If George W. Bush pulls off an electoral victory in Florida to capture the presidency, a racist Reconstruction-era law that aims to limit the black vote may play a main factor.

As many as 31 percent of African-American men in Florida were barred Tuesday from casting a vote under a mid-19th century law that disenfranchises convicted felons. Nationwide 1.4 million African-American men, and 4.2 million Americans in all, are prohibited from voting based on similar laws, many of which date to the late 1860s shortly after former slaves were given the right to vote.

Overall in Florida, about 500,000 ex-felons -- 5 percent of the total voting population -- can not vote. Considering the slim voting difference of less than 2,000 between the Texas Governor and Vice President Al Gore, the impact 500,000 extra voters, including a disproportionate number of African-Americans, could have had on the final vote is substantial.

Voteless in Florida





Thousands of Florida residents were struck from the voter lists because

they were mistakenly identified as ex-felons, just months before what

has become

the closest election in US history. With Bush apparently leading Gore

by only

hundreds of votes, in a state with hundreds of thousands of

disenfranchised voters, could similar errors be tipping the race?





by Sasha Abramsky





Nov. 8, 2000







The cliffhanger in Florida may ultimately be decided by those

who didn't vote. Hundreds or even thousands of Florida residents may

have been erroneously crossed off the voter lists because they were

mistakenly

identified as ex-felons.

Felon disenfranchisement laws may have hurt Gore in two ways. With the

> result of the presidential election coming down to a handful of

votes in

Florida, the disenfranchisement of close to three quarters of a

million

felons and ex-felons in the state may well have made the difference

between a Gore presidency and a Bush one. Considering that the majority

of felons

are poor, black and Latino -- that is, likely Democratic voters -- had

fewer than two percent of the disenfranchised in Florida voted, Gore

would have

probably been elected president.

But even more disturbing is the possibility that a significant number

of

Floridians may have been wrongfully barred from voting -- perhaps enough

to have tipped the race.

Just months ago, nearly 12,000 Floridians were informed by the state

Division of Elections that they had lost their voting rights because of

felony convictions in other states. But the company hired by the state

to compile that list of names made a massive mistake and misidentified

thousands

of people, according to the Palm Beach Post and other Florida papers.

In

response to a barrage of complaints from irate voters, nearly 8,000 of

those who had received the notices were subsequently reinstated on the

eligible

voter lists in time for yesterday's vote.

George Bruder, senior vice president of the Boca Raton-based company,

Database Technologies, called the inaccurate lists "a

miscommunication."

Representatives of the company did not return calls inquiring as to

whether the other 4,000 voters on the list turned out to be genuine

felons

> or

> ultimately had their voting rights restored. Florida election

> officials

> also

> could not be reached for comment.

> In a state with such a huge number of disenfranchised

> citizens, the

> possibility that other such errors have gone undetected is

> impossible to

> ignore. In fact, in a separate, similar incident in August, some

> 500 people

> in Miami had their voting rights restored after they turned out to

> either

> be

> non-felons or felons who had been given voting clemency, according

> to the

> Tampa Tribune.

> In recent years, the Florida Division of Law Enforcement has

> moved

> aggressively to remove felons who had sneaked onto the voter

> rolls. In

> 1998,

> the state reported that more than 50,000 felons were voting in

> Florida. In

> an

> effort to crack down on these voters, state authorities provided

> lists of

> resident felons to each county; counties then sent out letters

> informing

> these people they were being struck from the voter rolls. The

> state left

> it

> up to each county to determine whether the voters they deleted from

> eligibility were indeed felons; some counties, in turn, placed the

> onus on

> individuals who claimed they were the victim of a mistake to prove

> it,

> according to local newspapers. At least one county gave citizens

> only 30

> days

> to respond with a notarized affidavit challenging their

> disenfranchisement.

>

> In some instances, it is possible legitimate voters whose

> names were

> being used as aliases by felons were struck off the voter rolls.

> In Martin

> County, for example, Elections Supervisor Peggy Robbins remembers

> that two

> people reported being sent the letters erroneously. One person said

> he had

> been wrongly disenfranchised several times. If the recipients

> didn't phone

> to challenge the letters, says Robbins, there would be no way to

> rectify

> the

> mistake.

> How many people might be affected? "There might be one or

> two," in her

> county, Robbins believes. "In a great big county, there might be

> more."

> Small

> numbers, but Florida has 67 counties; if this race comes down to

> just a few

> hundred votes, such glitches could provide the Democratic Party

> with

> grounds

> for challenging the result in the courts.

>

> The wrongful-disenfranchisement question joins a lengthening

> list of

> voting irregularities in Florida. In Palm Beach County, thousands

> of Gore

> voters may have mistakenly marked their ballots for Pat Buchanan,

> thanks to

> a

> confusingly laid-out ballot. ABCNews.com reports that thousands of

> other

> Gore

> votes may not have been counted because of a computer error in

> Volusia

> County. Officials of both major parties also reported that many

> voters were

> apparently turned away from the polls and that some precints ran

> out of

> ballots. Several papers reported that white state Highway Patrol

> officers

> set

> up a checkpoint near a balloting site in a heavily black district

> in

> Broward

> County, allegedly prompting state and federal officials to

> investigate

> whether the incident amounted to intimidation against

> African-American

> voters.

> In almost any other election, the number of potential

> wrongful-disenfranchisement errors would be so small as to not

> matter.

> But,

> if a couple thousand -- or even a few hundred -- people who would

> have

> voted

> were wrongfully deprived of their right to do so, it is at the

> very least

> possible that the election of the most powerful man in the world

> will have

> been swung by bad information about eligible voters fed into

> computers.

>

> Read the article online:

>

> http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/floridavote.html

>

> Check out the latest from the MoJo Wire and Mother Jones magazine

> at:

>

> http://www.motherjones.com

>

I am in complete agreement with the premise in the article--i.e. gross disenfranchisement of blacks in particular and all convicts in voting.

I believe these are laws are discrimination and arbitrary especially in today's climate with nearly 2 million people in prisons and an even larger population of people on probation, parole, or with previous criminal record.

This situation demands a remedy and has been overlooked for too long. Here in Califorinia I have registered voters and been a field organizer for peition drives on referendums to change the drug laws and legalize medical marijuana; we were told that after release from prison for 1 year all voting rights were restored and we could register them...a far better situation than Florida but still far from optimum.

I see now reason that those in jail or prison should lose their most basic of civil rights, the franchise to vote. A citizen's status should not be held up any more than skin color, religion, sexual orientation etc. Both major political parties prefer small voter turnouts when it's to their advantage.

RC

worse than i ever imagined. had no idea these 'jim crow' laws were still being used like this

Thank God convicted felons can't vote.

I don't want rapists, murderers, drug dealers, thieves and muggers choosing my president, or deciding who gets into the Senate or Congress.

I don't care what color they are.

If you care about how this country is going to be in the future -- you won't want politicians being "the felons choice."

We have enough felons in politics already!

There are two separate issues here--the legal (if probably unconstitutional) disenfranchisement of felons, and the illegal disenfranchisement of voters incorrectly labeled as felons. Of these two issues, it seems to me that the latter is the one that ought to be looked into first and most vigorously. Yet, aside from one article dated 11/08/00, I can find nothing on the Internet concerning this issue. Is anybody out there in criminal justice or journalism looking into how these registered voters came to be mislabeled as felons?

I too noticed that the story of non-felons wrongfully denied the right to vote had no "legs" -- wasn't being followed up on anywhere in the media.

So I went to the Rainbow/PUSH web page looking for details. Found none. Just bare accusations. They said that they had sent "voluminous documentation the US Department of Justice" (paraphrasing), but did not disclose any details of the documentation.

So, I went to the DOJ web page -- nuttin.

So, I saw Rev. Jesse Jackson on Tim Russert, going on about this issue. Russert said -- "well, what is Janet Reno and the DOJ doing about this?" (Again paraphrasing.)

Jackson said, and this I think I can count -- "The Department of Justice has let us down." (??!!)

C'mon Jesse -- you KNOW that Clinton and Reno would do anything for you! Jackson is Clinton's closest spiritual advisor.

So, the only logical conclusion is that there's nothing to this. More hocus bogus noise.

Or, you could say its a huge Right wing media controlled, industrial/military bi-partisan conspiracy. Your choice.

I said "this I think I can count"

I meant to say "this I think I can QUOTE."

Happens.

BUSH 2004 - Can't stop the machine!!!! It's already in motion.

The machine? Oh, you mean the impeachment.

Bush in '04

Rice in '08 and '12

You kids are outta luck.

I guess we will have to get jobs and stop sucking off the Gov't.

I'd love to suck off that Dick Cheney. I just love how he's able to steal from those silly little Haliburton shareholders!