Florida Faces Vote Chaos in 2004, Commission Hears

[RamboLiberal]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=3&u=/nm/20040715/pl_nm/campaign_florida_dc

Florida faces another debacle in the upcoming presidential election on Nov. 2, with the possibility that thousands of people will be unjustly denied the right to vote, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights heard on Thursday.
In a hearing on the illegal disenfranchisement of alleged felons in Florida, commissioners accused state officials of "extraordinary negligence" in drawing up a list of 48,000 people to be purged from voter rolls, most of them because they may once have committed a crime.

"They have engaged in negligence at best and something worse at worst," said Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the commission, an independent bipartisan body whose members are appointed by the President and Congress.

<snip>

"It does seems to me there is a smoking gun here," said commissioner Christopher Edley. "There has been extraordinary negligence in the way the felon purging process has been conducted. ... If it was intentional, this could be a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act."

<snip>

The state said each of Florida's 67 counties would now have to find its own way to purge its voter rolls of felons. The commission heard that many counties, especially those controlled by Republicans, would probably use the state list despite its flaws and that court action was likely.

[Parche]

1. election

Crap, they have had over 3years to get it worked out,what the "cheney" have they been doing all this time.

[UpInArms]

3. they have been working non-stop at continuing their

nasty little ways.

I really really wanted the UN to watch our election. :(

[Rebellious Republican]

2. Excellent post, I just hate to get my hopes up though, like so many

other investigations. They just to end in favor of Bushco!

[peacetalksforall]

4. If lynching is taking a life, then what the right wing is doing is

also a lynching. They are vote lynchers. Imagnine choosing to get sued rather than turning over their 'lists of lynchees'.

[seasat]

5. The firm that compiled the list should ring alarm bells.

The first list that probably swung the 2000 election to Shrub was compiled by Diebolt. You know the company that makes the voting machines whose CEO swore to do everything he could to get shrub reelected. This current list was compiled by Accenture.(LINK) They used to be know as Anderson Consulting, the accounting company behind Enron's books. (LINK) Coecidink? Don't think so. A sad point is that the list used to be compiled with good accuracy for a couple of grand by a local Florida firm until Jebbie came into power. Another sad thing is that this law first came up as a Jim Crow law to keep blacks from voting. Florida needs to get in line with the other states and allow felons to vote at least after they finish parole. Here is a report I found that list the states and their felon voting laws. (LINK) There are only 7 states that have these archaic laws.

[Halliburton]

6. There no longer felons...

They are Iraqi insurgents!

[fearnobush]

7. Is there any news of Greg Palest testifing Today? C-SPAN ?

News?

[tlcandie]

9. I looked on their schedule for the day and did not see Greg listed

anywhere? :shrug: Also, I checked his site, but nothing as of yet.

[DemoTex]

8. Jeb - Fucking - Bu$h

Dangerous, dangerous man. If we don't deep-six the current BFEE contribution to our government, we will have Jeb running in 2008. Kerry must win big. Real big.