- by Romey Lane

DEMOCRACY SILENCED IN ELECTION 2000

“It is not a question of a recount or even an accurate count, but more pointedly those whose exclusion from the right to vote amounted to a ‘No Count’.”

This was the conclusion of the U.S. Commission On Civil Rights in a preliminary assessment released March 9, 2001. The Commission has held two fact-finding hearings in its investigation of allegations by Florida citizens of voting irregularities during the Presidential election 2000. The Commission, chaired by Mary Frances Berry, has heard approximately 30 hours of sworn testimony from some 100 witnesses.

While the media remains focused on the ballot examinations going on in Miami and Palm Beach regarding hanging chads, pregnant chads, loose or strict standards, etc., the real problem with Election 2000, according to the Commission, was in not counting votes and in preventing voters from being able to cast their ballots. In Florida, voter disenfranchisement and overvotes (those ballots which were thrown out because they were marked for two candidates) accounted for hundreds of thousands of lost votes in predominately African-American precincts.

At the core of the Commission’s investigation is Secretary of State Harris’ authorization for ChoicePoint, a Texas database company, to purge the states’ voter list of thousands of legal voters, misidentified as felons.  The majority of these voters were African-Americans, Hispanics and poor whites. The NAACP has filed a lawsuit charging Secretary of State Harris and other Florida officials with violating the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  (For more on this, see “A Blacklist Burning” by Greg Palast in The Nation, December 2000).

The Commission emphasized in its preliminary report that the implementation of voting technology reforms and uniform standards for counting and recounting ballots, although necessary and significant, does not address “the significant and distressing issues and barriers that prevented qualified voters from participating in the Presidential election.”  In a letter to Governor Jeb Bush, Chairperson Mary Frances Berry expressed her “deep disappointment” in the Governor’s avoidance in addressing these most vital concerns in his statement at the opening of the latest Florida legislative session.

The Commission plans to release a draft report on the Florida voting probe by the end of April and the final report in early June. The Commission has also decided to return to Florida late this summer after the state legislative session, in order to assess what changes have taken place at the state and local level.

Further information on the Commission may be obtained by contacting headquarters at:
US Commission on Civil Rights
624 9th Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20425
(or contact the regional office in your area)
 
For Congressional inquiries, contact:
Congressional Affairs Unit, USCCR
(202) 376-8317

Florida, however, was not alone in the problems of Election 2000. Allegations of voter disenfranchisement and irregularities have surfaced in other states, as well. In Tennessee, the right to vote for thousands of citizens was thwarted by actions taken by elections officials such as telling people they could not vote without voter registration cards (this is not a requirement to vote in Tennessee); voting sites suddenly closed without warning on election day; people who had NAACP stickers on their cars were told to take them off or leave; people who had registered to vote through the DMV were told they could not vote because they were not officially registered; voter registration books missing or pages missing; poll opening times were changed in some areas from 7:00 a.m. to 8 or 9:00 a.m. without notifying voters.  At Tennessee State University, many students were told they could not vote even though they were registered.

Much of this evidence has been collected by the Tennessee Voter Empowerment Team, the state branches of the NAACP and Catherine Danielson. Reports are still emerging and, according to Catherine Danielson, the Department of Justice is presently in Nashville investigating these allegations, which largely affected voters in minority precincts (The Tennessean, April 4, 2001). The national NAACP will be conducting hearings, as well, at Fisk University regarding the irregularities of Election 2000. The date for these hearings has not yet been set as of this writing, but if you would like further information regarding this you can contact the Nashville NAACP office at 1308 Jefferson Street, Nashville, TN 37208; phone (615) 329-0999.

On March 7, 2001, the Senate Commerce Committee met in Washington D.C. to hold the first congressional hearing into the massive voting machine failures of Election 2000. Chairman John McCain and members of the panel were stunned by the testimony of Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox who revealed evidence of a large number of undercounts by electronic machines in Georgia.

Secretary Cox testified that nearly 94,000 voters went to the polls in her state last November and either did not vote for president, made a mistake that voided their ballot or did not have their vote counted by a machine. She compared Georgia’s undervote percentage of 3.5 percent with that of Florida – 2.9 percent, and the national rate of 1.9 percent.

The undervotes in black precincts were particularly large. Cox states that in punch card counties, the undervotes in white precincts averaged 4.4 percent, while undervotes in black precincts averaged 8.1 percent. In counties that employ opti-scan machines, the undervote in predominately white precincts averaged 2.2 percent, while the undervote in predominately black precincts averaged 7.6 percent.

Along with Georgia Secretary Cox, witnesses at the hearing included members of Congress, the secretaries of state of Kansas, Oregon and representatives from the Leadership Conference on Civil Right, the Paralyzed Veterans of America and AARP.

Senator McCain along with ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee, Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, recently introduced the American Voting Standards and Technology Act.  This measure would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop voluntary standards for voting machines. It would also provide federal matching funds to states and localities to help purchase and upgrade old voting equipment and authorized grants to bolster voter education.

The Committee will hold further study regarding these and other irregularities of Election 2000 in Georgia and other states. If you would like further information on this you can write to:
United States Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Washington, DC 20510-6125

By Phone:
(202) 224-5115 (Committee Public Information)
(202) 224-1251 (Majority Side/Republican)
(202) 224-0411 (Minority Side/Democrat)

It is evident that from the many investigations and hearings which continue regarding Election 2000 and from the preliminary reports which are just now surfacing, the consequences of this past November will leave a lasting scar on the face of democracy. When a citizen of the United States is not allowed to vote, when tens of thousands of votes are thrown away and no one cares, then democracy is no longer viable.

We must all be in the battle to protect one another’s right to vote and to make sure that our elected officials do everything in their power to make it easier for people to vote – not deter them from voting.

“Voting is the language of our democracy and regrettably, when it mattered most, real people lost real opportunities to speak truth to power in the ballot box.”

     - US Commission on Civil Rights, March 2001

If you or anyone you know has had a problem voting in any election, please contact

United States Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
Post Office Box 66128
Washington, D.C. 20035
(202) 307-2767 (voice)
(800) 253-3931(toll-free)

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