2004-06-10
DEMOCRACY || CORPORATE CONTROL
Florida Voting Protections | ...as if there were such a thing | The Tampa Tribune reports [7 June 2004] that the Jeb Bush machine, like the rest of the family, is still agressively prohibiting otherwise legal citizens from participating in the democratic process | Some talking points:
there's more...
Might we say: "T-R-E-A-S-O-N" ? ¶ 09:56
Florida Voting Protections | ...as if there were such a thing | The Tampa Tribune reports [7 June 2004] that the Jeb Bush machine, like the rest of the family, is still agressively prohibiting otherwise legal citizens from participating in the democratic process | Some talking points:
Today, as the 2004 election nears:
* More than 43,000 Floridians are on the waiting list to have their rights restored, some of whom first learned in 2000, after voting for years, that they weren't legally entitled to vote. The restoration process can take years, and the list is growing, not shrinking.
* Hundreds of people wrongly removed from voter rolls in 2000, who never committed felonies or whose rights had been restored, may not yet have been put back on the rolls.
* A lawsuit charges that Florida's felon disenfranchisement is unconstitutional and affects up to 600,000 people.
* Despite all this, state officials have just sent elections supervisors in Florida's 67 counties another list of 47,000 names of individuals who may have committed felonies in the past, telling the supervisors to purge their rolls again.
* Some supervisors say they don't have the staff, expertise or money to do the purge without the same kind of errors as in 2000.
* Legally purged voters, meanwhile, won't find out about it until they get a letter from an election supervisor this summer - too late to have their rights restored for this election - or are turned away on Election Day.
* The vast majority of them are black and would be likely to vote Democratic.
* In Miami-Dade County, for example, blacks are 20 percent of the population but make up 65 percent of those on the 2000 felon purge lists.
there's more...
Might we say: "T-R-E-A-S-O-N" ? ¶ 09:56
