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     | Wednesday, December 13, 2000 - 01:41 pm From the files of CounterPunch visit the site for more details. http://www.counterpunch.org Back in the 1980s radicals used to write about "demonstration elections", conducted in Central American countries such as El Salvador at the instigation of the US government and micromanaged by the CIA. After the money was appropriately spread around, the opposition's more tenacious and principled leaders either butchered by death squads or driven underground, and the unruly poor thoroughly intimidated, the election ritual would take place amid complacent orations about the democratic way from North American commentators. We've just had a peaceful and non-lethal version of these "demonstration elections" in the state of Florida and no calls for closure will erase that national disgrace, least of all in the minds of those who were denied their democratic rights. Don't forget, beyond those who made it to the polls in Florida, there were those denied even the dubious benefits of that access. Beyond the obsession about defiant punch card machines, obstacle course ballots, and pregnant or hanging chads, there are more serious issues that, in the miles of print written about the election in Florida, have received barely a mention: the systematic intimidation of poor people, blacks, hispanics, immigrants and the disabled. Try this story from Ron Davis of Miami-Dade County. "Our family always votes together. This year it was my turn to drive. After work, my wife Lisa and I borrowed a van from a friend and picked up my brother, my parents and my uncle and aunt. About a block away from the polling place, we were pulled over by a county sheriff. He looked in the van and asked me if I had a chauffeur's license. I said, this is my family and we're going to vote. He said, 'You can't take all those people to the polling place without a license. Go home and I won't write you a ticket.' I was tired of arguing. We went home and all tried to vote later. But it was too late." Or how about this account told to us by Dave Crawford of Broward County: "I showed up at the polling place with my five-year old daughter. I was stopped at the door by an election official. He asked me my name. I told him. He said, 'Son, we've got a problem. You're not allowed to vote.' I asked him what the hell he was talking about. He said, 'Son, says here you're a convict. Convicts can't vote.' He had this list in his hand. And I told him that I'd never even been arrested in my life. I handed him my voter ID card. He just shook his head, smiled and pointed at a list. He never showed me my name. My daughter began to cry and I left in disgust." On November 7, blacks and hispanics turned out to vote in record numbers. But tens of thousands were shunted away before they reached the polling booth. The scenes, many of them narrated during an extraordinary 5-hour hearing sponsored by the NAACP and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, harked back to the pre-voting rights act South, when black voters were denied the franchise through a variety of schemes, from the poll tax and character vouchers to loyalty oaths and literacy tests. Across Florida, black voters were turned away from the polls by hostile election workers who demanded voter ID cards, even though those weren't required from white voters. Police set up roadblocks in black precincts around Tallahassee. Other police intimidated voters by asking if they were felons. Polls in black precincts closed early, often with dozens of voters waiting in line. Other polls were moved from their original locations without notice. Dozen of black college students who had registered this summer weren't permitted to vote. Other voters were told that their names weren't on the voter rolls only to find out later that they were. Haitian voters were often asked for two forms of identification. Stacey Powers, a former cop who is now a news director at a Tampa radio station, spent the day visiting different polling places in Tampa's black neighborhoods. She said dozens of black voters were turned away after being told that their names didn't appear on the voting registers. Powers said that when she reminded some voters that they could sign an affidavit and then vote, she was booted out of the polling place. "There were illegal poll watchers, threatening people, telling them: 'I know where you work. You're going to get fired'" reported Charles Weaver, publisher of the Fort Myers-based Community Voice. A catalogue of these accounts was assembled and shipped off to Janet Reno, who, as attorney general, is charged with enforcing the Voting Rights Act. So far, the Clinton Justice Department hasn't taken one step to investigate the charges. "This is a strange stance from the Justice Department", said Kwesi Mfumi, head of the NAACP. "They just seem to get colder to civil rights as the administration draws to a close." Then there were the more than 12,000 largely black voters who were evicted from the Florida voter rolls in May, supposedly because they were ex-felons. In the sunshine state the system functioned in a particularly devious way. Nearly all of those booted off the rolls turned out not to have had criminal records. But nearly all of them were black. Some 8,000 went through the legal red tape to assert their voting rights. The remaining 4,000 didn't bother. Nearly all of those votes would have gone to Gore. The list was prepared by a company known as Database Technologies, a firm picked by Secretary of State Katherine Harris. As the London Guardian reported, Database Techologies is a subsidary of ChoicePoint, which is has been under investigation for misusing personal information gathered state computers. ChoicePoint's beleagured CEO, Rick Bozar, made a timely $100,000 contribution to the Republican National Committee early this year. Even those who made it inside the polling booth found out later that their votes didn't tally. While the press and the Gore pr machine raged about the injustices done to Jewish voters by the infamous Butterfly ballot, the real story, even in Palm Beach County, was the effort to suppress the black vote. Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell, who speaks venomously of the Gore machine, was one of the first to point this out. "I looked at those precincts," said Caddell. "And it struck me that most of them were in predominately black areas. Of course, they would be just as unlikely to vote for Buchanan as the Jewish retirees. But the Gore people made a deliberately effort to spin it as a case of 4,000 elderly Jewish Democrats being duped into voting for a Nazi." A similar point was made by Adora Ori, the president of the NAACP's Florida chapter. "A closer examination has to be made. The precincts that have the most irregularities at this point seem to be black and minority." The Democratic Party has displayed a marked disinclination to make any political capital out of the denial of black and haitian voting rights in Florida. After a couple of days hammering the issue Jesse Jackson was evidently told to cool it.
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| | Wednesday, December 13, 2000 - 02:12 pm Exactly, what is the point, or did you forget the introduction? My god, you really talk too much. have a nice ramadan. Muna
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| | Wednesday, December 13, 2000 - 02:21 pm jummmmmmmmt!
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| | Wednesday, December 13, 2000 - 04:23 pm is this a free journal? just joking but u either forgot the level of your audiences or your message lost its way. any way thanks for the info. and i feel sorry 4 the US nigro at least they lost their roots in unfaithful place.
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| | Wednesday, December 13, 2000 - 05:52 pm Ask the French revolutionaries what they meant by "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity", then please do me a favor to ask the Haitians and the Algerians of what the French meant those words. Therefore, you would realize that it was never intended to extend to the primitive races, it was and still is a concept that only addresses the political desires of the progressive forces (WASP's). So wake up guys and read any book in race-relations in the U.S.
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| | Wednesday, December 13, 2000 - 06:16 pm As much as i understand Xoogsade is sick and He is Abdi farah......TOO...i..wish him a safe recovery from his sickness.W/alleikum Salam.
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