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Chiding
Chads According to the website of the Social Security Administration, the name "Chad" plummeted from the 107th most popular name for newborns in the 1990s to the 312th most popular name a decade later. These days, you're more likely to tickle the toes of Adolph, Milhaus, or Orenthal than to meet an infant named Chad. Why were so few Chads born in 2001 and 2002? Because too many chads were pregnant in 2000. That is, the difficulty of pushing "pregnant chads" all the way out of punch-card ballots became infamous during the November 2000 presidential election, and played a role in swinging Florida's crucial electoral votes to George W. Bush. With all the bumper stickers and jokes on Leno ("Abort the pregnant chad," "Hang the hanging chad," etc.), few parents want to make the job of the playground bully any easier. No doubt about it, punch-card ballots need to be replaced. Researchers at MIT have confirmed that punch-card balloting is more prone to errors than other methods of voting. I once marked a punch-card so sloppily that I needed to get a new one from the Lane County Elections Office (and no, I wasn't following Richard Daley's advice to "vote early and often"). I'm glad that Congress — due in part to the leadership of America's best congressman, Peter DeFazio — has appropriated money for counties to replace punch-card ballots with modern technology. But as we criticize punch-cards, let's be careful that we don't become punch drunk. I was surprised when a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit held that punch-card balloting forecloses any possibility of fair elections — a holding that the Ninth Circuit reversed en banc last week. The original ruling by the three-judge panel won praise from some conservative revisionists who blame punch-card ballots for the entire debacle in Florida. According to this view, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was just an innocent victim of the evil punch-card ballot. C'mon. Poor Chad shouldn't be the only fall guy for the disaster in Florida. The elections officials deserve most of the blame. Any inherent flaws in punch-card balloting were greatly exacerbated when the Florida officials opted for a two-page "butterfly ballot" that did not match candidates' names to punch holes very clearly. In fact, the "butterfly ballot" was so confusing that even Pat Buchanan admitted some of the votes he received were probably intended for Al Gore. Other problems in Florida had nothing to do with punch-card balloting. Elections officials sent absentee ballots gratuitously to voters in heavily Republican counties, but not to voters in heavily Democratic counties. Also, the officials simply "lost" boxes of completed ballots. These problems were aptly summarized in my favorite bumper sticker from 2001: "One person, one vote (offer not valid in Florida)."
Should we question the validity of past elections in Lane County because our county has used punch-card ballots? Of course not. Our elections officials are a lot more scrupulous than their counterparts in Florida. For the surest proof that the Lane County Elections Office is above board, just check out the win-loss record for the county's money measures last year: 0 for 6! In 1998, Lane County lost a revenue measure by 13 votes out of 52,000 cast. That would have been a win in the Sunshine State. Let's not forget that election fraud predates the punch-card ballot. When Chicago residents voted with pencils fastened to the walls of voting booths, some voters complained that the strings were only long enough for the pencils to reach the Democratic boxes. I'll conclude by paraphrasing the NRA: Ballots don't steal elections, people do. Tom Lininger is a law professor and former county commissioner.
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