Kerry forms legal team to fight abuse at polls

Kerry forms legal team to fight abuse at polls By STEWART M. POWELL and MARK HELM Hearst News Service

BOSTON --Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Monday announced creation of a nationwide legal SWAT team of election lawyers to combat the kind of voting irregularities that occurred in Florida four years ago, contributing to the disputed election of President Bush by five electoral votes.

Kerry said his team would take "tough action" to prevent the kind of voter "intimidation and harassment" that kept an estimated 1 million African-American voters from the polls in 2000 and prevented some 57,000 African-American voters from casting votes in Palm Beach County, Fla.

The legal team is led by Washington, D.C., attorney Robert Bauer and backed by teams of lawyers around the nation.

Kerry outlined the election program in an interview with executives of the Hearst Corp., and representatives from the company's television stations, magazines and newspapers -- including the Houston Chronicle. MISCELLANY Sen. John Kerry on other issues:

PRE-ELECTION TRAVEL: John Kerry suggested he may travel overseas before the Nov. 2 election to meet with foreign leaders about their views on U.S.-led operations in Iraq and other international issues.

TRIP TO IRAQ: He declined to rule out a visit to Iraq "at the appropriate time."

NEWS CONFERENCES: He promised to hold monthly news conferences if elected. President Bush has held three during his term.

Kerry said his lawyers would "go after" local election officials who erroneously "purge people" from the rolls of registered voters.

Kerry also expressed concern about some of the new digital voting machines fielded in some states as part of the congressionally backed, multibillion-dollar effort to modernize the election system in the aftermath of the 2000 irregularities.

Separately, Bauer said in an interview that the election teams would work in every state over the next several months, talking with local officials, gathering information on voting procedures and researching possible legal issues that could arise.

"We want to make sure that every eligible voter who votes has that vote counted," he said.

Bauer said the teams will examine a range of issues, including making sure new voting machines work properly, that voters receive adequate education and training on using the machines and that states don't mistakenly leave eligible voters off registration lists.

"We're trying to anticipate problems, so that when an issue comes up it's not a matter of freelancing a solution on the spot but fixing it before it blows up," he said.

Kerry also criticized Bush for building a "flimflam, fraudulent coalition" of nations for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, saying that the United States and Britain bore the burden, the casualties and the costs with only symbolic help from a variety of nations claimed as full coalition partners by the Bush administration.

Kerry said his goal as president would be to get "as many damn countries involved on the ground as possible" in Iraq, in part by sharing reconstruction contracts with participating nations.

Kerry continued to defend his vote in favor of the October 2002 congressional resolution authorizing Bush to go to war in Iraq as a "last resort," despite the findings last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration had relied on wrong information about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

If he had been president at the time, Kerry said, he would have "wanted authority to use force so I could get something done but I would have used (the authority) differently" to build an effective international coalition and solicit wider support within the U.N. Security Council to intensify diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Saddam to comply with U.N. weapons inspections.

"My regret is not my vote; my regret is the way the president went about going to war," Kerry said.

"I stick by my vote. I think the president breached faith by the way he used it."

Kerry also criticized Bush for building a "flimflam, fraudulent coalition" of nations for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, saying that the United States and Britain bore the burden, the casualties and the costs with only symbolic help from a variety of nations claimed as full coalition partners by the Bush administration.

How many people from Poland, Australia, etc should have died, Mr. Kerry? Total coalition deaths (accidental, illness, and hostile fire) COMBINED US and partners has just hit 1,000 which is amazingly small for "war".

Meanwhile here is what Mr. Kerry had to say in 1997:

"I don't think anybody can deny that we would have liked it to have threatened force and we would have liked it to carry the term serious consequences will flow. On the other hand, the coalition is together. I mean the fact is there is a unanimous statement by the security council and the United Nations that there has to be immediate, unrestricted, unconditional access to the sites. That's very strong language. And it also references the underlying resolution on which the use of force is based. So clearly the allies may not like it, and I think that's our great concern -- where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity..."
"...there's absolutely no statement that they have made or that they will make that will prevent the United States of America and this president or any president from acting in what they believe are the best interests of our country."
"I think the United States has always reserved the right and will reserve the right to act in its best interests. And clearly it is not just our best interests, it is in the best interests of the world to make it clear to Saddam Hussein that he's not going to get away with a breach of the '91 agreement that he's got to live up to, which is allowing inspections and dismantling his weapons and allowing us to know that he has dismantled his weapons. That's the price he pays for invading Kuwait and starting a war."

I know I speak for all Americans when I say that it's good to hear that the Democrats will be bringing even more lawyers with them to this year's election. Having our elections decided by courts has long been a goal of the American people, and we applauded when Al Gore's campaign manager said on the night of the 2000 election, "No we're not conceding... this campaign is not over."

Yes, dragging the election into the courts was a true innovation; something Al Gore can finally say he invented. It didn't work out for him, but the principle he established -- that we'll sue and sue to get the votes re-counted in all sorts of funny ways until we win -- is one that restores people's faith in our electoral process.

What could be more fair than having judges re-write the rules on the fly to benefit one candidate or another? The law says "15 days?" So what? Let's find a judge who will overrule the law and make it 30 days because he said so. When that's done we can play "My Supreme Court beats your Supreme Court." That was another inspiring moment that left us all thinking, "How wonderful to watch our votes being batted around like shuttlecocks at the whims of these people in black robes."

Who can be fooled into thinking that "the law" means anything at all when these nine black robes get over-ruled by those nine black robes? You would think that at that level of play, judges would have some basic agreement on what the law is. But noooo. Here we have presumably 18 of the World's Smartest Jurists, and two groups of them are at loggerheads over what the law is. If they can't agree on what it says, how the Hell are ordinary people supposed to have a clue? The message most of us got from that whole exercise is that the law is whatever the highest-ranking black robe says it is. And when that starts deciding elections...

So here's to the Democrats and their lawyer friends, who I'm sure will make this "election" another monument to the insufferable arrogance of lawyers and judges, who now presume to "adjust" our elections after-the-fact.

Kerry said his team would take "tough action" to prevent the kind of voter "intimidation and harassment" that kept an estimated 1 million African-American voters from the polls in 2000 and prevented some 57,000 African-American voters from casting votes in Palm Beach County, Fla.

This has been documented among the lies in Michael Moore's movie.

Rush was talking about it on the radio today, I believe (the disproven assertion that people were prohibited from going to the polls).

I did not find that among the issues discussed here but this is still relevant:

59 Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11

Florida Purge of Convicted Felons from Voter Rolls
Deceit 4
According to Fahrenheit, Bush cronies hired Data Base Technologies to purge Florida voters who might vote for Gore, and these potential voters were purged from the voting rolls on the basis of race. ("Second, make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote count woman. And that her state has hired a company that's gonna knock voters off the rolls who aren't likely to vote for you. You can usually tell 'em by the color of their skin.") As explained by the Palm Beach Post, Moore's suggestion is extremely incomplete, and on at least one fact, plainly false.
The 1998 mayoral election in Miami was a fiasco which was declared void by Florida courts, because--in violation of Florida law--convicted felons had been allowed to vote. The Florida legislature ordered the executive branch to purge felons from the voting rolls before the next election. Following instructions from Florida officials, Data Base Technologies (DBT) aggressively attempted to identify all convicted felons who were illegally registered to vote in Florida.
There were two major problems with the purge. First, several states allow felons to vote once they have completed their sentences. Some of these ex-felons moved to Florida and were, according to a court decision, eligible to vote. Florida improperly purged these immigrant felons.
Second, the comprehensive effort to identify all convicted felons led to large number of false positives, in which persons with, for example, the same name as a convicted felon, were improperly purged. Purged voters were, in most cases, notified months before the election and given an opportunity to appeal, but the necessity to file an appeal was in itself a barrier which probably discouraged some legitimate, non-felon citizens from voting. According to the Palm Beach Post, at least 1,100 people were improperly purged.
The overbreadth of the purge was well-known in Florida before the election. As a result, election officials in 20 of Florida's counties ignored the purge list entirely. In these counties, convicted felons were allowed to vote. Also according to the Post, thousands of felons were improperly allowed to vote in the 20 non-purging counties. Analysis by Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh, dissenting from a report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, suggests that about 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida. (The Thernstrom/Redenbaugh dissent explains why little credit should be given to the majority report, which was produced by flagrantly ignoring data.)
When allowed to vote, felons vote approximately 69 percent Democratic, according to a study in the American Sociological Review. Therefore, if the thousands of felons in the non-purging 20 counties had not been illegally allowed to vote, it is likely that Bush's statewide margin would have been substantially larger.
Regardless, Moore's suggestion that the purge was conducted on the basis of race was indisputably false. As the Palm Beach Post details, all the evidence shows that Data Base Technologies did not use race as a basis for the purge. Indeed, DBT's refusal to take note of a registered voter's race was one of the reasons for the many cases of mistaken identity.
DBT's computers had matched these people with felons, though in dozens of cases they did not share the same name, birthdate, gender or race...[A] review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted. Records show that DBT told the state it would not use race as a criterion to identify felons. The list itself bears that out: More than 1,000 voters were matched with felons though they were of different races.
The appeals record supports the Palm Beach Post's findings. Based on the numbers of successful appeals, blacks were less likely to have been improperly placed on the purge list: of the blacks who were purged, 5.1 percent successfully appealed. Of Hispanics purged, 8.7 percent successfully appealed. Of whites purged, 9.9 percent successfully appealed. John R. Lott, Jr., "Nonvoted Ballots and Discrimination in Florida," Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 32 (Jan. 2003), p. 209. Of course it is theoretically possible that the appeals officials discriminated against blacks, or that improperly purged blacks were not as likely to appeal as were people of other races. But no one has offered any evidence to support such possibilities.
[Moore response: Cites various articles about the felon purge. Offers no evidence to support the claim that voters were targeted on the basis of race.]

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