Posted on 05/21/2002 2:52:19 PM PDT by Mean Spirited
The government will file three lawsuits against Florida counties alleging voting rights violations resulting from the bitterly disputed 2000 presidential election, a Justice Department official said Tuesday.
TWO OTHER LAWSUITS also will be filed, in Missouri and Tennessee, by the department’s civil rights division, Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd told the Senate Judiciary Committee. The lawsuits will allege disparate treatment of minority voters, improper purging of voter rolls, “motor voter” registration violations and failure to provide access to disabled voters, Boyd said. Other charges, he said, include failing to allow voters with limited proficiency in English to have assistance at the polls and failing to provide bilingual assistance.
I remember this...the Crescent News Network was one of them....who knows how many voters they affected by calling the results before the results were even completely in. They "apologized" for it, which is laughable....do whatever you want, you can always "apologize" for it after the damage is done.
No cleanout of the Klintoon shills in the Injustice Department. And not one single prosecution of the myriad of crimes committed under the Klintoon regime. This news sure makes me glad we've got Repocrats, uh, Demopublicans, uh... in power.
Utterly disgusting.
C'mon, when an investigation begins with a 'rat premise, it's going to turn out with a 'rat end.
Care to bet a donation to FR that significant 'rats will be indicted? Freepmail me. Warning: I only take sucker bets - you'll lose.
The 'rats will sail free, and mud will be thrown on those who dared try to STOP some of the 'rat corruption.
I sure am glad the Injustice Department is back in full swing. Heck, you'd think Reno was still there ! Wow, am I glad I voted for Bush ! The continuity is breathtaking !
Ashcroft and Reno are barely from the same planet much less illustrating any continuity but I would never expect one hoping for defeat to recognize it.
Many of us have been calling for such an investigation for months and its initiation is highly welcome to any with an understanding and appreciation of our president.
If my memory serves me well (it does), I remember the highest court in Floridah ruling that Bush won but approximately 60 percent of Floridians still swear the GOP cheated and Bush was selected, not elected. That is the reason I'm upset by DoJ only going after dimocRat accusations and not giving any thoughts to the St Louis Judicial fraud.
Part 2. Your are among the clueless if you think Bush controls DoJ or any other Dept (see GAO dim appointees in control). He HAS NOT removed the Klintoon appointees and seems to HOPE THE DIMS WILL LIKE HIM FOR LETTTING THEM STAY. These are my problems with the whole picture.To recap, President Bush and AG John Ashcroft are giving credibility to the dims' charges of GOP hatred of minorities etc. by wording the suits as only the dim viewpoints. period
As far as the bilingual thing, I am of the opinion that if they can't read the ballot in English, then they have no business voting in our elections.
What we know from various sources:
Seven Florida counties and two cities. The Florida counties that were filed on were Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Leon, Miami-Dade, Orange, and Volusia. The cities were St Louis, Missouri, and Nashville, Tennesee.
From the Washington Post/AP story we know that Broward and Leon counties have settled their suit, and Miami-Dade may have settled, that leaves four or five counties: Duval, Hillsborough, Orange, Volusia, and a maybe on Miami-Dade, and the cities of St. Louis and Nashville.
Matching the charges with the counties and cities is all we need to do to determine the unknowns.
The charges alleged:(1)disparate treatment of minority voters, (2)improper purging of voter rolls, (3)“motor voter” registration violations and (4)failure to provide access to disabled voters, Boyd said. Other charges, he said, include (5)failing to allow voters with limited proficiency in English to have assistance at the polls and failing to provide bilingual assistance.
The St. Louis suit is related to charge #2. The Nashville suit is related to charge #3.
This leaves the (five or four) Florida counties to tie to charges.
A few Google searches revealed that the Duval county suit is related to charge #4, the Volusia and Orange counties suit involves charge #1, and the Hillsborough along with Miami-Dade suit relates to charges #5 and #2.
Other findings:
This George Will article shows what likely happened to the bulk of the 11,000 complaints once they got into court. It's a good read and good ammo for the RATS that ask you why so few of the cases were considered.
By George Will / Special to The Detroit News
Nov. 7, 2000 -- Election Day -- will forever call to mind Florida's butterfly ballots and pregnant chads. But the day was eventful in St. Louis, too.The night before, Democratic Rep. William Clay had told a Gore-Lieberman rally that a lawsuit would be filed to force the polls to stay open longer than Missouri law allows. The next afternoon such a suit was filed, claiming that minorities were having trouble voting. Clay had been prescient about those troubles -- or those troubles were fictitious and he was part of a carefully planned operation.
The suit's lead plaintiff, Robert D. Odom, complained of being denied the right to vote. But someone noted that his problem might have something to do with the fact that he died in 1999.
Later, Clay said, the plaintiff should have been Robert M. Odom, a Clay aide. But Odom's complaint, if there ever really was one, was vitiated when he voted that afternoon. By the time the compliant judge ordered the polls to stay open, voters were already receiving prerecorded telephone messages from Jesse Jackson saying they could vote late.
Matt Blunt, Missouri's secretary of state, says that among 1,384 ballots illegally cast were at least 62 by felons, 79 by people registered at vacant lots, 68 by people who voted twice and 14 cast in the name of dead people.
Missouri law says court orders can be issued to secure the vote only for registered voters who were removed from the voting rolls by mistake. Of 1,268 applications for court orders, 1,233 were improperly granted, many for people who admitted they had never registered but persuaded the court with written reasons that included "I was late registering due to me were going through a mental disorder," "I want a Dem. president," "For the democratic party," "I'm a busy lady w/ 7 children" and "Found out about Gore from my mother."
And: "forgot to." Register, that is.
Amazingly few St. Louis residents forgot. Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond says 247,135 of St. Louis' 258,532 voting-age residents were registered. That 96 percent registration rate was, strictly speaking, incredible. And almost one in 10 voters registered in St. Louis was registered to vote somewhere else, too.
All this is pertinent to the Senate's consideration of an election reform bill born partly from Bond's fury about St. Louis' irregularities. There has been much talk about the putative problem of "exclusion," making much of the myth of widespread intimidation and obstruction of black voters in Florida. Bond insists on addressing the real problem of excessive inclusion -- of fraudulent votes.
Four of the bill's provisions are particularly notable:
* Statewide registration to make it more difficult for persons to be registered in several places, and more difficult for local political organizations to register noncitizens or nonexistent people.* A requirement that when a person registers under provisions of the "motor-voter" law -- registers when getting a driver's license -- the registration card will at least ask if the person is a citizen and will inform noncitizens that they may not register. The fact that these small, common-sensical requirements have not existed is itself telling.
* Provisional voting to allow a person not on the voting rolls to cast a vote which will be counted if it can be proved that a clerical error kept the person's name off the rolls.
* A bipartisan Election Administration Commission to help states and localities comply with federal law and other matters.
We have made some progress since a year ago. However, Florida's Legislature has drawn censorious squints from some exquisitely sensitive civil rights lobbyists who are alarmed by a new law that requires posting at polling stations a list of "responsibilities" of voters.
For example, a voter should:
"Keep his or her voter address current"; "Bring proper identification to the polling station"; "Know how to operate voting equipment properly"; "Ask questions when confused"; "Check his or her completed ballot for accuracy."In this rights-obsessed era, talk of responsibilities is unusual. But not unconstitutional, as critics imply when they compare the posting of "voter's responsibilities" to the long-proscribed literacy tests and poll taxes that were designed to adversely affect minorities.
Some jurisdictions, perhaps disproportionately where minorities comprise majorities, use antiquated voting technologies that are unacceptably unreliable in recording the political choices of voters who exercise reasonable diligence in attempting to record their choices. But it is not a civil rights violation to say that such diligence is a civic duty.
Voting irregularities in Missouri:
The 2000 presidential election was marred by voting problems, especially in Missouri, where there was a tight race for U.S. senator in which incumbent John Ashcroft lost to a Democrat who died in a plane crash.
* There were 1,384 illegal ballots.
* Of the illegal ballots, 68 were cast by people who voted twice, 62 by felons, 14 by dead people.
* 97 percent of the applications for court orders allowing someone not on the rolls to vote were improperly granted.
* 10 percent of registered St. Louis voters were registered to vote elsewhere.
Source: Missouri secretary of state, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.
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