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September 29, 2004
File Under Ignorance Is Bliss...
Oh...and don't forget those 20-foot alligators living in the sewers...
Yes, the political urban legend that black voters in Florida were harassed and intimidated on Election Day four years ago is making a comeback. Only yesterday Jimmy Carter, fresh from blessing Hugo Chavez's dubious victory in Venezuela, moaned that in 2000 "several thousand ballots of African Americans were thrown out on technicalities" in Florida, and that this year more black than (Republican) Hispanic felons are being disqualified to vote--as if all felons weren't supposed to be barred, regardless of race.
Mr. Carter's concern for convicted felons is laudable. Strangely, though, he cares not a whit for the active duty military disenfranchised by Al Gore during the 2000 election. But then the DNC feels that convicted felons ought to have more of a right to vote than law-abiding military veterans who are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Apparently their "support of the troops" doesn't extend to supporting their right to vote.
Perhaps race conspiracists like John Kerry (who, interestingly, couldn't summon sufficient outrage during the last four years at the "disenfranchisement of one million blacks" - a number he conveniently has no facts to back up - to do anything about, preferring to squirrel the number away in his memory for use on the campaign trail) can explain facts like these:
In June 2001, following a six-month investigation that included subpoenas of Florida state officials from Governor Jeb Bush on down, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report that found no evidence of voter intimidation, no evidence of voter harassment, and no evidence of intentional or systematic disenfranchisement of black voters.
In Florida, as in many other states, the manner in which elections are conducted, including all of the essentials of the voting process, is determined at the county level. In 24 of the 25 Florida counties with the highest ballot spoilage rate, the county supervisor was a Democrat. In the 25th county, the supervisor was an Independent. And as for the "felon purge list," the Miami Herald found that whites were twice as likely to be incorrectly placed on the list as blacks.
So just who "stole the election" down in Florida?
UPDATE: It's Autumn in New York, the apples are ripe, leaves are crunching underfoot... and everywhere you go, the smell of voter fraud is in the air... Dee-lightful.
- Cassandra
September 29, 2004 at 08:25 AM | Permalink
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Comments
Wait just a minute here, with all the problems from the 2000 election Jeb Bush left the counties in charge of elections knowing that democrats were the election officials in the counties with the highest ballot spoilage? With full knowledge that these inept officials would disenfranchise the voters that might keep his brother from being reelected?
We might just have another stupid evil genius on our hands.
Posted by: Pile On® at Sep 29, 2004 8:54:01 AM
Obviously the Naval Academy had an open enrollment program the two years Carter spent there.
Posted by: RIslander at Sep 29, 2004 12:07:42 PM
Ouch... actually, I blame him on Hyman Rickover.
Posted by: Cassandra at Sep 29, 2004 12:17:19 PM
So nobody read the Vanity Fair article yet?
Also this by Greg Palast has been out for a couple of years:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=122&row=2
Somebody in last night's thread was offering a $100 per name per disenfranchised voter. From the page of the erroneous scrub list: Johnny Jackson, Jr., David Russell Bustler, Jr. Willie Dixon, Jr., Thomas Alvin Cooper, Jr., Wallace McDonald - five on just one page. People who were assumed to be felons because they had a similar name to an actual felon. The state and the database manager failed to do any further background checking on the list.
This year the State of Florida came up with another purge list. Over 2000 non-felons were erroneously listed as felons. Jeb pulled the list after it came under scrutiny by the press.
The State of Florida paid the database company $4 million for the 2000 list, which was chock-full of errors. So at the very least Katherine Harris and Jeb paying $4 million for very flawed product. Doesn't anybody in Florida care how the public money is being spent?
Posted by: Al Peck at Sep 29, 2004 2:16:20 PM
Al, I've had the Vanity Fair articles on my machine since last week but haven't gotten to reading them yet. I was sick over the weekend and just haven't felt up to it. And work's been awfully busy.
Al, that doesn't change the basic fact that elections in FLA are run and supervised at the county level, BY DEMOCRATS. They chose the ballots, the procedures, etc. So it's disingenuous in the extreme to blame this on Harris and Bush. They had nothing to do with setting up and running elections.
Also, you're conveniently ignoring the fact that active duty military were disenfranchised by the Gore campaign, which challenged their votes in the contested election. So much for concern over people being disenfranchised.
At any rate, the solution to the felon roles problem is quite simple, but the DEMOCRATS won't entertain the solution: require voters to present a photo ID at the polling place.
I can think of no possible reason why this is objectionable. You have to present a photo ID to use your credit card, to get a drivers license, to do a million other things in society. But not to VOTE for Pete's sake? We have massive voter fraud problems, and if your name erroneously showed up on a convicted felon list, having a photo ID would be one way to establish that you were someone else. They could quickly check you against an online database that way and establish your identity.
Posted by: Cassandra at Sep 29, 2004 2:29:35 PM
Well Cass that would imply that the democrats are against voter fraud. They are not, they practicly invented it. They just want it to be in their favor.
Posted by: Pile On® at Sep 29, 2004 2:32:32 PM
One of the Democrats running the County elections office was quoted in the VF article as a Bush supporter. Dixiecrat. Another (LePore)was just incompetent. Harris awarded the contract for the purge list and pushed it on the county officials, so they bear some responsibility. Plus now the Florida state police are harassing black GOTV leaders.
Jeb's Florida is probably no more corrupt than Daley's Chicago, but that don't make it right. Republicans just think they should get their turn to run corrupt political machines?
As to showing ID, I have no problem with that. The big problem seems (still) to be no national minimum standards for election systems. Doing away with the electoral college would at least average out the state-to-state screw-ups.
Posted by: Al Peck at Sep 29, 2004 9:40:05 PM
Al,
This has been going on for years in Florida, way before Jeb became governor. Check out the 1988 Senate election. There have been voter irregularities down there going back for many elections.
Main problems:
1)Immigrations state (like Cal., Texas, NY, Az, etc.) and big problems with controlling voter rolls. Motor voter registration makes this worse.
2)A big ex-felon population, which can be a problem if felons permanently lose the franchise. Is this right? Separate question.
3)Dade, Broward and a couple other big counties have politcal machine politics (like Chicago, Cook county) and are just plain crooked.
People can complain about Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush all they want, but the problem won't go away anytime soon when you have incompetent, crooked people screwing with the system, at all levels.
Posted by: Don Brouhaha at Sep 29, 2004 10:17:42 PM
Al, just as you ask if Republicans just think it should be their turn to control corrupt voting. I could ask you why you insist on climbing up the bureaucracy so that you can stop at the first major republican. It is a rhetorical tool that doesn't really address the issue.
The counties run their own elections. We can debate about the utility of county v/s state, but that is not the reality as it stands today.
As for the electoral college, search the archives as we've had several good discussions about it.
Posted by: Masked Menace at Sep 30, 2004 11:14:09 AM
"Doing away with the electoral college would at least average out the state-to-state screw-ups."
I don't understand this comment. First, before the 2000 election, most polls showed Bush leading. Many pundits predicted that Gore might win the election on electoral college but lose the popular vote. No one said, on the front, that we should get rid of the electoral college. That system works, and it is very easy to see the scenario when it goes the other way, against a Republican.
Second, Al, and this is covered at the other threads, I'd like to see you organize and conduct a nationwide recount in a close election. It wouldn't matter how easily a candidate won any state. If a nationwide election were close, then the loser could demand a recount of EVERY voting booth in the country to try and pick up votes everywhere possible. Talk about a full employment act for lawyers. At least the electoral college removes states from the controversy, so both parties can go to just those counties run by Democrats to do the recount.
Posted by: KJ at Sep 30, 2004 1:53:16 PM
