A federal law suit seeking redress against the Chester County Election Board for practices that resulted in unconscionably long lines and as much as a day-long wait to vote at a poll near Lincoln University back in the November 08 election has - thankfully - put election administration back in the spotlight for a minor media moment.  The Inquirer recently ran a piece by columnist Mark Bowden on the incident entitled "Indefensible."   Why not tell The Inquirer at inquirer.letters@phillynews.com that the issue is much bigger than one egregious precinct in Chester County?

Certainly there's no excuse for what went on at the Lower Oxford East poll on election day.  The right to vote of the two thousand plus registered voters, primarily African-American, was, in effect, restricted by authorities due to a litany of poor decisions and practices.  One was a conscious decision to maintain a polling place serving primarily African-American voters that couldn't possibly handle the traffic.  A team of public interest lawyers is spearheading the case .  

On the face of it, the facts seem overwhelming.  In a precinct almost 70 percent African-American, there was only a 56 percent turnout, when across mostly white Chester County turnout was about 80 percent.  Do you think the prospect of many hours on line (in the rain), a factor that no other Chester precinct had to endure to anywhere near that extent, might have contributed to voters not showing up or giving up?  Then there's the point of who happened to be heading the Democratic ticket on that day.  

Ironically, "this happened to Lincoln University students, who walk the same halls as the great civil rights advocate Justice Thurgood Marshall once did, and to community members who live where he once lived," explained the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.  The legal complaint didn't need to say that Marshall must've been turning in his grave.  
 

But the broader point is that while the case puts on trial a dramatic example of the failure of our election system in one precinct in one county, election problems are broad and deeply rooted.  They exist in every county in Pennsylvania and probably in every state. They range from a lack of reliable, verifiable and secure voting technology to a lack of adequate poll worker training, understaffed polls, inadequate budgets (despite the low costs involved to support the essential operations of election processes), late poll openings, insufficient physical access and sometimes the simple failure to abide by clear-cut election law. Nationally, some four million eligible voters were disenfranchised in November 08, according to a report from the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.

Pennsylvania is, for example, under permanent federal court order to issue emergency paper ballots.  If 50 percent or more of the machines in any precinct fail to operate, emergency ballots are to be issued “immediately.”  Yet the Montgomery County Election Board - and it's a good bet that most others are no better - offers no instruction on procedures, other than maybe at the actual moment of an incident.  If a question is asked at trainings, poll workers are told only to call the Election Board.  
 
The result is that many, if not most judges of election, do not even know that emergency ballots exist.  Their election day packets usually include only green provisional ballots, which can be used as emergency ballots if properly marked.  (Separate emergency forms, which were available in Nov. 08, are no longer available in Montco, apparently to cut costs.)  The manual distributed at trainings has two lines on the subject, but the information was wrong in 2009, saying that emergency ballots should be provided only if all of the machines - not 50 percent or more - fail to operate. We know of at least one vote in Cheltenham that was lost last November because a diligent judge of election got no guidance in trying to process an emergency ballot.  Only one vote, true, but even that margin was enough to decide the recent mayoral race in Conshohocken!

Our "ask" today is that you take a moment and write The Inquirer a very brief letter to the editor - one paragraph will do - at inquirer.letters@phillynews.com .  Base it on either your direct experience at the polls or your general concern that the media should cover the widespread election problems that threaten our democracy.  You can use Bowden's recent column  as your jumping off point and say simply that the "indefensible" incident in Chester County reflects bigger problems in our elections across Pennsylvania.  Do it today.  And please send us a copy.  Thanks.