2A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, October 21, 2004 NATION/WORLD Lawsuits The Associated Press m >ile up as election nears NEWS IN BRIEF A new political strategy has emerged in this photo-finish presidential race: File a flurry of lawsuits before the first votes are even tallied. From Oregon to Florida, Democrats and Republicans are firing away at issues such as touch-screen voting machines and provisional ballots. The lawsuits rep- resent a hard-learned lesson from 2000. "I have never seen this level of concern about an election," said Laughlin McDon- ald, director of the American Civil Liber- ties Union's Voting Rights Project. Others believe the legal wrangling may serve only to damage the voting process. "It's disastrous for fundamental faith in the system itself," said Doug Lewis, exec- utive director of the Election Center, a nonprofit organization working with poll- ing administrators across the country. "Pretty soon you get people saying, 'Shoot, then why bother to vote?' There has been such a concerted effort to beat up on the system itself that people need to step back and understand that if you destroy the very process by which your candidate gets elected, then what have you gained?" In more than a dozen states, includ- ing the big battleground sites of Florida, Voters cast their ballots electronically in a downtown Miami government building Monday as Florida began its early voting program. Ohio, Michigan and Missouri, a series of lawsuits has been filed in the past few months. Most of the cases were brought on behalf of Democrats. Two of the most common legal bat- tles are over electronic voting and pro- visional ballots. Florida and 28 other states will use touch-screen machines, but that has prompted lawsuits claiming the ATM- like devices are unreliable because they produce no paper receipts that could be used in a recount. On Tuesday, a law- suit filed in New Jersey asked that 8,000 of the machines be banned on Election Day for those reasons. A trial over the e- voting machines also got under way this week in Florida. Provisional ballots have prompted intense fighting in Ohio, Michigan and Florida. In court decisions issued this past I week, Democrats won their fight to ease restrictions on such ballots. In Ohio and Michigan, judges ruled that a voter who shows up at the wrong polling place can still cast a provisional ballot as long as he or she is in the right city or county. On Monday, Republicans scored a vic- tory for their side of the argument when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that pro- visional ballots cannot be counted unless they are cast in the correct precinct. Another fight in Florida involves a Democratic lawsuit challenging an order to disqualify voters. Secretary of State Glenda Hood instructed county officials to throw out registration cards from vot- ers who do not check a box confirming they are American citizens, even if they sign an oath on the same form swearing they are citizens. Hood maintains state and federal laws require the box to be checked. The law- suit marks the fourth time since August that the party has taken the Florida sec- retary of state to court. The ACLU is monitoring election practices in several states, includ- ing Nevada, where a judge refused to reopen registration for Clark County residents whose registrations may have been destroyed by a Republican-funded group. Clark County, home to Las Vegas, is the state's most populous county. .OIN.THE x MICHIGAN.DA.. NEWS SECTION:. WE'LLACCEPT. BOTH YANKEEAND RED Sox FAN$. SHOW YOUR SCHOOL PRIDE DURING THE BIG GAME COLLEGE RIVALRY T-SHIRTS NOW AVAILABLE @ WWW.SUCKSHIRTS.COM $11.95 + S/H BAGHDAD, Iraq Iraq requests more election workers Iraq's interim government complained yesterday that the United Nations isn't doing enough to help prepare for January elections, saying the organization has sent fewer electoral workers than it did when tiny East Timor voted to secede from Indonesia. U.S. aircraft, meanwhile, mounted four strikes in Fallujah on what the U.S. military said were safehouses used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror network. A Sunni Muslim clerical group demanded that the Iraqi government prevent any full- scale U.S. attack on Fallujah, hoping to muster the same public anger that forced the Marines to abandon a siege of the city last spring. In other violence, 11 American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were wounded when two car bombs exploded in Samarra, a city that U.S. and Iraqi forces have hailed as a success story since taking it from insurgents last month. An Iraqi child was killed and a civilian was wounded, the Army said. A suicide bomber in Baghdad detonated his car near a U.S. patrol on the air- port road, wounding two American soldiers and two Iraqi policemen. The road is among the most dangerous in the capital. Zarqawi's terror organization claimed responsibility for the attack, though it was not immediately possible to verify that the Internet posting was authentic. KABUL, Afghanistan Leader blamed for not disrupting voting Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has fallen out with some of his lieutenants, who blame him for the rebels' failure to disrupt the landmark Afghan presidential election, the U.S. military said yesterday. Election officials, meanwhile, said U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai could all but seal a victory today as vote counting proceeds from an Oct. 9 ballot that came off largely peacefully. A U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Scott Nelson, said intelligence reports from Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan indicated the Taliban's failure to mount major attacks during the election had demoralized the rebels. "There's been serious disagreements between Mullah Omar and some of his lower commanders on the strategy for the follow-up after the election," Nelson said. "There's a lot of frustration with his lack of effectiveness in disrupting the election." MADRID, Spain Police: Militant planned huge suicide bomb A Muslim militant schemed to punish Spain with the "biggest blow of its his- tory" - a half-ton suicide truck bombing of the National Court aimed at killing judges investigating Islamic terror, including the Madrid train attacks, states a police intelligence report obtained yesterday by The Associated Press. "If Spain loses three or four of its most important judges, that is worse than losing its prime minister," the report said. It quoted an informant whose testimony on his contacts.with the militant triggered the arrests of eight suspects this week in Spain. Western Europe has never suffered a major suicide bombing, although suicide blasts killed 61 people last November in Istanbul, Turkey. An estimated 220 pounds of explosives was used in the 10 backpack bombs that hit the Madrid commuter rail network March 11, killing 191 people. DENVER Site matches organ transplant donors, patients Setting aside ethical concerns, surgeons completed a kidney transplant yester- day in what is believed to be the first operation where the donor and recipient me through a commercial website. The donor and recipient were doing well after the four-hour surgery, Presbyte- rian/St. Luke's Medical Center spokeswoman Stephanie Lewis said. Bob Hickey, who lives in a mountain town near Vail, had needed a transplant since 1999 because of kidney disease but had grown tired of being on the national waiting list. He met donor Rob Smitty of Chattanooga, Tenn., through Matching- Donors.com, a for-profit websie created in January to mhatch donors atd patients for a fee. - Compiled from Daily wire reports MARKET UPDATE WED. CLOSE CHANGE Dow JoNEs 9,886.93 - 10.69 NASDAQ 1,932.97 + 10.07 s& Poo 1,103.66 + 0.43 i i www.michigandaily.com The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Mondays during the spring and summer terms by students at the University of Michigan. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are $110. Winter term (January through April) is $115, yearlong (September through April) is $195. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. Yearlong on-campus subscriptions are $40. Subscriptions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of The Associated Press and The Associated Collegiate Press. ADDRESS: The Michigan Daily, 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109- 1327. E-mail letters to the editor to tothedaily@mchgandaily.com. 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