Letters the editor

Democrats failed, desperately need to restructure
party

A grand theory of 2004 is impossible, so permit me to shoot off
some observations instead.

A mandate? More Americans voted for President Bush than have
ever voted for anyone in the history of America ““ it’s
actually quite underwhelming if you know that more Americans voted
against Bush than have ever voted against an incumbent president in
history.

The combination of population growth and high turnout that makes
the numbers so big also makes them meaningless.

The margin’s the thing. And the margin ““ 48 to 51
percent ““ mandates nothing but caution, which history shows
Bush will promptly throw to the wind.

Here’s a guy who finished second last time and governed as
if he’d swept the nation.

Next, Democrats lost, and we have to stop doing that. While we
spent the last four years wandering the tundra, we did so warmed by
the knowledge that Al Gore had really won, Bill Clinton had been
elected president twice, and Bush was a dolt propped up by photo
ops and a terrorist attack.

Sadly, that knowledge provided as much complacency as comfort,
and we spent the last four years concentrating solely on our
organization, not on our ideas.

For a variety of reasons, we lack the frames, images and
taglines that can accurately communicate our principles.

While we know what they are, we’ve stubbornly refused to
write them on the proverbial 3-by-5 card (and not because
they’re particularly complex, it’s more because we like
adjectives, qualifying statements and showing off how smart we
are).

And we nominated a guy with “screw concision”
tattooed on his vocal cords.

Now we’re going to have to hit the drawing board, wear
down the chalk, and concisely define our party. We’re going
to have to learn to speak the language of values, not numbers.

Ezra Klein Third-year, political science

Bush margin small, but he will work at uniting the
country

As was made clear by both the Nov. 2 election results and your
recent editorial, “Country shouldn’t conform to
Bush’s views” (11/4), the United States is an intensely
divided country.

You made the substantial mistake, though, of believing that
re-elected President Bush does not recognize this and will only
exacerbate the polarization of the country.

In his acceptance speech, Bush addressed Kerry voters
specifically, saying, “I will need your support, and I will
work to earn it.”

On the other hand, you at The Bruin have called (albeit
tongue-in-cheek) for the secession of California in response to
Kerry’s defeat (“If Kerry can’t succeed,
Californians must secede,” 11/2) as well as maintaining
staunch resistance to Bush’s platform.

Don’t praise democracy as the great political system if
you aren’t willing to practice what you preach and accept the
results.

Kenneth Hurst First-year, chemical
engineering

Students discouraged by voting difficulties at Hedrick
Hall

On Tuesday, I worked at Los Angeles County voting precinct
9001330A, the polls at Hedrick Hall. I was disgusted there by the
failure of the process that I witnessed and participated in.

Hundreds of students came with postcards that said Hedrick was
their polling place, but their names were nowhere to be found on
the rosters.

This resulted in hundreds of provisional ballots which will
undergo all kinds of scrutiny to see if they will even be
counted.

Also, scores had never received their absentee ballots and also
had to vote provisionally. Because of this, we ran out of
provisional ballots, are required for voters outside their
precinct.

At my previous experience working at the polls, we used a dozen
provisional ballots, but this time we used over 300!

We ran out of regular ballots, too. In a precinct of about 1,000
voters, we had only 750 ballots.

When we had to announce we had run out, as many as 100 would-be
voters simply left, instantly disheartened. Those that remained
(and did not have to vote provisionally ““ remember, we were
out of provisional ballots as well) voted on demonstration ballots
that were unnumbered and marked “DEMONSTRATION.”

The voters who needed provisional ballots because they were not
on the rosters or not from our precinct pleaded with our
supervisor, County Clerk representative Richard Patricelli, for
some means to vote, but he simply told them he was out of
provisional ballots.

However, when there were only a handful left, he said he
remembered that he might have some in his car, and then came back
with a bag of hundreds of them. We had called him hours before to
tell him we were running out, but at that time he had said there
was nothing he could do.

UCLA students, on Nov. 2, your voice was silenced.

Greg Katz UCLA student