London Observer: Florida exposed - Darkness at noon in the Sunshine State

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Sun, 31 Oct 2004 02:59:12 -0500

palast

 

 

London Observer: Florida exposed - Darkness at noon in the

Sunshine State

 

 

 

The Observer, London

Sunday, October 31, 2004

 

Voters claim abuse of electoral rolls

Students say they were conned into registering twice

Greg Palast in New York

Sunday October 31, 2004

 

An Observer investigation in the United States has uncovered widespread

allegations of electoral abuse, many of them going uninvestigated

despite complaints of what would appear to be criminal attempts to

manipulate voter lists.

 

The allegations, which come just two days before Americans go to the

polls in one of the most tightly contested elections in a generation,

threaten to plunge Tuesday's count into a legal minefield and overshadow

even the elections of 2000.

 

The claims come as both Republicans and Democrats put in place up to

2,000 lawyers across the country to challenge attempts to manipulate the

vote in swing states.

 

Although allegations of misconduct have been levelled at both parties

recently, the majority of complaints that have been identified in The

Observer' s investigation involved claims against local Republicans.

 

The claims, made by the BBC's Newsnight, follow alleged attempts by

Republicans to illegally suppress the votes in key states. Republican

spokesmen deny these allegations.

 

[Watch the BBC broadcast at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm ]

 

One of the more serious claims is that no action has been taken in a

complex fraud, where more than 4,000 Florida students were allegedly

conned into signing a form which could lead them to be doubly registered

and void their votes. The Florida Law Enforcement Department has told the

complainants that it is too busy to investigate.

 

In Colorado too, Democrats are complaining about an attempt to remove

up to 6,000 convicted felons from the electoral roll, at the behest of

the state's Republican secretary of state, Donetta Davidson, despite a

US federal law that prohibits eliminating a voter's rights within 90

days of an election to give time for the voter to protest.

 

The attempt to purge the list of alleged felons would appear to be a

re-run of the attempt by Florida Governor Jeb Bush's secretary of state

to remove 93,000 citizens from voter rolls as felon convicts are not

allowed to vote.

 

Investigations appear to have established that only 3 per cent of the

largely African-American list were illegal voters.

 

That action led to a vote in July by the US Civil Rights Commission to

open a criminal and civil investigation of the Jeb Bush

administration's purge of voters, including indications of concealing

evidence

subpoenaed by the commission's investigators. The new claims follow the

Newsnight revelation last week of confidential documents from inside

Republican headquarters in Florida and Washington which the programme

claimed

suggested a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to stop thousands

of African-Americans from voting on election day.

 

The programme produced two leaked emails, prepared for the executive

director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national

research director in Washington DC, containing a 15-page list. The list

contains 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and

traditionally Democratic areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

 

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told

Newsnight: 'The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing

is to

challenge voters on election day.'

 

Ion Sancho, not affiliated with any party, noted that Florida law

allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters

from obtaining a ballot. They may then only vote 'provisionally' after

signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.

 

Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho,

not one challenge has been made to a voter 'in the 16 years I've been

supervisor of elections. Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow

down the voting process and cause chaos on election day and discourage

voters from voting.'

 

Sancho calls it intimidation. And it may be illegal. In Washington,

well-known civil rights attorney Ralph Neas noted that US federal law

prohibits the targeting voters, even if there is a basis for the

challenge,

if race is a factor in targeting the voters.

 

The list of Jacksonville voters covers an area with a majority of black

residents.

 

When asked by Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican

spokespeople claimed that the list merely records returned mail from

either

fundraising solicitations or newly registered voters to verify

addresses for purposes of campaign literature.

 

Republican state campaign spokeswoman, Mindy Tucker Fletcher, stated

the list was not put together 'in order to create' a challenge list, but

refused to say it would not be used in that manner.

 

The Observer has found that many people are soldiers sent overseas.

Republicans acknowledge the list was created by compiling lists of voters

whose addresses have changed whose only use, say critics, would be to

challenge voters on election day on the basis that their voting address

is not valid. But this 'caging' method captures those whose addresses

have changed because they have been sent to Iraq or other places. The

list includes homeless shelter residents, casting doubt on suggestions

the list was created from fundraising solicitations for the Bush-Cheney

campaign.

 

 

-------------

View Greg Palast's BBC Television film, " Bush Family Fortunes, "

available this week on DVD in an updated edition from The Disinformation

Company at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

 

To receive Greg?s investigative reports

http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1340190,00.html

 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Contact: media

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