Technologic Dyscalculia

The ninth circuit throws a monkeywrench in the right’s attempted coup

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

9/16/03

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/recall4.htm

It probably didn’t help that the three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in postponing the recall election, quoted liberally from Bush vs. Gore, the decision that handed America over to Putsch. The right wing had enough to gibber and scream and froth about, without being mocked.

OK, I’m sure the court panel had no intention of mocking them. That’s ok. The rest of us are happy to take up the slack.

The decision, a unanimous one, was pretty straightforward. Punch cards are demonstrably less accurate – by a margin of 2 ½ times worse than the second least reliable method – at tabulating votes accurately. There is an error margin of between 3 and 4 percent with punch cards.

The Secretary of State had already ordered the punch card machines abolished in time for the 2004 primary. The court noted this, saying, "...a voting system so flawed that the Secretary of State has officially deemed it "unacceptable" and banned its use in all future elections." The trouble is that prior to July, nobody was expecting there to be an election before the March 2004 primary, and as a result, districts representing a total of 44% of all Californians still had nothing to replace the punch card system.

And of course, no punch card system was designed for a ballot with 135 candidates, not even in alphabetical order. If people thought the butterfly ballots were bad, imagine trying to grapple with THIS monster of a ballot! The court noticed this, too, saying, "Compounding the problem is the fact that approximately a quarter of the state's polling places will not be operational because election officials have insufficient time to get them ready for the special election, and that the sheer number of gubernatorial candidates will make the antiquated voting system far more difficult to use." Locally, several residents had complained to me that lack of ballot places that were ready and that the County Clerk was pressing them to file absentee ballots, or drive miles to a voting place.

The court ruled that those 44% stood a significantly lower chance of having their vote tabulated, either accurately or at all, determining that the system suffered from technologic dyscalculia.. Between this, and the standing law requiring that punch card machines not be used at all, the court decided the election needed to be postponed, writing, "The choice between holding a hurried, constitutionally infirm election and one held a short time later that assures voters that the 'rudimentary requirements of equal treatment and fundamental fairness are satisfied' is clear."

The court also noted that this system, combined with a potentially close vote, could result in a massive tangle of suits and countersuits and a state paralyzed by a lack of a legitimate government. (The far right might love that, but nobody else would.)

Republicans promptly went out of their little minds with rage. Never mind that the court is merely suggesting a postponement until the equipment is standardized and brought up to snuff, as California law demands. Never mind that between now and next March, it hardly matters who the governor is, since there will be no budget negotiations going on. The Republicans were furious.

McClintock snarled that this was the same court that wanted to remove the state sponsored prayer from the state oath. Of course, he babbled furiously about kicking god out of the schools and so on. It didn’t have much to do with the recall decision, and it wasn’t even the same three judges, but McClintock didn’t have anything else to say, apparently.

Schwarzenegger’s campaign reacted more rationally, merely stating that they would appeal the decision.

Not all the candidates were upset about it. The New York Times described Arianna Huffington as "ecstatic" and quoted her as saying, "I'm happy that the people of California will have more time to scrutinize the candidates' positions. It will be much harder for Schwarzenegger to run a campaign based on platitudes, and it will be much harder for Cruz Bustamante to run on the fact that he's the next guy in line to succeed the governor."

Ah. Yes. That’s what the Republicans are upset about. Good call, Arianna.

The trash right went right out of its collective mind, if that’s the term for it. Trash jocks howled about coups and insurrections and the like, and one such did what the right always does when they don’t get things their way, and blamed Clinton. "Clinton comes to town and a day later two of his appointees on the appellate court decide to nix the election," said Roger Hedgecock a right wing talk show host. Poor Roger. I hope the stool he was sitting on was waterproof.

He may have more to howl about in the next few days. You see, the recall mechanism in the state constitution which has caused us all so much exercise over the past few months has a few other little bombs hidden away.

It states that "The [state] Supreme Court has exclusive jurisdiction to determine all questions arising under this section." The federal SC, which is where the right wing cast of "It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" are headed next, might note this and deny cert. Chances are good that the court, its reputation already badly compromised by the disgraceful performances of Scalia, Thomas and O’Connor in Bush v. Gore, will take that as a good excuse to sit that one out.

If they do note that the state supreme court has exclusive jurisprudence over this, and Issa and McClintock and all the Rush clones and the rest all go haring there to file an appeal, they may encounter another shock: they won’t have standing. The laws governing the recall process state that State Governor’s Commission gets to decide what happens next. Section 12071 says, "The commission shall have exclusive authority to petition the Supreme Court to determine any questions that arise relating to vacancies in and succession to the office of Governor." And that occurs only if they can’t arrive at a majority consensus among themselves. And the chair is Senate Majority Leader John Burton, and the vice chair is his counterpart, also a Democrat, from the Assembly.

I bet they can reach a consensus.

Even if I wasn’t deriving considerable schadenfraude from the reaction of the GOP and the far right to the decision, I would think it was a good decision. Time is not an issue here. We have time to have an election with reliable equipment (hopefully not the Diebold machines, which are a voting coup waiting to happen in their present incarnation), and give everyone an equal chance to have their vote counted.

Most Californians would approve of this. Back when they were still good Americans, the GOP and far right would have approved of it. Better to do an election right. Better no election over a fraudulent one.

But that was the days of the old GOP. The present caricatures of Americans that are the mouth of the GOP prefer to rant and rave instead.

But it looks like recall, their attempt at a coup in California, is becoming a train wreck for them.

I can live with that.