The Vote Was Protected in Cleveland

By Dan Frosch, AlterNet. Posted November 3, 2004.

After a long and uncertain night, the morning of Nov. 3 brought with it no immediate winner in the presidential election, although that scenario has changed quickly.

Despite assertions of victory by the Bush administration throughout the day's early hours, the Kerry camp had initially refused to concede until late votes from the pivotal state of Ohio were considered – the state board of elections says there are currently 178,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted.

Kerry, however, called President Bush to congratulate him shortly before noon and will give a gracious concession speech at 2 p.m. EST. At press time, CNN data showed that with all of the precincts reporting, Bush was leading in Ohio by more than 136,000 votes.

Things appeared decidedly different just a short 24 hours ago in Cleveland, Ohio – a Democratic stronghold which party officials knew would have to sway heavily toward Kerry in order to counter strong Republican turnout in Columbus and rural Ohio. According to local newspaper reports, Democrats had registered 140,000 new voters in Cuyahoga County – essentially Cleveland and the surrounding areas – in the months leading up to the election.

And virtually as soon as the polls opened, Cleveland locals began braving a cold, steady rain and growing lines to cast their vote, even as word circulated of an expected wave of Republican vote challengers who'd been granted access to the polls by an early morning decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. (The court had voted to overturn a decision meted out on Nov. 1 which banned all challengers from polling places).

Some 1,500 poll monitors volunteering for Election Protection, many of them law students and lawyers from the northeast, also fanned out across Cuyahoga County – to insure that challengers were behaving themselves and voters voices' would be heard. According to Lynne Algrant, a private school teacher and volunteer for the national non-partisan group, Election Protection, the poll monitors were sent to 167 different poll locations, in areas organizers identified has having a high concentration of new voters and where the rate of spoiled ballots had been particularly high in the past.

In Brooklyn Acres, a working-class, white area and long heavily Democratic, people – many of them old and handicapped – began showing up before the polls even opened at 6:30 a.m.

"I wouldn't miss this for the world," said one 85 year-old woman who wheeled her walker through the puddles and up to the polling location, a rental office for a housing complex. "I've been voting since I was 18, and I'm sure not going to stop, especially not in this election."

Across town, at Superior Elementary School in East Cleveland, an impoverished and predominantly African American city which sits adjacent to Cleveland but is still within Cuyahoga County, lines were long and emotions high.

"People here don't have nothing," said 37-year old Kim Yeager of the area, which some locals say is more dangerous than Baghdad. "So everyone is voting around here. This is the biggest turnout I've ever seen. Even the drug dealers off the street are voting. They get it too."

Later in the day, students from Shaw High School who'd been doling out voting rights information during the weeks leading up to the election showed up at Superior too. "This is very important. Many lives are at stake because of this election and so people need to vote," said eleventh-grader Antoinette Williams.

As the day progressed, it became clear that aside from some long lines – up to three hours at some locations – a few broken voting machines and a smattering of misinformed poll workers, there were none of the systemic and potentially ruinous problems some election officials had been bracing for.

Perhaps much of the reason why the situation at the polls seemed relatively calm was due to the constant and visible presence of poll monitors and legal teams who advised voters on their rights and kept a wary eye on election workers. Aside from the numerous Election Protection volunteers, a two-person team of election observers from the international group Fair Election drove to polling places and spoke with voters and poll workers as well.

Dan Frosch is an independent journalist based in New York City. He's been on staff at the San Gabriel Valley Weekly section of the Los Angeles Times, The Source magazine and most recently the Santa Fe Reporter. Dan also contributes to The Nation, In These Times and VIBE magazines.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »