Haïti Progrès
November  15 - 21     2000

This week in Haiti

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THE U.S. POLITICAL CRISIS:
What Does the Republi-crat Vote
Squabble Mean For Haiti?

Fraud, corruption, voter intimidation, confusing ballots, racial profiling, lost ballot boxes, destroyed ballots, incompetent and abusive polling site supervisors, polling sites closing early, and many other irregularities have all come to light due to the incredibly tight U.S. presidential race between Republican candidate George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.

In fact, the deadlocked election between the two almost indistinguishable candidates has revealed the giant flaws of U.S. bourgeois democracy and created great nervousness among investors which threatens to burst the giant speculative bubble of the U.S. stock market, where prices are already tumbling. All this presages greater global political and economic shocks in the months ahead.

Meanwhile, for many Haitians, the U.S. election fiasco is proof that there is a God... and that he has a sense of humor. ...It was God himself who made this thing happen the way it happened, so that the whole world can see how the Americans have absolutely no moral authority to go supervise or judge any election in any other country,... said Lavarice Gaudin of Veye Yo, a Miami-based popular organization which has been active in the struggle for Haitian-American voting rights in southern Florida.

At press time, the deadlock remained what it has been since the Nov. 7 election day: Vice-President Gore leads Bush in the popular vote by 222,880, with 49,222,339 votes to Bush's 48,999,459. But due to the archaic U.S. Electoral College system (see accompanying article), Gore stands to lose the election if he loses the popular vote in Florida, the remaining uncalculated state. Presently, Bush leads Gore there by a razor-thin margin of about 388 votes, 2,910,299 to 2,909,911. Several counties, most particularly strategic Palm Beach, are considering or already undertaking hand-counts.

Gore presently has 255 electoral votes to Bush's 246. A win in Florida, with its 25 electoral college votes, will put one of the candidates over the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency.

Much of the battle has moved now to the legal realm. Both Republicans and Democrats have assembled huge teams of lawyers and spokespeople, led by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher respectively, to call for recounts, challenge recounts, mount lawsuits, appeal to higher court, and play to the highest court of all: public opinion.

While condemning recounts in Florida, the Republicans are poised to demand recounts in New Mexico, Oregon, and Iowa, three states where Gore won by a slim margin.

But Florida remains the key battleground since it has the most electoral votes, and the election there was marred by numerous and gross irregularities. On Nov. 11, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest and oldest civil rights organization in the U.S., held a "Public Meeting on Electoral Irregularities" in Miami, attended by hundreds of people. At the forum presided over by NAACP head Kweisi Mfumi, speaker after speaker, mostly African Americans from towns around Florida, testified how they had been denied their right to vote.

Fumiko Robinson of Broward County explained how her mother was registered to vote but was not allowed to because of incompetent voting station workers. "We made it a point to find out what training the poll workers had," Ms. Fumiko said. "They only needed to watch a two-hour video to be certified in Broward County. Then they can tell anybody they want that they don't have the right to vote. That was very disturbing to me."

Ms. Robinson also testified that an elementary school which had long served as a polling station was torn down three weeks before the election, and many voters in that district had not been notified and did not know where to go to vote.

Another woman testified that long lines of people and of cars were turned away by officials at one polling station when it closed at 7 p.m., even though the would-be voters had been waiting on line long before the cut-off time. "I felt as if I had been stripped of something very important and personal to me," the woman said.

Miami resident Suzie M. Stephen submitted a written statement that at one mostly African American polling place she observed unidentified men, who had a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on their pick-up truck, distributing flyers charging that a vote for Gore was a vote for the KKK.

Stacy Powers, the news director of Tampa's oldest black radio station, outlined numerous irregularities in Hillsboro County. She lrned of 941 absentee voters (residents who mail in their ballots from outside the county) who were disqualified from voting without notification or explanation. At a church polling site, she witnessed people with their voting cards and listed on the register being turned away because they had no photo I.D.. This denial is an election law violation. One woman voter, she said, was sent to six different polling sites, before eventually being sent back to the one where she started.

Powers recounted how the Progress Village Center, a largely African American polling site, was surrounded by an intimidating force of about 30 cops. She explained how she met there a 67-year-old black man who was proudly voting for the first time in his life. But moments later, as she was driving away, she saw him being surrounded, harassed, and put on the ground by a group of policemen. "I'll call it like it is," said Powers, who was a police officer for 6 years before becoming a journalist, through tears. "It was racial profiling. All people wanted to do is vote." When asked by a panelist how many people she estimated were denied their right to vote in Hillsboro County, Powers replied: "Thousands."

Andree "Andy" Berkowitz, a New Yorker who recently moved from West Palm Beach, explained the problems with the now-famous Palm Beach ballot. "The ballot was confusing to everybody, regardless of education, race, and age," she said. "I have voted since I was 18 years old, and I did not understand this ballot at all. It was not like the sample ballot that came in the mail or has been projected on television."

She realized after she voted that she had mistakenly voted for Patrick Buchanan, the ultra-right candidate of the Reform Party. Far surpassing his average in other Florida counties, Buchanan received over 3,000 votes in Palm Beach, where hundreds of people say they punched the wrong hole like Berkowitz. "There is no way Buchanan got that many votes unless it was a mistake," she said, an assessment even Buchanan has made. Furthermore, over 19,000 ballots were discarded as ineligible because voters had punched holes for two candidates in an effort to fix their mistakes.

Berkowitz also explained that she observed African Americans being asked for photo I.D. while she, a white woman, was not. Also there were no facilities enabling handicapped to vote at her polling site. It also appeared to her that registered voters were being turned away, and there was "not one inspector who offered to assist any of these voters who were turned away," Berkowitz said. "I feel the entire nation is being disinfranchised."

There was also testimony about the non-collection of ballot boxes. The Reverend Clyde W. Judson, the pastor of the Good News Little River Baptist Church in Miami, testified that his church has been a polling site for at least the past 22 years that he has been ministering there. He said a record number of about 1,400 African Americans came to vote at his church. But after his site closed, no officials from Florida Election Commission came to collect the ballot box, #501. Haïti Progrès heard reports of several other uncollected ballot boxes: one in a hotel (reported by a policeman), one in a nursing home (reported by a labor organizer), one in an elementary school (reported by Miami Haitian community activist Marlène Bastien). NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, a former U.S. congressman, called the reports of missing ballot boxes "just amazing."

Haitians also played a large role in uncovering the voting irregularities. At the NAACP forum, Ernest Duval of Palm Beach county testified that he and his wife were not allowed to get new ballots when they realized that they had mistakenly voted for Buchanan on their original ballot. "The supervisor told me 'No, you have only one chance, you don't have another chance. If you made a mistake, you can't do it again,'" Duval reported. In truth, voters are entitled to a new ballot if they make a mistake. "I said, 'If you can't help me, please let me see someone else, because I need to vote, and I made a terrible mistake.' We stood on a line for 15 minutes, but nobody helped us. So my ballot was punched twice, #4 [for Buchanan] and #5 [for Gore]." Without a doubt, Duval's ballot was one of the 19,120 discarded by Palm Beach vote counters. "We want a revote," Duval concluded. "I left Haiti because of such things. Is this an accident or was this done deliberately to confuse people? Everybody was confused, young and old."

While the mainsteam press and election officials speak of a recount, Palm Beach residents like Duval and Berkowitz keep repeating that they want a revote. The same demand is put forward in large spirited demonstrations that march through the county seat almost daily this past week. It is estimated that there are between 40,000 and 60,000 Haitians-Americans in Palm Beach county; one of the county's most important towns, Delray Beach, is estimated to be one quarter Haitian.

Marlene Bastien, the executive director of Haitian Women in Miami, also testified at the NAACP forum. She had received many phone calls from Haitians who had not been able to vote because they received no assistance from Creole-speaking volunteers at the polling sites. When Bastien went to investigate one troublesome site, she found a hostile supervisor. "The supervisor said 'Well the Haitian Americans should not expect any special treatment. We're on top of everything. We're taking care of it,'" Bastien reported. When Bastien insisted that the electoral law entitled the Haitian-American voters to be accompanied to the voting booth by the Creole-speaking volunteer, the supervisor said "No!" and told her to get off the premises. "She was actually in my face and she was almost insulting me," Bastien said. "I brought her forms from my car showing her that people can get help in the booth in voting."

Bastien also outlined other irregularites and electoral law violations such as polling sites closing early and people with voter cards being turned away because they had no identification. "For many first time Haitian-American voters, it turned out to be an agonizing, confusing, and shameful experience," Bastien said.

There were several other instances of election day shenanigans targeting Haitian-American voters in the Miami area which were denounced in Creole programs on the local WLQY radio station. "Some Haitian Republicans took photographs of Al Gore and put the number [on the ballot] for Bush on the bottom of it, then they gave it to Haitians to trick them into voting for Bush," said Lavarice Gaudin.

Some of the other election monkey-business reported on WLQY programs: Cuban-Americans election workers at several polling sites took the ballots of certain Haitian-Americans and instead of putting them in the ballot box just left them scattered on a desk. Also, many Haitian-American voters reported having problems voting when they arrived at their polling place. Cuban-American supervisors at the polling sites said that they were not on the list of registered voters. Some Haitian-American voters, who were sure of their rights and where they were registered, succeeded in voting after making a stink, but others were turned away.

All these voting irregularities have enraged Haitians, African Americans, and working class people of all races and nationalities who tend to vote Democratic because it is the "lesser of two evils." The uproar is even threatening the whole U.S. two-party dictatorship. About 10,000 people including many Haitians, led by Democratic figures like the Reverend Jesse Jackson, marched on Nov. 13 in West Palm Beach to demand a recount and a revote. (In an interesting parallel with their tactics in Haiti, the Republicans sent bands of clearly paid-off African American street youths to heckle Jackson, disrupt the Democratic rally, and shout pro-Bush slogans).

"We must not surrender to those who want to stop us from voting, stop us from counting, stop us from talking," Jackson said at a giant rally at the Palm Beach Amphitheatre that evening. "Our quest for one person one vote will not stop."

"In fact, the battle has gone out of Gore's hands now," explained Lavarice Gaudin. "Gore, I could say, works for the system. Even if Gore now sits down with Bush and cuts a deal for the sake of the system, but the people have taken this thing over. The people will not allow it."

Meanwhile in Haiti, Ben Dupuy of the National Popular Party (PPN) held a press conference on Nov. 10 to fix that party's position on the election. "While it dubs itself the greatest democracy in the world, the United States electoral system isn't democratic at all," Dupuy asserted. "It isn't the people who elect the president; it's what they call the Electoral College." Dupuy ridiculed how U.S. officials defend the Electoral College as providing "a precaution against the passions of the American people. In other words, they don't even have faith in the people. They say they are too impassioned. But when they have to go to war, they have no trouble whipping up passions. 'Remember Pearl Harbor,' they chanted during World War II to whip up people." Dupuy remarked that the U.S. had become "the laughing stock of the world" and that it "has no moral authority to give lessons to anybody about democracy or elections because they have just proved that they took their college degree in concocting electoral monkey-business (magouy)."

Dupuy recalled that a few years back a U.S. offical had remarked that "Haitians are lacking a chromosome that would permit them to make concessions and arrive at compromises. Well we say that it seems to us that they have an extra chromosome which makes them create election monkey-business. We ask that the OAS (Organization of American States), CNO (National Council of Observers) and all the observers which usually go to the small countries decide whether the U.S. election has been well done or improperly done... In fact there is always some election monkey-business or scandal exploding in countries such as France or Germany and now the U.S., and the day they accept for the developing nations to observe their elections, then we will not have a problem to invite them to come observe our elections."

In fact, many Americans are no longer content to play along with the two-party system, and almost 2.7 million of them voted for Ralph Nader the candidate of the Green Party. Some Democrats have accused Nader of bleeding votes away from Gore, contributing to a possible Democratic defeat. But Ralph Nader responded in a Nov. 8 press conference that, if Gore loses, it will be Gore who defeated Gore. By voting for Nader, a growing sector of the American people -- particularly among the youth -- has told the Democratic Party that it has moved completely and unacceptably to the right. Meanwhile, socialist presidential candidate Monica Moorehead of the Workers World Party got over 1800 votes in Palm Beach County, another strategic toll on the Democrats which should give them pause.

In short, this year's electoral crisis reveals the more general bankruptcy of the U.S. political system. As usual, less than 50% of eligible voters bothered to vote because they don't feel there is that much difference between the two U.S. ruling parties. "There is no great ideological chasm dividing the candidates," admitted outgoing New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But the relatively strong showings of alternative candidates, along with the gross irregularites of the U.S. elections, is a tremendous boon to Haiti. "For Haiti's Nov. 26 elections, the U.S. is supposed to send a delegation to oversee the elections," said Lavaric Gaudin. "But the Haitian government should send them right home because the U.S. truly has no credibility to be able to inspect any elections done in the smaller countries."
 
 

What is the Electoral College? The Electoral College is the body which elects the U.S. President every four years. Most Americans, prior to this year's election, were not even aware of the existence of the Electoral College or didn't really understand its role. They thought they were voting for the president when they cast their ballot for President on the first Tuesday in November every four years. In fact, they are only electing the person who will then elect the president in the middle of December. The first thing one must understand about the Electoral College -- an institution unique to the U.S. -- is that it was designed to constrict democracy, not assist it. Contrary to the Haitian Revolution, which was an uprising against slave owners, the American Revolution was an uprising led primarily by slave owners. The "founding fathers" also included big merchants, bankers, shippers, big planters, and lawyers who feared the American masses, at that time mostly small farmers, artisans, and day laborers. The American masses also included women, slaves, and Native Americans, but all these latter groups were specifically prohibited from voting by the hallowed Constitution of the "founding fathers." Much like the "nèg save" (wise men) who drew up the 1987 Haitian Constitution (bourgeois representatives like Louis Roy and Duvalierist representatives like Emile Jonassaint), the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution and devised the Electoral College only represented 10% of the U.S. population and included no workers or peasants. At that time, states restricted the right to vote to property owners only. For the first 50 years (until 1824), the U.S. didn't even permit a concurrent popular vote for president. The American "founding fathers" worried that the American masses were poorly read and subject to being misled and making "passionate" decisions. They didn't want the American people to directly vote for the president. They felt that would be too much "democracy." Many of them wanted the Congress to choose the president. But finally, they devised the Electoral College, where the U.S. citizens elect "electors," who then elect the president. Each state gets one elector for every representative and senator it has in Congress. Each of the 50 U.S. states has two senators. The number of representatives is adjusted every decade, after a census count, to reflect population growth and shifts. There are a total of 538 electors this year, including the three allotted to the District of Columbia. One of the main purposes of the Electoral College system is to prevent challenges to the status quo by third parties and mass movements. This way the two factions of the U.S. ruling class - Democrat (liberal) and Republican (conservative) - can maintain their choke-hold on power, a thinly veiled dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This is admitted even by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director of the U.S. Federal Election Commission: "There can be no doubt that the Electoral College has encouraged and helps to maintain a two-party system in the United States," he writes. "This is true simply because it is extremely difficult for a new or minor party to win enough popular votes in enough States to have a chance of winning the presidency... In addition to protecting the presidency from impassioned but transitory third party movements, the practical effect of the Electoral College (...) is to virtually force third party movements into one of the two major political parties... In this process of assimilation, third party movements are obliged to compromise their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable objectives." Of course he means more "generally acceptable" to the ruling elite. Kimberling extols the Electoral College system over "direct popular election," which is far more feasible today than in 1776. Direct elections would spawn "a multitude of minor parties" which would draw presidential candidates into "the regionalist or extremist views represented by these parties" which would result in "a frayed and unstable political system characterized by a multitude of political parties and by more radical changes in policies from one administration to the next." In short, Kimberling exhibits the same elitist reasoning as the founding fathers in "insulating" the two-party dictatorship from third party challenges and popular will. This is why, for the past century, socialist and progressive candidates since the days of Eugene V. Debs have always condemned the Electoral College system as just one more tool used to control and suppress democracy in the U.S.. Today, with the Electoral College vote threatening to subvert the popular vote and with the strong showing by progressive Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, many Americans are waking up to the true nature of this institution.

~*15 Novembre 2000*~