Some Election Info you may not have seen

[glugglug]

Cliff notes:

• Harris sets up new rules as Secretary of State and Supervisor of Elections to hand off voter regulation to a private company.

• Harris has this company "scrub" 8000 "ex-felons" from the list

• Expands the list to include those with the same surnames and/or birthdates as the "ex-felons" for a total of 58,000 votes to remove (for Bush "election")

• List is later found to be 95% inaccurate

• Harris is "elected" to the House of Representatives 2 years later using the voter list she had created

Link

 

[tcsenter]

What the hell does it say and why the hell can't it be put in HTML or just plain text? It keeps downloading and downloading something, after I refused to install Flash player, then I get a blank box.

Oh good, cliff notes, thanks!

Harris sets up new rules as Secretary of State and Supervisor of Elections to hand off voter regulation to a private company.

Absolutely false.

The Florida Legislature mandated Florida election officials create this voter purge list and that it be done through a private firm. Had Harris not done this, she would have violated Florida law and her statutory obligations. The law was enacted by the Florida Legislature as an anti-fraud measure after the high incidence of fraud that was uncovered in the 1997 Miami Mayoral election.

A lot of reviews and investigations have found a lot of things, not one of them have found that Florida election officials deviated or departed from, failed to follow in any way, this mandatory requirement set forth by the Florida Legislature.

If the law is flawed producing these errors, that is the Legislature's fault, not the officials legally obligated to follow it.

All names on the list were to be verified correct by each county supervisor of elections. If the supervisor of elections could not verify that a certain voter was correctly purged, they were instructed not to disqualify that voter.

 

[Ryan]

Please, quit your bitching - the election wasn't stolen, blah, blah, blah. If you believe this, I've got a war to sell you (hey, I hear that you can take all the oil you want!!).

 

[NesuD]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
What the hell does it say and why the hell can't it be put in HTML or just plain text? It keeps downloading and downloading something, after I refused to install Flash player, then I get a blank box.

Oh good, cliff notes, thanks!

Harris sets up new rules as Secretary of State and Supervisor of Elections to hand off voter regulation to a private company.

Absolutely false.

The Florida Legislature mandated Florida election officials create this voter purge list and that it be done through a private firm. Had Harris not done this, she would have violated Florida law and her statutory obligations. The law was enacted by the Florida Legislature as an anti-fraud measure after the high incidence of fraud that was uncovered in the 1997 Miami Mayoral election.

A lot of reviews and investigations have found a lot of things, not one of them have found that Florida election officials deviated or departed from, failed to follow in any way, this mandatory requirement set forth by the Florida Legislature.

If the law is flawed producing these errors, that is the Legislature's fault, not the officials legally obligated to follow it.

All names on the list were to be verified correct by each county supervisor of elections. If the supervisor of elections could not verify that a certain voter was correctly purged, they were instructed not to disqualify that voter.

Ouch! Ownage.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Harris sets up new rules as Secretary of State and Supervisor of Elections to hand off voter regulation to a private company.

Absolutely false.

A lot of reviews and investigations have found a lot of things, not one of them have found that Florida election officials deviated or departed from, failed to follow in any way, this mandatory requirement set forth by the Florida Legislature.

If the law is flawed producing these errors, that is the Legislature's fault, not the officials legally obligated to follow it.

While you're right about the law, you're being disingenuous if you're claiming Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush's administration in general had nothing to do how it was implemented to eliminate tens of thousands of black voters.

In particular, why did the administration grant ChoicePoint DBT, when their bid ($2.3 million) was so much higher than all the other bids (all around $10,000)?

How did George Bruder, senior VP of ChoicePoint DBT, know what to bid? According to him, "a little birdie" told him what to bid. Who might that little birdie have been?

Why was there a handwritten note "don't need" next to the list of verification databases on the ChoicePoint DBT list when that verification process was the only distinguishing characteristic of their bid that might have justified their huge surcharge over the other bidders?

Why did ChoicePoint VP James Lee testify before Congress that the state gave DBT the directive to add to the purge list people who matched 80% of a last name and told them to ignore checks that would reduce the number of mistakes on the list?

Why did ChoicePoint VP testify before Congress that he misled Florida election officials about race being used as one of the match conditions to create the voter purge list?

Why did Katherine Harris' office assure the US Dept of Justice that the new voter purge would not affect blacks' right to vote when it clearly did? The US Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that the state of Florida check any such changes with the Dept of Justice.

Why did Katherine Harris' office order county clerks to blank out the conviction dates that were in the future? How did the list contain all those future felons anyway? The list had over 4000 blanked convinction dates.

If the lists were accurate at all, why did DBT in 2002 after being sued by the NAACP, indicate that the new list would only contain 5% of the people listed in their list for the 2000 election?

If Harris is so restricted by the legislature, why did she disobey their post-2000 election vote that the Secretary of State be barred from hiring an outside firm to make a voter purge list by hiring Accenture in 2001 to do the list for 2002 for another huge fee of $1.6 million?

Harris' office paid millions of extra dollars for either:
1. A failed, incomplete, and incompetent service that stripped many innocent citizens of their right to vote, in which case, why didn't they do something to fix this problem and why are they hiring another firm to do the check over the objections of the state legistlature?
2. A service performed exactly as they hoped it would be.

All names on the list were to be verified correct by each county supervisor of elections. If the supervisor of elections could not verify that a certain voter was correctly purged, they were instructed not to disqualify that voter.

True, but how could the counties check them? They didn't have the resources of a $2.3 million contract to hire a statistician and cross-check databases. Some tried to take up the effort, but they didn't have the manpower to check every list sent to them by the state. The best many counties could do was to send letters out to the people on the list and some did, but 1/3 of the addresses were wrong, and if you did get such a letter, you were told that your recourse was to appeal to the state government to get your rights restored, bringing us back to Jeb Bush's administration. The counties were definitely involved in this election fraud, some of them by not verifying the list at all, but to attempt to deny that Katherine Harris' office which was responsible for creating the list wasn't involved is ridiculous.

Katherine Harris was involved with the 2000 election fraud as deeply as the Daleys were with the 1960 election fraud.

 

[arsbanned]

And if you recall, bands of Republican hoodlums stormed the places where this effort was taking place, intimidating workers, throwing sh!t around.....

 

[naddicott]

July 2, 2004: Thousands of eligible voters are on felon list

More than 2,100 Florida voters -- many of them black Democrats -- could be wrongly barred from voting in November because Tallahassee elections officials included them on a list of felons potentially ineligible to vote, a Herald investigation has found.

A Florida Division of Elections database lists more than 47,000 people the department said may be ineligible to vote because of felony records. The state is directing local elections offices to check the list and scrub felons from voter rolls.

But a Herald review shows that at least 2,119 of those names -- including 547 in South Florida -- shouldn't be on the list because their rights to vote were formally restored through the state's clemency process.

That's a potentially jarring flaw, critics say, in a state that turned the 2000 presidential election to Gov. Jeb Bush's brother George on the narrowest of margins -- 537 votes.

Florida -- one of just six states that don't allow felons to vote -- has come under intense criticism over its botched attempts to purge felons since the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election, when myriad problems prompted many elections officials to ignore the purge altogether.

The new list is causing its own problems, raising more questions about the fairness and accuracy of the state's efforts to purge the voter rolls of ineligible voters.

State elections officials acknowledge there may be mistakes on the list but insist they have built in safeguards to make sure eligible voters are not removed by local election offices. They say they have warned election offices to be diligent before eliminating voters, and have flagged possible cases in which voters on the list may have regained their rights.

''We have been very clear that this database is not to be considered the final word,'' Paul Craft, chief of the division's bureau of voting systems, said Thursday. ``We have told the local supervisors they need to be very careful with it.''

INCREASES RISKS

Yet local officials, already overburdened preparing for the election, say shifting the burden to them is opening the door for major problems.

''I have never seen such an incompetent program implemented by the DOE,'' said Leon County elections chief Ion Sancho.

Sancho said his office has already found people in the state's felon voter database who have received clemency.

Miami-Dade County Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan said she, too, intends to err on the side of voters.

''This concerns me,'' Kaplan said of The Herald's findings. ``That's why I'm not having my staff jump to start any process until we can make 100 percent sure that it is the correct person.''

Craft said his office continuously checks the database against a list of felons who have received clemency -- which includes the right to vote -- and that 10,000 felons have already been taken off the list because of the clemency match.

Craft and other elections officials on Thursday declined to discuss why The Herald found another 2,119 voters in the database who have received clemency.

''We can't speculate on the methodology you used,'' Craft said. ``It is a matter that requires further investigation.''

CLOSE SCRUTINY

Elections officials said some voters with clemency could have been left on the list because records show they registered to vote before their rights were restored.

Dawn Roberts, director of the Division of Elections, said the process used to clean the voter rolls has been ''vetted at the highest levels of the Department of Justice'' and negotiated with civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP.

Those assurances offered scant consolation to Mary Catherine Lane, 51, of Miami, who was 18 when she was arrested for robbery in 1972.

''That just makes me angry,'' Lane, a registered Democrat, said when told she was on the list.

''I got a pardon on Dec. 14, 1998, signed by Gov. Lawton Chiles and everything. And now they're doing this to me? I served every day of my sentence plus some for bad behavior,'' she said.

`DON'T LIKE IT'

Norman Carter, 45, of Fort Lauderdale, also on the list, keeps his May 20, 2003, clemency papers folded in his Bible.

''I don't appreciate it, I don't like it and I wish I knew what I could do about it,'' said Carter, a Democrat, convicted of dealing in stolen property in 1988.

''I know how critical these elections have been lately,'' he said.

Of the 2,119 people who obtained clemency, 62 percent are registered Democrats, and almost half are black. Less than 20 percent are Republican. Those ratios are very close to the same in the list of 47,000 voters who the local elections officers are supposed to review and possibly purge from the registration rolls.

''It's just not right,'' said state Rep. Chris Smith, who represents and lives in a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood hit hardest by the list, the city's historic black neighborhood.

''Those who have been disenfranchised before seem to be continually disenfranchised by our archaic laws,'' Smith said.

WERE NEVER TOLD

Several of the three dozen voters on the state list interviewed by The Herald were not aware that their rights had been restored through the clemency process.

''I'm upset because I had clemency all these years and nobody told me,'' said Roger Maddox, 51, a Miami Democrat who received clemency in 1977 for a 1973 theft conviction.

''Now I'm on a purge list . . . man,'' he said.

Maddox said he intends to visit the Miami-Dade elections office to get his name removed from the list. ``Give me the number, man. This is crazy.''

Craft said it is possible that some names are incorrectly included in the database because the match was less then perfect when elections officials made their comparisons.

To identify registered voters with felony convictions, the Division of Elections compared names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and other identifying information.

Elections officials said there are 311 voters who may have clemency who were left on the list.

''But in each case the database is flagged so the supervisors of elections know there was a match of some kind,'' Craft said. ``The supervisors know automatically that those 311 potentially have clemency.''

SOME NAMES FLAGGED

County elections supervisors interviewed acknowledged that some of the names are flagged. But they wonder why it is that already overburdened elections employees should investigate facts the state has not been able to definitively answer itself.

Kay Clem, elections supervisor in Indian River County, said her staff ``is dealing with terms they've never heard of before. We need a lot more training.''

Clem said her office is hiring a private company to investigate the 365 names that appear on its list.

''This is putting us in a very precarious situation,'' Clem said.

INVESTIGATE VOTERS

All county elections supervisors are required to investigate each voter on the list, verify whether or not he or she is eligible to vote, then notify by mail suspected felons who have not had their civil rights restored.

The certified letter is supposed to name a time and place voters can appear to explain why they should remain on the rolls.

If supervisors suspect the letters were not received, they're supposed to publish at least one notice in the local newspaper.

If there's no response within 30 days, supervisors must remove the person from the rolls.

No one interviewed by The Herald -- including 53-year-old Walter Gibbons of Miami Gardens, a Vietnam veteran convicted of drug possession in 1973 -- had yet received a letter.

''I don't think it's fair that they're trying to stop me from voting, because everybody that commits a crime does not stay a criminal,'' said Gibbons, an ordained minister granted clemency in 1978. ``I had my error in life, but that was a long time ago, over 30 years now, and I'm a different person.'

A little better process this year, but still troubling...

 

[AcidicFury]

This is how our democracy works.

 

[etech]

In particular, why did the administration grant ChoicePoint DBT, when their bid ($2.3 million) was so much higher than all the other bids (all around $10,000)?

How did George Bruder, senior VP of ChoicePoint DBT, know what to bid? According to him, "a little birdie" told him what to bid. Who might that little birdie have been?

A "little birdie" told him what to bid but his firm didn't have the lowest bid?

I've got to buy more Reynold's stock.

 

[MrGrim257]

Originally posted by: cquark

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Harris sets up new rules as Secretary of State and Supervisor of Elections to hand off voter regulation to a private company.

Absolutely false.

A lot of reviews and investigations have found a lot of things, not one of them have found that Florida election officials deviated or departed from, failed to follow in any way, this mandatory requirement set forth by the Florida Legislature.

If the law is flawed producing these errors, that is the Legislature's fault, not the officials legally obligated to follow it.

While you're right about the law, you're being disingenuous if you're claiming Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush's administration in general had nothing to do how it was implemented to eliminate tens of thousands of black voters.

In particular, why did the administration grant ChoicePoint DBT, when their bid ($2.3 million) was so much higher than all the other bids (all around $10,000)?

How did George Bruder, senior VP of ChoicePoint DBT, know what to bid? According to him, "a little birdie" told him what to bid. Who might that little birdie have been?

Why was there a handwritten note "don't need" next to the list of verification databases on the ChoicePoint DBT list when that verification process was the only distinguishing characteristic of their bid that might have justified their huge surcharge over the other bidders?

Why did ChoicePoint VP James Lee testify before Congress that the state gave DBT the directive to add to the purge list people who matched 80% of a last name and told them to ignore checks that would reduce the number of mistakes on the list?

Why did ChoicePoint VP testify before Congress that he misled Florida election officials about race being used as one of the match conditions to create the voter purge list?

Why did Katherine Harris' office assure the US Dept of Justice that the new voter purge would not affect blacks' right to vote when it clearly did? The US Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that the state of Florida check any such changes with the Dept of Justice.

Why did Katherine Harris' office order county clerks to blank out the conviction dates that were in the future? How did the list contain all those future felons anyway? The list had over 4000 blanked convinction dates.

If the lists were accurate at all, why did DBT in 2002 after being sued by the NAACP, indicate that the new list would only contain 5% of the people listed in their list for the 2000 election?

If Harris is so restricted by the legislature, why did she disobey their post-2000 election vote that the Secretary of State be barred from hiring an outside firm to make a voter purge list by hiring Accenture in 2001 to do the list for 2002 for another huge fee of $1.6 million?

Harris' office paid millions of extra dollars for either:
1. A failed, incomplete, and incompetent service that stripped many innocent citizens of their right to vote, in which case, why didn't they do something to fix this problem and why are they hiring another firm to do the check over the objections of the state legistlature?
2. A service performed exactly as they hoped it would be.

All names on the list were to be verified correct by each county supervisor of elections. If the supervisor of elections could not verify that a certain voter was correctly purged, they were instructed not to disqualify that voter.

True, but how could the counties check them? They didn't have the resources of a $2.3 million contract to hire a statistician and cross-check databases. Some tried to take up the effort, but they didn't have the manpower to check every list sent to them by the state. The best many counties could do was to send letters out to the people on the list and some did, but 1/3 of the addresses were wrong, and if you did get such a letter, you were told that your recourse was to appeal to the state government to get your rights restored, bringing us back to Jeb Bush's administration. The counties were definitely involved in this election fraud, some of them by not verifying the list at all, but to attempt to deny that Katherine Harris' office which was responsible for creating the list wasn't involved is ridiculous.

Katherine Harris was involved with the 2000 election fraud as deeply as the Daleys were with the 1960 election fraud.

Did it ever occur to you that removing felons from the voting roles would disproportionally remove lots of black voters? Whats that, black people might be more likely to commit crime that white people?? Oh, the HORROR!!

 

[naddicott]

Originally posted by: MrGrim257
Did it ever occur to you that removing felons from the voting roles would disproportionally remove lots of black voters? Whats that, black people might be more likely to commit crime that white people?? Oh, the HORROR!!

Nobody here appears to be concerned about felons who have not received clemency being removed from the voting lists. Not sure who you're talking to, a little voice in your head perhaps?

The problem is US Citizens, who served their time, received clemency (thereby legally restoring their right to vote), and yet the state of Florida is attempting to deny them the right to vote. In 2000, there were additional cases of mistaken identity: citizens who had never committed a felony, but who were refused their right to vote soley due to a similarities of name and birthdate.

The fact that those who were illegally disenfranchised happen to be disproportionately black (and disproportionately Democratic) certainly raises questions as to whether the Republican officials responsible for these lists had any concern about these innacuracies, or whether they considered the extra non-voting Democrats as a bonus.

 

[etech]

Originally posted by: naddicott

Originally posted by: MrGrim257
Did it ever occur to you that removing felons from the voting roles would disproportionally remove lots of black voters? Whats that, black people might be more likely to commit crime that white people?? Oh, the HORROR!!

Nobody here appears to be concerned about felons who have not received clemency being removed from the voting lists. Not sure who you're talking to, a little voice in your head perhaps?

The problem is US Citizens, who served their time, received clemency (thereby legally restoring their right to vote), and yet the state of Florida is attempting to deny them the right to vote. In 2000, there were additional cases of mistaken identity: citizens who had never committed a felony, but who were refused their right to vote soley due to a similarities of name and birthdate.

The fact that those who were illegally disenfranchised happen to be disproportionately black (and disproportionately Democratic) certainly raises questions as to whether the Republican officials responsible for these lists had any concern about these innacuracies, or whether they considered the extra non-voting Democrats as a bonus.

Interesting, is it your contention than that ex-felons are more likely to vote for Democrats?

 

[tcsenter]

While you're right about the law, you're being disingenuous if you're claiming Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush's administration in general had nothing to do how it was implemented to eliminate tens of thousands of black voters.

Again, a lot of reviews and investigations have found a lot of things, including the excoriating report of the US Civil Right Commission that borders on looney and recommends litigation against Harris and Bush by the US Department of Justice, not one of them have found that Florida election officials deviated or departed from, failed to follow in any way, this mandatory requirement set forth by the Florida Legislature.

The nature of any misconduct alleged by these investigations were purely results-based. That is, the extent of their 'evidence' is in essence that "well, black people were on the list by mistake and denied their right to vote, so it must have been deliberate."

That's sorta like alleging "the suspect died while in police custody therefore police must have killed him."

Tell me, why did the NAACP settle its lawsuit against Harris in exchange for nothing. That's right. The evidence against Harris was so damning that the NAACP decided to settle its lawsuit against her and received absolutely nothing from Harris as part of this "settlement".

Dropping the lawsuit because the NAACP didn't have a leg to stand on wouldn't have looked good for the NAACP, so they decided to call it "settling" instead. lol!

True, but how could the counties check them?

Ask the Florida Legislature. It was the Florida Legislature who placed the final burden on county supervisors to verify the accuracy of the purge list for voters residing in their county, not Katherine Harris nor Jeb Bush.

The counties were definitely involved in this election fraud, some of them by not verifying the list at all...

You bet they were, Democratic strongholds with high numbers of criminal constituencies (do they come in any other kind?) simply ignored the list, allowing actual felons to vote (for Gore) and more prohibited persons may have been allowed to vote for Gore than the number of persons wrongly prevented from voting.

Have they actually turned up more than one or two dozen persons who in fact attempted to vote but were wrongly turned-away? Last I knew, they could only find a handful who could prove it. If there were 20,000 persons erroneously purged, and only 100 of them actually attempted to vote anyway, then the rights of 100 persons were violated, not 20,000.

 

[naddicott]

Originally posted by: etech
Interesting, is it your contention than that ex-felons are more likely to vote for Democrats?

In the state of Florida, those illegally disenfranchised have been reported to be disproportionately Democrats, not all of whom are ex-felons at all. I certainly wouldn't be shocked if ex-felons are indeed more likely to vote for Democrats, however.

I doubt that these individuals are voting using felon related issues as their main voting criterion. For instance, the ordained minister in today's Miami Herald article (quoted in full above) most likely votes based for the candidates he thinks will do the most for the interests of his current parishioners rather than voting on issues related to his 1978 felony.

 

[naddicott]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Tell me, why did the NAACP settle its lawsuit against Harris in exchange for nothing. That's right. The evidence against Harris was so damning that the NAACP decided to settle its lawsuit against her and received absolutely nothing from Harris as part of this "settlement".

Perhaps its because they had already negotiated settlements promising to revise relevant laws to protect the rights of legal voters from other parties. The goal of the NAACP was to prevent a repetition of the circumstances of the 2000 election, not economic gain or the reversal of results.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: naddicott

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Tell me, why did the NAACP settle its lawsuit against Harris in exchange for nothing. That's right. The evidence against Harris was so damning that the NAACP decided to settle its lawsuit against her and received absolutely nothing from Harris as part of this "settlement".

Perhaps its because they had already negotiated settlements promising to revise relevant laws to protect the rights of legal voters from other parties. The goal of the NAACP was to prevent a repetition of the circumstances of the 2000 election, not economic gain or the reversal of results.

Wait wait...wait a darned minute!

You're alleging, as the NAACP was alleging, illegal conduct resulting in serious violations of civil and constitutional rights suffered by citizens belonging to a protected class whose recent history warrants vigorous protections, and vigorous prosecution of those who would violate their rights.

And you're telling me that, as a remedy to such serious civil rights violations and illegal conduct, the NAACP was willing to drop the whole thing in exchange for "We promise not to do it again?"

Well, I see! I hereby retract my statement that the NAACP received 'nothing' in the settlement. lol!

 

[Zephyr106]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: naddicott

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Tell me, why did the NAACP settle its lawsuit against Harris in exchange for nothing. That's right. The evidence against Harris was so damning that the NAACP decided to settle its lawsuit against her and received absolutely nothing from Harris as part of this "settlement".

Perhaps its because they had already negotiated settlements promising to revise relevant laws to protect the rights of legal voters from other parties. The goal of the NAACP was to prevent a repetition of the circumstances of the 2000 election, not economic gain or the reversal of results.

Wait wait...wait a darned minute!

You're alleging, as the NAACP was alleging, illegal conduct resulting in serious violations of civil and constitutional rights suffered by citizens belonging to a protected class whose recent history warrants vigorous protections, and vigorous prosecution of those who would violate their rights.

And you're telling me that, as a remedy to such serious civil rights violations and illegal conduct, the NAACP was willing to drop the whole thing in exchange for "We promise not to do it again?"

I see...

Wahh wahh protected class, white man oppressed. Stop your demagoguery and realize that not every knee-grow is out to get the white man's money.

Zephyr

 

[Moonbeam]

And to think that all that cunning, all that money in graft, all it bought us was a Chimp. God does have a sense of humor.

 

[MrGrim257]

Originally posted by: Zephyr106

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: naddicott

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Tell me, why did the NAACP settle its lawsuit against Harris in exchange for nothing. That's right. The evidence against Harris was so damning that the NAACP decided to settle its lawsuit against her and received absolutely nothing from Harris as part of this "settlement".

Perhaps its because they had already negotiated settlements promising to revise relevant laws to protect the rights of legal voters from other parties. The goal of the NAACP was to prevent a repetition of the circumstances of the 2000 election, not economic gain or the reversal of results.

Wait wait...wait a darned minute!

You're alleging, as the NAACP was alleging, illegal conduct resulting in serious violations of civil and constitutional rights suffered by citizens belonging to a protected class whose recent history warrants vigorous protections, and vigorous prosecution of those who would violate their rights.

And you're telling me that, as a remedy to such serious civil rights violations and illegal conduct, the NAACP was willing to drop the whole thing in exchange for "We promise not to do it again?"

I see...

Wahh wahh protected class, white man oppressed. Stop your demagoguery and realize that not every knee-grow is out to get the white man's money.

Zephyr

He never even suggested that blacks were trying to take advantage of whites. I'll take that statement as an admission that tcsenter's argument cant be refuted.

 

[M0NEYSH0T]

***Getting in the Delorean***