Forum focuses on elections

By Bob Gibson / Daily Progress staff writer

Americans who think they are holding a single national election for president on Nov. 2 may be surprised to learn there will be 51 somewhat separate and distinct elections to decide whether Republican George W. Bush or Democrat John F. Kerry will be in the White House on Jan. 21.

For instance, if terrorists try to disrupt the presidential elections by bombing polling places on the morning of Nov. 2, some states may continue voting that day while officials in other states could decide to postpone their elections, a Charlottesville forum on fair elections was told Monday.

Decisions about whether to proceed with or suspend and delay voting that day are largely left to the officials in the 50 states and District of Columbia conducting the elections, experts told the University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs forum.

“We don’t hold one presidential election in America,” said John Fortier, executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission. “We hold 51 presidential elections” in the states and the nation’s capital, and the states have different laws governing when and how voting is conducted or could be suspended in case of a hurricane or other catastrophic emergency.

“The states hold significant authority over the elections,” Fortier said. “There’s nobody in Washington running them.”

In the case of multiple terrorist attacks, “states might not have any choice but to move their elections to a different day” as New York City did with primary elections disrupted by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he said.

Nearly half the states have some provision in law for the government to delay an election in case of a declared emergency, including New York and Florida, but about half the states have no legal provision, Fortier said. “I don’t think it’s cowardly at all to think about this possibility,” he said. “I think it’s prudent.”

If serious terrorist attacks were to take place next month, federal and state officials would hold conference calls to discuss possible actions by the states, he said.

“There is no specific credible threat of any terrorist activity aimed at a polling place in Virginia or anywhere in the United States,” Ellen Qualls, press secretary to Gov. Mark R. Warner, said Monday. However, “state officials in the new normal post-9/11 planning process are trying to balance contingency thinking with a fair and open process,” she said.

Virginia has a 2-year-old law allowing delay of certain smaller elections and primaries in emergencies but the law excludes federal general elections, statewide elections and those for the General Assembly.

Other experts at UVa’s Miller Center forum said many groups plan to monitor next month’s elections to ensure fairness and prevent intimidation of voters or suppression of voting.

“Elections in America are exceedingly well administered,” said Doug Lewis, executive director of The Election Center in Houston. States do not fund their election officials well and are somewhat behind in implementing reforms recommended by the 2001 National Commission on Election Reform and drawn up at the Miller Center, he said.

America has a long history of intimidating minority voters and suppressing the vote, said Laughlin McDonald, director of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Foundation Inc. in Atlanta.

In parts of South Carolina, election observers and party representatives have intimidated black voters by loudly questioning individuals seeking assistance in voting, McDonald said. White voters seeking assistance in balloting are not questioned or harangued, he said.

“No one supports voter fraud,” McDonald said, “but neither should one support laws that create special burdens on minority voters.” He said officials in South Dakota have recently targeted newly registered Native American voters but found that voter suppression efforts backfired and created larger voter turnouts from that minority community.

“Minority voters still occupy a very fragile position,” he said. “They are subject to manipulation by both parties.”

Contact Bob Gibson at (434) 978-7243 or

bgibson@dailyprogress.com.

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