There is an Electoral Uprising coming in November
2004...And yes, the Bush cabal and the "vast reich
wing conspiracy" will try to steal it again, and if
they cannot steal it again, they will try to deep-six
the whole process with an insane assist from Al
Qaeda...IF the margin of victory is large enough, they
will not be abale to steal it, and IF they cancel it,
well, then UNcivil war will be perilously close...Be
vigilant, be vocal, be vociferous...Either you
understand the nature of this threat to the Republic,
or you will lose this Republic...
Jim Defede, Miami Herald: As far as I'm concerned,
there is no more trust. There are no more second
chances. Glenda Hood must resign. She is either
amazingly incompetent or the leader of a frightening
conspiracy, but either way she should go.
Next, the governor should remove himself from matters
affecting elections and an agency such as the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights should step in and assume
direct oversight of the state's election system.
Florida is simply a joke that just isn't funny any
longer.
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
Posted on Sun, Jul. 11, 2004
Voter list mess shows officials can't be trusted
BY JIM DEFEDE
Sharon Lettman-Pacheco was driving to her office in
Tallahassee Saturday when her cellphone rang with the
news that Florida had just scrapped its voter purge
list of 47,763 suspected felons.
''Completely?'' she asked. ``You mean we finally wore
them down? Wow.''
As a national field director for People for the
American Way, Lettman-Pacheco had been fighting the
list for months. PFAW, along with the ACLU, the NAACP
and other groups, were convinced that many of the
names on the list were wrong, and that individuals --
especially blacks -- would be barred from voting this
year as they were in 2000.
They wanted to verify the list's accuracy, but the
state refused to make it public. The groups, along
with members of the media and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson,
then sued the state.
On July 1, a Tallahassee judge ordered the list
released, but before he did, The Herald obtained a
copy, analyzed it, and found more than 2,100 people
who were on the purge list despite having their rights
restored through clemency.
Rather than admit the list was filled with errors,
Secretary of State Glenda Hood defended her agency's
shoddy work and attacked The Herald. She even had the
chutzpah to offer a ''tutorial for all reporters''
last week on the purge list and how it was created,
''in order to prevent factually inaccurate articles
such as those reported by The Herald'' from being
repeated.
Turns out, it was Hood who needed the tutorial.
Since The Herald story, more revelations have
followed. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported
Wednesday that out of the nearly 48,000 names on the
list, only 61 were Hispanic. Once again Hood and her
boss, Gov. Jeb Bush, stood by the list.
Then on Saturday, The New York Times showed why
Hispanics, who largely vote Republican, were kept from
the list while blacks, who overwhelmingly vote
Democratic, remained. It turns out, the Department of
Corrections database follows the federal standard for
race, classifying Hispanics as white, and the election
department rolls identify voters by ethnicity. Since
the two databases didn't mesh, the identity of
Hispanic felons couldn't be verified and were
therefore kept off the list.
''Unbelievable,'' Lettman-Pacheco sighed.
``Unbelievable.''
Soon after the Times story broke, Hood, who, at this
rate, may soon be as reviled as her predecessor,
Katherine Harris, finally caved in and dumped the
purge list.
''That's what I call justice,'' Lettman-Pacheco said,
applauding the media and groups such as her own for
discovering a serious flaw that would have been
ignored by the state.
''At the end of the day, though, it is the state that
has a responsibility to put in place systems that are
fair and equal,'' she said. ``And Florida is simply
not doing things fairly. With all the billions of
dollars we have allocated in our state government, you
would think they would have an information technology
division that was objective and knew what it was
doing. Or was this intentional?
''This kind of malfeasance of justice clearly has
every degree of manipulation written all over it,''
she continued. ``But I'm going to let the public
decide how deliberate it was.''
''I can tell you with the utmost certainty that it was
unintentional and unforeseen,'' responded Hood
spokeswoman Nicole de Lara.
I don't know how de Lara can be so certain. I don't
know how she can so casually disregard the possibility
there's been an orchestrated attempt to defraud the
public and that no one in the state knew about the
flaws.
As far as I'm concerned, there is no more trust. There
are no more second chances. Glenda Hood must resign.
She is either amazingly incompetent or the leader of a
frightening conspiracy, but either way she should go.
Next, the governor should remove himself from matters
affecting elections and an agency such as the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights should step in and assume
direct oversight of the state's election system.
Florida is simply a joke that just isn't funny any
longer.