[pf] Fw. A NZ vote-counter in Calif comments on the US Elections.

· This isn't as valuable as the other one about Maori, but still interesting. 
[contains:
  "Punched cards! America deserves better than this. A billion dollars was
spent on this election to puff up the egos of a handful of people but it
doesn't look like anyone's spent a dollar since the 1970s on improving the
voting system. No wonder people stay away in droves. On the morning of the
election a co-worker said she went to vote and there was just one retired
person at her polling place, bravely trying to check everyone's ID and get
them their voting forms, with a huge line of people in a hurry to get to
work standing there fuming.
   Not all counties use the punch card system.  A couple working next to me
counting votes said the neighbouring county they live in uses paper ballots
that you write on. They were county employees persuaded to 'volunteer' on
election night. I'd seen a flyer in the City Clerk's office and signed up
to work 8pm till midnight for $30, but it's so hard to get election workers
that more than half of the 20 people working there were volunteered by the
county."]    D.

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http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0011/S00064.htm
  is:

US Elections: Two horses win six-legged race
Thursday, 9 November 2000, 5:21 pm
Column: Rosalea Barker

Missing my usual flutter on the Melbourne Cup [the horse-race that's the
main betting event in Australasia] on November 7, I took a bob each way on
the Presidents Cup instead. ["a bob": one shilling - a common bet as I was
growing up - now just 10 cents.  D.] Three green Tic Tacs still await their
fate, bet recklessly on George Bush winning as I sat with my fellow Alameda
County
vote counters last night, fanning through wads of punch
cards looking for chads. And 50c went into a newspaper
dispenser this morning in the expectation that in years to
come an early edition of the Oakland Tribune with the
headline "It's George W" will finance my retirement, should 
the headline turn out to be an historical curiosity.

Not having a vote [being a NZ citizen, I believe.  D.]
 I had no idea what to expect when I turned up
at the  Election Count Center at 8pm on election night. I'd
already been extremely surprised that election results for
the east coast were being announced  hours before the polls
on the west coast closed. Just before leaving for the 
Little Theater where the vote count was going to take place
I caught a  snippet of Dan Rather on CBS saying they were
reversing their earlier  announcement that Gore had won Florida.

At the counting house we had no tv or radio
coverage apart from an  occasional announcement from the
member of the Grand Jury who was overseeing  the vote count
process. He had a radio with earplugs and would occasionally
tell us how many electoral college votes each had. But
really the most  gripping part of the night was in mastering
the technique of using our  county issue strawberry hullers
to remove the little squares of card not fully punched out
by some voters when they put it in the Votomatic machine. 
We only removed the chad if it hung by one corner - anything
else had to be  smoothed down so it didn't jam the card
reader machine and on the assumption  that the voter had not
intended it to be fully punched out.

Punched cards! I ask you!
 Having seen on earlier news bulletins the huge forms
the people counting absentee votes were dealing with I'd
expected  something similar. Instead I was transported back
to my days of sitting at an IBM029 card punch machine at the
Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in  1972 where I
operated a computer terminal that took up half a floor and 
consisted of a teleprinter, a card sorter and a card reader.

Punched cards! America deserves better than this.
A billion dollars was  spent on this election to puff up the
egos of a handful of people but it doesn't look like
anyone's spent a dollar since the 1970s on improving the
voting system. No wonder people stay away in droves. On the
morning of the election a co-worker said she went to vote
and there was just one retired person at her polling place,
bravely trying to check everyone's ID and get them their
voting forms with a huge line of people in a hurry to get to
work standing there fuming.

Not all counties use the punch card system.
 A couple working next to me counting
votes said the neghbouring county they live in uses paper
ballots that you write on. They were county employees
persuaded to 'volunteer' on election night. I'd seen a flyer
in the City Clerk's office and signed up to work 8pm till
midnight for $30, but it's so hard to get election workers
that more than half of the 20 people working there were
volunteered by the county.

It's now Wednesday evening here
and I watched a whole hour bulletin of the local news and
saw not one mention of whether Nader got his crucial 5 
percent vote, but they devoted at least 5 minutes to
replaying CNN's pushme-pullyou coverage as election night
unfolded. Other election stories included  a controversy in
Washington State over the form that one county used which
allegedly confused voters into punching the hole for Pat
Buchanan, thinking  they were voting for Al Gore. There's a
call for a recount there too.

People in the South Bay
voted by 70 percent to pay an extra 1/2 cent sales tax to
bring Bay Area Rapid Transit to San Jose - easily achieving
the 66 2/3 percent required after the local authority turned
the extension idea down. And in Mendocino County a measure
put on the ballot by a petition  signed even by the local
sheriff was passed, allowing people to grow  marijuana for
personal use. Unfortunately the same sheriff will still have
to enforce the state and federal laws, which prohibit it.

The school voucher initiative was roundly trounced
despite (or because of) the almost non-stop litany of
children's voices saying "38 Yes, 38 Yes" on the radio. If
there isn't a law about exploiting children during a
political campaign then there should be. Nine of the 11 San
Francisco supervisor races produced nobody with 50 percent
of the vote as required by law, so in a  month's time
there'll be run-off elections between the two top contenders
in each district.

The San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown,
wasn't up for election at this time but he sure had plenty
to say about the presidential election. He was  furious at
Al Gore for not using Bill Clinton in his political
campaign. "The referendum for Clinton", Brown said, was the
New York senate race where  Hillary "won handsomely" with
her cheating husband and all the negatives he  supposedly
represented at her side. Clinton came belatedly to the Bay
Area last week attracting huge crowds, and he also taped a
phone message asking people to vote no on school vouchers.

The day before the election a similar strategy
was used with an automatic dial-up of voters imploring them
to vote Democratic, recorded by the distant Al Gore.
Judging from the close result in Florida I guess he was
right to spend his time over there instead of here in
California where he won with ease, but it's just another
negative in the public mind in respect of the electoral
college system. It forces candidates to campaign in a
handful of toss-up states instead of across the country.

And if Gore, who's won the popular vote, doesn't
also win the electoral  college vote - and thus does not
become President - I'd say this century will see a mighty
shake-up in the way American democracy operates.

Lea Barker
California
Wednesday November 8 (PT)

http://www.scoop.co.nz/headline.htm : Scoop Headlines
Copyright (c) Scoop Media

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sent on to Positive Futures by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/index.html#top
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