Well, I just don't feel very diplomatic or "happy go lucky" about my vote anymore. It seems that the SC Supreme Court has its own opinion of what happened...
'S.C.Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal said there is no evidence the voting irregularities from the Bluffton Town Council election deprived votes from the two candidates who lost in November and are seeking a do-over.'
...this is from the Bluffton Today, there is no mention of this story by anyone else, so I do wonder, but still I don't know. They go on to say,
'“What evidence is there that that miscoding resulted in even so much as one person being prevented from voting?” said the chief judge, citing a county protest hearing transcript on the matter.
“There’s a lot of testimony in there where people were fussing,” she said, adding, “Was any voter mentioned by name at all?” Karl Bowers, the attorney representing Fulgham and Thomas, conceded there were none but pointed to the county’s determination that a new election was warranted.
Toal was not swayed. “There is not one single voter that was put upon the stand to testify they were prevented from voting, and there is no voter who voted a challenged ballot or whose vote was challenged,” she said. “All you’ve got is some statistical information from Ms. Garvin about how the voters were coded.”'
I was one of those people, but if what I have to say, if my vote doesn't matter, what is the use? We might as well be a dictatorship. I tried to look up the SC Supreme Court to write them a letter, but there was none. I guess next time, if we believe this is a democracy, or republic as it were, I need to start making a "fuss" and crying discrimination and disenfranchisement from the very beginning.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
My Vote Doesn't Mean Squat
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1 comment:
The problem is that there are specific rules for voting, but the GenPub doesn't know them and doesn't know how to invoke them. If you are supposed to vote for a certain group of offices, and they are not on your ballot, you protest, then they are supposed to offer you a challenged ballot to use. The thing is that you have to 1) realize that they are not on the ballot to begin with BEFORE you press a single button - not easy to do when they do the computerized "go to next page" machines. 2) you have to make a vocal protest - basically be a nuisance - before anyone responds. Sometimes - because poll workers are on the whole uneducated - you have to show them where you should get a challenged ballot in their own book. Make too much of a fuss (and that is subjective) they'l call the cops and have you removed. Finally, 3) you have to be prepared to go to the election verification hearing and show cause why your challenged ballot should be counted.
Most folks have neither the knowledge, time, or money to do this, much less the obnoxiousness that it takes to demand their rights to vote. The poll workers, the election commissions, the legislature, and the judges all know this - which is exactly why it is set up that way.
Spoken as someone who was a poll manager for 15 years.
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