COUP WATCH: Voting Rights In Florida-- From Red Rock Eater News Service\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\nCOUP WATCH: Voting Rights In Florida-- From Red Rock Eater News Service<\/b><\/p>
\r\n\r\n\r\nBy Phil Agre<\/b><\/p>
\r\n\r\nThu Dec 07 13:22:31 2000<\/p>
\r\n\r\n[So let's get this straight. A Republican became mayor of Miami through\r\nmassive absentee ballot fraud. The election was thrown out by means\r\nof a statistical adjustment of the vote and his opponent was given the\r\npost. Florida's Republican government reacted by hiring a Republican\r\nfirm with a history of questionable business dealings to prepare lists\r\nof citizens who should be cleansed from the voting rolls.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut, oops!,\r\nthe lists included many thousands of extra people. The Republican\r\nlegislature also enacted tough laws making it highly illegal to mess\r\nwith absentee ballot applications. So what happens? Republicans walk\r\ninto at least two county election offices and mess with thousands of\r\nabsentee ballot applications. And who is helping the Florida Republican\r\nParty prepare absentee ballot applications? Yes, that's right, the guy\r\nwho became mayor of Miami through massive absentee ballot fraud.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAt the\r\nsame time, George W. Bush says that his favorite Supreme Court justice\r\nis Antonin Scalia, who the other day said that Americans have no right\r\nto vote for President. Meanwhile, the chief justice of the Supreme\r\nCourt, our buddy Bill Rehnquist, got his start by agitating against\r\nminority voting rights in Arizona. These same Supreme Court justices,\r\njust a few months ago, repealed big hunks of Article VI and the 14th\r\nAmendment to the Constitution by adding to the 11th Amendment a new\r\nstates'-rights provision that, as the majority openly admitted, can\r\nbe found nowhere in either the text or the framers' discussions of\r\nit. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis new provision prevents the federal government from allowing\r\ncitizens to sue individual states. The case at hand was something\r\nperfectly obscure, but it's plain that the real target of this brazen\r\nactivism was voting rights. Florida violated the voting rights of its\r\ncitizens in at least a dozen different ways in the election just past,\r\nincluding ways that are quite amazingly reminiscent of the mysterious\r\nFlorida elections of recent times, and citizens are in court right\r\nnow attempting to seek redress under federal voting rights statutes.\r\nCan you spot the pattern?<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAlthough I said that I'm not systematically collecting election-related\r\nURL's any more, people keep sending me useful items that I can't just\r\ntoss on the floor. So here they are:<\/p>
\r\n\r\nNeither Won, So Split Electors Between Them
\r\n http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/print\/editorials\/20001207\/t000117165.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nChoking the Florida Black Vote
\r\n http:\/\/www.boston.com\/dailyglobe2\/341\/oped\/Choking_the_Florida_black_vote+.shtml<\/p>
\r\n\r\nJust Our Bill
\r\n http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/120200-101.htm<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe Loose Ends of Election 2000
\r\n http:\/\/www.theconnection.org\/archive\/2000\/12\/1206a.shtml<\/p>
\r\n\r\nKeep Them Out!
\r\n http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/12\/07\/opinion\/07HERB.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAmerica in the Grip of Bush's \"Iron Triangle\"
\r\n http:\/\/www.guardianunlimited.co.uk\/Print\/0,3858,4099753,00.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nRepublican rioters identified
\r\n http:\/\/washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/politics\/fedpage\/columns\/intheloop\/A30170-2000Dec5.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nButterfly Voters Confused
\r\n http:\/\/helix.nature.com\/nsu\/001207\/001207-1.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nCredibility of Voter Purging Questioned
\r\n http:\/\/www.gopbi.com\/partners\/pbpost\/epaper\/editions\/wednesday\/news_18.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nProblems In Florida 2000 Vote Echo 1988 Senate Race
\r\n http:\/\/www.voter.com\/home\/news\/article\/0,1175,2-16556-,00.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nFor those who want to forward this message to their friends, here are the
\r\nelection-related URL's that I included in my list of pointers the other day.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWho Lost Florida?
\r\n http:\/\/slate.msn.com\/code\/BallotBox\/BallotBox.asp?Show=12\/4\/2000&idMessage=6613<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe Madness in the GOP's Method
\r\n http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/121100\/chait121100.html
\r\n http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/121100\/lizza121100.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nFlorida's Flawed \"Voter-Cleansing\" Program
\r\n http:\/\/www.salon.com\/politics\/feature\/2000\/12\/04\/voter_file\/<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThanks to everyone who contributed.]<\/p>
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\r\n\r\nDate: Wed, 06 Dec 2000 12:09:10 -0800
\r\nFrom: \"Paul H. Rosenberg\" <\/p>
\r\n\r\n[...]<\/p>
\r\n\r\n============
\r\n*The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United\r\nStates*
\r\n By Alexander Keyssar \/ Basic Books
\r\n 467 pages; $30.00
\r\n\r\nReviewed by
\r\n Paul Rosenberg<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe United States has abysmally low voter turnout, yet we still\r\ncherish a public mythology that America is the \"Land of Democracy\",\r\nsuperior to all others in every significant way. This includes\r\nthe assumption that Americans have long enjoyed something close to\r\nuniversal suffrage. We know this wasn't true in the pre-civil rights\r\nera South, but that's usually regarded as a regional anomaly and is\r\nreadily shrugged off. If we haven't always been perfect, at least\r\nwe've always striven for perfection -- so goes the myth.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nHistorians have long known otherwise. Most notoriously, blacks\r\ngained the right to vote after the Civil War, only to lose it almost\r\ncompletely in the deep South under Jim Crow, but there are numerous\r\nless-dramatic reversals. In *The Right To Vote: The Contested History\r\nof Democracy in the United States*, Duke historian Alexander Keyssar\r\ndoes much more than collect these various reversals together. He\r\ndevelops a broad-based, realistic picture of the various historical\r\nforces working for or against the expansion of democracy, which in\r\nturn makes sense of an otherwise bewildering array of advances and\r\nretreats. The result is a marvelously coherent, richly detailed\r\nhistory of a most hard-won right. America certainly was the first\r\nmodern democracy, but being first did not exempt us from the kinds\r\nof historical struggles that plagued other countries in expanding the\r\nright of self-government.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWithout oversimplifying, Keyssar identifies four different periods in\r\nour history when distinctive dynamics tended to prevail. Immigration,\r\nurbanization, industrialization and class conflict were the great\r\nengines driving these changes. The first period of expanding the\r\nelectorate lasted until around 1850. Then mass immigration and the\r\nspecter of a European-style working class triggered a period of upper-\r\nand middle-class hostility to democracy in which a variety of measures\r\n(such as registration laws and residency requirements) contracted\r\nthe electorate until WWI. A third, static period of mostly minor\r\ntinkering lasted until the 1960s, when the impetus of the civil\r\nrights movement helped do away with most other obstacles as well.\r\nThe two highest-profile struggles for voting rights -- that of women\r\nand blacks -- generally don't fit neatly into these periods. Instead,\r\nthe different period dynamics explain a great deal about the obstacles\r\nthose movements struggled against and the forces favoring them.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis history is sprinkled with surprising details, such as 19th\r\ncentury frontier states that allowed alien settlers to vote, states\r\nthat allowed women to vote in school board elections, and the\r\nnearly-universal loss of voting rights by free blacks between 1790\r\nand 1850, when voting rights for whites were expanding. Even more\r\nrevealing is the harsh light the factual record throws on spurious\r\nideals used to restrict voting rights. Residency and registration\r\nlaws, invariably proposed in the name of good government always\r\nmanaged to have a sharp class and ethnic bias in keeping people from\r\nthe polls. States often passed such laws limited to major cities\r\npopulated by immigrant workers.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nEqually telling is the recurrence of anti-democratic ideas, raised\r\nto the level of high principle whenever too many of the \"wrong sort\"\r\nstart to think that the \"self\" in \"self-government\" includes them.\r\nParticular favorites were the notion that voting is a privilege\r\nor a trust, not a right, and a cluster of sometimes contradictory\r\nrationales surrounding property or wealth restrictions. Although\r\nsuch battles seem safely past, the yawning chasm between our mythic\r\nideal and our real history is a potent reminder against glib self-\r\ncongratulation, particularly when so few now see this right as the\r\nprecious prize *The Right to Vote* shows it to be.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n\r\n--
\r\nPaul Rosenberg
\r\nReason and Democracy
\r\nrad@gte.net<\/p>
\r\n \r\n\"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!\"
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/dlis.gseis.ucla.edu\/people\/pagre\/florida.html","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"It's a bigger coup than you thought, according to this dash through the tangled web that stretches from the Miami mayoral absentee ballot fraud several years ago to the Supreme Court\u2019s states\u2019-rights additions to the 11th Amendment and it\u2019s potential impact in preventing Florida citizens from suing the state of Florida for violating their voting rights. Plus links, and more.","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2000\/12\/rre_fl20.htm","filesize":"10.4 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2000\/12\/4805.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":4854,"heading":"Those Who Cannot Remember The Past...","article":"Read \"Votescam\", published by Victoria Press, 1993, which concerns Justice Scalia's dismissal of a lawsuit against the Republicans over voting fraud in Florida, during a previous presidential election. His action, moved him ahead politically of his former law teacher Bork, and he was subsequently nominated by the Republicans for the Supreme Court!","author":"Craig Stehr","parent_id":4805,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2000-12-13 23:50:24","modified":"2000-12-14 00:05:17","fileurl":""}]}