1.9 million black votes didn't count in the 2000 presidential election
 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG2976LG61.DTL

In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.

This year, it could get worse.

These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.

How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.

While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers.

Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."

By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? In Tallahassee's white- majority county, voters placed their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.

In other words, in the white county, make a mistake and get another ballot; in the black county, make a mistake, your ballot is tossed.

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission looked into the smelly pile of spoiled ballots and concluded that, of the 179,855 ballots invalidated by Florida officials, 53 percent were cast by black voters. In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter.

But let's not get smug about Florida's Jim Crow spoilage rate. Civil Rights Commissioner Christopher Edley, recently appointed dean of Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley, took the Florida study nationwide. His team discovered the uncomfortable fact that Florida is typical of the nation.

Philip Klinkner, the statistician working on the Edley investigations, concluded, "It appears that about half of all ballots spoiled in the U.S.A. --

about 1 million votes -- were cast by nonwhite voters."

This "no count," as the Civil Rights Commission calls it, is no accident. In Florida, for example, I discovered that technicians had warned Gov. Jeb Bush's office well in advance of November 2000 of the racial bend in the vote- count procedures.

Herein lies the problem. An apartheid vote-counting system is far from politically neutral. Given that more than 90 percent of the black electorate votes Democratic, had all the "spoiled" votes been tallied, Gore would have taken Florida in a walk, not to mention fattening his popular vote total nationwide. It's not surprising that the First Brother's team, informed of impending rejection of black ballots, looked away and whistled.

The ballot-box blackout is not the monopoly of one party. Cook County, Ill., has one of the nation's worst spoilage rates. That's not surprising. Boss Daley's Democratic machine, now his son's, survives by systematic disenfranchisement of Chicago's black vote.

How can we fix it? First, let's shed the convenient excuses for vote spoilage, such as a lack of voter education. One television network stated as fact that Florida's black voters, newly registered and lacking education, had difficulty with their ballots. In other words, blacks are too dumb to vote.

This convenient racist excuse is dead wrong. After that disaster in Gadsden, Fla., public outcry forced the government to change that black county's procedures to match that of white counties. The result: near zero spoilage in the 2002 election. Ballot design, machines and procedure, says statistician Klinkner, control spoilage.

In other words, the vote counters, not the voters, are to blame. Politicians who choose the type of ballot and the method of counting have long fine-tuned the spoilage rate to their liking.

It is about to get worse. The ill-named "Help America Vote Act," signed by President Bush in 2002, is pushing computerization of the ballot box.

California decertified some of Diebold Corp.'s digital ballot boxes in response to fears that hackers could pick our next president. But the known danger of black-box voting is that computers, even with their software secure, are vulnerable to low-tech spoilage games: polls opening late, locked-in votes, votes lost in the ether.

And once again, the history of computer-voting glitches has a decidedly racial bias. Florida's Broward County grandly shifted to touch-screen voting in 2002. In white precincts, all seemed to go well. In black precincts, hundreds of African Americans showed up at polls with machines down and votes that simply disappeared.

Going digital won't fix the problem. Canada and Sweden vote on paper ballots with little spoilage and without suspicious counts.

In America, a simple fix based on paper balloting is resisted because, unfortunately, too many politicians who understand the racial bias in the vote- spoilage game are its beneficiaries, with little incentive to find those missing 1 million black voters' ballots.

Greg Palast is the author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."

Oh damn, there goes that Ralph Nader spolier theory!

That's another story. This should be a happy day for you-what with the news of his running mate and all.

Kick! :woohoo:

Thanks. ;)

It really is rather sickening, IMO. African Americans fought for the right to vote decades ago and now it's slowly being taken away from them again so that their votes don't count. It's sick.

Another very eye-opening article. Thanks, goldy!

Sometimes I wish I can print out some of these articles, and hand them to some of our patrons at the library. The ones who read all of the O'Reilly & Coulter books, and think our President is God's gift to the nation, and couldn't possibly be involved in anything shady.

But unfortunately I always have to keep my opinions to myself... though, trust me, when I get a chance to say something in a non-confrontational way, I take it!

Good for you! :woohoo:

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky...ws/9080831.htm

Questions over felon `purge list' threaten Florida governor

BY MARC CAPUTO

Knight Ridder Newspapers


TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - (KRT) - As thousands of Floridians learn that a state list could wrongly bar them from voting, Democrats have found a rallying point for the November elections and proof, they say, of long-held suspicions that Gov. Jeb Bush's elections machinery is rigged against them.

More than 2,100 people, many of them black Democrats, remain on the list of potentially ineligible ex-con voters despite winning clemency - and the right to vote - after their crimes, The Miami Herald reported Friday.

Democrats and activists call it a "purge list" - a phrase that deeply irks the governor.

That phrase, and the sinister plot it suggests, is rapidly becoming an article of faith among some Democrats, already fired up by the sensational "Fahrenheit 9/11" conspiracy film that begins with Florida's voting woes four years ago.

"They had four years to fix this, and apparently they're asleep at the switch. It's either the most egregious neglect, or something else at play here," said Tony Welch, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. "News flash to Jeb Bush: It's your job. If there's one responsibility this time around, it's to make sure it all goes smoothly."

Unlike in 2000, when tens of thousands of blacks and Democrats were likely prohibited from voting, The Miami Herald's analysis of the list's potential flaws has surfaced long before the November elections, giving activists the chance to object - and, perhaps, to sue.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it will file a challenge in federal court to have the names of voters with clemency removed from the state's database.

"If the state insists on continuing to throw up these bureaucratic obstacles for no material reason, then we will file a suit under federal law to have those names removed," said Randall Marshall, legal director of the ACLU of Florida.

More than a third of those from South Florida who are on the state's list despite receiving clemency voted in the 2000 presidential election, a Miami Herald analysis found.

Bush wouldn't comment when The Miami Herald story was published Friday. He hustled away from the spotlight at a public event, not to be seen again by the news media.

A spokeswoman for Bush's secretary of state, Glenda Hood, issued a public statement decrying the accuracy of the Herald story, but provided few specifics and wouldn't return calls.

On Thursday, when a Tallahassee judge demanded that Bush's administration release the list, the governor said he wouldn't fight the ruling. Bush said he was happy the judge commended his administration for following the now-unconstitutional law - which he signed - that kept the list from the public.

Bush didn't want to discuss the high number of blacks and Democrats on the list.

"I haven't done the analysis," Bush said. "It doesn't matter to me."It matters to black lawmakers, however. Among them is Bush-critic-in-chief Kendrick Meek, a Miami congressman who led a sit-in protest in Bush's office after the governor ended some aspects of affirmative action.

"If the state of Florida cannot manage to identify which felons they have restored voting rights to and which they have not, then the governor should step to the plate, and end this racially biased program of disenfranchisement, an act he could do by executive order," Meek said in a written statement.

Meek was a force behind the "arrive with five" movement that brought an historical number of blacks to the polls in 2000.

Incoming state House Minority Leader Chris Smith, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said the analysis of the new data will help Democrats recruit voters and remind them that they just need about 600 more votes to count this year.

"They stole this in 2000. We've now got proof of what we've been saying for a while. The list is rigged. It's rigged against certain communities," said Smith, who represents the African-American core of central Fort Lauderdale.

There, in the 33311 ZIP Code, The Miami Herald found the highest concentration in the state of voters who had their rights restored but are on the state's list. About 50 of them are on the list.

"The darkest part of the most Democratic county has the most people disenfranchised," Smith said. "Gee, surprise, surprise."

His constituent, Jeffery Rogers, isn't shocked.

"It's real sneaky," said Rogers, 37, who was convicted in 1988 of cocaine possession and received clemency for the crime in 1989. "You think it's a mistake? The world is so crooked, so nothing surprises me. The bad thing is, they get away with it."

Bush said last week there's nothing sinister with the law barring felons from voting, which is a vestige of past administrations. He points out he has restored rights for more people than any of his predecessors. Still, he said, he's not going to grant across-the-board clemency.

"Some people believe that felons should have the right to vote. I don't. So I'm not in discomfort with this law. And we will carry it out," Bush said.

To underscore his efforts in "reaching out" Bush pointed to a settlement with the NAACP, which sued the state over its felons list. The state agreed to quickly reinstate the voting rights of those convicted of felonies in other states that don't require a clemency process. It also agreed to clean up its database that caused so much controversy in 2000.

The secretary of state's office cited its work with the NAACP in a Friday press release that questioned The Miami Herald story's accuracy. The main complaint: 1,647 of the 2,119 people found by The Miami Herald had registered to vote before getting their rights restored, and therefore have to re-register.

A lead attorney in the NAACP lawsuit, Elliot Mincberg, said that was "bureaucratic, nitpicking." He also said that, contrary to the Bush administration's claims, it has been dragging its feet in clearing people from what he calls the "purge" list.

Bush said he expected criticism of his administration, and said it disappointed him.

"There are cynics out there that view people in public life to be motivated by something they're not," he said.

"And sadly I think it's motivated by what they read in the papers sometimes and that's disturbing. What I can tell you is the truth - that we adhere to the law. And we are carrying out the law. And that is exactly what we're doing."

---

We agree!

- Jake

Glitches Resurface in Fla. E-Voting Machines

Thursday, July 08, 2004



MIAMI — With less than four months to go before the November presidential election, Florida officials are once again hovering over voting equipment. This time, they’re worried about a software glitch in their touch-screen machines.

Last year, a Miami-Dade (search) elections employee discovered that weak batteries caused the voting machines to jumble serial numbers — a serious technical blip that officials say could delay an audit of all votes if there’s another close election as there was in 2000.

Critics say that possibility is unacceptable.

The company that designed the machine, Electronic Systems and Software (search), reportedly knew of the problem more than a year ago, but never notified state officials. The company says the flaw doesn’t affect the equipment’s ability to correctly record each vote.

Touch-screen machines are being used in 11 of Florida’s 67 counties. Miami-Dade alone spent $25 million on more than 7,000 machines. County officials stand by the equipment, but admit that correcting a software glitch so close to the election makes for bad public relations.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,125005,00.html

Bush declines NAACP invitation
 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/....ap/index.html

Thursday, July 8, 2004 Posted: 11:40 AM EDT (1540 GMT)

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- President Bush declined an invitation to speak at the NAACP's annual convention, the group said.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People expects more than 8,000 people to attend the convention, which opens on Saturday.

Democratic challenger John Kerry accepted an invitation to speak next Thursday on the final day of the convention, the NAACP said.

Bush spoke at the 2000 NAACP convention in Baltimore when he was running for president.

NAACP spokesman John White said Wednesday that Bush has declined invitations in each year of his presidency -- becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover not to attend an NAACP convention.

The NAACP received a letter from the White House three weeks ago declining the invitation because of scheduling conflicts and thanking them for understanding.

The letter was signed by presidential scheduler Melissa Bennett.

White House spokesman Jim Morrell said Wednesday that the president has spoken about "equal opportunity and equal rights for all Americans" in many public places.

I know - I read that. Rove is not ABOUT to let W go anywhere where he cannot control the crowd's reactions. The NAACP would likely jeer at him :shrug: So, he sure as hell a'int going there for that video byte.

It doesn't matter to him?!?! Jesus christ! How can anyone support such politicians???

I know. I was floored. He's basically thumbing his nose at them. He really has no right to refuse, IMO. Just like he refused to answer questions about Lay today. He works for us, damnit. :mad:

Why does he need to speak at an NAACP convention?
After all, he knows half of their votes will be thrown out anyway. :mad: