Still Too Glose to Gall

Vanessa Simpson, OP Contributor

© one wanted a repeat of the

2000 election when Vice
President Al Gore called
George W. Bush to
concede defeat
only to withdraw
his concession
when it appeared

théte was a possibility
for him to win the state
of Florida. The 2000
election was hard-fought
and the results in many

   
   
 

   

states like Florida

were close—within
four hundred to five
hundred votes. Florida
and several other states
recounted their ballots.

While those votes were being recount-
ed, several unsettling issues began to
emerge, issues that were bringing the
American electoral system into disrepute.
People complained that they were denied
their right to vote because they went to
the wrong voting stations. Voters com-
plained about being sent home after
standing in line for hours because the
precincts—voting ridings—were closed.
Precincts with predominate populations
of disenfranchised groups, such as the
poor and visible minorities, believed their
ballots were being discounted. The racial
divide in the United States continued to
fracture.

And then the hanging chad emerged.
What is a hanging chad? Several states in
2000 used punch-card ballots. The idea
was for voters to punch out the box next
to the candidate they are supporting.
Sounds simple. But the punched boxes
became a fierce and fertile battleground
for Democrat and Republican lawyers,
election officers, and volunteers. Some of
the boxes were not punched out com-
pletely. Some only had a_ pointy
impression left on the ballot. Some had
the dangling pieces of those paper
boxes—hanging chads—-still attached to

 
 
   
   
   
  
   
   

the electoral cards. How should those
votes be counted?

Both parties went to court to argue
their case and ultimately a judge stopped
the recount in
Florida State. Al
Gore, having won the popular vote in the
election, conceded defeat having lost the
electoral vote. In several ways, the election
of 2000 was tainted by suspect media cov-
erage, suspect voting, lawyers, and courts.
No one wanted to repeat that milieu of
unease and distrust.

The 2004 election found televi-
sion networks spouting phrases
like “Still too close to call” and
“Insufficient data” so as not to call
victory too early and make the same mis-

take they made in the previous election.
Graphic representations of the United
States were coloured grey or white to
denote a neck-and-neck race. Ohio, New
Hampshire, Nevada, and New Mexico
stayed grey or white into the wee hours of
Wednesday morning. The TV coverage
plodded along cautiously because no one
wanted to be accused of being wrong.
How did states handle suspect voting?
Florida, along with several other states,
computerized voting. No more hanging
chads. The electoral system adopted a
new system called “provisional ballots” to
allow non-registered voters voting privi-
leges. Names and voter eligibility would
be verified later. Lines of voters stretched
around blocks of some precincts but the

voting doors remained open. Hours were
extended to avoid denying voters their
constitutional right to cast a ballot.

The lawyers and the courts remained
present but were not as closely involved
with the outcome of this year’s election.
In Pennsylvania, Republican lawyers
asked and received an injunction from the
courts to disallow counting of absentee
ballots until Wednesday morning. But the
margin of victory for John Kerry in that
state was far greater than the number of
absentee ballots and so the injunction was
a moot point. Much like Ohio.

Why should Canadian students be
concerned with US politics? Because
awareness is never a bad thing.

 

MONTREAL (CUP)—A North-
American coalition is trying to stop
multinational corporations building
warehouses on Mexican historical and
cultural sites.

The Civic Front for the Defence of
the Casino de la Selva and the Civic
Front for the Defence of the
Teotihuacan Valley, or el Frente
Civico, have headed to New
York in an attempt to put pres-
sure on Wal-Mart and Costco by
convincing one of their major
American investors, the
Teachers Insurance and Annuity
Association-College Retirement
Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF),
to divest from the companies.

El Frente Civico is joined in
its campaign by a coalition of
organizations protesting TIAA-
CREPF’s
multinational

investment in other
corporations,
which they accuse of human-
rights violations.

“We feel that if we can influ-
ence this particular pension
fund, other trusts and other
pension funds will also follow
the said Jaime
Lagunez, a member of el Frente

example,”

Civico.

“The coalition is campaign-
ing to have the pension funds become
more ethical,” he said.

“To take out investment from corpo-
rations with a bad reputation and put it

 

into community projects, services to the
community, schools, parks, housing, the
infrastructure.”

Lagunez was in Montréal recently on
a North-American campaign to raise
awareness about the destruction of

Mexican heritage sites, which he calls a

human rights violation.

“We know that the transnationals are
not taking into account what we call
human rights of the third generation,”

Sacred Savings at Wal-Mart Mexico

Activists Ask Investors to Cut off Big-Box Superstores
Coalition pressures pension fund to pull out of Costco and Wal-Mart

Aliyana Traison, The McGill Daily (McGill University)

said Lagunez. “These rights refer to col-
lective rights, what is heritage for a
community, for a country, for humanity.”

Costco opened a warehouse on the
heritage site of the Casino de la Selva
Hotel in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in August
2004. In 2003, the United Nations

 

denounced the construction of the ware-
house, calling it a crime against future
generations.

Wal-Mart began construction of a

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