My joy (and relief) that Barack Obama prevailed in this election
is enormous — certainly the size of last night’s crowd — but
there’s a deeper joy here as well, and an accompanying sense of dread.
“America is a place where all things are possible.”
That’s the problem. Thus 135 million people can turn out on a golden (and
in some places rainy) fall day to vote, to put their hands on the arc of
history, but a few million more can be purged from the voting rolls before the
day began. Indeed, an unknown number of voters or would-be voters ran into
problems that sometimes prevented them from voting and — mainly because
of the terrifying uncertainty of electronic voting — may not have had
their votes counted at all, or not counted as they were cast.
Obama won — his landslide was too big to be denied. But I
urge that we not be complacent or smug about this dream we call democracy,
because it is a fragile dream: that principled cooperation will hold its own in
the arena of history with the naked struggle for power and control. This will
only happen when citizenship means being more concerned with the fairness of
the electoral process than with who wins. In other words, Barack Obama’s
victory over John McCain on Nov. 4 was less important than the growth and
strength, or lack thereof, of democracy itself.
The fair-elections movement may be the most important democratic
development of the last eight years. Our “freedom” isn’t
taken for granted with quite the complacent arrogance — even by the media
— that it used to be. And the infrastructure of fair elections,
independent of partisan politics, is growing.
Before I went down to Grant Park, I spent most of Election Day
hanging out at the Chicago office of the law firm DLA Piper, which provided pro
bono space for the Election Protection Hotline volunteers giving help to voters
in this part of the Midwest, mostly in Illinois and Indiana. Some 80 volunteers
here were on phones helping voters with problems large and small from 6 a.m.
till the polls’ closing 13 or so hours later. Nationally, Election
Protection Hotline fielded 79,343 calls for help or assistance; around 2,500
came in to the Chicago call center.
The most serious problems were from voters whose names
weren’t listed on the rolls in their precinct; who were being wrongly (in
Illinois) required by judges to show identification; and who reported unduly
long lines caused by machine malfunction and other problems. The array of
potential troubles was formidable. An Indianapolis woman, for instance, called
the hotline to report that she’d been told that her early vote
hadn’t counted because the judge failed to initial her ballot; she needed
to revote. This she did, but she feared many others either didn’t get
that call or would have been unable to do so.
Still, this is a day to celebrate both Obama’s victory and
the huge outpouring of voters who wanted to have a say in this election. I saw
long, snaking lines everywhere in Chicago on Tuesday, and I’m sure that
was the case across the country. Election Day — Democracy Day —
isn’t a national holiday (yet) but it felt like one.
- - -
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist,
is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You
can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune. com
or visit his Web site at commonwonders. com.
© 2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
1 | 2
