The 2000 Election: Where's the Disenfranchisement?

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Until Dems get a grip and let this issue die, people will continue to write articles like this. There are those on here that continue to believe that Gore and the Left were robbed in the 2000 election. This article has information that you should read, especially if you want to correct the error of your ways.

The 2000 Election: Where's the Disenfranchisement?

Senator John Kerry made a fantastic statement while speaking to a predominantly black audience in Indianapolis this past spring. While criticizing the Bush administration for calling "[the Kerry campaign] pessimists for speaking truth to power," Kerry stated: "Don't tell us disenfranchising a million African Americans and stealing their votes is the best we can do. This time, in 2004, not only will every vote count - we're going to make sure that every vote is counted."

This wasn't a new accusation by Kerry. Both he and Edwards made similar statements in the Florida Democratic Convention in December 2003 while campaigning for the Democratic nomination. There, Sen. John Kerry told the crowd, "We know that thousands of people were denied the right to vote." Sen. Edwards called the 2000 election "an incredible miscarriage of justice."

The following is an examination into the issue of disenfranchisement in the 2000 election focusing on the results from Florida.

Immediately following the contested 2000 presidential election, The U.S Commission on Civil Rights (hereinafter 'the Commission') conducted a six-month investigation into Florida's election. The result? The Commission found absolutely no evidence of systematic disenfranchisement of black voters. Furthermore, the investigation found no credible evidence that any Floridians were INTENTIONALLY denied the right to vote in the 2000 election.

The Commission did find, however, that many Florida voters, irrespective of race, spoiled their ballots by MISTAKE. But voter error is not the same thing as "disenfranchisement" and it certainly isn't evidence of any conspiracy or plot to steal or suppress black votes. The Commission also found violations of the Voting Rights Act in three counties. The infractions were that some poll workers had been hostile to Hispanic voters, bilingual assistance hadn't been provided to two Haitian voters and some Hispanic voters had been denied bilingual assistance. None of the offending counties was controlled by Republicans!

The lack of formal evidence, however, did not prevent the Commission's majority from issuing a report alleging "widespread disenfranchisement and denial of voting rights'. Which according the minority report did not "withstand even a cursory legal or scholarly scrutiny." (As quoted from the Commission's dissent written by Commissioner Abigail Thernstorm and Russell G. Redenbaugh; it should be noted that Commissioner Thernstorm at the time was the only registered Republican on the Commission).

The Commission's majority report referenced "countless allegations" involving "countless numbers" of Floridians who were denied the right to vote. This anecdotal evidence was drawn from the testimony of 26 "fact witnesses," residing in only eight of the Florida's 67 counties. Not emphasized in the majority report were the many witnesses who appeared before the Commission and testified to the absence of "systemic disenfranchisement" in Florida. For example, a representative of the League of Women Voters testified that there had been many administrative problems, but stated: "We don't have any evidence of race-based problems... we actually I guess don't have any evidence of partisan problems." And a witness from Miami-Dade County said she attributed the problems she encountered not to race but rather to inefficient poll workers: "I think [there are] a lot of people that are on jobs that really don't fit them or they are not fit to be in."

What you did not hear reported was that the Florida 2000 election was not a startling anomaly. National studies on the issue demonstrated ballot-spoilage rates across the country range between 2-3 percent of total ballots cast. Florida's rate in 2000 was 3 percent. In 1996 it was 2.5 percent.

This same study revealed that the number of ruined ballots in Chicago was 125,000, compared to 174,000 for the entire state of Florida. Several states experienced voting problems remarkably similar to those in Florida. But the closeness of the 2000 election in Florida placed it dead center in the ensuing electoral storm.

The Commission's report failed to note that elections in Florida are the responsibility of 67 county supervisors of election. And, in all but one of the 25 counties with the highest ballot spoilage rates, the election was supervised by a Democrat-the one exception being an official with no party affiliation. In fact, most of the authority over elections in Florida resides with officials in the state's 67 counties, and all of those with the highest rates of voter error were under Democratic control.

Of the 25 Florida counties with the highest rate of vote spoilage, in how many was the election supervised by a Republican? The answer is zero. All but one of the 25 had Democratic chief election officers, and the one exception was in the hands of an official with no party affiliation.

The majority report argues that much of the spoiled ballot problem was due to voting technology. But elected Democratic Party officials decided on the type of machinery used, including the optical scanning system in Gadsden County, the state's only majority-black county and the one with the highest spoilage rate.

There were certainly jammed phone lines, confusion and error, but none of it added up to widespread discrimination. Many of the difficulties, like those associated with the "butterfly ballot," were the product of good intentions gone awry or the presence of many first-time voters. The most compelling testimony came from disabled voters who faced a range of problems, including insufficient parking and inadequate provision for wheelchair access. This problem, of course, had no racial dimension at all.

Other notes of significance:

Florida's Attorney General testified that of the 2,600 complaints he received on the election, 2,300 were related to the confusing butterfly ballot, and only three complaints concerned alleged discrimination on the basis of race

An expert on voting rights and election law, Professor Darryl Paulson, testified that the problems in Florida were due to "a system failure without systemic discrimination." He also testified: "Across the United States, there were 2.5 million votes that were not counted. And whenever you have an election system that requires 105 million people to vote essentially in a span of 12 hours, you have created a system guaranteed to have voting problems."

CONVICTED FELONS: Why are they Voting?

Another allegation made of voter disenfranchisement is Florida's use of a 'convicted felons list' which has the names of all convicted felons, which under Florida law, are banned from voting. The compilation of the purge list was part of an anti-fraud measure enacted by the Florida legislature in the wake of a Miami mayoral election in which ineligible voters cast ballots The Commission's report asserts that the use of a convicted felons list "has a disparate impact on African Americans." "African Americans in Florida were more likely to find their names on the list than persons of other races."

Other points not in the Commission's report:

Whites were twice as likely as blacks to be placed on the list erroneously, not the other way around.

According to the Palm Beach Post, more than 6,500 ineligible felons voted, despite having their names on the 'convicted felons list. The biggest problem then was that the list ended up allowing ineligible voters to cast a ballot--not that it prevented voters from casting a ballot.

The sole piece of supporting evidence it cites a table with data on Miami-Dade County. Blacks were racially targeted, according to the report, because they account for almost two thirds of the names of the felon list but were less than one-seventh of Florida's population. It is not only meaningless but irrelevant. The vast majority of the people on the felons' list were properly listed. It was illegal for them to vote according to Florida law.

Research revealed that 239 for the 4,678 African Americans on the Miami-Dade felons' were eventually cleared to vote which represented 5.1 percent of the total number of blacks on the felons list. Of the 1,264 whites on the list, 125 proved to be there by mistake-which is 9.9 percent of the total. The error rate for whites was almost double that for blacks.

The Commission did not hear from a single witness who was prevented from voting as a result of being erroneously identified as a felon. One witness did testify that he was erroneously removed from the voter list because he had been mistaken for another individual on the felon list whose name and birth date were practically identical to his. However, he was able to convince precinct officials that there had been a clerical error, and he was allowed to vote.

The Commission completely ignored the bigger story: Approximately 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida on November 7, approximately 68 percent of whom were registered Democrats. The Miami Herald discovered that, "among the felons who cast presidential ballots, there were "62 robbers, 56 drug dealers, 45 killers, 16 rapists, and 7 kidnappers. At least two who voted were pictured on the state's on-line registry of sexual offenders."

Furthermore, the Post found no more than 108 "law-abiding" citizens of all races that "were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election." In fact during all the various lawsuits against Florida, only two people testified they weren't allowed to vote because their names were mistakenly on the list.

Of the 19,398 voters removed from the rolls, more than 14,600 matched a felon by name, birth date, race and gender.

The BALLOTS--An Analysis

According to the Commission's report, some 180,000 Florida voters in the 2000 election, 2.9 percent of the total, turned in ballots that did not indicate a valid choice for a presidential candidate and thus could not be counted in that race.

59% of these ballots were "overvotes". The chief problem in Florida was voters who cast a ballot for more than one candidate for the same office (59%), and the second most common problem was voters who registered no choice at all. (35%). Ballots were "rejected," in short, because it was impossible to determine which candidate-if any-voters meant to choose for president.

No statistical significant evidence was presented of political/race based ballot disqualification. 94% of Florida voters simply voted for too many presidential candidates or none at all.

Other examples:

* At least one police checkpoint was set up on election day near a polling station in a minority neighborhood, prompting voters to complain of police intimidation (Despite claims of rampant police intimidation and harassment, the only evidence of law-enforcement "misconduct" consisted of just two witnesses who described their perceptions regarding the actions of the Florida Highway Patrol. One of these witnesses testified that he thought it was "unusual" to see an empty patrol car parked outside a polling place. There was no evidence that sight of the vehicle somehow intimidated the witness or any other voters from casting ballots. The evidence, however, shows that the checkpoint in question was two miles from the polling place. Moreover, it was not even on the same road as the polling facility. During the checkpoint's approximately ninety minutes of operation, citations for faulty equipment were issued to 16 individuals, 12 of whom were white. There was no evidence that the!

erstwhile occupant of the vehicle harassed voters. There was no evidence that the empty vehicle was there for the purpose of somehow disenfranchising anyone assigned to vote at that location, pulled from National Review, March 09, 2004, By Peter Kirsanow ).

* College students and others submitted voter registration applications on a timely basis, but in many instances these applications were not processed in time for the applicants to receive voter registration cards;

* Many Jewish and elderly voters received defective and complicated ballots that may have produced "overvotes" and "undervotes;"

* Some polling places were closed early and some polling places were moved without notice (including one polling place which had to be moved due to a fire the night before);

* Many Haitian-American and Puerto Rican voters were not provided language assistance when required and requested;

* Persons with disabilities faced accessibility difficulties at certain polling places.

These problems don't rise to the level of invidious discrimination. There was one case in which a black woman alleged that she was turned away from a poll at closing time whereas a white man wasn't but this allegation could not be substantiated.

THE BOTTOM LINE: BUSH WINS RECOUNT after RECOUNT after RECOUNT

Both the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post "hardly bastions of Republicanism" as Harris has pointed out found that, if anything, county officials were too permissive in whom they let vote, and this largely was to the benefit of Al Gore.

In November 2001, a ballot-by-ballot analysis by a consortium of newspapers (the media consortium included The Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Tribune Company, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The St. Petersburg Times, The Palm Beach Post and CNN. The group hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago in January to examine the ballots) shows that Bush would have won the election clean if he'd let Florida go ahead with the partial recount that Gore wanted. This proved to a be a political miscalculation. Gore only wanted a recount of only four counties -- Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Volusia -- where he expected to pick up votes had Gore insisted on recounts throughout the entire state, the analysis shows him winning both Florida and the presidency. Gore's political calculation to put politics over principle (every vote should count) arguably cost him the election. Gore, you will recall, in his daily mantra sought to have "every vote count." But in court he asked only for a hand recount of undervotes in four counties that favored Democrats. Had he sought and won a statewide recount of all votes - assuming the canvassing boards agreed to the same standards used by the consortium of newspapers - he might have won the presidency by as many as 115 votes. Maybe.

If Gore had adopted a different legal strategy and if the courts had agreed to a manual recount of all invalidated ballots, perhaps he would have won. As The Los Angeles Times points out, his best chance lay in a manual recount of the state's nearly 114,000 overvotes. Although most were spoiled by marks for which there was no way to determine voter intent, he potentially had valid votes in counties that used optical scanning equipment.

The findings show that even if the U.S. Supreme Court had not stopped the county-by-county recounts of undervotes ordered by the bitterly divided Florida Supreme Court, Bush would have won. The high court ruled the lack of a statewide standard for hand-counting votes violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Even the venerable New York Times was forced to agree that Bush won. In its November 12, 2001 paper it Bush "would have won under the ground rules prescribed by the Democrats."

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[WarTim 3,457]

Sure, the election was stolen. After all, Bush WON, so, He must have cheated...right?