Floridians... any updates on fixing the voter rolls?

[salin]

Remember the state had to correct the problems found (created ala Harris) with the "cleaned up" voter rolls - an effort that disenfranchised thousands of FLorida voters (predominantly African American).... they somehow got a slide in 2002 based on that all the fixes couldn't certainly be corrected in time for those elections... but with assurances that all problems would be resolved by 2004.

So have there been any stories about this at all in any of the Florida papers?

This should be a huge story - and the public should be driving the push.

There was an embarassing silence in 2000 about the significance of what happened - the illegal disenfranchisement of eligible African American voters... a scant 34 years after voting rights were first passed and then later enforced in the south. I believe that those disenfranchised - have been unable to vote in elections for more than two years. Will this go on through the next election? That would be frightening in terms of the gains made through the sixties and seventies in terms of voting rights.

Is there any news in Florida? Is there anything we should be doing (writing regular letters in all of the papers - to push public awareness up? But to do that we need refreshers on what happened, what the civil rights commission ruled (which I believe gave an extension to the state for correcting the problem that did not require things to be fixed in 2002))

[Name removed]

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[tom_paine]

2. F*cking crazy talk. I hope you're joking.

However you are right that, with Stalinst-Wet-Dream Touchscreen "Voting", Florida, I'm afraid, may well already be lost.

Goddmanit, DON'T GIVE UP THOUGH! You want to do something about it? E-mail Bev Harris at www.blackboxvoting.org and sign up for her Clean Voting Squad.

Instead of bitching about it and making crazy :silly: threats that are going to earn you a visit from SS and OHS, maybe you might want to bring your video camera out on "Election" Day and catch one of those fuckers IN THE ACT or pehaps help people who are being disenfrachised to have their vote counted.

It doesn't take anything. Just some of your time and a video camera.

What're you waiting for? The SS to come visit you? Get off your ass and DO SOMETHING BESIDES make crazy, foolish threats!

We need exactly 2,004 Clean-Up Crew members to volunteer as poll workers, election judges, and poll watchers, with a checklist of problems to hunt for and a hotline to litigators and the media. E-mail with "Volunteering!" in the subject line to join the Clean-Up Crew.

CONTACT INFO

[e-mail]

[salin]

3. A question of whether we turn back the clock on voter rights

and there is no comment?

[salin]

4. refresher: Visualize a Fair Election in 2004

Visualize a Fair Election in 2004

by Greg Palast and Ina Howard

The techniques that brought us Florida 2000 are catching on across the U.S. Add unverifiable electronic voting, and we could see the most questionable election yet. How do we reclaim our vote?

MAY 4. BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA. At the dais, Martin Luther King spoke with the marchers who had crossed the bridge into Birmingham, the women and men who had faced down Bull Connor’s police dogs and fire hoses:
“We ask a simple question. Do African Americans have the right to vote in the United States of America?”

I (Greg) had to blink. Speaking was Martin Luther King the Third, son of the late Nobel Laureate—and the year was 2003. The elderly foot soldiers of the legendary civil rights march of 1963 had gathered to commemorate their peaceful invasion of the city 40 years earlier.

They were invited by Birmingham’s new mayor and police chief, both African Americans. Counterpoint to the toasts to such stunning progress, King called attention to a cloud on the political horizon, no bigger than a man’s hand, threatening to grow into a storm—the racial fix of the presidential election of 2000 in the state of Florida.

The civil rights activists knew in detail what most Americans today have yet to learn: In the five months leading to the 2000 presidential election, political appointees working for Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the removal of 57,700 voters from Florida’s vote registries. The official reason? Those they targeted were felons, ex-cons, who had illegally registered to vote. The truth? Virtually every voter they “scrubbed” from the voter rolls is innocent of any crime—except that many are guilty of the crime of Voting While Black. There’s no guessing about this—Florida voter registrations include each citizen’s race.

much more: http://www.yesmagazine.org/27government/palast.htm

[salin]

5. SP Times - December 2003: No telling if voter rolls are ready for 2004

No telling if voter rolls are ready for 2004

In 2000, some people were mistakenly labeled felons and denied voting rights. Despite three years of reform efforts, inconsistencies and obstacles remain.
By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
Published December 21, 2003

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


David Murry had regularly voted for 20 years, so the mechanic didn't think twice when he showed up at his Seminole precinct in November 2000 to vote for president.

But poll workers wouldn't let him cast a ballot.

Murry was a felon, they said, and they brushed aside his protests that their records were wrong. The apologetic letter he later received from the Pinellas County elections office acknowledging the mistake offered little solace.

"This was a presidential election. It was very important," Murry recalled last week. "I never did anything to deserve it, but they denied me my constitutional right to vote."


---snip

The counties have been told to deal with inconsistencies in the list as best they can. Some are returning to the rolls any voters who the county can't prove are felons. But others are making voters prove they aren't felons in order to vote next year.

Despite a legal settlement to make it easier for felons to regain their voting rights, the backlog of former prisoners who have applied to restore their rights has grown to nearly 39,000. That's a six-fold increase since 2001, yet the state earlier this year cut the number of Parole Commission staffers who handle applications.

In 2004, could Florida voters again be wrongfully denied their voting rights?

more: http://www.sptimes.com/2003/12/21/news_pf/State/No_telling_if_voter_r.shtml