Copyright 2004 National Public Radio (R)

J. Kenneth Blackwell and Melissa Harris-Lacewell discuss Ohio's voting woes

TAVIS SMILEY, host:

From NPR in Los Angeles, I'm Tavis Smiley.

On today's program, we find out that it's not simply a question of what you eat, but health is a matter of where you live. PolicyLink's Angela Blackwell joins us to explain. Also, our regular commentator Michael Eric Dyson on the vilification of Martin Luther King Jr. in life and his idolization in death. The discrepancy, he contends, says a lot about liberal notions in America. And finally the legacy of Jack Johnson--America's first black heavyweight boxing champion.

But first, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. The election of 2004 is over--at least they tell us it's over--yet numerous questions continue to swirl around the conduct of the vote in the Buckeye State, which has replaced Florida in recent weeks as the operative metaphor for voter dissent and discontent. Hearings have been held, demonstrations mounted and petitions filed by citizens who believe that something went terribly wrong in Ohio on November 2nd. And on Wednesday, Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan called for federal and state investigations into what he calls inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering in one or more Ohio counties. Congressman Conyers says the alleged tampering was systematic.

Representative JOHN CONYERS Jr. (Democrat, Michigan): The refusals of cooperation from the secretary of State of Ohio himself, Mr. Kenneth Blackwell, have laid to rest the fact that this could be all fortuitous, unconnected, innocent. We're talking, first of all, about thousands of complaints about failure of process, coercion, suppression of the vote. The country was so nervous about how the election was conducted in 2000 that we passed an additional federal law, Help America Vote Act. Now at 2004, we find out that our provisions in the federal law didn't go nearly far enough. We still don't have paper trails. We still have election officials acting in really irregular fashion.

SMILEY: Congressman Conyers says that Ohio's secretary of State should not have been allowed to hold dual positions, both as chair of the Bush-Cheney committee and as the official responsible for certifying that state's election. And speaking of the secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, he joins me now.

Mr. Secretary, nice to talk to you again, sir.

Secretary J. KENNETH BLACKWELL (State Department, Ohio): Thanks for having me, Tavis.

SMILEY: You heard the taped comments by Congressman Conyers, the senior Democrat, that is, on the House Judiciary Committee. He's made some serious charges here, both about how the election was conducted and more specifically about your role in it. So is it possible that some improprieties took place here?

Sec. BLACKWELL: Tavis, my message to the good congressman is that Elvis is dead, the Bambino jinx has ended, the 2004 election results are conclusive, Bush won, turn out the lights, the election is over. We've had over 34 suits that have been filed. We have won every one of them. We have an enormous election operation in Ohio, 50,000 poll workers, 45,000 square miles of geography, 88 counties, and we had a record number of 5.7 million voters, almost a million more voters than in 2000. We had a record voter registration drive that produced nearly a million new registered voters. We had a great election in Ohio, and I think what the congressman is expressing is a combination of partisan rage and sour grapes.

SMILEY: Try to explain, though, to this audience, at least I'm told, why there was a disproportionate number of errors and mistakes that took place in largely Democratic and black voting districts, according to observers.

Sec. BLACKWELL: Well, that's an assertion, but let me give you an example. Franklin County, one of our state's largest counties--that's where Columbus, Ohio, is located--the Board of Elections has a chairman. That chairman is a fellow by the name of William Anthony. William Anthony is African-American. He is a Democrat. He's just not an ordinary Democrat; he is the chairman of the Franklin County Democratic Party. He, in fact, has said that it is outrageous that Congressman Conyers and the Reverend Jesse Jackson would come into Ohio and claim that he provided oversight to the stealing of an election for George Bush. That's just how ridiculous this is.

We have a system that is bipartisan. The bipartisan system protects the integrity of the vote. Ohio had an election that was transparent and its management was bipartisan and fair. The system's watchdogs are representatives of the major parties. And so William Anthony was just not the only example of Democrat leaders being embedded in a permanent part of our system. Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, Timothy Burke is the chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Elections. He's also the chairman of the Hamilton County Democrat Party. That state...

SMILEY: All right. Let me jump in. I get your point, Mr. Secretary. I get your point here. Let me jump in and ask another question before my time with you runs out.

Sec. BLACKWELL: Right.

SMILEY: The number of voting booths that were allocated in the disputed counties, I'm told, was based on the 2000 election turnout. The number of voting booths allocated in the disputed counties based on the 2000 election turnout, not the 2004 registration. If that is true, that would disproportionately affect those dense urban Democratic precincts falling short of the number of booths they actually needed.

Sec. BLACKWELL: The shortage of voting machines across the state of Ohio, which resulted in long lines and long waits, was across the board, both in Democrat areas and Republican areas. The voter registration effort in the state of Ohio was just about even in terms of Democrats and Republicans. Remember, we had an issue on the ballot which protected the sanctity of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, which got churches...

SMILEY: Right.

Sec. BLACKWELL: ...out in big numbers in terms of registration drives. And it's reflected in the fact that many Democrats came into our state trying to keep the African-American vote for George Bush at about 8 percent, which was what it was in 2000.

SMILEY: Right.

Sec. BLACKWELL: The African-American vote more than doubled...

SMILEY: Let me...

Sec. BLACKWELL: ...for George Bush in Ohio. So the notion that there was selective reduction of voting machines in Ohio in Democrat areas is just plain false.

SMILEY: All right. Let me close with this and I'm out of time. When are you going to announce that you're running for governor of Ohio, Mr. Secretary? And might this controversy, small C, impact your chances to become the first African-American governor of that state?

Sec. BLACKWELL: No, sir. As a matter of fact, I've already announced. There was a statewide poll that was out and reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on yesterday. I am the leading candidate in the Republican Party for the nomination and I run statewide. I've been elected to statewide office three times. I get 50 percent of the African-American vote. And so for any Democrat who comes into the state thinking that I would want to suppress the African-American vote when it is one of my competitive advantages in a statewide general election is just foolish and full of it.

SMILEY: Mr. Secretary, all the best to you. Happy holidays.

Sec. BLACKWELL: Well, in the words of your mom and mine, remember, Jesus is the reason for the season.

SMILEY: There you go.

Sec. BLACKWELL: Merry Christmas.

SMILEY: Thank you, sir.

Sec. BLACKWELL: All right.

SMILEY: Up next on this program, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. Professor Lacewell observed 10 Columbus, Ohio, precincts during the November election.

Melissa, nice to have you on the program.

Professor MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL (University of Chicago): Thank you. It's very nice to be here.

SMILEY: What do you make of what Congressman Conyers is doing here? Is he on the right track?

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I mean, I certainly think that Congressman Conyers is on the right track, although it's hard to fight for people who aren't going to fight for themselves. So just as Al Gore gave up in 2000, Kerry has given up in 2004. So I don't think ultimately we can dispute the election results themselves. I think the real question here is whether or not democracy is working in this country, and the elections in Ohio make it pretty clear that it's not.

SMILEY: What role has race placed in this process?

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: Oh, it's been enormous. When I was in Columbus, Ohio, on Election Day, it was clear that the voter suppression was occurring in vastly predominantly black districts, precincts, and urban precincts. It was not happening in more rural, more Republican and more white precincts.

SMILEY: How do you respond to the notion that some have suggested that we have arrived at a point in our nation's history, given the degree of political polarization, that every important national election will be the subject of suspicion, controversy and investigation by somebody?

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I don't think that the issue is about the polarization of the electorate. I think the issue is about the fact that we do not have transparent and tamper-proof electoral processes in a country where we have, of course, enormous capacity to do things in the medical field, to do things in terms of technology. We have the technology to make elections inexpensive, transparent and tamper-proof and we've just simply decided not to, and mostly we've decided not to because, in fact, we've allowed elections to be controlled at the local level. And if you're a local official and you have to make a decision between police officers, schoolteachers and voting technology, you're going to make a choice for police officers and schoolteachers, not for voting technology. This ought to be a federal issue.

SMILEY: How, then, do we ever change that reality?

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I think we start pressing for federal election law that says that rather than having 50 separate and unequal elections, one in each state of this country, we instead have one process, so that whether you vote in a rural area of Franklin County, Ohio, or whether you vote in the center of Columbus, you've got the same voting process. Whether you're voting in, you know, Nebraska or in New York, it ought to be the same voting process. You ought to be voting on the same kinds of machines. There ought to be the same rules about registration. It ought to be transparent to everyone in this country about how you vote. And we simply should not have a system where it is harder, where it takes more sacrifice on the part of poor, urban and African-American people to vote than it does for other citizens. That's deeply undemocratic.

SMILEY: Let me ask you right quick here, then, since you've already suggested that you realize, in fact, that all politics is local. It's one thing for John Conyers at the national level to call for an investigation and one thing for Jesse Jackson to fly into Ohio. But how are the folk on the ground in Ohio looking at this issue? Are they over this?

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: No, I can't imagine that they are. I mean, I have to tell you, I really learned on that day just what it meant to sacrifice to vote. This is not something that's a 40-year-old issue. It wasn't just a sacrifice to vote in 1965 or in 1968. It was a sacrifice to vote in 2004. I watched young women with infants stand in the rain for three hours. I watched obese men whose knees were bothering them stand in pouring rain for three hours. I saw a woman who had been standing in line for two and a half hours just start shaking and crying. And I said to her, `What is going on?' And she says, `I'm a pastor's wife. We have a funeral. I've got to leave. I've got to go do this funeral.'

SMILEY: Yeah.

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: `And yet I feel like it's my God-given responsibility to stand here and to vote and I don't know what to do.'

SMILEY: Melissa...

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: And we simply should not have to make those kinds of choices as voters. It ought to be an easy process to walk up and exercise your constitutional basic civil right. No, I don't think these voters are over it.

SMILEY: Melissa...

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: I think these voters are mad as hell. And I think that they deserve...

SMILEY: Melissa, I've got to cut you off. I hate to do this, but I had to cut you off. Thank you for your insight. I appreciate it.

Prof. HARRIS-LACEWELL: All right.

SMILEY: I'm out of time and I apologize.

It's 19 minutes past the hour.