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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------