John Nichols: Harlem Mystery: Did Rangel’s District Go for Barack Obama?

[babylonsister]

Harlem Mystery: Did Rangel’s District Go for Barack Obama?
by John Nichols


New York Congressman Charlie Rangel was an early and essential backer of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president.

The support of the senior House Democrat was required if the senator from New York was to be able to run nationally with the assurance that her home turf was “locked up.” And Rangel, as the dean of New York’s Democratic House delegation, and a dominant player in the politics of Harlem for four decades, helped to do just that.

Along with the support of Georgia Congressman John Lewis, Rangel’s backing also gave Clinton credibility in the African-American community beyond New York. But, now, Lewis is wavering in his support for Clinton — suggesting to the New York Times that, after his Atlanta-area congressional district voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, he is likely to cast his superdelegate vote at the Democratic National Convention for the surging senator from Illinois.

When word came that Lewis and other African-American House members were starting to talk about “keeping faith” with their constituents and voting for the candidate who could be the first African-American nominee for president, I immediately checked the results from Rangel’s congressional district.

According to figures reported after the February 5 New York primary, Rangel’s Harlem-based 15th district voted rather comfortably for Clinton. The unofficial count with 100 percent of the votes supposedly tabulated was:

Clinton — 55,359 votes, 53 percent

Obama — 47,514 votes, 45 percent

That was close enough to create a 3-3 delegate split. But it was a clear Clinton win, and thus there would be no pressure on Rangel to vote the will of a congressional district that backed Obama.

Or so it seemed.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/15/7098/

[Fredda Weinberg]

1. The whole election was messed up. The next DUer who says lever

systems are acceptable can go to hell.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/nyregion/16vote.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

[Igel]

3. They have the same problem as all other systems.

There are humans involved in the elections. But only non-human mathematical precision is apparently acceptable.

I've watched poll workers that were 5 minutes away from opening the door and couldn't remember how to set up the machines. (I showed up late, had just had a refresher training session, and set up enough to get things going.) Lest you think that could never happen with ballots, I was also there once when we *could* set up the machines but the poll worker with all the information from the BOE was late.

I've watched poll workers stamp their feet and pitch a fit, allowing numerous voters in a hurry to vote without signing in and putting their paper records out of synch with the machine count.

I've watched a poll worker, the precinct captain for that election, tell dems--and only dems--to fill out their affadavit ballots in such a way that the votes had to be declared void. Had the spreader of misinformation not been the former chair of the county Democratic Party and a staunch dem for the previous 60 years of his life, I'd have cried foul. As it was, the only thing that I saw was one of the repubs--and only one--chortle. And that wasn't because of the goof-up, but the overbearing arrogance of the precinct captain, proudly repeating over and over that only he could be trusted to give voters the right information, esp. when it came to his suspicions that the repubs would tells dem voters to fill out the forms incorrectly.

Then there was the pissing contest involving the same two people. The ex-dem chair would challenge a repub when he was sure the person didn't have appropriate ID on him, only to have the repub poll worker pull the same "let's disenfranchise the enemy" trick on a dem. They were both slugs and an embarrassment to the rest of us. And, yes, poll workers could legally challenge any voter to produce acceptable ID for any reason.

I've watched poll workers tell people to sign the wrong place in the poll book. Usually when the poll workers' hearing and the voters' foreign accent made communication impossible, but also when there was a large family involved, all with the same last name. Made for interesting times when a person would show up to vote only to find s/he'd voted already.

And, yes, I've seen poll workers call off the wrong numbers (usually the right numbers but at the wrong time). Fortunately, somebody more experienced than me and more competent than the woman calling out the numbers realized something was wrong, otherwise my little Brighton precinct would have done exactly the same thing described in the NYT article. A mistake that could also happen with paper ballots, by the way.

Then I moved to Houston and saw e-Slate in action, and watched a very large number of mostly black voters stand in a long line, run out of time, and leave. Most of the machines didn't work. Those that held out ran into another problem: Their access codes had a time limit, and the limit had expired. Then I watched the black technician yell at the poll workers--all black, the youngest maybe 65--about how they were *supposed* to have set up the machines; poll workers usually reflect the neighborhood. These poll workers disenfranchised a lot of voters that day through sheer incompetence. (And I'm expected to want them to count a few hundred ballots, each ballot with 20 races or measures on it, and keep an accurate tally? Um ... no thanks.)

Human error. I like the idea of something to allow the competent to follow behind the possibly incompetent and do the *real* count, the count that has any legal meaning. Which, by the way, is exactly what the lever machines allowed the NYC BOE folk to do and why you got to read about the poll workers' mistake in the *unofficial* numbers.

[AZ Criminal JD]

2. Has Obama ever lost an election that wasn't stolen?

Next we will be hearing Bobby Rush stole the election when those who know him best gave Obama 31% and Rush 69%. Those machines I sure were fixed also.