They're At It Again - Florida Voter's Roll

ChipZilla

http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040708_639.html

TAMPA, Fla. July 3, 2004 — Many Floridians have been shocked to find their names on a new state list of nearly 48,000 people identified as felons who may be ineligible to vote, even though they have no criminal record or have been granted clemency.
"Weird. I've never been arrested for felonies," William Miller, 50, of Tampa.

The unemployed mechanic has no criminal record and is a registered voter. He apparently was confused with a man who has the same first and last name, plus the same birthday but who has a different middle name and a criminal record.

State officials have said there are people on the list who are not felons, and elections workers have flagged more than 300 people listed who might have received clemency. Others on the list had registered to vote before they received clemency and need to register again, election officials said.

The new list, released Thursday, revives memories of the 2000 presidential election, in which many residents discovered at the polls that they weren't allowed to vote. An error-filled list had been produced by an outside company and elections supervisors removed voters without verifying its accuracy.

Many Democrats were convinced state officials purposely culled too many voters from the rolls in order to ensure George W. Bush's election.

"This potential careless and needless disfranchisement of thousands of voters is extremely disturbing," Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said of the new list. "Florida's list of felons ... needs to be scrapped."

A spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Jeb Bush dismissed Democrats' complaints as "pure politics."

Election officials emphasized that the list is intended to be a starting point for county election supervisors.

On Election Day, anyone who feels they have been inadvertently removed from the voter rolls will be allowed to use a provisional ballot that will be examined later to determine eligibility.

The same tactic that was used four years ago to get blacks and hispanics off the list?

Provisional ballots for those who were inadvertently removed?

I wonder how many Kerry voters on this list will see their votes going in the bin?

What do the public reckon? Coincidence or deliberate?

The Best Democracy Money can Buy... It really is.

Big Ears

deliberate , its as simple as that .

vorbis

:rolleyes:
and you think the same mistakes wouldn't happen over here.

He apparently was confused with a man who has the same first and last name, plus the same birthday but who has a different middle name and a criminal record.

I'd bet that most irish polling stations would make the above mistake. Judging by the article themselves, wronged people will be able to correct any mistake. They have over three months to do it in!

Hobbes

Originally posted by vorbis

I'd bet that most irish polling stations would make the above mistake. Judging by the article themselves, wronged people will be able to correct any mistake. They have over three months to do it in!

Then all they have to worry about is the polling stations closing early, getting moved without notice or not enough ballot papers being given to the polling stations.

It wasn't one mistake.. it was a whole series of mistakes .

dahamsta

Sorry to drag this up, just said I'd mention that Channel 4 news has picked up on this and will be running a story this evening (7pm). From Jon Snow's daily newsletter:

SUNSHINE STATE SHENANIGANS
==========================

>From Florida, a new attempt by Governor Jeb Bush, brother of you-know-who, to exclude a great swathe of black voters from the electoral register in the State. He did it before and is trying to do it again, but this time many many more voters are involved : 47,000 to be precise. We are mulling over whether to lead with it. I think we should - let's see what happens.

Unfortunately I don't get to watch the only decent news programme on TV any more, cos of bloody Sky...

adam

arcadegame2004

Florida is a former state of the old Southern Confederacy at the time of the US Civil War 1861-1864. It has a tradition of this kind of racism. The Republican were out of favour among Southern whites in the US for about 100 years after that war because they were the party of Abraham Lincoln who abolished slavery and fought a war to enforce this. When the Democrats started to abolish most of the racist election rules in Southern US states, whites in the South started voting for the Republicans, and have mostly done so since then. As such, it is in the interests of the Republicans now to try to disenfranchise non-whites in order to stay in power. Disgraceful in the extreme.

vorbis

well dahamsta, they certainly made a good start with the story, misquoting it already. by the end of the week, it'll be hundreds of thousands that are excluded. Read the news article again, the list total is 48000. Of that officals believe so far that 300 people shouldn't be on it. No where is it suggested that the majority of people on the list shouldn't be on it. This seems a non story to be honest.

gom

Disenfranchising anyone from voting.

Felon or Puritian is not democratic in the slightist.

Surely this runs counter to the US constitution on some freedom or other.

I suppose "THE WAR ON DISENFRANCHISMENT" doesn't have the same ring as the other wars for freedom...

leeroybrown

The more things like this that Florida do before the election the better. Theres plenty of time left for people to correct their registrations and publicity like this is sure to drag out the Democratic vote.

Jeb Bush really has a fight on his hands to deliver Florida for Dubya. Last time he had trouble doing it despite being up against a Democratic candidate who had less charisma than a soggy tissue.

sceptre

Originally posted by vorbis
well dahamsta, they certainly made a good start with the story, misquoting it already. by the end of the week, it'll be hundreds of thousands that are excluded. Read the news article again, the list total is 48000. Of that officals believe so far that 300 people shouldn't be on it. No where is it suggested that the majority of people on the list shouldn't be on it. This seems a non story to be honest.

Sorry vorbis, but there's a pot in your kitchen calling a kettle a blaggard.

Let's look at the line in the story above:

State officials have said there are people on the list who are not felons, and elections workers have flagged more than 300 people listed who might have received clemency.

Now let's add some emphasis:

State officials have said there are people on the list who are not felons, and (we're moving into a separate issue here, watch...) elections workers have flagged more than 300 people listed who might have received clemency.

So we've an undefined number of people on the list who are not felons. And we've got 300 people flagged who might have received clemency. That's 300 people plus an undefined number. From the story that undefined number is somewhere between 1 (William Miller) and 47700 (48000-300). So far we don't know which it is. And if I remember rightly the official gap in Florida was 567 last time out, which even ignoring the arguments over hanging chads, overpunched ballots, failure to submit ballots, butterfly ballots and so on was rather less than the number of illegally disenfranchised last time.

Obviously there are plenty of people accusing Katherine Harris of using Jim Crow tactics to influence the election. The fact is that it doesn't matter if she is or not (or was or not) from the point of view of this story. Getting this story out there now will encourage those who hear it to be paranoid about their voting rights. In a state as half-arsed about voting integrity as Florida appears to be, paranoia about one's vote is a good thing. if the same kind of stuff was going on here, it'd be on the news. Mind you, there's a half-chance that our government/AG/Ombudsman might actually do something about it.

ChipZilla

And now it appears the Florida electronic voting system has lost voting records twice last year:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/28/florida.voting.ap/index.html

They did not have any backups of the data on the system at the time of either crash. They only started performing backups the month after the second crash. :rolleyes: