Fraud & racial segregation in the land of the free

According to a new study by experts at the University of 
Minnesota and Northwestern, the exclusion of more than 1.4 
million African-American ex-convicts from the US electoral 
process is deliberately racist and stems directly from 
segregationist laws established during the 19th century. And it 
is Florida that holds first place among the states that most 
cruelly applies such discriminatory procedures.

In the country that proclaims itself to be such a model of 
democracy, more than 1.7 million citizens do not have the right 
to vote because of having a "criminal record". Of that number, a 
large majority is Black, a social group that tends to vote mostly 
for the Democratic Party.

The state of Florida, strategic for Republican President George W 
Bush's re-election, and governed by his brother, is 
"distinguished" by the fact that 600,000 of its citizens are 
deprived of the right to vote, a national record.

Governor Jeb Bush himself controls the electoral system, via 
Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a personal friend of Cuban-
American Mel Martmnez, former federal secretary of housing and a 
well-known accomplice of Miami's Cuban-American mafia.

According to the study by a group of researchers into the US 
election system, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Virginia and Kentucky 
are among the states where the last Senate elections were the 
most hard-fought (like the presidential elections in 2000) and 
won by Republicans, to a great extent thanks to the laws 
excluding ex-convicts from voting.

The study, titled "Felon Voting Rights and the Disenfranchisement 
of African Americans", compliments a previous study, "Ballot 
Manipulation and the 'Menace of Negro Domination'", a joint 
project between the University of Minnesota and Northwestern.

Excluded from voting

"African Americans are a significant part of the excluded 
population", Christopher Uggen, a sociologist at the University 
of Minnesota and co-author of the study, commented on the web 
site Bet.com.

During the second half of the 19th century, many US states 
refused to comply with the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees 
Black people the right to vote. These states applied a number of 
laws and regulations with the aim of minimising the African-
American vote under the pretext of a supposed "threat of Black 
domination", Uggen explained.

The spirit of that refusal to grant the descendants of slaves 
their elemental rights is present in every regulation that blocks 
access to basic democracy for that important minority. Little has 
changed in that sphere in many former slave states and other 
countries that the United States invaded to teach its concept of 
democracy.

Thirteen percent of all Black men in the United States are 
deprived of their right to vote. More than 245,000 women are in 
the same situation.

In six of the states that withhold such an important right via 
racist laws — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Virginia, 
and Iowa — one out of every four people of African origin is 
deprived of his or her right to vote.

Only the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Utah and Vermont allow 
inmates to participate in elections while serving a prison term.

Internationally, the norm is for people convicted of crimes to 
automatically recover all of their civic rights upon completing 
their prison sentences.

In Florida, ex-convicts who wish to have their full rights 
restored have to go through a lengthy bureaucratic process for 
this "privilege". In the case of serious crimes, they must 
somehow be called and present themselves in person in a special 
hearing presided over by Governor Jeb Bush, an extremely 
humiliating, medieval process in which they have to beg the 
governor to restore their rights.

In 2003, some 21,000 former convicts recovered their rights after 
civil rights organisations intervened and demonstrated the vast 
number of people who were unable to participate in the 2000 
elections on account of having been wrongfully excluded.

With four months to go before the November presidential 
elections, 8000 persons who have solicited that right have yet to 
be attended to, according to Bush's own services.

The election for the next US president could be decided in 
Florida by a very narrow margin of votes, according to all 
observers.

Last month, Bush's officials announced that they had discovered 
47,000 people registered to vote who "could be" ex-convicts, and 
the governor ordered their exclusion, a process so absurd and 
arbitrary that the state's senior elections official, Ed Kast, 
resigned.

Because it is a secret, in line with a Florida law approved by 
the Republicans shortly after George W Bush robbed the 
"election," the list of those 47,000 "excludables" cannot be 
consulted by the population like any other electoral roll, in 
what is doubtless a case unique in the world.

The state recently consented to hand over a copy of the list to 
the American Civil Liberties Union, the country's most important 
civil rights group, after it was recognised as the legal advisor 
to the Green Party.

Dodgy voting system

In addition to this scandalous situation, Florida continues to 
lack a trustworthy voting system. All indications are that the 
next elections will produce situations as absurd as those seen in 
2000, in Miami-Dade and Broward.

The computerisation of the voting system is taking place in the 
midst of that crisis. A report by a Miami-Dade official has just 
revealed that the Votronic brand voting machines, used in Miami-
Dade and Broward counties, present a "serious defect".

According to that expert, those apparatuses cause votes to be 
lost and for entire machines to disappear during the final voting 
audit.

Lacking a mechanism for printing on paper, the Votronic machines, 
which are banned in California, do not allow voting results to be 
checked in a detailed manner. Florida Secretary of State Glenda 
Hood had repeatedly failed to authorise the purchase of the 
printing accessories needed for such a process.

The racist exclusion of voters with criminal records, the 
manipulation of secret lists and — according to some observers -
- the probable conclusion of the upcoming elections in another 
confusing situation propitious for fraud, is convenient for a 
Republican Party that openly allies itself with the Cuban-
American mafia.

The dubious past of Jeb Bush — who was an associate of well-
known dissolute characters in his financial adventures — would 
allow him to easily orient himself in that giant swindling 
operation.

Upon his arrival in Florida from Texas, Jeb Bush was hired by 
Armando Codina, a businessman at that time a member of the 
executive council of the terrorist Cuban-American National 
Foundation. Via a complacent millionaire friend, they obtained 
$4.56 million in loans from the Broward Federal Savings & Loan 
Association in Sunrise, Florida to buy a building in Miami.

When they couldn't repay the loan, they managed to get the 
federal regulators to reduce the building's value to $505,000, 
and then repaid that amount, kept the building and sued the 
former administrators of Broward Federal Savings & Loan 
Association, which was bankrupt.

Jeb was also associated with Leonel Martmnez, a well-known drug 
trafficker who smuggled more than 1500 kilograms of cocaine into 
Miami between 1985 and 1986. When he was arrested in 1989 and 
then convicted, federal prosecutors had in their hands an 
eloquent photograph of Jeb shaking hands with Martmnez, but 
refused to hand it over to the press.

Meanwhile, Martmnez had contributed, with a number of cheques, to 
the so-called Fund for the Future of America, headed up by Vice 
President George Bush (Sr) and later, by his presidential 
campaign.

Jeb's dubious business partners

Another one of Jeb Bush's dubious business partners who won't 
cost him exclusion from the voter rolls is Mario Castellsn, an 
extreme-right wing Guatemalan businessman who introduced himself 
to a leader of the Nicaraguan Contras to provide "medial 
services" to mercenaries via the illegal network overseen by 
Oliver North, Donald Gregg and narco-terrorist Filix Rodrmguez.

Jeb also linked up with "Manny" Dmaz, whose business buddies 
include Charles Keating Jr, convicted of having cheated dozens of 
investors in Lincoln Savings & Loan of a record $6 billion.

He also had an extensive relationship with Miguel Recarey, 
another "successful" Cuban-American, who diverted a large amount 
of a federal subsidy destined for public health services in 
Miami. Likewise, through his firm, International Medial Centers 
(IMC), he organised hospital services for the Nicaraguan Contra 
mercenaries, a specialty of then-Vice President George Bush.

Simultaneously, Jeb received $75,000 from IMC as its real estate 
agent to find a new headquarters site for Recarey, which he never 
did.

Recarey now appears on the FBI's most-wanted list.

And Jeb Bush, who has overlooked his own past, is the man who is 
deciding who may or may not vote in the state where in 2000 the 
US dream of democracy was violated in the most spectacular way 
ever witnessed.

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Granma