Were black voters blocked in 2000?

[HubZilla]

During all the Gore/Bush “stuff” that was going on in Florida, I recall hearing reports that blacks in Florida were being blocked from voting.

What ever came of this story? Did it really happen?

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/election_blackvote001203.html

Feds Check Fla. Voting

W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 4 — Justice Department representatives arrived in Florida today to look into allegations that some blacks there were deprived of their right to vote in the presidential election.

< snip >

Black Floridians turned out in record numbers to vote on Nov. 7, but many feel they were turned away because of race, and thousands of votes from black precincts also were thrown out.

< snip >

The Washington Post reported Sunday that a computer analysis found that predominately black and Democratic precincts were more likely to have a high number of presidential votes that were not counted.

In precincts with a black population of 70 percent or more, about 10 percent did not count, it said. The report said about 2.9 percent of Florida’s presidential ballots — roughly 180,000 — were not counted because no candidate was chosen, two candidates were picked or a ballot was not clearly marked. Traditionally, 2 percent of ballots cast nationwide do not record a presidential vote.

In Miami-Dade, Florida’s most populous county, roughly 3 percent of ballots were excluded from the presidential tally, the study said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/americas/1058767.stm

Thursday, 7 December, 2000, 01:58 GMT
Blacks sue in Florida

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson joined several black political leaders from Florida on Wednesday in filing a lawsuit against a county election official, saying that the election board has prevented blacks from voting in the presidential election.
The suit alleges:

that the design of the ballot was confusing

that several black voters were turned away because they did not have voter ID or photo ID cards

that several black voters were not registered although they believed that they had registered when they applied for driver’s licences.

Voting Rights

U.S. Civil Rights Commission Report on Florida Election “Too Gentle” on Officials, ACLU Says
June 6, 2001

MIAMI–The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida today responded to the release of the Executive Summary of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report on Florida’s 2000 election, saying that the preliminary summary may fail to hold state officials adequately accountable for the terror-ridden election last November.

< snip >

According to news reports, the commission found that blacks were more likely than whites to have their ballots rejected and acknowledged that “injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency” plagued the election overall. However, it found no “conclusive evidence” that state officials intentionally disenfranchised thousands of blacks Hispanic and Haitian voters across the state.

But the ACLU said the state’s purging process was part of an orchestrated project by state leaders to suppress opposition votes. For example, Elections Supervisor for Hillsborough County Pam Iorio has stated that while blacks represent about 15 percent of county wide voters, they made up approximately 54 percent of the voters on the purge list during last November’s election.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/04/politics/main527998.shtml

2000 Election Resonates In Fla. Race

MIAMI, Nov. 4, 2002

Blacks, who traditionally vote Democratic and comprise 11 percent of the state’s voters, are key, analysts say.

In the 2000 presidential race, Al Gore trailed the governor’s brother in Florida early in the year, but he was helped by a massive voter registration drive by black leaders. About 610,000 black Floridians voted, nearly 50 percent more than in 1996, and Gore got about 90 percent of those votes. The close election was tied up in the courts for 36 days.

In that election, however, many blacks said a high percentage of their ballots were systematically discarded. In the September primary, several precincts in black neighborhoods in South Florida opened late because of problems with voting machines.

Page O’ Links.
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/florida.html

[december]

DDG, I’m not sure you responded to the OP’s question. There were two types of allegations about Florida 2000: [ol][]More black votes were thrown out.[]Black voters were discouraged from voting by intimidation, etc.[/ol]I thought HubZilla was asking about #2. As I recall, #2 was investigated, but no evidence surfaced.

[Squink]

no evidence surfaced.

Does the word of those claiming to have been intimidated count as evidence ?

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People says it has gathered 486 complaints and taken more than 300 pages of sworn testimony from people who say they were blocked from voting in Florida. That organization plans to sue the state and several counties, alleging voter intimidation and other violations of voting rights.

http://archive.nandotimes.com/election2000/story/0,3977,500287674-500454749-502988634-0-nandotimes,00.html

[december]

squink supplied this quote:

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People says it has gathered 486 complaints and taken more than 300 pages of sworn testimony from people who say they were blocked from voting in Florida. That organization plans to sue the state and several counties, alleging voter intimidation and other violations of voting rights.

That quote came from an article dated December 7, 2000 – two years after the NAACP claimed it planned to sue the state and serveral counties. So, where are the suits? As I recall, these complaints simply didn’t stand up.

[UncleBill]

Let’s say I find an area where 85% of the population has never voted before, and I go around, getting as many people as I can to register to vote for the very first time, and I only have a few days to get this done. This is Group A.

Let’s say there is another area where 50% of the population has been registered and voting regularly now for an average of 15 years. We’ll call them Group B.

How many first-time Voter Registration errors do you predict from Group A? More than Group B?

How many of those properly Registered Voters from Group A do you think would not be familiar with the identification requirements at the Polling Place, and not have what they need? More than Group B?

How many Group A voters would make rookie mistakes on a ballot versus the more experienced Group B?

At the precincts, would the Polling Place for Group A be ready to handle a 300% increase in voter turnout (that would be 45% overall turnout), versus the Polling Place for Group B, for whom 45% would be a slow day?

Yes, I fully believe that there was a massive Get Out the Vote effort in communities that had historically low turnout. I believe many of these areas were Black communities in that case. I believe these communities had a much higher incidence rate of error all through the process.

I fully believe that these facts alledged in the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s lawsuit are correct. (Italics are mine.)

that the design of the ballot was confusing (this is an opinion, not a fact)
that several black voters were turned away because they did not have voter ID or photo ID cards
that several black voters were not registered although they believed that they had registered when they applied for driver’s licences*(sic)*

And I fully believe this was caused directly by a scenario strikingly similar to the one I expressed above. Not a sytematic racial issue.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

December, I’m not sure I was trying to respond to his question, because as with so many issues surrounding the 2000 election, I don’t think there is an answer to his question. I was suggesting some reading so he could make up his own mind.

I looked for the results of the lawsuits, too, and found this.

FindLaw Legal Blogs - FindLaw

Egad. And then I scrolled way, way down to the bottom–there are “More Lawsuits”…

FindLaw Legal Blogs - FindLaw

…and “More Lawsuits”…

FindLaw Legal Blogs - FindLaw

And I don’t have any idea where to start to find out how any of those are doing (presumably they’re all grinding their way slowly but surely through the legal system), so I gave up.

[Squink]

December stated: So, where are the suits? As I recall, these complaints simply didn’t stand up.

You claimed absence of evidence, not absence of successful suits.

[JDM]

The biggest Florida crime is the “felon” scrub list which, disgustingly, is still in effect. It will not be gotten rid of until next January.

Here is a good description, although there is more to the story than Palast reported in the linked article. He has written a follow-up, but it is on Salon premium.

Here is another story.

What happened, briefly, is that Florida hired a company, ChoicePoint (specifically DBT Online, which later became part of ChoicePoint) to produce a list of names of felons from throughout the US. Florida is one of 13 states which does not restore voting rights to felons after they have served their sentence. The ChoicePoint list consisted of names, crimes, dates of crimes, race, etc. The Florida officials (Katherine Harris and her cohort, as well as Jeb himself) used the list to remove people from the voter rolls, with little effort to check the validity of the list, or whether or not the person being removed was in fact the person on the list. In one case,

Madison County’s elections supervisor, Linda Howell, had a peculiarly personal reason for distrusting the central voter file: She had received a letter saying that since she had committed a felony, she would not be allowed to vote.
Howell, who said she has never committed a felony, said the letter she received in March shook her faith in the process. “It really is a mess,” she said.

In other cases, the dates of the “crimes” were in the future- one “felony” happened in 2007. Voters with the same name (and even close names, like as that “criminal” were still purged from the list.
From another Palast article:

Thomas Alvin Cooper (2), twenty-eight, was flagged because of a crime for which he will be convicted in the year 2007. According to Florida’s elections division, this intrepid time-traveler will cover his tracks by moving to Ohio, adding a middle name, and changing his race. Harper’s found 325 names on the list with conviction dates in the future, a fact that did not escape Department of Elections workers, who, in June 2000 emails headed, “Future Conviction Dates," termed the discovery, “bad news.” Rather than release this whacky data to skeptical counties, Janet Mudrow, state liaison to DBT, suggested that “blanks would be preferable in these cases.” (Harper’s counted 4,917 blank conviction dates.) **The one county that checked each of the 694 names on its local list could verify only 34 as actual felony convicts. **Some counties defied Harris’ directives; Madison County’s elections supervisor Linda Howell refused the purge list after she found her own name on it.

The important thing is that both the list and the Florida registration rolls list race. That meant that if there was a name on the list, Bob Smith, for instance, and he was listed as black, then when the voter registration rolls showed 25 Bob Smiths, they could easily leave on the white Bobs, and purge the black Bobs. Since it is a sad fact that felons are disportionatly black, that meant that there were a lot more black voters to be disenfranchised.

Here, for december, is the result of one set of suits.

The “liberal press” has kept this story under wraps. It is a crime.
JDM

[monstro]

Yes, I fully believe that there was a massive Get Out the Vote effort in communities that had historically low turnout. I believe many of these areas were Black communities in that case. I believe these communities had a much higher incidence rate of error all through the process.

This would be nice to believe, but the real reason that blacks were disenfranchised is much more—how should I put it?–FUCKED UP.

From the not-so-objective Guardian:

***… for black Floridians, the 2000 elections were about disenfranchisement, and their problems are by no means over. Thousands of voters turned up at the polls two years ago and found their names had been removed from the electoral roll.

It turned out that the Florida establishment, run by Governor Jeb Bush, George Bush’s younger brother, had hired a private company to draw up a list of all Floridians with a criminal record, so they could be removed from the voting lists (under Florida law, past convictions bar you from voting for life).

But the company, DBT, was instructed to overestimate and to “scrub” from the lists anyone with a similar name, date of birth and race to people with past felony convictions. As blacks account for nearly half of all such convictions, but only 11% of the Florida electorate, that meant that a disproportionate number of blacks with similar names and ages to felons were “scrubbed”.

“Our votes were stolen. It’s like coming to my house and taking the groceries from my wife and children,” Mr White said. ***

From a wee-bit-more objective Salon article:

***Early in the year, the company, ChoicePoint, gave Florida officials a list with the names of 8,000 ex-felons to “scrub” from their list of voters. But it turns out none on the list were guilty of felonies, only misdemeanors. The company acknowledged the error, and blamed it on the original source of the list – the state of Texas. ***

It’s a fact that Jeb Bush contracted with a company to compile a list of “unwanted” voters.

It’s also a fact that most of the people on that list were incorrectly placed there.

It’s a fact that a disproportionate number of people on that list was black, and that a disproportionate number of these people was also illegally barred from voting.

IMHO, this was a fucked-up situation, not only because people–particularly a group of people who have struggled HARD to be able to vote–were denied their rights as citizens, but because the whole election was riddled with controversy in the first place. The confusion over the ballots is one issue; the BARRING of people who shouldn’t be barred from voting is another.

This issue deserves a whole more attention and less denial of wrongdoing and blaming of the victims.

[UncleBill]

JDM and monstro, nice simulpost with good info. This is another reason entirely, and addresses the OP.

My post about Jesse’s lawsuit points is a different matter altogether. Showing up without ID or a Voter Registration Card, and not being registered in the FIRST place is what I was addressing. Felon issues ARE fucked up here.

[JDM]

There is more to this- from Buzzflash: an interview with Greg Palast-

So here’s the new tricks from these old dogs: **The company that came up with this rotten little “purge” list has, under threat of suit from the NAACP, confessed that the total purge targeted 94,000 voters – and that, at outside tops, only 3,000 may be illegal voters. **
This weekend, on www.Salon.com, I’m breaking the ill news that, while the state admits that it kept these legal voters away from the polls, they will not put them back on the registries – get this – until AFTER the election on Tuesday.

First Bro’ Jeb is in the fight of his life – a statistical dead heat with Democrat Bill McBride … so the Republicans, with their hands on the elections machinery, seem to be saying, “What’s the use of stealing an election in 2000 if we have to give it back two years later?”

If Jeb wins by less than 100,000, it will be theft, pure and simple.

So 91,000 people, mostly black, were deprived of their right to vote by the Jeb Bush administration. He has a lot of “devious plans.”

And as far as the new “high-tech” voting machines go:

The “touch” screens are made by ES&S, chosen by Katherine Harris, congressional candidate. The lobbyist for that company is Sandy Mortham, founder of Women for Jeb – and Harris’ predecessor as Secretary of State. It was Mortham that began the hunt for black voters in 1998.

These Mortha-matic machines – surprise, surprise --failed to work in Black precincts. And there was no paper ballot back-up.

It’s not planned “conspiracy” – it’s what I call “passive vote fraud.” You KNOW a screw up will occur that will wipe out your opponents votes … and you simply don’t do anything to prevent it. I used to be a government investigator of racketeering and fraud. Passive fraud is no more legal than active fraud. But then, who’s going to act on this? John Ashcroft?

I ask again why the “liberal media” has ignored this, and ignored the fact that the touch screen machines in Florida have no accountability.

JDM

Note to mods- I pasted a lot of material from this interview, but Buzzflash says that that’s ok, as long as I say: “This interview first appeared at Buzzflash.com.”

[JDM]

I did find this amusing but scary transcript on http://scoobiedavis.blogspot.com/ (Oct. 28 posting). Scoobie had called in to Sean Hannity and actually gotten to talk to him:

SCOOBIE:
Jeb Bush, who was responsible for purging tens of thousands of minority voters from the polls back in 2000 through this felony—

HANNITY: Can I ask you—what is it about all these liberals; they’re so filled with vitriol. They so filled with animosity. Sir, no such thing happened. It’s an absolute lie and it’s even a bigger disgrace that you repeat the lie.

SCOOBIE: BBC journalist Greg Palast—

HANNITY: BBC, now we’re quoting the Brits, okay.

SCOOBIE: He did a study and he found how Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush used the felony voter purge to get tens of thousands of eligible voters off the voter rolls and these people didn’t have access to any kind of ballot once they were at the polls—

[HANNITY DISCONNECTS SCOOBIE]

HANNITY: First of all, that’s untrue. It’s never been proven. It’s never even been alleged except by the real extreme left like yourself. But what is true and what was chronicled is the systematic disenfranchisement of brave men and women who were out there serving their country—and that’s what Al Gore did.

Which shows how folks like Hannity deal with this story: lie about it, then lie about Al Gore.
JDM

[puddleglum]

Here is a link to a report by two members of the US civil rights commision about the florida vote situation.
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document081001b.html
It contains alot of statistics and some wrangling with other members of the commission but its findings are that the relatively high spoilage of ballots in certain areas were due to first time voters and incompetent election supervisors.

[JDM]

*Originally posted by puddleglum *
**Here is a link to a report by two members of the US civil rights commision about the florida vote situation.
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document081001b.html
It contains alot of statistics and some wrangling with other members of the commission but its findings are that the relatively high spoilage of ballots in certain areas were due to first time voters and incompetent election supervisors. **

Well, Greg Palast mentions that too, at least as regards one county:

In my book, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” I reported that one in eight votes in Gadsden, Florida’s “Blackest” county, were “spoiled” and never counted. The optical readers knocked out every paper ballot with a stray mark. Over 2000 ballots voided … zero doubt that Gadsden alone accounted for Gore’s loss.

Here’s the ugly part. In next-door “white” Tallahassee, the same ballots and same counting machines returned “spoiled” ballots to voters so they could vote again. Almost no white votes were lost.

Now the good part. A black woman defeated the white incumbent elections supervisor in Gadsden. She changed the machines … and total spoiled votes went from over 2,000 to just 16 in the entire county!

JDM

[ElvisL1ves]

Did the stories about extensive “random” traffic checkpoints by police near polling places in black areas of Jacksonville pan out? Anybody know?

[zigaretten]

*Originally posted by JDM *
**
Now the good part. A black woman defeated the white incumbent elections supervisor in Gadsden. She changed the machines … and total spoiled votes went from over 2,000 to just 16 in the entire county!
JDM **

There is something very wrong here. Mr Palast says that there were 2000 spoiled ballots in 2000. OK, I’ll take him at his word. But then he states that in the next election there were only 16 spoiled ballots.

What next election?

He isn’t talking about our latest election because his quote comes from Nov. 4. So he must be talking about some off year election. But what were the respective voter turnouts? What were the number of spoiled ballots as a percentage of total votes cast? This guy isn’t really telling me anything.

[ElwoodCuse]

The whole controversy about people wrongly being identified as felons in the Florida election is explained pretty well in Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men.

Of course, even as a centrist-lefty myself, I tend to take most of what Moore says with a grain of salt.