Florida's voter purge

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Originally posted by Paul Ranson:
Why weren't the 54000 wrongly erased from the Florida electoral roll screaming and shouting about it prior to the election? It's not like this was some minor janitorial or gubernatorial occasion.

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They weren't notified. The first they heard was when they showed up to vote and were told they couldn't. But for the full insanity, you have to read the Palast story. Follow the link posted earlier. It's enlightening and terrifying.

Davie

GWB seeking relection to the post of toilet cleaner. That's a nice picture.
I wouldn't even mind if anything dodgy went on to secure him the post.

In Florida (or the US in general) do you not get some kind of notification that there's an election and where to go to vote?

Strikes me that this would have been good legal grounds to nullify the election. OTOH that might have meant Al Gore being elected, and he would have been really useless.

Paul

That was Palast's point -- the purging didn't really come to light until later and in the meantime everyone was obsessing about hanging chads and ignoring an apaprently much more important issue.

AFAICT most Americans are still unaware of the whole thing.

Matthew

Palast seems very full of himself.

And very superficial. Exactly what is intrinsically wrong with 'computerized' voter lists? Surely a central state list allows voters to confirm their registration details for themselves?

There's a whiff of the Moore about him, and his going along with the recent publicity stunt is inexcusable for a serious journalist. I wonder where the truth is?

Paul

Paul is just FUDing Palast I think.

Matthew

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Do you have any evidence to contradict what Palast is saying?

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Saying about what?

The Florida voter purge was clearly illegal and inappropriate. But you only have to read the quote on the first page of this thread to see the spin in action.

Paul

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Nothing is wrong with them if they are maintain and used independently of the political parties with appropriate safeguards in place.

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But in the US the process depends on directly elected and accountable officials. Are you challenging that tradition? Should these officials be appointed by the State Governor?

There's clearly something broken with the US electoral process, but since no-one here seems to know what the process is when it comes to actually being a voter it's hard to discuss it. I don't understand how 54000 (I'm estimating from one of the figures given by Palast less the approximate number of actual felons) people could be removed from an electoral roll and not be aware until election day.

The people in England who decide where consituency boundaries should lie can have huge political side-effects. Are they 'independent of the political parties'? You judge here.

Paul

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Would you like to put a positive spin on the subject?

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It doesn't need any spin at all.

Greg Palast seems primarily concerned with 'Greg Palast, SuperReporter'.

I found this interesting, and some of the other material gathered on this web site. Including some by said Greg Palast...

Paul

quote:

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Originally posted by Paul Ranson:
I don't understand how 54000 (I'm estimating from one of the figures given by Palast less the approximate number of actual felons) people could be removed from an electoral roll and not be aware until election day.
Paul

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Paul:

As I said before, there is no notification procedure. Nor was there any big announcement along the lines of: "We're illegally removing some felons, many possible felons and thousands of people we just don't like in case they vote for Al Gore."

Anyway, the problem isn't the voters' awareness - it's the fact that this sort of corruption could happen at all. And that so few people in the States seem to know or care.

Incidentally, I doubt if Gore would have been "useless". He actually read his daily briefings, understood policy, and knew that a priority as president would have been the threat from Al-Qaeda (Bush's people were told the same thing, but did nothing - and GWB doesn't bother reading such mundane reports).

Davie

I did some digging and it turns out the NAACP and the ACLU did sue Katherine Harris after the 2000 election and there was a settlement.

In part this settlemnt agreed:

"Greater accuracy in the maintenance of voter registration rolls to ensure that eligible voters are not erroneously removed from the voter lists in future elections and restoration of voters who were wrongly removed prior to the 2000 elections"

"State monitoring and coordination to ensure that state agencies provide required voter registration opportunities and to ensure that the counties carry out state list maintenance programs in a uniform and non-discriminatory manner"

See http://archive.aclu.org/news/2002/n090302a.html

Presumably this settlement was followed up with announcements of appropriate reforms and procedural changes from the Florida state govenrment.

Matthew

You seem intimate with Bush's habits...

In the UK we get an annual request to confirm electoral roll details. And prior to an election you get sent a card telling you when and where to vote. They like you to take the card to the polling station but it's not required. Generally you don't have to show photo or any other ID. Anyway if I were purged from the roll I'd know.

It's clear from reading around that the quality of the electoral rolls in most of the US is very poor, and that election fraud is rather common. And not restricted to Republicans.

Paul

So presumably the 40,000 names Jeb just ordered off the voter rolls are fully vetted?

Dan

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Have you any links to evidence of Democrat led electoral fraud?

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I posted one to an enumeration of a litany of bipartisan US electoral fraud up thread. here

This one's relevant. What one party is removing from the rolls the other is doing its damnedest to replace...

'Vote early and vote often' allegedly coined by a Democrat.

Paul

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Originally posted by Paul Ranson:
You seem intimate with Bush's habits...

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GWB makes no secret of his indifference to details. He proudly says he doesn't read newspapers, magazines or books. And he has let it be known that he wants very brief memos summarising what's in his daily briefings.

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In the UK we get an annual request to confirm electoral roll details ... Anyway if I were purged from the roll I'd know.

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Yes, I'm familiar with how this works in the UK. But let's assume there was some similar hanky panky going on in your constituency. If you didn't see the annual request to update, or didn't receive your card before election day, would that automatically alert you to the fact that you'd been purged from the rolls?

Maybe you take more notice of these things, but I wouldn't have known anything was up until I got to the polling station.

Now imagine being a black voter in Palm Beach County, showing up in good faith, and without having a clue that there was a problem, to be told in public that you can't vote because you're a felon. A little humiliating, n'est-ce pas?

Davie

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If you didn't see the annual request to update, or didn't receive your card before election day, would that automatically alert you to the fact that you'd been purged from the rolls?

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Yes.

The electoral rolls and election procedures in the US seem rather creaky. And any moves to reform stir up partisan political resistance. Improving voter ID might exclude illegal immigrants for example. Scraping off felons allows the casual deletion of an ethnic group.

But what's really striking is the shouting about racism in a particular minor interference with the electoral process but acceptance of the fact that 1/3 of black men in Florida are convicted felons.

The presidential election this year is going to be interesting. I think Kerry is rather unappealing, he's definitely no Clinton, and absolutely not a JFK (another President who indubitably stole his election, probably to all our benefit) and Bush isn't exactly stellar. Not a choice I'd like to make.

Paul

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Originally posted by Paul Ranson:
The electoral rolls and election procedures in the US seem rather creaky.

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No argument here.

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But what's really striking is the shouting about racism in a particular minor interference with the electoral process but acceptance of the fact that 1/3 of black men in Florida are convicted felons.

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Minor? The purge arguably handed GWB the presidency (with a little help from the Supreme Court).

I have no idea if the figures about black men are correct. However, where do felons typically come from? In many societies, the poor and desperate provide a disproportionate number of athletes, entertainers and criminals - for similar reasons. And while the African-American community is, in many ways, vibrant, creative, proud and strong, it has also been on the wrong end of systemic racism for centuries. That's one of the best ways of breeding crime that we've come up with yet.

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I think Kerry is rather unappealing, he's definitely no Clinton, and absolutely not a JFK

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Again, no argument here. But at least he's no GWB either.

It will be interesting to see how the latest Al-Qaeda threat plays out. Do we actually trust anything Ashcroft says? If there is an attack, what will be the political consequences? What about if the government/FBI/CIA claim to foil an attack?

Davie

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Originally posted by Paul Ranson:
But what's really striking is the shouting about racism in a particular minor interference with the electoral process but acceptance of the fact that 1/3 of black men in Florida are convicted felons.

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Interesting. Also lacking in sophistication and historical knowledge. Anyway, do tell who accepts the high percentage of black convicted felons.

"Have you any links to evidence of Democrat led electoral fraud?"

Actually Alex, Southern Democratic legislators had historically succeeded in finding ways to exclude Blacks from voting in what you might call institutionalized voter fraud. Although the 15th Amendment of 1870 made it impossible for them to prohibit blacks from voting outright, various Democrat-controlled southern states passed laws requiring voters to be literate, instituting poll taxes, or automatically registering voters who had family members voting before the U.S. Civil War (all of these things increased the proportion of white voters, obviously). Before Lyndon Johnson's Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed these kinds of tactics, black southern voting rates had fallen to pathetic levels -- 7% of all black adults in the case of Mississippi.

Ironically, southern Democrats today now tend to oppose measures that would minimize voter fraud precisely because they are afraid that doing so would decrease the proportion of black voters.* So for example, in Alabama last year there was a huge fight over whether I.D.s should be required at voting stations. Prior to last year, I.D.s were not required -- rather perversely, since it made fraud easy and widespread. Many Alabama state Democratic legislators vigorously opposed the change, fearing it would weaken their base of black voters. I realize this is astonishing for a variety of reasons, but it's true.

Eric

*I should mention that for various reasons the southern black vote shifted from pro-Republican in the post-Civil War south (Lincoln's party was Republican), to largely pro-Democrat in the post-WWII south.

Excellent post, Eric.

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Anyway, do tell who accepts the high percentage of black convicted felons.

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People like Greg Palast. Perhaps even the ACLU. People who characterise the purge as racist. Perhaps because it cannot be blamed on Republicans?

One thing that's clear is that the US isn't going to get a great President in November, and the UK isn't going to be getting a great Prime Minister next year. This is rather a shame as we sit and watch the world fall to bits.

Paul

Having read a few of the Palast bits I agree that he comes off as Moore-esque.

The purge on its own isn't racist (when not including convenient additions and strictly following state law). It's the lifetime disenfranchisement law that is racist. If you or someone else can explain how it isn't, I'll listen.

Also, if you could explain how saying the purge and/or disenfranchisement laws are racist is accepting large percentages of black felons by default, enlighten us. One can be solved with the swipe of a pen, the other by turning the society upside down over the course of generations.

On November I tend to agree, but "great" presidents are a rare breed.

Concern about 'lifetime disenfranchisement' being racist is like fiddling while Rome burns. If you return the vote to convicted felons then you don't touch the racism inherent in the judicial system, or the pressure that generates black criminals. I think you actually reinforce it.

Paul

I'm not convinced, but to each his own.