Executive Director, Gregory T. Moore, when he testified at the second installment in the Conyers hearings on Monday, this time in Columbus, Ohio:

The NAACP National Voter Fund joins in solidarity with CASE, the Free Press, National Voting Rights Institute, and many other groups as we seek a recount of all the votes cast on November 2, 2004 in the state of Ohio; something that never happened in Florida 4 years ago. . . .

Those people standing in line will go down in history in the same spirit as students and civil rights leaders sitting in at lunch counters and county courthouses demanding an end to segregation in public accommodations and the right to vote for all Americans regardless of race.

The courage and determination of those voters all over Columbus to stand in line should serve as the opening volley in a rallying cry that will, with your leadership in the Congress, lead to a series of long overdue uniform standards for voting, and provisional voting at the federal and state level. This upcoming legislative battle will be fought on two fronts in Washington and here in Columbus. It is the continuation of our decades long crusade to break down the barriers to full voting rights. . . .

Our democracy is in grave danger when “we the people” relinquish to machines the power to decide who governs our nation. We all know from our day-to-day lives that cars break down, computers break down, and even electrical systems can shut down as the people of Ohio witnessed last year. When we have machines that are recording a higher voter turnout than the total number of people who are actually registered in a jurisdiction (as was the case in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties), we the people have to step in and take corrective action. . . .

The NAACP and the NAACP National Voter Fund made a commitment to our voters that we would work to ensure that all votes are counted. We are not conceding that battle until all the votes are counted. . . .

My bible and Rev. Jesse Jackson has taught me that the race does not go to the swift and the strong, but for those who hold out til the end. Thanks to all of you here for continuing to hold on and for keeping the promise of our democracy alive.

(Whole thing. [pdf 56KB])

After the Conyers hearing in Washington last week, Cliff Arnebeck of Common Cause Ohio pronounced that

If you look at who was here . . . you had leaders from the generally white political reform movement, and leaders from the black civil rights movement. This is a powerful coalition. We are not talking about one group having dominance over the other, but a real partnership of the traditional political reform community with the traditional civil rights community, and Reverend Jackson is the one that proposed it, has initiated the organization of it.

Let's hope Arnebeck is right.