Voting Rights of Florida Felons Scrutinized After 2000 Election

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/28/politics/campaign/28FELO.html?hp

Gov. Jeb Bush looked out over a roomful of felons appealing to him for something they had lost, and tried to reassure them.

"Don't be nervous; we're not mean people," the governor said as some fidgeted, prayed, hushed children or polished their handwritten statements. "You can just speak from the heart."

And they did: convicted robbers, drunken drivers, drug traffickers and others, all finished with their sentences, standing up one by one in a basement room at the State Capitol and asking Mr. Bush to restore their civil rights. Their files before him, Mr. Bush asked one man about his drinking, another about his temper, and so on.

Four mornings a year, this unusual scene unfolds in front of the governor and his cabinet, as they review the requests of some of the thousands of felons whom Florida has stripped of their rights to vote, serve on a jury and hold public office.

<snip>

In one lingering puzzle from 2000, an unknown number of legal voters were removed from Florida's rolls leading up to the presidential election, after a company working for the state mistakenly identified the voters as felons. At the same time, some counties mistakenly allowed actual felons to vote or turned away legitimate voters as suspected felons. A lawsuit filed in January 2001 sought to prevent similar errors, while another, filed just before the 2000 election, charged that the ban on felons voting discriminated against blacks and should be overturned.

[G_j]

1. so these people have appealed to have their voting rights

returned one by one? (I didn't read the article because I didn't log in) I wonder how many will not go through this process for one reason or another.

thanks for posting

[Zookeeper]

2. 2000 voter fraud in Florida is documented...

..in the first chapter of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, by Greg Palast, reporter for The Guardian in London. The story was covered in England and Europe, but the American media wouldn't touch it.

Thanks for the post; I had heard that N.Y. Times was finally being "brave" enough to mention it.

[MasonJar]

3. "mistakenly identified." Oh, sure! And Katherine Harris and Jeb

Bush are " not mean people." Oh, sure.