Getting every vote counted

BOSTON â€”  It was the typical round of Democratic National Convention parties, except the reigning celebrities on this particular evening were not Hollywood stars. They were the elderly members of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom delegation, among the 63 black delegates who traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J., demanding to be seated -- just like the official all-white delegation.

The historic civil rights showdown turned into a showcase, dramatizing the delegates’ stories of black people being threatened or even murdered for trying to vote.

Forty years later, the issue of voter enfranchisement -- and the disputed 2000 elections -- was the subject of heated discussion at several parties Sunday night, including an event sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and honoring the Freedom delegation and a tribute to the late Maynard Jackson, a former mayor of Atlanta.

Not since the birth of the pregnant chad has so much casual conversation revolved around the technicalities of the electoral process. As delegates circulated at various parties, members of the caucus and other black leaders discussed how to try to ensure that in 2004 every vote would count.

“That’s the single biggest issue of the campaign,� said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He said he pressed President Bush on the issue when they met at Friday’s meeting of the National Urban League in Detroit, where Bush appealed to black voters to reconsider their historic loyalty to the Democratic Party.

“I asked Bush if he would have a meeting on a one-item agenda: protecting the vote,� Jackson thundered, as cocktail party guests swirled around him and a jazz band played at a nighttime tribute to Maynard Jackson. Jesse Jackson said Bush told him that senior White House advisor Karl Rove “would get back� to Jackson.

“The suggestion that the elections might be postponed because of a terrorist attack, it takes on legs, because they stole the election in 2000,� Jackson said. He was referring to a Newsweek report earlier this month that said that counterterrorism officials were reviewing a proposal that could allow for postponing the election in the event of a terrorist attack. The department denied it had a contingency plan for a postponement, but even the suggestion proved alarming to some people.

“They stole the election,� Jackson continued. It was a disgrace to democracy.�

A Republican campaign spokesman dismissed such accusations.

“The president won the election in 2000,� said Steve Schmidt, the spokesman of Bush-Cheney ’04. Schmidt said Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie has suggested to Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe that lawyers for each party and a member of the news media be stationed in 30,000 precincts across America and work together to have “the fairest elections free from controversy.�

The Democrats “have been totally unresponsive,� Schmidt said. “They would rather perpetuate that fiction because they think it is a motivator to their grass roots, rather than work to make the election process better.�

Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was more measured in his words than Jackson but no less vehement, as he described his concerns about the flaws in Florida’s new list of felons to be purged from the voter rolls.

Two weeks ago, it was revealed that the list -- with 48,000 names -- included the names of more than 2,100 people who had received clemency and were eligible to vote. The reports prompted Florida to scrap the list.

For Cummings, the news brought to mind the 2000 presidential elections, when the state of Florida barred hundreds, and possibly thousands, of eligible African American voters who shared the same names as convicts.

“I worry when I see what’s happened in Florida. I think the [black] caucus will be asking the president to guarantee votes will be counted, across the country,� Cummings said, leaning against a marble wall at the Boston Statehouse, where the elderly members of the Freedom delegation held court at a commemoration that carried on well into Monday morning.

Others were also riveted. “The concern is the same thing that happened four years ago,� Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-Va.) said as he stood at a cocktail party greeting delegates. “Florida is trying to purge people whether they’re felons or not. The fact that they’re even trying to use this list four years later is an outrage.�

Scott said officials need to begin solving potential elections problems long before November. Elections officials, he said, must make sure all voting machines can properly identify spoiled ballots. “I’m going to be working in Virginia to make sure it doesn’t happen,� he said, adding: “If there’s deliberate disenfranchisement, it ought to be a crime.�

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), a dean of the Congressional Black Caucus that held hearings on allegations that African American voters were harassed and intimidated in 2000, said he was concerned about the use of Diebold electronic voting machines.

“We’re watching Diebold very carefully,� he said. “They shouldn’t even have that contractor. They say they back Bush.�

Conyers was referring to Walden O’Dell, the Diebold chairman who was criticized in 2003 for holding a $1,000-a-plate Republican fundraiser in his Columbus, Ohio, home and saying in his invitation letter that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.� Diebold has banned its executives from such activities, and O’Dell said he regretted his actions.

This week’s gathering here is likely to focus attention on the weaknesses of the voting process and how they could affect what is expected to be another tight race, especially in battleground states where African American votes can make a difference.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) is among those who are calling for United Nations monitors to oversee the November elections. She said proponents have been told that the State Department would need to make the request, and they forwarded the proposal July 8 to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, with whom she served as an elections monitor in Nigeria in 1999.

“This is a major movement taking place,� Lee said. “We’re working with lawyers, labor unions, ensuring that votes will be counted, and there are no shenanigans as there were before.�

Like some others at the Mississippi Freedom delegation event, Lee linked efforts to protect the election of 2004 to the struggle of the late Fannie Lou Hamer, the head of the Mississippi Freedom delegation in 1964 and the granddaughter of a slave who was raised on a plantation in Sunflower, Miss., by her sharecropper parents.

“We’ve come a long way because of heroes and sheroes like Fannie Lou Hamer,� Lee said. “But we still have work to do.�

Emotions surged at the commemoration ceremony for the elderly delegates. One by one, the elegantly dressed women and men, one of them in a wheelchair, were praised for their valor.

One delegate, Victoria Gray-Adams, 77, was Fannie Lou Hamer’s best friend. She held court in a red caftan, wearing a black fez-style hat flecked with gold, and told of the day when, as a young wife and mother of four children, she left behind a thriving business as a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman to devote herself full time to a civil rights struggle that had already gotten people jailed, killed or fired from their jobs.

“They threatened you. They called you at home in the middle of the night to let you know you were on the list,� she said. “There was not a place in Mississippi that was not dangerous in those days. Most people decided not to get involved. You might lose your job, your house. They might hurt your family.�

Another delegate, Peggy Connor, 71, still lives in Hattiesburg, Miss., where she was born, raised and became an activist. “We knew it was dangerous,� said Connor, who received her commemoration in a peach suit and pearl earrings. “It didn’t stop us. We had just taken all we could take. We didn’t have any idea we were making history no kind of way. We were just doing what we had to do.�

An unexpected measure of how much things have changed came when a suited representative from Verizon, one of the corporate sponsors of the event (the other was Lockheed Martin) stood up and solemnly told the room that “the inspiration of Fannie Lou Hamer is an inspiration to all of us.�

But to some in the room, things hadn’t changed quite enough. As the event wound down early Monday morning, Cummings shrugged at Bush’s attempts to court African American voters at the Urban League event.

“Contrary to what Mr. Bush said the other day, the reason so many African Americans support the Democratic Party is the Democrats are seen as truly trying to make life better for African Americans, while the Republicans are seen as putting up roadblocks,� he said.

Cummings said black voters had been the “most consistently loyal constituency� of the Democratic Party.

“The African American people want to make sure the Democrats pay them in a way that’s consistent to their loyalty to the party,� he said. “We still have work to do.�