Maddow: Election system 'weak link' in Obama strategy? David Edwards and Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday November 4, 2008





Print This Email This One of Barack Obama's biggest strengths this campaign season has been his ability to compete in states that are not traditionally home to close presidential elections. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow wonders if this could also be a "weak link" in the Democratic candidate's vaunted operation.



"If you're counting on winning states that aren't usually in play come Election Day, then you're counting on systems that are relatively untested under the weight of unprecedented voter turnout," Maddow warned Monday night, noting predictions that turnout could rise as much as 15 percent compared to four years ago.



"You're counting on states that aren't used to the pressure of close presidential elections," she continued. "That's like finding out that you're going to be your doctor's first open heart surgery patient."



Up to 140 million Americans are expected to cast ballots on Tuesday, and officials in some of the most intensely contested states, like Virginia, Colorado, Indiana and North Carolina, have little or no experience tabulating massive numbers of votes that could decide who becomes the next President of the United States.



"States like Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio, they're not necessarily good at running elections," Maddow says, "but because they're almost always battleground states, they are used to the pressure. officials know what to expect."



In contested states like Virginia and others that allow for early voting, there already have been reports of long lines, voting machine problems and other difficulties that could discourage voters from showing up to the polls. If such problems are persistent on Election Day, Obama could find himself returning to his day job as junior Senator from Illinois on Wednesday.



"Breakdowns and chaos on Election Day are not really bipartisan, they favor the side that benefits from lower turnout -- the side that wants the least number of votes cast and counted, as possible," Maddow says. "And frankly, in all candor, that is the Republican side, as they and conservative activists have self-defined for more than a generation."



To illustrate her point, Maddow noted that some precincts in Virginia are expecting up to a 40 percent higher turnout on Tuesady but have not distributed enough additional voting machines to account for the increase. Each machine in a Norfolk, Va., precinct will be used by about 350 voters.



Ohio, on the other hand, mandated that precincts have enough machines so that each one need not be used by more than 175 voters. So, Maddow says, a voter may have twice the opportunity to vote in the traditional swing state as in the red state Obama is contesting.



"Is this the weak link in Obama's grand 50 state strategy?" she asks.



Former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder, joining Maddow, said he worried that some polling places in his state would not have enough paper ballots to account for machine malfunctions. He said more needed to be done to ensure elections are well run, to maintain the United States' ability to police elections in developing countries and uphold its global reputation.



"We've gone through some very tough times in this country; some people have thought some things didn't happen as they should've happened," Wilder said, in an apparent reference to contested election results in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.



"We can't afford to repeat that," he continued, "particularly in this election because the eyes of the entire world are upon us."



This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast November 3, 2008.









Download video via RawReplay.com







