BY MALIK MIAH
On June 8, the United States Civil Rights Commission issued a divided report on the electoral process in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. By a partisan vote of six to two, the eight-member commission voted along party lines to declare the Florida electoral system biased.
"Poorer counties, particularly those with significant people-of-color populations, were more likely to use voting systems with higher spoilage rates than more affluent counties with significant white populations", the report said. "Nine of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of African American voters have spoilage rates above the Florida average."
So extreme were the disparities in Florida, the report stated, that the most extraordinary fact was not the closeness of the vote in those places where Republican George W Bush beat Democrat Al Gore by a handful of votes counted. It was the proof of "widespread voter disenfranchisement".
The report found that 54% of the ballots rejected as improperly marked were cast by African American voters, who accounted for just 11% of voters statewide. The report stated the 2000 presidential race was characterized by "injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency".
In response to the sharp criticism of the report by the Florida Governor Jeb Bush, brother of the president, and other Florida Republican officials, the commission's chairperson, Mary Francis Berry, emphasised the point, "The history of this country is that African Americans were denied the right to vote. My mother, my aunts and my cousins were told for years and years, 'You can't do anything to prove we intended to deny you the vote'."
The committee found that:
- Black voters' ballots in Florida were rejected 14.4% of the time, compared with 1.6% for other voters;
- Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris had not taken responsibility for the state's election problems and ignored warning signs that the fast-growing voter population would overwhelm the state's ageing voting system;
- Florida has not yet set up a system for monitoring its purges of felons from the voter rolls, a procedure that caused significant problems when a private contractor inadvertently deleted non-felons;
- African Americans had a significantly greater chance of being listed on the state's mandated purge "list";
- Many people who tried to register to vote were not notified of alleged application errors until election day or later. These voters were also denied any chance to correct the information so they could vote;
- Many Floridians who were registered and had voted in past elections were told for the first time on election day that their names were removed. They were given no opportunity to appeal;
- Despite the requirements that voters who were not proficient in English be given assistance in their own language, many voters did not get such help;
- The commission found no conspiracy to deny blacks their votes, but noted that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 does not require proof of intent, only proof that discrimination occurred; and
- The commission requested an investigation by the justice department to determine whether these results were intended and has requested a meeting with the US Attorney-General.
Since the commission has only investigative powers, no action is expected by the justice department or the Bush administration. The fact that Bush lost the popular vote by nearly a half million votes (the highest ever in US history) makes the findings of the report even more embarrassing.
Berry made clear to the critics of the commission's work, "We will as a commission go out and hold hearings, we will issue reports from time to time, in other words, we intend to stick with this issue. We're not going away. We're just going to stick with it and stick with it and stick with it, at least until ... the 2002 election."