Dorothy Brizill tools around in her SmartCar. A copy of the District municipal code sits in the rear along with a listing of the city’s 143 precincts. Asterisks appear near some; those are the ones she intends to visit. I’m along for the ride.
Founder of DC Watch, a government watchdog organization, Brizill pushed the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics to establish a hot line. She developed a survey and posted it on her organization’s Web site. She wants firsthand information from citizens about what they see at the polling places: Are there sufficient ballots; are the electronic machines working; and is there sufficient staff.
“What I want to do is go beyond a handful of impressions to get Joe Citizen’s actual experiences in trying to vote,” she says as she explains why she persuaded representatives from various organizations — the Federation of Citizens Associations, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union among others — to serve as election observers, monitoring actual vote counting.
Nationally, a small army of pro-bono lawyers converged on select so-called battleground states to prevent vote suppression or voter fraud. But Brizill fixated on her backyard — the District. I have known her since the late 1980s. For all those years one of her top priorities has been the integrity of elections operations.
This year, there were problems in the February presidential primary and the September local primary. A D.C. Council investigation has been unable to determine definitively what happened. A roundtable has been scheduled for next week to examine issues related to Tuesday’s general election. No doubt that meeting will explore why the District was the last in the region to provide results.
Brizill says she and others sprang into action hoping to determine exactly what is going wrong in the election process. “It’s very difficult to construct after the fact what happened,” she adds.
By late afternoon, Brizill shifts into second gear. She picks up another team member to check out precincts east of the Anacostia River. Just before 8 p.m. they arrive at the board’s office to observe the process.
While there is an agreement with the BOEE chairman to permit the team of observers, the board’s General Counsel Kenneth McGhie treats Brizill and others as if they are criminals — not taxpayers who fund his salary and the board’s operation. He even threatens to call the police. Eventually, four individuals are taken to the second floor of 441 4th St. NW to watch the counting.
“I have lost all respect and confidence in the Board of Elections, especially its senior staff,” says Brizill a day later.
“The chairman was not trying to renege on the promise to allow observers,” says Dan Murphy, BOEE spokesman. “There was an issue of available space.”
“After February and September, I thought the board just needed some minor tweaking,” says Brizill. “Now I believe it needs to go in for major surgery.”
