"No voting rights for YOU......boy!"- Florida's illegal purges of voter rolls to continue for 3rd national election? Election head resigns. While Florida
refuses to release the "purge lists" to CNN, "The head of Florida's elections division resigned Monday amid reports he was feeling political heat over a push to purge thousands of suspected felons from the state's voter rolls." (Tallahassee Sun-Sentinel) " there has been
little action (and worse, really) on Florida's
agreement to reinstate illegally purged voters to Florida voting rolls that resulted from an NAACP lawsuit over the 2000 election [
"Many voters said their votes didn't count or they were turned away from polls due to mistakes on voter lists, busy telephone lines at election headquarters, punch-card voting machine foul-ups and other problems...Statewide, the largest numbers of voting problems were found in precincts with high proportions of black and elderly voters." The NYT editorially
acknowledged the scandal on February 15, 2004.]
On May 21, 2002, Ashcroft's Justice Department began a suit against Florida counties
"for purging Black voters from voter rolls and other violations of civil rights" Now, four years after the 2000 election, illegally "purged" Florida voters will not be notified until it is
"too late to have their rights restored for this election - or are turned away on Election Day", reports the Tampa Tribune.
"The vast majority of them are black and would be likely to vote Democratic."
It's difficult for convicted felons to
regain the right to vote in Florida, but many on the "purge" lists were not (in 2000) and still are not felons at all. [ note :
Greg Palast - busy of late - must be most credited with blowing this story wide open. See
here here,
here.....]
posted by troutfishing
on Jun 9, 2004 -
46 comments
