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      Roy Saltman, Who Warned About Hanging Chads, Dies at 90

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      He foresaw the problems with punch-card ballots that benumbed the nation after Florida’s chaotic vote in the 2000 presidential election. His warnings went largely unheeded.Roy G. Saltman, the federal government’s leading expert on computerized voting whose overlooked warning about the vulnerability of punch-card ballots presaged the hanging chad fiasco in Florida that came to symbolize the disputed recount in the 2000 presidential election, died on April 21 in Rockville, Md. He was 90.His death, in a nursing home, was caused by complications of recent strokes, his grandson Max Saltman said.In a 132-page federal report published in 1988 and distributed to thousands of local voting officials across the country, Mr. Saltman, an analyst working for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, cautioned that the bits of cardboard that voters were supposed to punch out from their ballots, known as chads, might remain partly attached (hence, hanging), or pressed back into the card when the votes were counted.Either event would render the voter’s choice uncertain or, if the ballot appeared to be picking more than one candidate, invalid.“It is recommended,” Mr. Saltman said flatly, “that the use of pre-scored punch card ballots be ended.”His recommendation was largely ignored, certainly in Florida, where the initial count in the 2000 election gave the Republican candidate, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, a 1,784-vote lead over the Democrat, Vice President Al Gore, a margin so close that state law required a recount.Armies of lawyers and political operatives descended on Florida, suits and countersuits were filed, and recounts were started and stopped in various counties. The spectacle of election workers examining punch-card ballots through magnifying glasses, to try to determine a voter’s intent, popularized the term hanging chad as it raised doubts about the accuracy of the count.After five weeks of recounts, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in on Dec. 12, 2000, and, in a 5-to-4 decision, stopped a state court-ordered recount, with Mr. Bush holding a 537-vote lead over Mr. Gore. Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes, and the presidency, were awarded to Mr. Bush.“It has always puzzled me why my report never got a wider acceptance,” Mr. Saltman told USA Today in 2001. “It takes a crisis to move people, and it shouldn’t have.”The counting crisis that crippled the presidential transition in 2000 prompted congressional hearings that led in 2002 to the Help America Vote Act, which outlawed the use of punch cards in federal elections.A member of the canvassing board in Broward County, Fla., examining a disputed election ballot in the 2000 presidential election.Alan Diaz/Associated PressAs recently as last month, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems after Fox TV personalities falsely claimed that Dominion’s voting machines were susceptible to hacking and had switched votes in the 2020 election from President Donald J. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr. The company’s patents cite Mr. Saltman’s early reports on punch-card vulnerabilities as proof that Dominion’s voting technology had overcome those flaws.As early as 1976, Mr. Saltman warned that “we have a serious problem of public confidence in computers and a serious problem of public confidence in public officials, and around election time they tend to coalesce.”When his bosses at the federal agency discounted his early concerns, Mr. Saltman got a $150,000 grant to study voting mishaps around the country.He found a report that reviewed Detroit’s first punch-card voting experience in a 1970 primary election. It turned up “design inadequacies of the voting device” that had invalidated ballots because voters had unintentionally voted for more than the prescribed number of candidates. Similar concerns about punch-card voting were raised after a 1984 election for property appraiser in Palm Beach County, Fla.In 1988, Mr. Saltman’s prescient report, “Accuracy, Integrity and Security in Computerized Vote Tallying,” recommended banning the pre-scored punch-card voting machines that would create the counting crisis in Florida in 2000.He also recommended against the use of computer systems that would prevent voters from examining their ballots for accuracy before leaving the polls, and that would not produce an immediate printed paper trail for election officials to examine in a recount.“The defects in the pre-scored punch card voting system are fundamental and cannot be fixed by engineering or management alterations,” Mr. Saltman wrote. He added that “manual examination of pre-scored punch card ballots to determine the voter’s intent is highly subjective.”“For example,” he continued, “manual counters are forced to determine whether a pinprick point on a chad demonstrated an intent to register a vote.”Max Saltman said his grandfather had expressed concern that nearly all electronic voting systems in the United States still relied on complex operating systems, despite his warnings about their vulnerabilities.Charles Stewart III, an M.I.T. professor of political science who consulted with Mr. Saltman, said by email: “Roy appreciated how computers could help to make election administration better, by automating vote counting, which is a very tedious and error-prone exercise when done by hand. But, he demonstrated that these machines sometimes broke down, and it was foolish not to design systems that took this fact into account.”Roy Gilbert Saltman was born on July 15, 1932, in Manhattan to Ralph Henry Saltman, a son of immigrants from Russia, and Josephine (Stern) Saltman, who had immigrated from Budapest as an infant. His father was a production manager in the garment industry and later at an electrical appliance factory. His mother was a homemaker.Raised in the Bronx and in Sunnyside, Queens, Roy graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School.He earned a degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., in 1953. In 1955, he received a master’s in engineering from M.I.T., where he worked on the guidance systems for the Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine. He also studied engineering at Columbia University and was granted a master’s degree in public administration from the American University in Washington in 1976.In 1969, after jobs at Sperry Gyroscope Co. and IBM, he joined the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he worked on software policy and served on the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, the agency charged with maintaining the uniform usage of geographic names within the federal government.His first marriage, to Lenore Sack, ended in divorce. In 1992, he married Joan Ettinger Ephross. She died in 2008.In addition to his grandson Max, he is survived by his sons, David and Steven, and a daughter, Eve, from his marriage to Dr. Sack; his stepchildren, David, Peter and Sara; two other grandchildren; and six step-grandchildren.After he retired in 1996, Mr. Saltman became an election consultant.The belated attention his reports received after the 2000 election, in part as a result of his testimony to the House Committee on Science in May 2001, prompted him to write what became a definitive book, “The History and Politics of Voting Technology” (2006).He also continued to speak out on election issues. In a letter to The Washington Post in 2005, he warned that Georgia’s requirement that voters have a photo ID card, at a cost of $20 every five years, might violate the Constitution’s prohibition of a poll tax.As Sue Halpern wrote in The New Yorker in 2020, plenty of potential problems with electronic voting machines that Mr. Saltman identified remain: “tallies that can’t be audited because the voting machines do not provide a paper trail, software and hardware glitches, security vulnerabilities, poor connections between voting machines and central tabulating computers, conflicts of interest among vendors of computerized systems, and election officials who lack computer expertise.”Mr. Saltman often said that there was no margin of error in voting, that civic engagement and confidence in the electoral system was too vital to a democracy to leave any grounds for misgivings.“An election is like the launch of a space rocket,” he often said. “It must work the first time.” More

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      In Georgia Trump Investigation, Most Fake Electors Take Immunity Deals

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      Prosecutors are nearing charging decisions after investigating whether former President Donald J. Trump and his allies illegally meddled in Georgia’s 2020 election.More than half of the bogus Georgia electors who were convened in December 2020 to try to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power have taken immunity deals in the investigation into election interference there, according to a court filing on Friday and people with knowledge of the inquiry.In addition, Craig A. Gillen, the former deputy independent counsel in the 1980s-era Iran Contra scandal, has been hired to represent a fake elector who could still face criminal charges, David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party. Mr. Gillen specializes in cases involving racketeering, which is among the charges being weighed by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga.Ms. Willis’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether the former president and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia, which Mr. Trump narrowly lost to President Biden. A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them.Ultimately, it will be up to Ms. Willis to decide which charges to seek before a regular grand jury, which she has said she will do after a new jury is seated in mid-July. Her case is focused in part on a plan to create the slate of electors pledged to Mr. Trump in the weeks after the 2020 election despite Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia.Lawyers for the electors have argued they were simply trying to keep Mr. Trump’s legal options open, though when they met on Dec. 14, 2020, three vote counts had all affirmed Mr. Biden’s win there.Even before any indictments are announced, the legal jockeying in the case has become intense. In March, Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to quash the special grand jury’s final report, most of which remains sealed.In April, Ms. Willis sought to have Kimberly B. Debrow, then a lawyer for 10 of the 16 Trump electors, thrown off the proceedings. According to a motion filed at the time by Ms. Willis’s office, some of the electors recently told prosecutors that Ms. Debrow and another lawyer, Holly Pierson, had not informed them of offers of immunity in exchange for cooperation that prosecutors made last year.Fani T. Willis, center, the Fulton County district attorney, in Atlanta in 2022.Ben Gray/Associated PressMs. Debrow responded with her own filing on Friday, in which she called the accusation “completely without merit” and said she had made her clients fully aware, in writing, of what she called “generalized potential offers of immunity.”Ms. Pierson, who along with Mr. Gillen represents Mr. Shafer, has called the district attorney’s assertions “entirely false.” Both Ms. Debrow and Ms. Pierson have been paid by the state Republican Party.Ms. Debrow’s new filing also revealed that eight of her clients had been offered immunity deals and that all of them had accepted. At least one additional elector who is not represented by Ms. Debrow also has a deal in place, according to people with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity as the investigation is ongoing.Ms. Debrow said in her filing that two clients had not been offered immunity deals and now had new lawyers, though she did not name the clients. A recent filing from Cathy Latham, a fake elector for Mr. Trump who was the Republican Party leader in rural Coffee County, Ga., revealed that she now has her own representation.Ms. Latham played a key role in an effort by Trump allies to access voter data in her county after the 2020 election — another point of scrutiny in the investigation.While all of the fake electors had long been identified by prosecutors as targets who could face criminal charges, three have been considered particularly vulnerable by those with knowledge of the investigation: Mr. Shafer, Ms. Latham and Shawn Still, a Georgia state senator who filed and later withdrew a lawsuit related to the vote count in Coffee County.Mr. Still did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Ms. Willis’s office declined to comment. Her office alleged in a filing last month that some of the Trump electors have accused another of illegal conduct.But in her motion, Ms. Debrow called the allegation “categorically false.” She added that the court “need not take defense counsel’s word for the fact that none of the electors incriminated themselves or each other — these interviews were recorded.”It will be left to Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, who has been presiding over the inquiry, to sort through the competing motions.Sean Keenan More

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      Something’s Got to Give

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      It’s been 52 years since Congress passed, and the country ratified, a constitutional amendment — the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 in the wake of the Vietnam War and the broader disruption of the 1960s. (The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, was passed in 1789.) It’s been 64 years since Congress added states to the union — Alaska and Hawaii, in 1959. And it’s been 94 years since Congress capped the size of the House of Representatives at 435 members.You might be tempted to treat these facts as trivia. But the truth is that they say something profound about American politics. For more than 50 years, the United States has been frozen in a kind of structural and constitutional stasis. Despite deep changes in our society — among them major population growth and at least two generational waves — we have made no formal changes to our national charter, nor have we added states or rearranged the federal system or altered the rules of political competition.One reason this matters, as Kate Shaw and Julie C. Suk observe in a recent essay for Times Opinion, is that “several generations of Americans have lost the habit and muscle memory of seeking formal constitutional change.” Unaccustomed to the concept and convinced that it is functionally impossible, Americans have abandoned the very notion that we can change our Constitution. Instead, we place the onus for change on the Supreme Court and hope for the best. Out with popular sovereignty, in with judicial supremacy.There is another reason this matters. Our stagnant political system has produced a stagnant political landscape. Neither party has been able to obtain a lasting advantage over the other, nor is either party poised to do so. The margins of victory and defeat in national elections are slim. The Republican majority that gave President George W. Bush a second term in the White House — and inspired, however briefly, visions of a permanent Republican majority — came to just 50.7 percent of the overall vote. President Barack Obama won his second term by around four percentage points, and President Biden won by a similar margin in 2020. Donald Trump, as we know, didn’t win a majority of voters in 2016.Control of Congress is evenly matched as well. Majorities are made with narrow margins in a handful of contested races, where victory can rest more on the shape of the district map — and the extent of the gerrymandering, assuming it holds — than on any kind of political persuasion. That’s the House. In the Senate, control has lurched back and forth on the basis of a few competitive seats in a few competitive states. And the next presidential election, thanks to the Electoral College, will be a game of inches in a small batch of closely matched states rather than a true national election.Past eras of political dynamism often came from some change in the overall political order. Throughout the 19th century, for example, the addition of states either transformed the terrain on which Americans fought partisan politics or opened avenues for long-term success for either one of the two major parties. States could be used to solidify partisan control in Washington — the reason we have two Dakotas instead of one — or used to extend and enlarge an existing coalition.Progressive-era constitutional transformations — the direct election of senators, women’s suffrage and Prohibition — reverberated through partisan politics, and the flood of Black Americans from Southern fields to Northern cities put an indelible stamp on the behavior of Democrats and Republicans.We lack for political disruption on that scale. There are no constitutional amendments on the table that might alter the terms of partisan combat in this country. There’s no chance — anytime soon — that we’ll end the Electoral College or radically expand the size of the House, moves that could change the national political calculus for both parties. There are no prospects, at this point, for new states, whether D.C., Puerto Rico or any of the other territories where Americans live and work without real representation in Congress.There’s nothing either constitutional or structural on the horizon of American politics that might unsettle or shake the political system itself out of its stagnation. Nothing that could push the public in new directions or force the parties themselves to build new kinds of coalitions. Nothing, in short, that could help Americans untangle the pathologies of our current political order.The fact of the matter is that there are forces that are trying to break the stasis of American politics. There’s the Supreme Court, which has used its iron grip on constitutional meaning to accumulate power in its chambers, to the detriment of other institutions of American governance. There’s the Republican Party, which has used the countermajoritarian features of our system to build redoubts of power, insulated from the voters themselves. And there is an authoritarian movement, led and animated by Trump, that wants to renounce constitutional government in favor of an authoritarian patronage regime, with his family at its center.Each of these forces is trying to game the current system, to build a new order from the pieces as they exist. But there’s nothing that says we can’t write new rules. And there’s nothing that says that we have to play this particular game.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Devolution of Ron DeSantis

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      After a promising start, he has become bogged down in issues that have divided and hurt Republicans in the past.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has fallen sharply in the polls.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAt the beginning of the year, Ron DeSantis looked as if he might be the answer to all of the Republican Party’s problems.For the first time in decades, a conservative politician rose to national prominence on issues that unified the party’s populist base with its beleaguered establishment — and without triggering a Resistance from Florida Democrats. He seemed to offer Republicans a path beyond the divisions and defeats of the last 15 years.Mr. DeSantis does not seem like the answer anymore. His poll numbers are cratering. His strength as a general election candidate is being questioned. This is partly because he’s fallen flat on the national stage, but it’s also because he’s slowly devolved into an older kind of Republican — the kind without answers to the party’s problems.He’s been bogged down in the very issues that divided and hurt Republicans in the past, like abortion, entitlements, Russia and the conduct of Donald J. Trump. Against Mr. Trump and without Democrats as a foil, his instinct to take the most conservative stance has pushed him far to the right. He’s devolved into another Ted Cruz.Mr. DeSantis will probably never be an entertainer like Mr. Trump, an orator like Ronald Reagan, or someone to get a beer with like George W. Bush. But to compete for the nomination, he will at least need to be who he appeared to be a few months ago: a new kind of conservative, who can appeal to the establishment and the base by focusing on the new set of issues that got him here: the fight for “freedom” and against “woke.”Mr. DeSantis’s varying campaigns against everything from coronavirus restrictions to gender studies curriculums weren’t extraordinarily popular, at least not in terms of national polling, but it was a type of political gold nonetheless. It let him channel the passions of the Republican base and get on Fox News without offending bourgeoise conservative sensibilities on race, immigration and gender. In fact, many elite conservatives disliked “woke” and coronavirus restrictions just like the rank-and-file. Even some Democrats sympathized with his positions. As a result, he won re-election in Florida in a landslide. Democratic turnout was abysmal.This combination of base and elite appeal made him a natural candidate to lead an anti-Trump coalition. In the last presidential primary, in 2016, Mr. Trump held the center of the Republican electorate and left his opposition split on either side. To his right, there was Mr. Cruz and the orthodox conservatives. To his left, there was Marco Rubio, John Kasich and the relatively moderate, business-friendly establishment. None of these factional figures stood a chance of unifying those two disparate groups, but for a fleeting moment after the midterms last year, Mr. DeSantis seemed to assemble all of the various not-necessarily-Trump factions under his banner.Since then, Mr. DeSantis’s coalition has unraveled. His superficial struggles on the campaign trail might be evident to most, but what is more easily overlooked is an overarching struggle to balance the competing needs of an ideologically diverse coalition in a Republican primary.His challenge has two halves. First, his instinct to move to the right has been more fraught in a Republican primary than it was when “woke” liberals were his foil. After all, there’s plenty of room to line up to the right of “woke” without alienating anyone on the right. Trying to be to the right of Mr. Trump, on the other hand, involves greater risk regarding both the general electorate and his relatively moderate supporters.Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. DeSantis actually fares best among moderate voters in Republican primary polling. This probably says more about which Republicans are most skeptical about Mr. Trump than it does about Mr. DeSantis, but it nonetheless means that his conservative instincts routinely put him at odds with his own base.In some cases, the tension between Mr. DeSantis and his base is unavoidable — and his moderate supporters will sometimes lose. A politician can’t always please every constituency. Abortion, for instance, poses a legitimate problem for Mr. DeSantis — and every Republican nowadays.But Mr. DeSantis has not always seemed cognizant of the delicate balancing act ahead of him and has committed errors as a result. His relatively soft position on Russia regarding Ukraine, for instance, overlooked that the elite, hawkish, neoconservative right not only cares deeply about containing Russia but would also inevitably be part of any successful anti-Trump coalition. Mr. DeSantis doesn’t need to be a neocon to hold this support against Mr. Trump, but it does seem he needs to support defending Ukraine.The second half is that the fights for “freedom” and against “woke” have not been a glue that’s held his fractious coalition together. So far this year, he’s struggled to make the race about these issues at all. Instead, abortion, entitlements, Russia and Mr. Trump have dominated the conversation.Of all the things that have happened to Mr. DeSantis so far this year, this might be the most troubling and telling. Tactical mistakes can be fixed, but if fighting for “freedom” and against “woke” isn’t a powerful, organizing theme, then he’s not especially different from any other Republican.This might not be entirely Mr. DeSantis’s fault. The coronavirus pandemic is over — at least for political purposes. The peak of “woke” might have come and gone as well: The arc of new left culture fights seems to have bent into a reactionary phase in which debate centers as much or more on proposed Republican restrictions on books, drag shows and A.P. history curriculums as on the latest controversy about the excesses of the left. Mr. DeSantis’s renewal of a year-old fight against Disney — the exact origins of which I suspect would stump even many regular readers of this newsletter — is a telling indicator that his campaign against “woke” is struggling for oxygen.At the same time as Mr. DeSantis’s new issues have faded, the old issues have come roaring back. The Supreme Court and Vladimir Putin made sure of it. So did Mr. Trump, who attacked Mr. DeSantis for old statements on cutting entitlements. And while all of these issues make Mr. DeSantis vulnerable in various ways, there are few opportunities to attack Mr. Trump as too woke.The devolution of Mr. DeSantis, in other words, is partly due to forces beyond his control. But if “freedom” or “woke” is not enough, he will probably need a new set of issues to unite open-to-anyone-but-Trump voters. More

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      In Erdogan’s Turkey, a Building System Fatally Weakened by Corruption

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      The building began convulsing at 4:17 a.m. Firat Yayla was awake in bed, scrolling through videos on his phone. His mother was asleep down the hall.The region along Turkey’s border with Syria was known for earthquakes, but this apartment complex was new, built to withstand disaster. It was called Guclu Bahce, or Mighty Garden. Mr. Yayla’s own cousin had helped build it. He and his business partner had boasted that the complex could withstand even the most powerful tremor.So, as the earth heaved for more than a minute, Mr. Yayla, 21, and his 62-year-old mother, Sohret Guclu, a retired schoolteacher, remained inside.At that very moment, though, Mr. Yayla’s cousin, the developer, was leaping for safety from a second-story balcony.Sohret Guclu, a retired schoolteacher, was asleep in her home in Antakya, Turkey, when the quake hit.via Firat YaylaWhat Mr. Yayla and his mother had not known was that the system to ensure that buildings were safely constructed to code had been tainted by money and politics. That system prioritized speed over rules and technical expertise.A New York Times investigation found that a developer won zoning approval for the project after donating more than $200,000 to a local soccer club, where the mayor is an honorary president. Then, when residents raised alarms that the blueprints did not match what had been built, they received no satisfying reply from the local government. The building inspector said that, even after the project had failed its inspection, the developers used political influence to get the doors open.The apartment complex, in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, was a concrete and stone representation of a patronage system that has flourished under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he has propelled a construction boom across Turkey for the past two decades.Undeterred by warnings that the breakneck development lacked sufficient engineering oversight, officials in the capital, Ankara, gave local politicians more power to issue construction licenses for large projects without scrutiny from independent professionals.Basic suggestions never took off — that civil engineers should have to pass a certification exam, for instance.Rescue workers at the site of the collapsed Guclu Bahce building. About 65 people died there.Emin Ozmen for The New York TimesThat building spree turned middle-class landowners like the Guclus, for whom the Guclu Bahce complex was named, into developers and landlords. Mr. Erdogan, who will stand for re-election on May 14, used construction as a vessel for economic growth and a symbol of Turkey’s progress. Local politicians from all parties benefited from the jobs, housing and off-the-books payments that commonly flowed from it all.Mr. Erdogan’s office referred questions to the environmental ministry, which did not respond to requests for comment.The Feb. 6 earthquake revealed the shaky foundation on which so much growth was built. More than 50,000 people died as buildings toppled, crumbled or pancaked. Guclu Bahce, the mighty earthquake-proof complex, was among them. An estimated 65 people died there.“So many died because they were told that the safest place was inside, and they should not try to leave during an earthquake,” said Fatma Oguz, whose sister died in the collapse.For the Guclu family, several of whom lived in the building, the collapse created a fatal rift. Survivors have turned on each other amid a lawsuit, a criminal investigation and a bitter search for answers:Were the buildings doomed to fall by nature of a powerful earthquake? Or did someone cut corners? Who can be held accountable in a system in which blueprints cannot be trusted and nobody agrees on whether the building passed inspection? The inspector says somebody forged his signature. It is unclear if the final project was up to code, and the developers cannot agree on who actually built anything.As the building shook in February, Mr. Yayla called out to his mother to stay in her room and get on the floor next to her bed. He did the same. They would ride this out safely.Then came a fierce thud, and the columns holding up the bedroom ceiling snapped.‘Money From Our Friends’Family members say the land, covered in fig trees, had been theirs for three generations.By 2015, buildings were popping up all around, a testament to a Turkish economy that had been growing about 7 percent a year.Mehmet Guclu, a young developer with a civil engineering degree, approached his relatives with a plan. Look around, he told them. Somebody’s going to develop this parcel. Better to keep it in the family, to be landlords, to make money.“He convinced us that he’d build the most magnificent project in our family name,” said Yusuf Guclu, another cousin who lived in the complex. He said that Mehmet had promised to protect against the earthquakes everyone in the region knew to expect.Mehmet Guclu, then in his 30s, was a charismatic striver with a luxe aesthetic, known for incorporating sleek finishes and expensive materials like marble. He had already built some of the tallest buildings in Antakya.The extended family had dreamed of exactly this opportunity for years.The complex was to be a centerpiece of the community — five towers, complete with luxury apartments, retail shops, a pool and a high-end gym.Mehmet’s career had taken off quickly, in part because of Turkey’s low barriers to entry for civil engineering graduates. Unlike in the United States and United Kingdom, graduates in Turkey do not need to pass certification exams or complete on-the-job training to become an engineer. Architectural trade groups have called for such requirements for years.The Guclu Bahce complex in May 2020, before residents moved in. The development attracted doctors, teachers, judges and politicians, some of whom bought multiple properties as investments.Google Maps“University educates you. It doesn’t train you,” said Mustafa Erdik, an earthquake engineering professor at Bogazici University in Istanbul. “We have to bring in professional engineering.”Getting a project started often hinges on unwritten rules that can be as important as technical expertise. In this part of southern Turkey, for example, contractors have known for years that a donation to the local soccer club can move a project along, said Hikmet Cincin, the former head of the soccer club. Antakya’s mayor at the time, Lutfu Savas, serves as the club’s honorary president.After discussions with that mayor, Mehmet Guclu gave the club more than half a million lira, more than $200,000 at the time, according to a person involved in the construction process who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an ongoing investigation.Mr. Savas denied profiting from Guclu Bahce’s construction and said the donation had not been tied to the project. “If we ask for money from our friends,” he said of gifts to the soccer club, “it’s for the benefit of everyone.”He called himself an honest politician in a corrupt system. He said developers commonly made payments to circumvent bureaucratic approvals. Most build whatever they want and assume it will be approved, he said. He blamed Mr. Erdogan and his political party for fostering this culture.But Mr. Savas, himself a former member of Mr. Erdogan’s party, was adamant that was not the case with Guclu Bahce.Mr. Savas says he has little memory of the particulars. What is clear is that the project rolled along in the following years, and the foundation was laid in summer 2017.But the earth in that part of Turkey is not ideal for building, particularly in an earthquake zone, said Serkan Koc, a member of the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects.“These areas shouldn’t have been turned into construction zones,” he said. Soft soil, for example, will amplify an earthquake. Mr. Koc said Turkish environmental officials should have assessed the whole area before the building boom.“Although the ministry had the authority to inspect, they didn’t” he said. The environmental ministry did not respond to requests for comment.As Mr. Guclu’s new project moved forward, the only limitations seemed to be financial. Soon after the foundation was poured, his money dried up. He turned to a prominent developer, Servet Altas, to help see it through.Mr. Altas became the public face of the project. His initials, in red and blue, would later adorn the low wall ringing the complex.Sales PitchSohret Guclu had been eager for a steady income to supplement her modest state pension. So she swapped her land deeds for ownership of six apartments and a retail storefront.She had raised two boys in an old, crumbling apartment building. Her new home was to be a four-bedroom unit with an airy living room and kitchen — one of the largest in the complex.Guclu Bahce’s apartments were among the region’s most expensive, costing as much as $160,000. But Mr. Altas promised upscale amenities and unparalleled safety, former residents said.“If there were an earthquake right now, I would run inside,” Mr. Altas repeatedly said, recalled Ertugrul Sahbaz, a building manager for the complex.Guclu Bahce attracted doctors, teachers, judges and politicians. Songul Oguz and her husband bought a $117,000 apartment after a sales agent said that the building’s strong foundation and reinforced steel bars could withstand even a 10-magnitude earthquake, Ms. Oguz’s sister recalled. It would take 10 days for Ms. Oguz’s body to be pulled from the wreckage.Mr. Altas, wearing a plaid jacket and bow tie, joined government officials for a jubilant opening ceremony in late 2019. They smiled and posed with a pair of 10-foot gold scissors that were later recorded by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest. Mr. Altas thanked Mr. Guclu for his engineering work and his own son for working as one of the architects.Servet Altas, center, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony during the opening of the apartment complex.Mehmet Bayrak/Hatay-IhaFew have argued that these developers knowingly put people in deadly buildings. Mr. Guclu’s own family lived there, after all, as did Mr. Altas’s son. Turkey deemed Mr. Guclu a qualified engineer, and the local government — measured by the number of officials at the grand opening — supported the project.But the chest-thumping and fanfare were premature. The buildings failed a final inspection, according to court testimony. The nature of the violations is murky, but Ismail Ozturk, a building inspector, testified this year that his company had raised concerns with the local authorities.Mr. Ozturk testified that the contractors had leveraged “close connections” in the city government to overcome the failed inspection. The city mayor at the time, Ismail Kimyeci, who belongs to Mr. Erdogan’s party, denied any special treatment. He said the government’s final approval had been a formality. “The inspection firm plays the most important role here,” Mr. Kimyeci said.Mr. Ozturk’s signature does appear on a certification document. Through his lawyer, he said it had been forged.In a functioning system, there would be no ambiguity about who had approved a project. But Turkey’s system is built on ambiguity. The Erdogan government has, for decades, weakened independent, expert construction oversight and fought proposals to toughen standards.Turkey’s chamber of civil engineers, for example, has argued for years that experienced engineers are stretched too thin to adequately supervise construction projects. The group has called for every project to get a dedicated engineer. That idea, which could have slowed down construction, went nowhere. The Erdogan government sued the group in 2015, blocking it from issuing its own, stricter certifications for engineers.Lawmakers also privatized the building inspection process, sidelining Turkey’s engineering and architectural union. And while the government in 2019 eliminated a rule allowing contractors to pick their inspectors, mayors still hold power to push past potential issues.Guclu Bahce’s opening was delayed. Discrepancies existed between the blueprints and what was built, Mr. Ozturk said in testimony after the earthquake. Some former residents, too, said that they had picked up on such differences and sent a letter to the city raising concerns.One resident said the dispute centered on the very building in which Mr. Yayla slept the night of the earthquake — the first to collapse. The resident said that the building had featured an extra floor, a penthouse with a terrace that had not appeared in the plans.The resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid being dragged into a criminal and civil dispute, said he had helped broker a meeting between Mr. Altas and the city’s current mayor, Izzettin Yilmaz, to find a solution.Mr. Yilmaz, a member of Mr. Erdogan’s party, acknowledged in an interview that he had met with Mr. Altas. But he said the purpose was to tell the contractor that he was not interested in taking bribes. Gossip was swirling, he said, and he wanted to make things clear: “I told him: ‘No one requested a payment from you.’”Through his lawyer, though, Mr. Altas, denied meeting with the mayor. What’s more, Mr. Altas — who took credit at the opening ceremony for building the complex — now denies involvement with the construction or the planning. That was Mehmet Guclu’s responsibility, he said.Despite claiming no involvement, Mr. Altas said he was certain that the complex matched the blueprints.There is no indication in Mr. Ozturk’s testimony that anything was done to assess the design changes. Residents said the city promised to investigate, but they never heard back.Whether this discrepancy played any role in Guclu Bahce’s collapse and whether the inspection was adequate are among many questions being asked in the government’s criminal investigation and a family lawsuit.But the city ultimately awarded occupancy permits and residents finally moved into their apartments in 2021. Guclu Bahce sprang to life, with a health club, a home goods store and a chicken shop.For almost two years, nobody looked back or gave further thought to the construction process.Cries in the DarknessLying on the floor next to his bed, Firat Yayla thought immediately of his cousin’s assurances about the building’s sturdiness. His confidence lasted less than a minute, though, until he heard the sound of crumbling concrete.The wall next to him was caving in.As the 7.8-magnitude earthquake continued for about 90 seconds, the building fell sideways. Steel bars knifed out from the concrete, and he began slipping toward them.The lights went out, and Mr. Yayla was sure he was going to die.The next thing he registered was the sound of car alarms. His foot was wedged in a crack and he couldn’t move under the weight of a giant wall. He could barely breathe but managed to call into the darkness.“Mom!” he shouted. “Are you OK?”She called back. “Firat! Firat! Firat!”But her cries weakened, and then went quiet.“Please help me!” he shouted over and over.A resident helped free Mr. Yayla from the rubble. He survived without serious injuries. Mehmet Guclu survived his jump from the balcony with little more than an injured finger.Firat Yayla, 21, was rescued without serious injuries from the ruins of Guclu Bahce. His mother did not make it.Emin Ozmen for The New York TimesSohret Guclu died, along with more than five dozen other residents.Members of the Guclu family have sued the contractors and the inspection company, alleging construction flaws. Among those they accuse of wrongdoing is Mehmet Guclu, the cousin on whom they had pinned so many hopes.Sohret’s brother, Yusuf Guclu, said family members were angry at a system of back-scratching and favor-trading that had papered over potential problems.That system had worked in his family’s favor. The Guclus had lived the Turkish dream, converting their land into a cash cow thanks to a relative’s expertise and connections. Now, Yusuf’s sister was dead and his family was accepting donated clothing.“We’ve lost everything,” he said.Mr. Altas was arrested and jailed pending the outcome of the investigation. He has not been charged with a crime. Through his lawyer, he said he had only bankrolled the project.Mr. Ozturk, the inspector, has also been arrested but not charged. He denies signing off on the project.And, in a meeting with The Times, Mr. Guclu appeared shellshocked. He said he would consider speaking publicly about the building, the lawsuit and his family.But with a warrant out for his arrest, Mr. Guclu soon stopped returning messages.The last time he was in contact, he was working on a government construction project — part of Mr. Erdogan’s well-publicized plan to rebuild the region swiftly.The Guclu Bahce complex, which fell sideways, after the quake. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesBeril Eski More

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      With Local Elections in Much of the U.K., Here’s What’s at Stake

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      Municipalities across England will face voters, including in areas that could sway the next national election. Here’s a guide to the ballots and how to interpret them.Votes will be cast across England on Thursday in local elections that will be a test of the popularity of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has stabilized Britain’s politics but whose government remains unpopular in the face of surging inflation, sluggish economic growth and labor unrest.These votes will not affect the national Parliament that gives Mr. Sunak his power: Members of Parliament face the public every five years or so in a general election. The date is flexible but one isn’t expected until next year.But Thursday’s voting could offer important clues about whether Mr. Sunak, whose Conservative Party trails the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls, can turn things around.At stake are seats for around 8,000 representatives in lower tiers of government: municipalities that control services like garbage collection and construction permitting and raise taxes, within strict constraints, on residential property.It’s not an infallible guide to national sentiment. Turnout will be far lower than at a general election and parochial issues like planned housing developments could sway some races.Still, this may be the largest public vote between now and the next general election, and it’s fought across most of the areas likely to determine the next British government, with national issues often prominent in campaigning.What’s the state of play nationally?Recent surveys show Mr. Sunak cutting into Labour’s lead, though it remains in double digits. So he retains hopes of snatching an unlikely fifth consecutive general election victory for the Conservatives.Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, needs a decent result to sustain his hopes of becoming the next prime minister. Despite moving his party close to power, he has failed to excite voters.The Labour leader Keir Starmer on the eve of local elections in Gillingham, England, on Tuesday.Gareth Fuller, via Associated PressThe local elections will indicate how Labour’s polling lead and Mr. Sunak’s polling progress translate into real votes.Who’s voting and where?The elections on Thursday take place across much — but not all — of England. Scotland and Wales aren’t voting, and Northern Ireland has local elections on May 18.Up for grabs are seats for representatives in 230 municipalities. The last time these seats were contested was in 2019, when Parliament was gridlocked over Brexit and the two main parties were about equally unpopular. Many big cities are voting (London excepted) but so are more rural areas.Both main parties hold a lot of these seats, but the Conservatives are defending the most — around 3,500 — and polling suggests they will lose plenty.How many is the key question: The parties traditionally seek to massage expectations. Greg Hands, the chair of the Conservatives, has talked of estimates that his party could lose 1,000 seats — a high number that some analysts think he inflated in an effort to portray lower losses as a triumph.Which are the results to watch?Some the most closely watched votes will be in so-called red wall areas in northern England and the Midlands. These deindustrialized regions used to be heartlands of the Labour Party. Mr. Sunak’s predecessor but one, Boris Johnson, fought a pro-Brexit general election campaign in late 2019 that won many of them for the Conservatives.With support dwindling both for the Conservatives and for Brexit, Labour hopes to regain some former strongholds, for example in northeastern England in areas like Middlesborough and Hartlepool.In the south, analysts will watch how the Conservatives perform in their traditional strongholds, prosperous towns like Windsor and Maidenhead, now sometimes known as blue wall areas. Here, Mr. Johnson alienated anti-Brexit Conservative voters, allowing independent candidates and a centrist party, the Liberal Democrats, to make gains. Mr. Sunak hopes his more technocratic style has arrested that slide.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London in April. The local elections will indicate how Labour’s polling lead and Mr. Sunak’s polling progress translate into real votes.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockSome results should emerge overnight — the northern city of Sunderland, for instance, prides itself on having all its votes counted just hours after the polls close, at 10 p.m. local time — but many places start counting the next day. There won’t be a reliable picture of votes across England until later on Friday.What’s the likely impact on British politics?Earlier this year, when Mr. Sunak’s leadership looked shaky, these elections seemed like a potential trigger for a leadership crisis and a comeback opportunity for Mr. Johnson, whose own fall was accelerated by local election losses last year.Since then, Mr. Sunak has struck a post-Brexit deal with the European Union on Northern Ireland, and stabilized the economy after upheavals under Liz Truss, Mr. Johnson’s short-lived successor. By contrast, Mr. Johnson is embroiled in an inquiry into whether he lied to Parliament about lockdown-busting parties during the pandemic.So Mr. Sunak’s position looks secure for now. But a bad result could demoralize party workers, shake confidence in his prospects, embolden his critics and confirm expectations that he will postpone calling a general election until late next year (it must take place by January 2025). A better-than-expected result for the Conservatives would strengthen Mr. Sunak and increase pressure on Mr. Starmer.If the Conservatives do suffer, the prime minister has one big thing going for him: timing. On Saturday, all the British media’s attention will shift to the pomp and pageantry of the coronation of King Charles III. More

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      Repulsed by Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump? Tough.

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      The presidential race sure does seem like it’ll wind up coming down to Biden vs. Trump — and a whole lot of people would rather have an alternative.Here’s an important early message: Even if you aren’t thrilled by the Republican and Democratic options come Election Day, don’t vote for anybody else.We’re talking here about the attraction of third parties. So tempting. So disaster-inducing.The lure is obvious. Donald Trump’s terrible and Joe Biden’s boring. Much more satisfying to go to the polls and announce you’re too far above the status quo to vote for either.The way so many people did in 2016, when Trump won the presidency thanks to the Electoral College votes of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Which Hillary Clinton would probably have carried if the folks who were appalled by Trump had voted for her instead of the Libertarian or Green Party candidates.OK, ticked-off swing staters, how did that work for you in the long run?This brings us to No Labels, a new group that’s warning it might launch a third-party candidacy if it isn’t happy with the two major party nominees.“We care about this country more than the demands of any political party,” No Labels announces on its website. Its founding chairman, Joe Lieberman, told interviewers that his group believes the American people “are so dissatisfied with the choice of Presidents Trump or Biden that they want a third alternative.”Yeah. But let’s stop here to recall that Lieberman is a former U.S. senator, Democrat of Connecticut. Who ran for vice president with Al Gore on the Democratic ticket in 2000, hurt Gore’s chances with a terrible performance in a debate with Dick Cheney, then made a totally disastrous attempt to run for president himself four years later.Hard to think of him as a guy with big answers. And about that business of voters wanting a third choice: A lot of them do, until it turns out that option throws the race to the worse of the top two.Remember all the chaos in the 2000 Florida vote count? The entire presidential election hinged on the result. In the end, Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee, got more than 97,000 votes there. In a state that George W. Bush eventually won by 537.Now Nader had a phenomenal career as a champion of consumer protection and the environment. But this was a terrible finale. His candidacy gave Floridians who felt that Gore was not very exciting a chance to declare their disaffection. It gave them a chance to feel superior. It gave the country a new President Bush. And a war in Iraq.I talked with Nader about his role much later, and he basically said the outcome was Gore’s fault for being a bad candidate. This conversation took place when the country was bearing down on the 2016 election, and Nader vowed not to vote for either Trump or Clinton. “They’re not alike,” he acknowledged, but added, “they’re both terrible.”Think that was the last time I ever consulted Ralph Nader.The third-party thingy also comes up in legislative races. Remember the 2018 Senate contest in Arizona? No? OK, that’s fair. The Democratic candidate was Kyrsten Sinema, who seemed to be in danger of losing because the Green Party was on the ballot, capable of siphoning off a chunk of her supporters. Even though Sinema had a good environmental record! Well, a few days before the election the Green candidate — have I mentioned her name was Angela Green? — urged her supporters to vote for Sinema. Who did squeak out a win.As senator, Sinema became an, um, unreliable Democratic vote. Who you might call either principled or egocentrically uncooperative. In any case, it didn’t look like she’d have much chance of being renominated. So now she’s very likely to run as … an independent.Another senator who frequently drives Democratic leaders crazy is Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who hasn’t announced his own plans. But he’s started to flirt with a presidential run. On a No Labels ticket? “I don’t rule myself in and I don’t rule myself out,” he helpfully told an interviewer.Sigh.Politicians are perfectly well aware of what effect a third option can have on elections. Back in 2020, a group of Montanans who’d signed petitions to put the Green Party on the ballot discovered that the Republicans had spent $100,000 to support the signature-gathering effort — undoubtedly in hopes that the Green candidate would take votes away from former Democratic governor Steve Bullock when he ran for the Senate. The irate voters went to court and a judge finally ruled that they could remove their names.Didn’t help Bullock win, but it does leave another message about the way too many options can be used to screw up an election. Really, people, when it comes time to go to the polls, the smartest thing you can do is accept the depressing compromises that can come with a two-party democracy. Then straighten your back and fight for change anyhow.Don’t forget to vote! But feel free to go home after and have three or four drinks.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Britain’s New Voter ID Rules Are Raising Hackles

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      Critics say the Conservative government’s new requirements are meant to discourage voting by young people and members of minority groups, who are likely to be Labour voters.The rituals around voting have changed little for decades in Britain, where electors give their names and addresses to polling station staff, are checked off a list and then handed a paper ballot to mark and cast in a box.But on Thursday a new requirement will be added for those choosing thousands of elected representatives for municipalities in England: proof of identity.And while voters in many countries take that obligation for granted, the move has unleashed a political storm in Britain.Critics claim the change could reduce turnout, discourage young people from voting and disenfranchise some minority voters and others who are less likely to have a passport or driver’s license.Requiring proof of ID could deter people either from going out to vote or from actually doing so if the new checks lead to long delays at polling stations, they say.And one quirk of the new system that has particularly incensed the critics is a concession allowing some older people to use as ID the cards that entitle them to free or reduced-fee travel, while preventing younger folk to use their travel cards in the same way.Given that older voters are statistically more likely than the young both to vote and to support the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, some opposition politicians fear a finger on the scales. The leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, accused the government of “undermining our democracy.”Ed Davey, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, said the new regulations on voter ID would undermine democracy.Henry Nicholls/ReutersEven one senior Conservative lawmaker, David Davis, has reservations. “The introduction of Voter ID has been shown to reduce turnout. This is bad for our democracy,” he wrote on Twitter.A similar push has proved contentious in parts of the United States. Several states where Republicans control the legislature and the governor’s seat have introduced new identification requirements as well as broader voting restrictions.But in Britain the furor also reflects the country’s longstanding resistance to identity cards, which are a common feature in many of its continental European neighbors.A 2005 effort by Prime Minister Tony Blair to introduce national identity cards was abandoned in the face of staunch opposition. (Mr. Blair still urges their adoption, although now in digital form.)Britons did carry identity cards during World War II, though they were abandoned in 1952 after a famous case in which Clarence Willcock, a dry cleaner from north London, refused to show documentation to a police officer who pulled over his car. When the matter came to court, a judge ruled in Mr. Willcock’s favor.Acceptable documents for modern-day voters will include a driver’s license or passport, and the government says it is simply following standard practice in most Western nations to protect the integrity of the electoral system.An official survey found that 96 percent of the electorate held a form of ID with a photo that respondents thought was still recognizable. That number fell to 91 percent when including only those with ID cards that had not expired.Those who lack the necessary documentation could apply for a new form of photo ID that the government calls a voter authority certificate.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended the regulations in Parliament on Wednesday, saying they were “commonplace” throughout Europe and in Canada.Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesHowever, there were just 85,689 applications for those cards, representing 4.3 percent of the estimated two million people who did not have valid photo ID, according to openDemocracy, an independent media platform that focuses on the political process.In requiring proof of identity, the government is offering a solution to a nonexistent problem, critics say. The Electoral Commission, the independent body that governs elections in Britain, said that in recent years there had been “no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud.”Of the 1,386 suspected cases reported to police between 2018 and 2022, nine led to convictions and six cautions were issued. In most instances, officers either took no further action or resolved the matter locally, it said.Critics fear that any barrier to participation in the electoral process will particularly affect minority groups. Clive Lewis, a Labour lawmaker, argued that those people already felt excluded from the political process, adding that “voter ID will make it even harder for marginalized groups to vote.”And a parliamentary committee noted “the widely voiced concerns about the potential impact of the introduction of mandatory voter ID on certain societal groups and for some with protected characteristics, including people with disabilities, members of LGBTQ+ communities, Black and ethnic minority groups and older people.”Questioned in Parliament on Wednesday, Mr. Sunak said that a voter ID requirement was “common in European countries, it’s common in Canada and it’s absolutely right that we introduce it here too.”John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said most countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development would expect people to show ID when they vote, as they must in Northern Ireland, where rules were introduced to deal with voting irregularities there.“From an international perspective you could say you should be doing it. From a domestic perspective the issue is, what’s the problem?” he said, noting that few cases of electoral fraud had been successfully prosecuted.Professor Curtice added that some categories of acceptable identification “look a little curious,” in particular the use of travel cards by older people.Ideally, such changes should have been made on a cross-party basis with the agreement of opposition politicians, he said.Another risk is that turning away voters who fail to provide valid ID could spark disputes, perhaps raising the suspicions about the fairness of election results that they were designed to allay. That is most likely in municipal elections, where turnouts tend to be low and just a handful of votes can decide the outcome of some contests.As to the likely scale of any impact, Professor Curtice said it was hard to predict.“The honest answer is that we don’t know and that we may never know,” he said, “unless there is an enormous drop in turnout, and that is particularly in places where fewer people have passports.” More