[lit-ideas] One more try.
- From: JulieReneB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:11:14 EDT
I couldn't pull up the article from the link I posted, but then doing a
Google News search, I was able to find it again. It's really an important
piece,
I think. I've copied & pasted it below so it doesn't get lost in cyberspace
again (I've no idea whether others gettinng my first post were able to
access the article or not.)
Jeb's defiance makes case for automatic clemency
Palm Beach Post Editorial
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Gov. Bush is attacking the judiciary with way more than the usual Republican
rhetoric. This time, he's resorted to outright defiance.
The governor couldn't have picked a more revealing way to display his
anti-court venom than by spurning the July 14 opinion of the 1st District Court
of
Appeal in Tallahassee. The court told the state that it must help felons fill
out a form needed to win back the right to vote after serving prison time.
Rather than follow the court's dictate, Gov. Bush eliminated the form.
That's the kind of inexcusable defiance that makes Florida the focal point
for national anxiety over the upcoming presidential election. Secretary of
State Glenda Hood, who was appointed by Gov. Bush and reports to him, already
has
gone too far in defending an indefensible list of nearly 48,000 ex-felons
who may or may not have been banned from voting. Fueling the conspiracy
theories that Ms. Hood says are groundless, nearly half the names on the list
belonged to African-Americans, who tend to vote for Democrats. Fewer than 100
belonged to Hispanics, who vote more often for Republicans than blacks do.
Both
parties are making strong appeals to Hispanic voters.
More than 50,000 felons were released from Florida prisons last year. About
85 percent must apply to get clemency. A year ago, the court found that about
125,000 inmates who completed their terms between 1992 and 2001 -- out of as
many as 700,000 -- had not been properly notified of their right to clemency.
Gov. Bush can't call the appellate court's ruling judicial activism. The
court didn't make the law; the state did. Here is the wording: "The authorized
agent (of the state) shall assist the offender in completing these forms...
before the offender is discharged from supervision." The court "interpreted"
that to mean the state must "assist the offender."
The governor whined that the form duplicates electronic filing methods and
did away with the form. But the governor's plan doesn't order the Department of
Correction to help inmates file electronically before they are discharged.
Instead, it promises only that the state will put a notice in the mail. Rather
than help people as they are about to leave custody, the state proposes
tracking these transient residents after they leave. Additionally, the state
is
finding flaws in its central voter database, which lists all Florida voters.
The errors on that list compounded the difficulty of screening out felons.
The long-term solution is for Floridians to change the state constitution to
automatically restore voting rights of felons. Florida is one of seven
states, including Mississippi and Alabama, that do not grant automatic
clemency.
State legislators chose to offer voters an amendment requiring parental notice
of abortions, not one that would lift the Civil War-era ban on voting rights.
The ban makes Florida look racist and uninterested in democracy. The
governor's actions make him appear to be complicit.
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: voter turn-out
correction Date: 7/29/2004 2:05:55 PM Central Daylight Time From:
_JulieReneB@xxxxxxxx (mailto:JulieReneB@xxxxxxx) To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
<<_http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/
opinion_1480230145bdb0e300e7_
(http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/op
inion_1480230145bdb0e300e7)
.html>>
Sorry. Between the time I posted this and checked it, the link went away,.
Try this article:
_Florida Again Faces Disputes Over Elections (washingtonpost.com)_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22176-2004Jul28.html)
Florida Again Faces Disputes Over Elections
Recounts, Missing Records Debated
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2004; Page A03
<NITF>MIAMI, July 28 -- Anything sound familiar
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<NITF>Voting rights lawyers are in Tallahassee, one of the epicenters of
the
2000 presidential election convulsions, arguing about recounts. Florida
civil rights advocates are seething about restoring the voting rights of
felons.
And, in Miami, elections officials now find themselves in the uncomfortable
position of having to explain why they've lost much of their audit records
from the last big statewide ele
<NITF>"We are no safer than we were in 2000," said Lida Rodriguez-Tasseff,
chairman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a voting-rights
group.
"We may have even bigger problems that we don't even know a
<NITF>Rodriguez-Tasseff's organization unearthed the latest in an
increasingly lengthy string of embarrassments for the Florida elections
system when it
filed a public-records request this month with the Miami-Dade County
elections office asking for the audits of votes in the 2002 governor's
election. The
records were supposed to have been collected by the county's new $25
million electronic voting network. The answer the group received has made
voter
advocates queasy about how the system will perform in the November
presidential
election: The records were
<NITF>The group was told that two computer crashes -- the first in May last
year and the second in November -- erased the records of the 2002 primary
and
general elections. The group's request, first reported in the New York
Times, also revealed that the lack of a backup system meant that the
records
could not be reco
<NITF>Seth Kaplan, a spokesman for the Miami elections office, said on
Wednesday that a decision against making a public announcement at the time
of the
crashes was made because elections officials believed the data loss was
merely a record-keeping issue and did not affect the integrity of the
elections
-- a contention disputed by voter advocates who say statewide audits are
critical for assessing the performance of the mac
<NITF>"There's always a fine line between speaking out about things that
are
truly necessary to speak about and not unnecessarily alarming the public,"
Kaplan
<NITF>Kaplan said technicians consulted with the system's manufacturer --
Elections, Sy& Software, one of the nation's largest electronic voting
machine
firms -- on Wednesday and now believe they may have found the records of
the
2002 general election and some of the records of the primary.
<NITF>Kaplan said he could not provide the exact dates of the computer
crashes. Rodriquez-Tasseff questioned whether the timing of the crashes --
shortly
after the elections -- may have been part of an effort to conceal problems
with the voting mac
<NITF>The revelations about lost records in Miami compounded a sense of
anxiety among voters' rights groups, some of which are calling for
congressional
and Justice Department investigations of Florida's s
<NITF>"It is becoming more and more clear every day -- one obstacle after
another, one mismanagement after another -- that Florida's secretary of
state's
office cannot manage its election," said Sharon Lettman, deputy national
field director of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group
based
in Washi
<NITF>Florida elections officials responded to the data loss in Miami with
criticism of the critics. "I think it is unfair for the different groups to
try to erode voter confidence," said Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for
Florida
Secretary of State Glenda E.
<NITF>The rift between the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and voters'
rights groups has grown as the Aug. 31 U.S. Senate primary approaches.
Advocacy groups -- including the American Civil Liberties Union, Common
Cause and
People for the American Way -- are asking a Tallahassee judge to step in
before the primary and override Bush's decision not to allow manual
recounts in
the 15 Florida counties that have touch-screen voting mac
<NITF>Florida ACLU Executive Director Howard Simon said there is no way of
knowing how the machines would perform in a close election if recounts are
not
allowed.
<NITF>George Waas, an attorney for the secretary of state's office, said
the
machines are immune from the "under-votes and over-votes" that occurred in
previous elections when punch-card ballots were used. He called the
concerns
raised by Simon and others "a parade of horri
<NITF>"It's what we call 'the sky is falling' syndrome," Waas said. "The
sky
is not fal
<NITF>Looming over the manual recount confrontations is the residue of
months of bitterness over the state's flawed list of felons purged from the
voting
rolls, which Bush was pressured into dropping after revelations that it
contained the names of thousands of felons -- including a high percentage
of
African Americans -- whose voting rights had been restored. While the state
list will no longer be used, the ACLU and others are still pressing for
reforms
at the local level, where they believe many felons have not been given
enough
information about how to regain voting privi
<NITF>"It is a real atrocity that Florida's elected officials are not going
out of their way to reassure voters and all of America that Florida has its
act together," Lettman said. "Democracy is in question in the state of
Flo
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: voter turn-out
Date: 7/29/2004 1:54:17 PM Central Daylight Time From: _JulieReneB@xxxxxxxx
(mailto:JulieReneB@xxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
<<That's also why the Republicans purged the Florida voter rolls of some
60,000 Blacks, in
order to steal the 2000 election.>>
Those voters purged because of felony (or alleged felony) records are
still
not allowed voting status. It's still a huge 2004 issue.
_Jeb's defiance makes case for automatic clemency_
(http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/op
inion_1480230145bdb0e300e7
.html)
Julie Krueger
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: voter turn-out
Date: 7/29/2004 1:45:49 PM Central Daylight Time From:
_andreas@xxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
> Saying that low voter turnout is the result of a concerted effort
> sounds a little too much like some sort of conspiracy theory.
Actually, this is true. The Republican party wants low voter turnout. The
most frequent
voters are elderly and homeowners, and they tend to vote Republican.
Infrequent voters (or casual voters) tend to vote Democrate or
non-aligned.
Thus they aren't
easy to control.
That's why the Republicans have fought strongly against automatic
registration (simply allow
everyone to vote, instead of requiring them to register first, as most
countries do), easy
registration (such as automatic registration with a driver's license), and
so on.
The Republicans have also built a core group of Christian fundementalists
who can control a
vote on the local elections. Voter turnout for those is often under 15%. A
few Baptist
churches can control school boards, county commissions, and so on.
That's also why the Republicans purged the Florida voter rolls of some
60,000 Blacks, in
order to steal the 2000 election. Blacks tend to vote 90% Democrat,
therefore by removing
60,000 votes, they gave Bush a plausible chance. The fewer voting Blacks,
the better for the
Republicans.
The US would vote solidly Democrat if (IF!) everyone were obligated to
vote.
Young people,
urban, suburban, and minorities are the vast majority, and they would vote
Democrat. That is
the big danger for the Republicans.
Therefore Republicans have done everything possible to make it difficult
to
vote, to reduce
turnout, and so on. This also includes disgusting the voters over the
political process. The
more disgusting politics becomes, the less people will care and the less
they will vote.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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