Election Fiasco in 2004???

The fuse has been lit. Lawyers are flooding into the swing states. Lawsuits are pouring into the courts. Allegations of fraud are already taking flight. The legal battle that overtook the U.S during the presidential election in 2000 may well be nothing but a scrimmage compared to the ensuing war that may take place when America chooses the next President on November 2nd.

America has not been as bitter and ideologically split than it is today. Recent polls have shown that the presidency lays in the hands of a small handful of states scattered throughout the country. These "swing states" are going to be the battle field where the future of the country is decided. It is because of this that both Democrats and Republicans have entrenched themselves to wage a war of attrition before, during, and after election day.

We remember all to well the 2000 election fiasco in Florida. For an entire month, ballots were checked and rechecked while lawyers launched salvo after salvo of legal attacks. In the end, the Supreme Court put an end to the crisis and George Bush was declared the winner. However, it was too late, the damage had already been done; the country had been severely wounded.
After 2000, we were promised that Florida would never happen again, but there are disturbing indications that the election will once again be consumed by litigation and partisan spin.

There is still two weeks until the election and problems have already arisen with the implementation of provisional ballots. Provisional Ballots were intended to allow voters who showed up at the wrong polling precinct to still cast their vote, but concerns have been raised over the possibility of fraud since provisional votes could be counted several times.

There have also been problems concerning the actual voting machines themselves. There are still hundreds of counties nationwide that still use the same punch-card system that derailed the previous election, but more importantly, several key counties in swing states are going to use them. This opens the door for the possibility of another Florida style recount.

Punch-card voting is not the only problem, although most states have modernized their voting machines to electronic systems, tests have shown that electronic voting is subject to a host of problems. Things like heat, power glitches, hackers, and computer crashes threaten the reliability and confidence in electronic voting.
Another problem that has surfaced is the overwhelming number of newly registered voters that have to be confirmed before voter lists are created. States like Ohio have been flooded with 100,000 new voter applications and many doubt they can be verified in time, which could cause chaos at the precincts as voters are turned away.

With all the problems that could manifest themselves on election day, there is one that trumps all the others: lawyers. Lawyers are the one factor that will certainly shape the ultimate outcome. It is no secret that lawyers will turn up the heat regardless of what happens. It is estimated that both parties combined will deploy some 30,000 lawyers to monitor, report, and file complaints in order to influence the election in their favor. With the presence of so many partisan lawyers, frivolous suits are an inevitable fact and will add confusion to an already nerve-racking process.

With all this in mind, the coming election could be a repeat of 2000. Whether it be machine failure, voter fruad, partisan lawyers, or a combination of all three, we can look forward to a prolonged post election as the war unfolds. We can only hope that when the dust settles that the country will be able to move forward and that there won't be to much harm done to the election process as a whole.