Author:
Armando Ramirez
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Date Posted: 14:05:12 07/12/10 Mon
>Justice letter chides Osceola
>
>By David Damron | Sentinel Staff Writer
>Posted May 23, 2002
>
>
>
>Osceola County poll workers discouraged Hispanic
>voters in the 2000 election by refusing them language
>assistance, insisting that they speak English and
>requiring them to have green cards before they could
>vote, the Justice Department alleges in a scathing
>letter to Elections Supervisor Donna Bryant.
>
>In the letter, received by the county on May 17,
>Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd Jr. threatens to
>file suit if Bryant doesn't make changes.
>
>The letter surfaced Wednesday, a day after Boyd told a
>U.S. Senate committee about Justice Department plans
>to sue three Florida counties and two cities in
>Tennessee and Missouri for similar ballot-access
>issues.
>
>Miami-Dade is the second county in Florida under
>threat of legal action. Election officials in
>Florida's other 65 counties Wednesday said they were
>unaware of any federal lawsuit planned against them.
>
>Boyd's letter to Bryant details a lack of Spanish
>voting instructions and a shortage of bilingual poll
>workers -- a problem, he said, that continued during a
>2001 special election in Osceola that Justice
>Department officials monitored.
>
>In that election, Boyd wrote in his May 13 letter,
>"Some poll workers we encountered were hostile to
>Spanish-speaking voters. They were insistent that
>these voters should speak English in order to be able
>to vote."
>
>Such behavior, Boyd said, denied some Hispanic
>citizens "an equal opportunity to participate in the
>county's electoral process."
>
>Bryant could not be reached for comment. Elections
>office attorney John Ritch said he didn't become fully
>aware that Osceola County was among the three targeted
>counties until Wednesday.
>
>"We apparently are involved," Ritch said. "Right now
>we're working to resolve that."
>
>Osceola County continues to recruit Spanish-speaking
>poll workers and offer voting information and
>instructions to Hispanic workers, said Ritch, of the
>Overstreet, Miles, Ritch & Cumbie firm in Kissimmee.
>He said no monetary penalties have been discussed,
>"but I imagine there would be some sort of financial
>issues involved."
>
>News of the pending lawsuits shocked officials in
>Florida, a state that passed major election reforms
>after the bitterly contested 2000 race ended with
>George W. Bush edging Al Gore by 537 votes.
>
>Still angry about the outcome of the election and the
>treatment of Hispanics at the polls, Osceola County
>Democratic Party official Armando Ramirez said Bryant,
>a fellow Democrat, should be sued. However, he thinks
>the threat is a Republican ploy to curry Hispanic
>votes.
>
>He said Bryant made some strides, such as a quarterly
>newsletter in Spanish offering election reminders and
>requesting poll workers. A similar letter already was
>in English.
>
>"She's still behind," Ramirez said. "She's not
>accessible to the Hispanic community. She's not
>reaching out to us."
>
>Hector Santiago, who worked as poll deputy in
>Osceola's Precinct 42 in the 2000 election, said
>officials should have made better provisions for
>Spanish-speaking voters, whose numbers have increased
>dramatically in the county in recent years.
>
>"People would ask me a question, and the rules say all
>I was supposed to do was point them to a sign on the
>wall," Santiago said.
>
>Many voters were new residents unfamiliar with the
>punch-card equipment Osceola used, he said.
>
>"Everybody here is from someplace else, and they'd
>never voted on these machines before," Santiago said.
>"They'd say, 'I've never done this; what am I doing?'
>And the instructions just weren't any good. There were
>a lot of people who threw away their votes."
>
>Creole problems in Miami
>
>Similar language-barrier complaints in Miami-Dade
>triggered the Justice Department lawsuit threat there,
>as well.
>
>Miami-Dade was contacted by phone 10 days ago by
>Justice Department officials wanting to discuss how
>the county provided language help to Creole-speaking
>Haitians.
>
>"That's their whole issue," Miami-Dade Assistant
>County Attorney Murray Greenberg said. Greenberg
>conceded there may not have been enough
>Creole-speaking volunteers at the polls but said it
>wasn't for a lack of trying. More than two years ago,
>the county passed a law requiring ballots to be
>available in Creole. It was in effect for the 2000
>election.
>
>"We've had Creole-speaking people -- as many as we can
>get -- come to the polls to help," he said. "Many of
>them signed up for training but for whatever reason
>didn't show up on Election Day."
>
>He said the lawsuit is unnecessary, and the Justice
>Department is a "Johnny-come-lately" to the Creole
>issue. The county has spent $25 million on new
>touch-screen voting machines, which will provide
>ballots in three languages.
>
>Complaints in Palm Beach
>
>In Palm Beach County, meanwhile, some voiced surprise
>that the home of the infamous butterfly ballot has not
>been threatened with a lawsuit.
>
>More than 20,000 residents -- including disabled,
>Haitian, Hispanic and black voters -- filed affidavits
>with the county Democratic Party claiming to have been
>victims of discrimination.
>
>"We should be [sued]," said Monte Friedkin, Palm Beach
>County Democratic chairman. "We're in worse shape than
>the other two counties."
>
>The Justice Department on Wednesday again refused to
>name Florida's third county under a lawsuit threat.
>
>After the presidential election, several counties
>fielded inquiries from federal officials about
>complaints over their voting procedures. Some were
>singled out for criticism by the U.S. Commission on
>Civil Rights.
>
>That left some election officials less than certain
>that they wouldn't be targeted.
>
>"Our mayor's office hasn't heard anything, and our
>general counsel hasn't heard anything," said Elections
>Supervisor John Stafford of Duval County, where a
>confusing ballot design led to thousands of
>presidential votes being thrown out -- many of them in
>black-majority precincts.
>
>But Stafford added, "If you hear anything, let me
>know. I'm kind of curious myself."
>
>Darrell West, a political-science professor at Brown
>University, said he was surprised at the timing of the
>Justice Department's actions.
>
>At this point -- particularly after the Sept. 11
>terrorist attacks -- the election fiasco has been
>mostly forgotten, West said. And given the pace of
>most court cases, he added, nothing significant can be
>accomplished by this fall's primaries and general
>elections unless there is a quick settlement.
>
>West questioned whether focusing on language and
>access issues will address all of the problems
>uncovered during the election. However, he stressed
>the importance of voter education and offering voting
>materials in more than one language. It's particularly
>crucial in a county such as Osceola this fall, because
>voters will be acclimating themselves to new voting
>machines.
>
>"Any time you change the technology, it's
>disorienting, and it takes a while for people to
>figure out how to use the new techniques," West said.
>"And non-English speakers face a particular barrier
>just because they need bilingual ballots. This is not
>a Florida problem; this really is a national problem."
>
>Christopher Edley, co-director of the Civil Rights
>Project at Harvard Law School and a member of the U.S.
>Commission on Civil Rights, said he feels vindicated
>by the Justice Department's actions. At the same time,
>Edley said, he is dismayed it took so long.
>
>Santiago, the Osceola poll worker, wants to know why
>elections officials needed the federal government to
>tell them to provide more help to Hispanic voters.
>
>More than 27 percent of Osceola's roughly 170,000
>residents are voting-age Hispanics, according to
>federal officials.
>
>"We're not just a slice of the pie here anymore," he
>said. "If everywhere you go, everything is in English
>and Spanish, shouldn't that tell you something?"
>
>Roger Roy, Linda Kleindienst, Gwyneth Shaw, Mark Pino
>and Kevin Connolly of the Sentinel staff contributed
>to this report. David Damron can be reached at
>ddamron@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5311
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