Give us an honest vote in Florida

The Oregonian, June 3, 2004

    We confidently predict that the outcome of the 2004 presidential election will not hang on paper ballots' "hanging chads" in Florida. We are immensely troubled, though, that the Nov. 2 Election Day winner could be determined by denying the vote to thousands of Floridians, predominantly African Americans, who will be purged wrongly - and in our view illegally - from the voter rolls.

    Florida's 25 electoral votes, awarded to George W. Bush, determined the winner of the 2000 presidential election. Florida now has 27 electoral votes and is expected again to be a crucial swing state in the presidential contest.

    Florida is one of eight states that do not restore voting rights of convicted felons after they complete their sentences. Following the 2000 election, BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast described in "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" how Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris improperly purged tens of thousands of Floridians - mostly African American voters in Democratic-leaning precincts - from the voter rolls because they appeared on lists of convicted felons.

    Palast's investigative tour de force showed how Harris scandalously failed to verify that those denied the vote were the same people who had been convicted of felonies. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights later confirmed that most of those whose names were erased were innocent and should have been allowed to vote.

    Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has announced "a surprise new purge" of the state's voter rolls targeting 40,000 to 50,000 of its own citizens, Palast told The Oregonian last week. The lists are "complete junk" he said, and gave examples.: An election supervisor, a Republican tipster, called to say that "within a minute" he found a county court clerk with a clean record on the purge list and it seems likely that only a handful of names on the list should be there.

    Florida is refusing to require a match of names with Social Security numbers or other methods that reliably could avoid wrongly removing voters' civil rights. The Justice Department must move to ensure that Jeb Bush's purge procedures are reliable. It must protect the rights of black voters in Florida.

    America's president must be elected honestly, not by partisan, racial manipulation of the voter rolls.