Recount puts focus on Alabama struggle with segregation-era laws
11/29/2004, 4:50 p.m. CT
By PHILLIP RAWLS
The Associated Press    

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) ? Election officials began a statewide recount Monday to determine if a measure to remove segregation-era language from Alabama's constitution was rejected by a narrow margin, as the Nov. 2 canvass showed. 
The recount, which may not be completed until next week, returned attention to a measure that was supposed to help Alabama's image ? but may have done the opposite as anti-tax and religious right groups objected to a disputed part of it.

Charles Steele Jr., the national president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said the recount will only increase damage to a state that still struggles with its image as a civil rights battleground.

"The perception that is going out after that vote is setting us back 40 or 50 years," said Steele, a former state senator from Tuscaloosa.

On the opposite side, former state Republican Party Chairman Elbert Peters said it was not lingering racism ? but fears that the measure would lead to court-ordered tax increases for public schools ? that caused voters to reject it.

"We're too concerned about the image of this state as compared to others," Peters said. "I hear about Wisconsin, where a maniac shoots six people, or California, where men are marrying men and women are marrying women."

Nov. 2, the constitutional amendment to remove unenforced segregation-era language from Alabama's constitution failed by 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million cast statewide. The close vote ? a margin of 0.13 percent ? triggered the first statewide recount under a 2003 law that provides for a new tally when a ballot measure fails by less than one-half of a percentage point.

Monday, election officials in most counties began feeding paper ballots by hand through electronic scanners to get a new count. Paper jams and malfunctions caused by crinkled ballots slowed the effort.

"It's just a cumbersome process," said Alan King, probate judge in Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham and is Alabama's largest county.

A few rural counties completed their recounts Monday afternoon and reported the results to Secretary of State Nancy Worley. "There are no major changes we've seen so far," she said.

With no precedent to go by, election officials are unsure how long the recount will take, but Worley is hoping to have an official tally in about a week.

Ricky Hill, elections chief for Jefferson County, said he expects the total to be "slightly different" than the original count based on the likelihood of misplaced ballots or ballots that cannot be counted again.

Just to make sure the recount doesn't change too much, opponents of Amendment Two ? as it the measure is known ? worked with Republican Party officials to get volunteers to watch the recount in most counties.

"The accuracy of the voting machines used in Alabama will be given a huge test by the recount of Amendment Two," Peters said.

Alabama's constitution, written in 1901, mandated separate schools "for white and colored children" and imposed poll taxes to keep blacks and poor whites from voting.

After the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision banning "separate but equal" schools, Alabama tried to get around the ruling by amending its constitution in 1956 to say there is no constitutional right to an education at public expense.

Amendment Two, which was endorsed by Republican Gov. Bob Riley, would have wiped out all three segregation-era provisions. But removing the 1956 wording drew opponents, including ousted Chief Justice Roy Moore, known for his fight to put Ten Commandments displays in public buildings, and Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles.

They said they had no problem with removing the 1901 language for segregated schools and poll taxes, but they objected to creating the possibility that a public education could become a constitutional right. They predicted that activist judges would use that right to mandate increased spending for public schools.

Proponents said other provisions in Alabama's constitution would prohibit any such court-ordered tax increase, and they pointed out that the Alabama Supreme Court in 2002 blocked a $1.7 billion school spending plan ordered by a Montgomery judge.

The vote on the constitutional amendment came one year after Alabama voters overwhelmingly rejected the governor's plan to raise taxes by $1.2 billion to improve public education and state services. Many of the opponents of Riley's tax plan also fought the constitutional amendment on the Nov. 2 ballot.

If the recount doesn't change the outcome, Riley says he will ask the Legislature next year to consider another constitutional amendment removing only the requirements for segregated schools and poll taxes. He doesn't plan to address whether education is a constitutional right.

"That's a contradiction," Steele said, "because it gets back to the race issue." He wants the Legislature to take another look at removing all three provisions.

The result is that 50 years after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, Alabama could still be fighting over issues that refuse to fade into history.

"I can see more unwelcome publicity for Alabama," said William Stewart, a political scientist at the University of Alabama.