Posted on 05/28/2002 6:28:13 PM PDT by knak
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department said Tuesday it found no credible evidence that any Florida residents were intentionally denied their right to vote in the state that handed George W. Bush his margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election.
The Justice Department, in a letter to Congress, detailed findings so far in its investigation of possible voting irregularities in three Florida counties: Orange, Miami-Dade and Osceola. The department has authorized lawsuits in those counties.
In the letter, the department acknowledged polling problems in the three counties may have led to small numbers of voters choosing to leave the polls without casting ballots.
"While the Civil Rights Division discovered evidence of significant confusion and delay in the three counties, there were relatively few voters who actually did not vote because of these problems," wrote Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd.
He said the small number "doesn't reasonably cast any doubt on President Bush's several hundred vote margin of victory in Florida."
"The Civil Rights Division found no credible evidence in our investigations that Floridians were intentionally denied their right to vote during the November 2000 election," Boyd said.
Poll watchers representing the Democratic Party allege that many voters were turned away.
Boyd said that one of the three counties - he did not say which one - may have employed too few bilingual workers, causing delays in providing assistance.
"This may have resulted in at least 26 voters choosing to leave the polls," the chief enforcer of the nation's civil rights laws wrote Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Boyd said that his investigators confirmed that a clerk denied poll watchers permission to help four voters who asked for bilingual assistance. The denial constitutes a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
In another of the other three counties - again, the county was not specified - the investigation found two cases of Haitian-American voters being denied language assistance, Boyd said.
However, the investigation was unable to confirm any of about 15 other alleged instances of voters being denied bilingual assistance.
In the third county, political party poll watchers alleged that approximately 140 voters had difficulty casting ballots, "but it appears that in every instance the voter was referred to the Supervisor of Elections office" for assistance, Boyd wrote. "The Civil Rights Division has no evidence that any of these individuals was unable to cast a ballot."
Also in the third county, the Civil Rights Division's investigation "indicated that a lack of bilingual poll workers resulted in considerable confusion at the polls, and that some poll workers were hostile to Hispanic voters."
Boyd has told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he expected the three counties to negotiate settlements by the time he's ready to file lawsuits.
Boyd said in an earlier letter that Orange County failed to have enough Spanish-speaking poll workers and didn't provide election information in both Spanish and English.
The government alleges that Miami-Dade officials didn't do enough to help Haitian-American voters understand the ballot, according to a copy of a proposed agreement between the county and the Justice Department.
Osceola County, south of Orlando, is accused of not providing Spanish-speaking voters with election information in their own language. A letter from the Justice Department to Osceola officials also said there were not enough bilingual poll workers.
2002 NEWS RELEASES, PRESS ADVISORIES AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS
U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS CONTINUES REVIEW OF FLORIDA ELECTION REFORM
Daylong Session Slated June 20 in Miami
DOJ Announcement Falls Short of Commission's Recommendations
(Washington, DC May 23)--U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Chairperson Mary Frances Berry today announced details for the Commission's upcoming public review of Florida voting rights, which is aimed at assessing election reform adopted by state and federal lawmakers after the 2000 presidential election.
At its May 17 monthly meeting, the Commission reaffirmed a previous decision to hold a public briefing in Florida as a follow-up to its extensive investigation and report on voting irregularities. One year after the release of the report, which found "strong and credible evidence of violations of the Voting Rights Act," the Commission has slated a daylong session for June 20 at the Hyatt-Regency Miami from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The Commission made 11 recommendations addressing widespread voter disenfranchisement and concluded that the election was marred by irregularities, inefficiencies, and ineptitude. Shortly after the Commission's public hearings, the Florida legislature adopted a reform measure that addresses seven of the Commission's recommendations. Federal election reform bills were passed in the U.S. House and Senate this year that also answer some of the concerns outlined in the Commission's report. This week, without providing details, the Department of Justice announced plans to bring suit against three Florida counties, alleging discriminatory treatment of minority voters, unjust purging of voters from voter rolls, and failure to provide language and disability assistance.
"The Commission welcomes the announcement by the Department of Justice," notes Commission Chair Berry. "While not informed of the scope of Justice's lawsuit, the irregularities that the Commission uncovered in 2001 were widespread and involved problems far beyond the three complaints that are reportedly the focus of the DOJ action."
5/23/02
Bring a camera.
...investigators confirmed that a clerk denied poll watchers permission to help four voters who asked for bilingual assistance....
In another of the other three counties...the investigation found two cases of Haitian-American voters being denied language assistance, Boyd said...
I've got the fix for all of this...Learn English!
Good for you. And keep on screaming. The Libs do.
Orange County failed to have enough Spanish-speaking poll workers and didn't provide election information in both Spanish and English. I beg to differ with this finding. I live in Orange County FL and the election notices AND mock ballots are all sent out prior to election. They are in English AND SPANISH!! ALWAYS!! Also, there are sample ballots in both languages posted in ALL polling places throughout Orange Co. so this claim is a bunch of B*LLS**T!
John Lott ("More Guns, Less Crime") shows that contrary to the Dem./press accusations of "Republican racism" during the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, the largest block of "disenfranchised" voters were black Republicans in the Dem. precincts.
What's more, Mary Frances Berry and the Dems./press knew this. The "Civil Rights" report left out the Lott report...though sound because she claimed that he did it for free, thus somehow making it legal to ignore it.
Further reading:
The mainstream media made no mention, except in one short quote in the middle of a "republicans are racist" piece in the NY Times, and the original, short-lived John Lott editorial in the LA Times.
Disenfranchised Blacks in Florida:
Black Republicans are a small minority in Florida, about one for every 20 black Democrats. But, as Lott pointed out in the Los Angeles Times, "This is a large number when you consider that the election in the state was decided by fewer than 1,000 votes."
The new findings likely would be an interesting footnote to the Florida recount battles if they didn't explicitly contradict the central claim of a hasty report by the heavily Democratic U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission argued that blacks in general had been "nearly 10 times more likely to have their ballots declared invalid." Lott says his findings established that this figure is impossible to verify.
....But the new data show that if there was any deliberate effort to suppress votes, it was "not because of race but because of party," Lott reported in a recent Los Angeles Times article. He reveals that a "wide range" of factors influence spoiled-ballot rates, including "education, gender, income, age, number of absentee votes, voting-machine type, ballot type and whether votes were counted at the precinct or centrally." But it is the "isolated fact of being a Republican that makes an African-American vastly more likely to have his or her ballot declared invalid" than by any other identifiable standard. .
Also, from Policy Review Online:
A study by John Lott reports black Republican voters were an astonishing 50 to 66 times more likely than the average black to have a spoiled ballot, and that black Democratic voters actually had a slightly lower spoilage rate than the average voter. His findings also seem inconsistent with any conspiracy by white or Republican election supervisors, since the rate of spoiled ballots was 14 percent to 31 percent higher in precincts with black or Democratic election supervisors. The overall rate of spoiled ballots was also higher for white Republican voters than white Democratic voters.
Hey, they DIDN'T report it? Imagine!
The reason is simple! We have been trying for decades to get the English language deemed as the official language of the U.S. , but to no avail.
The dimocrats fight it tooth and nail each time it comes up. If the vote were taken today, I'm afraid some repubs would be against it as well.
Sucks!
Hm. Sounds like a lot of FReepers I know.
I believe the problem in MO was some changed poll closing times or something. If I recall it was the dims who were involved.
Defund this organization NOW. In fact, why not just end it?
Just in case someone refuses to drop the false accusations gracefully....and, yes, the military deserves a Big Time apology.
I wouldn't go live in Mexico and expect them to all speak English so I would learn Spanish. Likewise I expect that people from other countries learn English while living in this Country or go back from where they came from!
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