Florida voters sound alarm on voter purges

Tim Wheeler

Florida Governor Jeb Bush's drive to purge 47,000 more voters 
from Florida's voter rolls has touched off angry charges that he 
is scheming a replay of the 2000 election, when thousands of 
Florida voters were scrubbed from the rolls to put his brother in 
the White House.

Florida State Senator Tony Hill, of Jacksonville, a former 
longshoreman and an organiser for the Service Employees 
International Union (SEIU), told the People's Weekly World 
(World), "I'm very concerned. An alarm went off inside me 
that this could be a repeat of 2000 all over again".

The furore erupted when Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood 
sent out a new list on May 25 of 47,000 names to be purged from 
voter rolls. All the data was provided by the Florida Department 
of Law Enforcement under Governor Bush's command, Hill pointed 
out. County election supervisors meeting in Key West said they 
have found a 6-7 percent error rate in the list.

"The purge list is not specific enough", Hill said. "If you 
happen to have the same name or a similar name as an ex-felon, 
you might be on that list and have your name expunged".

Voting rights groups have filed "friend of the court" briefs in 
support of a lawsuit by CNN and Democrat Senator Bill Nelson 
asking the courts to order release of the list. "I want access so 
I can inform every voter who is on it in Senate District One", 
Hill said. "Why is this list secret? This is another attempt to 
suppress our vote".

Beverly Neal, executive director of the Florida Conference of 
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 
(NAACP) branches in Orlando, said access to the list "would give 
us an opportunity to monitor that list in light of what happened 
in 2000 when so many people were disenfranchised".

"It is our responsibility to fight to see that the right to vote 
is protected", she told the World. "State-wide, our 
branches have registered close to 10,000 new voters."

In 2000, Hill and Kendrick Meek, both serving in the Florida 
Legislature at the time, spearheaded a voter registration drive 
that resulted in nearly 900,000 Black voters casting ballots in 
the 2000 election — 90 percent against Bush, 15 percent of the 
5.9 million votes cast in Florida.

Hill said the labour and civil rights movement ACORN seeks to 
equal that turnout to defeat Bush in Florida this November 2. 
ACORN has collected 800,000 signatures to put a question on the 
November ballot to establish a minimum wage in Florida.

The Florida Supreme Court is expected to rule soon whether to 
grant it ballot status. "This initiative will be the 'flavour of 
the year' in giving people a reason to turn out and vote", Hill 
said. "We're trying to draw people out based on their needs. This 
election is not just about the President. It's about the House 
and Senate. It's about quality of life, civil rights, civil 
liberties".

Neal decried the Bush record on issues vital to the people. 
"Health insurance is not available, prescription drugs are not 
affordable", she said. The Bush-Cheney campaign "didn't even 
bother to answer" a questionnaire the national NAACP sent to 
candidates, she noted. "That was a slap in the face not only to 
the NAACP but to everyone touched by the issues in that 
questionnaire".

In 2000, then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired Database 
Technologies (DBT) to purge Florida's voter rolls. At least 
57,700 voters, disproportionately African American, were removed 
as "ex-felons".

The NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund filed a lawsuit 
containing proof that 19,000 people were improperly purged (the 
margin between Bush and Democrat Al Gore was less than 1,000 
votes in the state). Florida promised to restore these voters but 
only 800 voters have been reinstated so far.

Leon County Election Supervisor Ion Sancho said Harris sent him a 
list of 694 supposed felons in 2000 but his office was able to 
verify that only 34 actually had a criminal record. The new 
Secretary of State has sent him a purge list of 820 to check for 
criminal records.

Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, part of an 
"Election Protection" coalition in Florida, wrote to Hood on June 
1, calling it "simply outrageous that you would give county 
supervisors just seven working days to devise a timetable for a 
new purge of the voter rolls when in more than eight months you 
have taken absolutely no action to follow up on the restoration 
of voting rights of voters improperly purged from the rolls in 
1999 and 2000".

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People's Weekly World