RACISM - FLORIDA'S REAL SCANDAL
____________________________________________________________________

THE VILLAGE VOICE
Mondo Washington
November 22 - 28, 2000
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0047/ridgeway.shtml#chad
by James Ridgeway

When Joe Lieberman unctuously declared on Meet the Press Sunday morning that
"every vote counts," he wasn't talking about the ballots not cast by African
Americans, Haitians, and other minorities in Florida. In many respects, the
untold story of the election lies not with the excited middle-class white
Democrats of Palm Beach County, but with the thousands of black people who
were turned away from the polls in a bizarre rerun of the segregated South
before the Voting Rights Act. It is the most amazing irony of the election
in that the black populations, which for years have formed the base of the
Democratic Party--at least before the Democratic Leadership Council took
over--were prevented from voting with amazingly little protest from the
party bigwigs. These voters could easily have carried the vice president to
victory in Florida. And, of course, the Republicans--who now are the real
Southern Democrats--have refrained from even mentioning the subject.

Not only were many blacks blocked from ballot access in Florida, but the
Gore team apparently ignored them on election day. Campaign boss Bill
Daley's main goal seems to have been to count and recount the votes of Palm
Beach County, which the vice president won by 140,000 votes. Not once did
Daley ask for a new election so these disenfranchised black citizens could
vote. And only as an afterthought did he even raise the possibility of
recounting all the votes in the state. In fact, the most vigorous proponent
of a state recount has been Nebraska Republican senator Chuck Hagel.

One thing now seems clear: On election day, many white Florida election
officials were doing their utmost to make sure blacks and other minorities
didn't vote. That's the real scandal in Florida. The NAACP, which continues
to pile up testimony from African Americans who say they were
disenfranchised, wants the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the
situation.

"This is a corrupted, tainted process, an attempt to steal an election,"
Reverend Jesse Jackson said last week.

Among the claims:

* That African Americans received phone calls the weekend before the
election from people who claimed to be with the NAACP, urging them to vote
for Bush. (Similar calls were reported in Michigan and Virginia.)

* That roadblocks were set up a few hundred yards from voting places in
Volusia County. Police stopped cars and ordered black men to get out of
their vehicles and produce identification. (The Justice Department is
reviewing the complaints to determine whether they amount to violations of
law.)

* That the morning after the election, employees at four predominantly black
Miami-area schools which had been used as polling sites found stuffed ballot
boxes, which apparently had not been counted. (The boxes were sent to
elections officials.)

* That, in a maneuver that smacks of the civil rights fights in the old
South, substantial numbers of blacks were turned away from polling booths in
various parts of the state. In Hillsborough County, sheriff's deputies who
checked voter IDs allegedly claimed that the race of the prospective
voters--which is listed on Florida voter ID cards--didn't match the race of
the person standing in front of them. "I can't tell you how many times it
happened," Sheila Douglas of the NAACP told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
"but it happened more often than not." (In addition, Nizam Arain, who works
with Jackson's team of investigators, claimed black men in Hillsborough
County were turned away from polling places as convicted felons, even though
such proof was lacking. Jackson later said some black voters in the county
were told there were no more ballots or that polls were closed.)

* That in largely Republican Duval County about 27,000 people were
disqualified when they attempted to vote. More than 12,000 disqualifications
came from four districts that are mostly African
American.

"While I expected some complaints, it struck me . . . that this was
startling in its scope and size," said Penda Hair, director of the
Advancement Project, which advocates social and racial justice. "It seems
that in counties across Florida, voters who were qualified were turned away
at the polls. It was a denial of the right to vote that seemed to be
concentrated in African American precincts."

Additional reporting: Rouven Gueissaz and Theresa Crapanzano

This story is part of the Village Voice's ongoing 2000 presidential
election coverage. http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/powertrip2000/

Copyright 2000 The Village Voice. All rights reserved.






_______________________________________________________
Tired of slow Internet? Get @Home Broadband Internet
http://www.home.com/xinbox/signup.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------