VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Search | Check update time ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 14:59:19 01/22/01 Mon
Author: how bout I kick your ass?
Subject: Florida Voting disaster

Passing the Buck in Florida



by JOHN LANTIGUA



oseph Heller would have had a field day with the hearings of the US Commission on

Civil Rights in Tallahassee last week.



When questioned about Florida's electoral chaos

and possible civil rights violations connected to the

November balloting, Governor Jeb Bush passed the

buck, none too gallantly, to Florida Secretary of

State Katherine Harris. He had nothing to to do with

staging elections, the President-elect's brother and

Florida campaign manager maintained. Bush never

mentioned that he had vetoed a $100,000 budget

item that would have funded a campaign to instruct

voters on how to understand and mark ballots. No,

it was Harris who held the reins to the electoral

system in the state he insisted.



Harris, in turn, swore several times that she knew

almost nothing about the nuts and bolts of elections, despite the fact that Florida statutes

charged her with running them. Commission Chairperson Mary Frances Berry later labeled

Harris' testimony "laughable."



Harris fobbed off responsibility to her immediate underling, Clayton Roberts, director of

the Florida Division of Elections. Roberts, equally versed in the tenets of Florida political

leadership, tried to dump the disaster in the laps of county election supervisors, who he

insisted had great autonomy in such matters.



But several supervisors had testified earlier, and angrily, to a total lack of state level

support for non-partisan voter education projects and Roberts ran into trouble with the

commissioners. Vice chairman Cruz Reynoso frankly told Roberts he didn't buy his

testimony.



Cornered, Roberts then came up with a classic Catch-22 explanation for the electoral and

post-electoral madness. Yes, his boss, Harris, had the statutory responsibility to set

standards for the conduct of elections and any needed recounts, but she didn't have the

legal authority to set those standards, so she didn't set them.



The explanation made eyes roll on the nine-member commission and it irritated

Commissioner Victoria Wilson.



"We're on a merry-go-round called denial," said Wilson.. She accused Harris and Roberts

of abandoning the county election supervisors.



"The voters ended up paying the price," Wilson said. "You didn't help the voters."



Not only did Florida's top officials refuse to take responsibility for the balloting mess, they

said they had heard nothing about possible violations of the Voting Rights Act, despite the

fact that the NAACP had held an all-day hearing in Miami on such allegations just four

days after the election.



"I find it very disturbing that Florida's elected officials don't seem to watch television or

read the newspaper and that they seem to know less about what's going on in Florida than

the rest of the nation does," Berry said.



Berry also questioned the veracity of those same officials when they said they had never

discussed the expected high turnout or the subsequent problems, despite the fact that they

met regularly at cabinet meetings. She said she found those claims "mindboggling."



During the two-day hearing, one black woman testified that she felt intimidated when she

was stopped on her way to her polling place by Florida Highway Patrol officers who

checked her driver's license. A black minister said his name had been purged from voter

rolls after he was falsely listed as a convicted felon. Other witnesses spoke of citizens who

were turned away from polling places, despite having arrived in time to vote; others,

especially Haitians, who were denied the help of translators; and still others who were

refused assistance when they had trouble deciphering ballots. A disproportionately high

percentage of ballots later discarded for one reason or another were cast by minorities, as

high as 31 percent in some precincts.



But some of the most damning testimony --besides that of Harris and Roberts

themselves--came from county elections supervisors. Ion Sancho of Leon County decried

Bush's veto of the $100,000 for voter education. "And this happened in a state where

some years the government spends as much as $35 million promoting the lottery," he said.



Sancho also criticized the state legislature for approving a $4 million contract with a private

firm, ChoicePoint/DBT, to purge convicted felons from the voter lists without ever

consulting the county supervisors, who are ultimately responsible for those rolls. The lists

have proven so inaccurate that many supervisors have refused to use them. Sancho said of

590 names submitted to him on one such list, fewer than forty proved to be convicted

felons.



Berry emphasized at various times during the hearings that it was not necessary to prove

deliberate misconduct for the commission to rule that violations of the Voting Rights Act

occurred. A pattern of neglect and/or incompetence is enough.



The commission will hold a second hearing in Miami next month and possibly a third

somehwhere else in the state before reporting its findings to Congress and the

Administration. The commission is empowered to recommend civil and/or criminal

penalties for those responsible for civil rights violations.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Post a message:
This forum requires an account to post.
[ Create Account ]
[ Login ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.