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J. Kenneth Blackwell on Tavis Smiley, NPR
Thursday, 12-16-2004 Transcript
Smiley: First, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. The election of 2004 is over, at least they tell us it's over, yet numerous questions continue to swirl over the conduct of the vote in the Buckeye state, which has replaced Florida in recent weeks as the operative metaphor for voter dissent and discontent. Hearing have been held, protests have been mounted, and petitions filed by citizens who feel that something went terribly wrong in Ohio on November 2nd. And on Wednesday, Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan called for federal and state investigation into what he calls inappropriate and likely election tampering in one or more Ohio counties. Congressman Conyers says the alleged tampering was systematic.
Conyers: The refusals of cooperation from the Secretary of State of Ohio himself, Mr. Kenneth Blackwell, have laid to rest the idea that all of this could be fortuitous, unconnected, innocent. We're talking first of all about thousands of complaints about failure of process, suppression of the vote. The country was so nervous about how the election was conducted in 2000 that we passed an additional law, the HAVA. Now in 2004 we find that our provisions in the federal law didn't go nearly far enough. We still don't have paper trails; we still have election officials acting in really irregular fashion.
Smiley: Congressman Conyers says that Ohio's secretary of state should not be allowed to hold dual positions, both as chair of the Bush/Cheney committee and as the official responsible for certifying that state's election. And speaking of the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, he joins me now. Mr. Secretary, nice to talk to you again, sir.
Blackwell: Thanks for having me, Tavis.
Smiley: You heard the taped comments by Congressman Conyers, the senior democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee. He's made some serious charges here both about how the election was conducted, and specifically about your role in it. So is it possible that some improprieties took place here?
Blackwell: Tavis, my message to the good congressman is that Elvis is dead, the Bambino's jinx has ended, the 2004 election results are conclusive. Bush won, turn out the lights, the election is over. We've had over 34 suits that have been filed; we have won every one of them. We have an enormous election operation in Ohio - 50,000 poll workers, 45,000 square miles of geography, 88 counties where we had a record number of 5.7 million voters, almost a million more voters than in 2000, we had a record voter registration drive that produced nearly 1 million new registered voters. We had a great election in Ohio, and I think what the congressman is expressing is a combination of partisan rage and sour grapes.
Smiley: Try to explain, though, to this audience, at least I'm told, why there was a disproportionate number of errors and mistakes that took place largely in democratic and black voting districts, according to observers.
Blackwell: That's an assertion, but let me give you an example: Franklin County, one of our largest counties, where Columbus Ohio is located. The board of elections has a chairman. That chairman is a fellow by the name of William Anthony. William Anthony is African-American, he is a democrat, and he's not just an ordinary democrat, he's the chairman of the Franklin County Democratic Party. He in fact has said it is outrageous that Congressman Conyers and the Rev. Jesse Jackson would come into Ohio and claim that he would provide oversight to the stealing of an election for George Bush. That's just how ridiculous this is. We have a system that is bi-partisan. The bi-partisan system protects the integrity of the vote. Ohio had an election that was transparent, and its management was bi-partisan and fair. The system's watchdogs are representatives of the major parties, and so William Anthony was just not the only example of democratic leaders being embedded and a permanent part of our system. Hamilton County where Cincinnati is located, Timothy Burke is the chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Elections. He is also the chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party.
Smiley: Let me jump in, I get your point, Mr. Secretary. Let me ask another question before my time with you runs out. The number of voting booths that were allocated in the disputed counties, I am told, was based on the 2000 election turnout, not the 2004 registration. If that is true, that would disproportionately affect those dense, urban, democratic precincts, falling short of the number of voting booths they actually needed.
Blackwell: The shortage of voting machines across the state of Ohio, which resulted in long lines and long waits, was across the board, both in democratic and republican areas. The voting registration effort in the state of Ohio was just about even in terms of democrats and republicans. Remember we had an issue on the ballot which protected the sanctity of marriage as the union between one man and one woman, which got churches out in big numbers in terms of registration drives, and it's reflected in the fact that many democrats came into our state trying to keep the African-American vote for George Bush at about 8 percent, which is what it was in 2000. The African-American vote more than doubled for George Bush in Ohio. So the notion that there was selective reduction of the number of voting machines in Ohio in democratic areas is just plain false.
Smiley: Let me close with this, and then I'm out of time. When are you going to announce that you are running for governor of Ohio, Mr. Secretary, and might this controversy, small c, impact your changes to become the first African-American governor of the state?
Blackwell: No, sir. As a matter of fact, I've already announced. There was a statewide poll that was reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer yesterday. I am the leading candidate in the Republican party for the nomination, and I run statewide, I've been elected to statewide office three times, I get 50 percent of African-American vote, and so any democrat who comes into the state thinking that I would want to suppress the African-American vote when it is one of my competitive advantages in a statewide general election, is just foolish and full of it.
Smiley: Mr. Secretary, all the best to you, and happy holidays.
Blackwell: In the words of your mom and mine, remember, Jesus is the reason for the season. Merry Christmas.
Smiley: Up next on this program, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Professor at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. Professor Lacewell observed 10 Columbus, Ohio precincts during the November election. Melissa, welcome to the program.
Harris-Lacewell: Thank you, it's very nice to be here.
Smiley: What do you make of what Congressman Conyers is doing here? Is he on the right track?
Harris-Lacewell: I certainly think that what Congressman Conyers is doing is on the right tack, although it's hard to fight for people who aren't going to fight for themselves. So just as Al Gore gave up in 2000, Kerry has given up in 2004, so I don't think ultimately we can dispute the election results themselves. I think the real question here is whether or not democracy is working or not in this country, and the elections in Ohio show clearly that it's not.
Smiley: What is the role of race in this process?
Harris-Lacewell: Oh, it's been enormous. When I was in Columbus, Ohio on election day, it was clear that voter suppression was occurring in vastly predominantly black districts and urban precincts. It was not happening in more rural, more white, and more republican precincts.
Smiley: How would you respond to the notion that some have suggested that we have arrived at a point in our nation's history, given the degree of political polarization, that every national election will be the subject of suspicion, controversy, and investigation by somebody.
Harris-Lacewell: I don't think the issue is about the polarization of the electorate. I think the issue is the fact that we do not have transparent and tamper-proof elections in a country where we have enormous capacity to do things in terms of technology. We have the technology to make elections inexpensive, transparent and tamper-proof, but we have simply decided not to, mostly because we allow elections to be controlled at the local level. And if you are a local official and you have to make a decision between police officers, schoolteachers, and election technology, you're going to choose police and teachers, not voting technology. This ought to be a federal issue instead of having 50 separate and unequal elections. ... We simply should NOT have a system where it is harder, where it takes more sacrifice, on the part of poor, urban voters, than it does for other citizens. That is deeply undemocratic. É I really learned on that day just what it means to sacrifice to vote. This is not something that is a 40-year-old issue. It was a sacrifice to vote in 2004. I watched young women with infants stand in the rain for 3 hours. I watched obese men whose knees were bothering them stand in pouring rain for 3 hours. I saw a woman who had been standing in line for 2.5 hours start shaking and crying, and I said to her, what is going on, and she said, I am a pastor's wife, there is a funeral, I've got to leave, I've got to go do this funeral, and yet I feel like it's my god given responsibility to stand here and vote, and I don't know what to do. We should not have to make those choices as voters.
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