---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 03:27:40 EST
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Allegations of voting rights violations need invest igation
Folks~
It will only take 5 minutes of your precious time to read this and maybe 2
minutes to send emails to the news programs. Please take the time to do so.
It could mean a positive change for our country. It's time this stuff got
brought out into the light so it can be corrected. Thanks~ Tori
Subj: [FAIR-L] ACTION ALERT: Allegations of voting rights violations need
invest igation
Date: 11/17/00 6:19:56 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: [log in to unmask] (FAIR-L)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (media analysis, critiques and news
reports)
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To: [log in to unmask]
FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
ACTION ALERT:
Allegations of voting rights violations need investigation
November 17, 2000
Since November 7, major media outlets have devoted enormous attention to the
aftermath of the presidential election in Florida. But one critical aspect
of this story has received relatively little attention: the allegations of a
pattern of voting irregularities and discrimination against
African-Americans and other minority groups that may violate the 15th
Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Upon request from major civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Justice Department is
deciding whether to pursue a federal investigation into allegations of
significant harassment of minority voters in Florida and elsewhere
throughout the country. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 makes it illegal to
intimidate, threaten, coerce or prevent any individual from exercising his
or her right to vote.
These are some of the disturbing and highly newsworthy charges that deserve
more media attention:
--Charles Weaver, publisher of Community Voice, a Fort Myers African
American weekly paper, witnessed "intimidation, harassment and apparent
illegal activity" at a polling place he visited. ''There were illegal poll
watchers, threatening people, telling them, 'I know where you work. You're
going to get fired,''' Weaver told the Inter Press Service (11/14/00). The
same article reported that Tallahassee police set up traffic checks at the
entrance to a polling place in a black neighborhood; that police in Newport
News, Va. stopped people at checkpoints; and some black voters were turned
away from polls in St. Louis for not having voter registration cards, even
though registration cards were not required from white voters.
--In an NAACP public hearing held in Miami (C-Span, 11/11/00), Stacy Powers,
a former police officer who currently serves as news director for Tampa
radio station WTMP, spoke of witnessing numerous voting irregularities in
her election day travels through city neighborhoods. Powers testified that
she saw people being turned away from several polling places in the black
community after being told their names were not on voting lists. When Powers
reminded poll workers that an individual can legally sign an affidavit and
vote even if their name isn't on an official list, she said, she was ejected
from several polling places (Daily News, 11/17/00).
-- Miami's Donnise DeSouza testified that she was denied the right to vote
after being shuttled to several polling places and told her name was not on
the list. When she checked with the elections board the next day, she said,
she found her name was in fact on the list. Many other voters were told
they'd been dropped from the rolls as convicted felons, even though they had
never been arrested, and that names of black college students who registered
this summer never showed up on voter lists, according to the NAACP hearings
(Daily News, 11/17/00).
--According to the New York Times (11/17/00), more than 26,000 ballots were
disqualified in the largely Republican area of Duval County-- four times the
total in 1996. The Times notes that nearly 9,000 of these ballots were cast
in predominately African-American communities around Jacksonville, which
registered support for Al Gore over George Bush at a ten-to-one ratio. (The
November 17 Daily News places the number of rejected African-American votes
in Duval County at more than 12,000, nearly 60 percent of disqualified
ballots).
--Derek Drake, an editor of the black weekly newspaper Central Florida
Advocate, told the London Financial Times (11/16/00) that Haitian Americans
and Hispanics, unlike whites, were often asked for two forms of
identification. "There was either something of a conspiratorial nature going
on or there was mass incompetence," Drake said. In a recent column for the
Los Angeles Syndicate (11/12/00), the Reverend Jesse Jackson noted that
ballot boxes in black communities went uncounted, voters were turned away
after being told there were no ballots left, and Creole speakers were not
allowed to assist Haitian immigrants voting for the first time.
Such exclusionary voting practices are hardly limited to Florida, or to
racial minorities. According to a Federal Election Commission report cited
by the Center for an Accessible Society, more than 20,000 U.S. polling
places fail to meet the minimal requirements of accessibility, depriving
people with disabilities of their fundamental right to vote. (Some of their
stories are documented by the Center's magazine, Ragged Edge Online, at
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/1100/1100votestory.htm .)
In New York City, Columbia University journalism students reported that
citywide voting irregularities included broken ballot booths, the denial of
translation assistance and insufficient instructions given to first-time
Russian voters hoping to support a write-in candidate, and the transposing
of the Chinese characters for "Republican" and "Democrat" on wall posters at
polling places and on columns in ballot machines (City Limits Weekly,
11/13/00).
As Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News noted (11/17/00), "Congress passed the
Voting Rights Act specifically to dismantle the Jim Crow laws -- including
poll taxes and literacy tests -- that kept blacks from voting in the South
for most of the 20th Century." Major media should investigate the
allegations of fraud, harassment, intimidation and voter profiling in
Florida and throughout the country, to determine whether or not the 2000
election included civil rights violations akin to latter-day Jim Crow voter
discrimination.
ACTION: Contact major media and request they conduct in-depth investigations
into allegations of violations to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
CONTACT:
NBC Nightly News
Phone: 212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259
Fax: 202-362-2009
mailto:[log in to unmask]
ABC World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
Fax: 212-456-2795
mailto:[log in to unmask]
CBS Evening News
Phone: 212-975-3691, 202-457-4385
Fax: 212-975-1893
mailto:[log in to unmask]
For more media contacts, see:
http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html
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