American Views Abroad

 
A second update on Fred's registration odyssey: Fred did indeed receive an immediate response from John Williams, the Director of the Board of Elections in Hamilton County in Ohio. Williams advised him to send the registration via express post. He had already sent out a registered letter with new registration forms on September 30. He feels uncertain if it really is the postmark and not the date of receipt which counts which could well be a few days past the deadline of October 4. He has requested a confirmation of registration but will not be online again for about a week since he is currently on vacation in the mountains of southern Poland.

Meanwhile various US newspapers report on an upsurge in new voter registration forms being handed in. Nearly 600,000 new voters applied in Florida. In Pennsylvania six million have registered instead of four million in 2000. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that officials in Ohio were swamped with applications from first time voters. It quoted an elections specialist working with the Board of Elections in Hamilton County as declaring the situation there as 'a zoo -- this is absolutely the craziest we have ever seen it.' The county has already processed 64,000 new registrations, more than double the figure in 2000 and has a backlog of several thousand more. According to various polls and emails from friends there, it is deadheat which way the state will go.

Though absentee ballots from New York City often arrived rather late in October in past years, I was still concerned enough to phone the Brooklyn Board of Elections at 718 797 8800 yesterday. According to the messages on tape, such ballots were sent out on August 14. However, a call to the League of Women Voters at 212 725 3541 informed me that the ballots were still at the printers and should be sent out very soon. I could easily access the FVAP website to obtain these numbers and to find out that registration in New York is possible till the end of October. Ballots have to be postmarked by the day before the election to be counted.

Various German newspapers are reporting on the possibility of a computer chaos on election day in the US. Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Munich had a detailed article on September 29 headlined Two Plus Two Equals Five. Among discussing the Help America Vote Act and the difficulties the new voting machines have, in particular leaving no paper trail, it mentioned an article in The Economist which reported on a case in Indiana where 5352 voters cast 144,000 votes. In Virginia, however, there were less votes cast than voters who actually went to the polls. The Hamburger Abendblatt has a photo today of one of those new touch screen machines with a subtext on how they leave no paper trail. The headline claims the new machines are not reliable and the political parties are already arming for out and out court battles. It also ran an article about the right of overseas Americans to vote and claimed there are 18,000 Americans in Hamburg. Hm. The real number is probably closer to 4,227 according to a report on Hamburg and its US sister city, Chicago.
- posted by Gloria @ 12:29 PM