lilcountriegal
Senior Member
Ohio voting system sparks lawsuit
Pregnant and hanging chads caused confusion in the 2000 US election
A US civil liberty group is suing Ohio for violating voters' rights by failing to scrap punch-card ballots.
In the first case of its kind to come to tribunal, the American Civil Liberties Union is taking the state to court over the voting system.
The low-tech system - where voters make a hole in a card, removing a small square called a "chad" - caused uproar during the 2000 US presidential poll.
Confusion over the clarity of the paper voting system led to a major overhaul.
Now the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says it wants all punch-card ballots in the state to be removed before the upcoming presidential election in November.
Low-tech chads
"Every voter in Ohio should be able to have confidence that his or her vote will be accurately counted by the election technology," Meredith Bell, a lawyer with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, says in a statement on the group's website.
In the last presidential elections, nearly 94,000 people living in Ohio had their ballots rejected because their chads were still partly attached to the ballot paper.
Following the "hanging chads" fiasco, the US Congress approved a $3.9bn overhaul of the nation's voting system.
But, the ACLU says, few of the very latest electronic voting systems - including touch-screen voting - have arrived in Ohio, where some 69 of the state's 88 counties still use the punch-card ballot system.
Ohio says it hopes to introduce the new technology by 2005 and blames security flaws for the delay.
African-American voters are particularly affected by the current voting system, the ACLU says, but the state denies this.
"It's our position that the state has not denied the right to vote to anybody and the evidence will be able to show that," Rich Coglianese, a lawyer defending the state, told the Associated Press news agency.
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Why are AFrican Americans paticularly affected by this?
(Big D... no need to reply.... I know your response)
Pregnant and hanging chads caused confusion in the 2000 US election
A US civil liberty group is suing Ohio for violating voters' rights by failing to scrap punch-card ballots.
In the first case of its kind to come to tribunal, the American Civil Liberties Union is taking the state to court over the voting system.
The low-tech system - where voters make a hole in a card, removing a small square called a "chad" - caused uproar during the 2000 US presidential poll.
Confusion over the clarity of the paper voting system led to a major overhaul.
Now the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says it wants all punch-card ballots in the state to be removed before the upcoming presidential election in November.
Low-tech chads
"Every voter in Ohio should be able to have confidence that his or her vote will be accurately counted by the election technology," Meredith Bell, a lawyer with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, says in a statement on the group's website.
In the last presidential elections, nearly 94,000 people living in Ohio had their ballots rejected because their chads were still partly attached to the ballot paper.
Following the "hanging chads" fiasco, the US Congress approved a $3.9bn overhaul of the nation's voting system.
But, the ACLU says, few of the very latest electronic voting systems - including touch-screen voting - have arrived in Ohio, where some 69 of the state's 88 counties still use the punch-card ballot system.
Ohio says it hopes to introduce the new technology by 2005 and blames security flaws for the delay.
African-American voters are particularly affected by the current voting system, the ACLU says, but the state denies this.
"It's our position that the state has not denied the right to vote to anybody and the evidence will be able to show that," Rich Coglianese, a lawyer defending the state, told the Associated Press news agency.
link
=====================
Why are AFrican Americans paticularly affected by this?
(Big D... no need to reply.... I know your response)
