| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| Time Mag: Deja Vu At The Florida Polls? |
| 2004-06-07 |
| from Time Magazine And to answer the misleading gibberish title? No. Monday, Jun. 14, 2004 Issue After the 2000 presidential-election debacle in Florida, state and county election officials there agreed to examine whether the names of more than 19,000 people should be restored to the voter rolls because most of them may have been mistakenly identified as convicted felons and thus ineligible to vote. (In Florida, convicted felons must apply to get back their voting rights after their sentences are complete, though few manage to do so.) Those disenfranchised voters took on increased significance when Bush won the state by just 537 votes. Have the snafus been fixed? Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has now told county supervisors that 47,000 more names are likely to be purged from the voter rolls this year, and election watchdogs fear that Florida is poised to repeat the mistakes of 2000 on a much larger scale. The onus is on the felon to have his/her voting rights re-established. That the 19,000 felons dropped is in question is merely that. Re-instating en masse would also abrogate state law. Don’t buy the whine. Prove they belong or STFU. Hood argues that the criteria for removing people from the rolls are more stringent than they were in 2000 and that supervisors are now required by law to inform those named. "New safeguards assure that error rates will be kept to a minimum," Hood’s spokeswoman says. But critics say the state is using the same flawed database that misidentified so many voters in 2000 and has done little to improve its accuracy. Hood staunchly denies that politics is at play, but her critics point out that almost a third of those listed reside in the heavily Democratic South Florida counties of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Polls show that Democratic contender John Kerry and President Bush are running neck and neck in the state, where the President’s brother Jeb is Governor. Note that the database is allegedly flawed - here Time states it as fact. I’m so dizzy! And big surprise, heavily Donk Dade has a disproportionate number of people who are dropped for the myraid possible reasons? F**kin’ Duh. The chads may hit the fan this week when Florida’s 67 county elections supervisors meet in Key West and debate how to handle Hood’s purge list of 47,000. Confirming the list’s accuracy is now their responsibility, and some elections supervisors are eager to avoid a replay of 2000. "We already found one person [on the list] whose [criminal] charges had later been reduced to a misdemeanor," says a G.O.P. supervisor. Given what happened in 2000, he adds, "I’m going to err on the side of the voter this time." So there are convictions, deaths, expired registrations, out of state emigrations, etc. for another 47,000 now ex-voters. So? Sounds like it will be handled at the local level, which makes sense. Much sound and conspiracy-ish fury - but not a single fact. Oh, yeah, there was ONE voter confirmed to belong on the list, Lessee, 19 + 47 = 66,000 - 1 = 65,999 drops. Hang this, Chad. Lol, much ado about nothing. |
| Posted by:.com |
| #16 Look, guys, ALL databases of this sort have errors. It's the nature of the beast - a combination of GIGO and bad maintenance/bad design, usually. There is NO WAY to fix them, short of verifying each individual entry, and by then you've got new errors input. Deal with reality. |
| Posted by: mojo 2004-06-07 3:01:13 PM |
| #15 Has anyone seen the website theworldvotes? PLENTY of "outlanders" think they have a right to tell us (stupid Americans) who we should vote for... |
| Posted by: jules 187 2004-06-07 1:30:19 PM |
| #14 The private firm hired to vet the felon lists did a sloppy job. We know that. Combine that with the typical 'sewer service', and you have a real problem. I know the one time I was turned away from a polling place (in NJ) I was furious. It turned out that they had misfiled my registration card; somebody had put 'Jablow' with the 'JU' names. No, I'm not a felon. If I hadn't been persistent in getting them to look further, and if they hadn't found it, or the misfiling had been worse, I would have been disenfranchised. Can we all agree that these decisions about voter-eligibility should be handled as carefully as possible? |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2004-06-07 1:17:04 PM |
| #13 *chuckle* "ought to have a say", eh? Pearls before sows, Steve, pearls before sows. |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2004-06-07 1:07:53 PM |
| #12 what about the military votes thrown out in california? no dem is screaming about this..just a disgrace.. |
| Posted by: Dan 2004-06-07 11:59:15 AM |
| #11 Voting "rights" for those in other countries who have a "stake" in what the U.S. does? I've been flaming an Irish moonbat on another forum the last couple of months, and she asserts fiercely that Europe "ought to have a say" in who the next US President is because "our rights are at stake too." Being it's the Usenet I can't see her face, but I assume it's straight. Just another step on the road to world guvment, folks, that's all. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-06-07 11:55:50 AM |
| #10 "Felons for Kerry" has a nice rign to it. As Dave Barry lives in Dade county he might say "Felons for Kerry" would be a great name for a rock band. |
| Posted by: mhw 2004-06-07 11:32:40 AM |
| #9 Quana--Nice list, but don't forget their proposal to allow non-citizen immigrants to vote, too! After all, why should only Americans vote in American elections? :-P |
| Posted by: Dar 2004-06-07 10:51:22 AM |
| #8 AZcat...sigh. Next the Paleo's will say the same thing. |
| Posted by: B 2004-06-07 10:33:22 AM |
| #7 What's next? Voting "rights" for those in other countries who have a "stake" in what the U.S. does? Actually you're not far off. There's more than one Hispanic activist group in California that urges Latinos to, "Vote, legal or not." |
| Posted by: AzCat 2004-06-07 10:21:35 AM |
| #6 fact is according to the civil rights committee report those heavily democratic areas ignored the list entirely because they didn't trust them. That meant that heavily democratic areas had an increased chance of felons voting, while heavily republican areas had the problem Democrats whine about, as well as the shutdown of voting in the Republican dominated Florida panhandle because the media called things early. |
| Posted by: Yank 2004-06-07 10:05:46 AM |
| #5 The (far Left) Democrats are losing the American public. They are doing so in a dramatic and enormous fashion. This loss is so gigantic even they know they're losing. That's what this "felon voting" is about. (On the other hand, I do have some reservations about who is labeled a "felon" based on our weirdo drug laws...but that's another rant...) Look at the list: Felons voting, votes for 14-year-olds (bandied about in California), instituting a draft (even though the public is quite obviously opposed to such) -- nothing indicates "Losing out forever" for the Democrats like these inroads against voting rights. What's next? Voting "rights" for those in other countries who have a "stake" in what the U.S. does? We already know that "dual" citizens vote here. Time for some heavy satire, I think. Or a couple of drinks. Mebbe more. |
| Posted by: Quana 2004-06-07 8:39:54 AM |
| #4 But God forbid that one absentee ballot sent by our servicemen now deployed to defend this country would have a date stamped received on its envelope but lack a stamp cancellation mark, like thousands of pieces of mail we find in our mailboxes everyday, and that vote will be thrown out care of the DNC. Convicts have rights, our bloodied defenders have none. |
| Posted by: Don 2004-06-07 8:27:55 AM |
| #3 they already have their army of myrmidon lawyers (is that redundant?) ready to contest this election til May if possible |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-06-07 8:14:11 AM |
| #2 almost a third of those listed reside in the heavily Democratic South Florida counties of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach In an eerie coincidence roughly one third of Florida residents live in Dade, Broward or Palm Beach counties. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-06-07 8:13:41 AM |
| #1 Democrats - the party of Jerry Springer. So concerned that their felons won't be able to vote. It just says so much about how low they are willing to admit that they have sunk. |
| Posted by: B 2004-06-07 8:02:15 AM |