Senator Dodd has a blind relative who is a retired New york city school
teacher.

Kelly


Panel Hears About Poll Problems

By DAVID LIGHTMAN
The Hartford Courant

Jul 24 2001 12:00AM

ATLANTA - Imagine, said Anil Lewis, going to vote and being told you
first have to clear a 10-foot vertical leap.

And once you're over that hurdle, you have to squeeze through a 5-inch
partition to get into the voting booth. That, the Georgia spokesman for
the blind
told the Senate Rules Committee, is the equivalent of what disabled
voters face all the time.

This is the kind of very personal, wrenching testimony committee Chairman
Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., and his colleagues wanted to hear as they
conducted
the first in what is expected to be a series of nationwide hearings to
document problems people had when they went to the polls last year.

Dodd and 50 colleagues are pushing sweeping changes in how elections are
run and have two gusts of wind at their back: a bipartisan desire to
never again
endure the kind of fiasco Florida experienced last year and a strong
feeling in minority communities that they were disproportionately refused
the right
to vote.

Monday, Dodd tried to add more momentum by bringing average folks before
his committee to testify.

"The evidence is piling up," Dodd said. "Florida was not an aberration.
What happened there happened everywhere."

Dodd, though, met with his usual nemesis: Local officials who aren't
crazy about Washington meddling in their affairs. "Federal mandates are
not the solution,"
said Hans A. von Spakovsky, vice chairman of the Fulton County (Ga.)
election board.

But the testimony from Lewis and others, so different in tone and
substance from the carefully prepared statements and rehearsed answers of
Washington,
helped Dodd win the public relations war.

Juanita Cribb, a teacher from Stone Mountain, Ga., warned at the outset
"I like to talk, so I may go on awhile," while a subdued Diane Smith of
Rex, Ga.,
was more nervous and kept her testimony quick. Civil rights leader Joseph
E. Lowery compared the current struggle to the 1965 voting rights march
from
Selma to Montgomery, Ala.

In this civil rights-conscious city, where Martin Luther King preached
and the courthouse sits beside a street that bears his name, Lowery made
it clear
this was not just about Florida.

"Our nation must respond again to the cries of its people," he said.

To hammer home the point that justice was denied, Dodd held the hearing
in a federal courtroom on top of a downtown office building, one of those
southern
sanctuaries where civil rights battles were fought, and ultimately won,
for half a century.

There was nothing fancy here. Dodd sat in front of a huge tan wall whose
monotony was broken only by a video camera, a U.S. District Court seal
and two
silver thermostats.

The most lasting impressions were the words, as most of the seven
witnesses made similar points. "I felt assaulted and I felt downright
insulted," the outspoken
Cribb said about her Election Day ordeal as she explained how she and
others had to wait more than six hours at her Lithonia, Ga., precinct
because of
power failures and other problems.

There were no fancy charts or studies, and the one attempt to
Washington-ize things went nowhere. People for the American Way, a
Washington activist group,
brought someone from the capital to pass out T-shirts screaming "You Have
the Right to Vote."

In Washington, the black and white shirts/symbols would have gone quickly
and allowed the audience to send a silent message. Here, only three of
about 100
spectators took the shirts. It was more notable that civil rights leaders
such as former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson simply sat in the audience,
offering
by his presence consent to what was occurring in front of them.

In fact, Lewis proudly pointed out at the end of his statement that he
had not even mentioned Florida's electoral problems and that "I have made
my appeal
without the use of statistics."

Whether all this will give Dodd's effort to reform voting the kind of
impetus he wants is still uncertain.

There were no Republicans present, and Smith, who was denied the right to
vote because of a registration mix-up, said afterward that could hurt the
cause.
Von Spakovsky was the only witness skeptical of Dodd's reforms, and there
was a minor local flap when State Rep. Bob Irvin said Dodd withdrew his
invitation
to testify after learning Irvin would challenge Georgia Sen. Max Cleland
next year.

Dodd nonetheless thought his cause was moving ahead quickly. He hopes to
send his bill to the full Senate in the fall and has the strong backing
of Senate
Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, who has vowed to make it one of the
year's top legislative priorities.

The staff of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is offering competing
legislation, was present Monday, indicating McConnell is open to some
change. He told
Senate colleagues in Washington he was ready to support more funding for
reform immediately.

Dodd's bill, the stronger of the two, would provide funding and resources
to states that want to improve voting technology, as well as train poll
workers,
update voting rolls and effect other changes.

And it has three key differences from McConnell's. It would require
states to allow voters to have sample ballots before election day, permit
"provisional
voting" that allows a questionable vote to eventually count if a mistake
was made, and provide equal access for all voters.


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