Reply #18: Thank you, Mr. Palast [View All]

[soup]

>Earlier this month, after Palast testified before the US Civil Rights Commission in Washington, the CRC voted to ask the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation of the State of Florida's handling of voter rolls.<
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Florida Elections: Voter List May Get Federal Inquiry

>The rights commission has a contentious history with Florida leaders, especially former Secretary of State Katherine Harris. After the 2000 presidential election, commissioners released a draft assessment of the election in Florida that called Harris and Bush "grossly derelict in fulfilling their responsibilities."
>snip<

"The whole reason why we're having these proceedings is to keep alerting the country to the fact that there are problems, and to try to put people's feet to the fire to make sure they try to solve the problems," Berry said. "So far what we have from Ms. Hood is just a sliding away from the problems."

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Hood, said the secretary of state was "disappointed with the partisan tone" of the commission meeting. Hood sent a letter to the commission detailing the state's decision on the felon list but did not attend.
>snip<

Although the list now won't be implemented before the November election, civil rights commissioners said they're concerned that the state has now left it to individual election supervisors to create their own system of removing ineligible voters.
http://www.constitutioncenter.org/explore/ConstitutionNewswire/9070.shtml
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Accenture

Jul 28, 5:47 AM EDT

Audit: State should renegotiate contracts worth $325 million

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- The State Technology Office should renegotiate contracts worth $325 million because it didn't justify the need for outsourcing the work and might not have competitively bid the contracts, a state audit shows.

The contracts were awarded to two politically connected firms - Accenture and BearingPoint - for services including help-desk operations, e-mail support, data storage and management of a multitude of government Web sites.
>snip<

Accenture, a New York-based conglomerate, was involved in creating a flawed database of potential felons voters was scrapped earlier this month by state officials. The company has hired a team of formerly high-ranking Republican officials with close ties to Gov. Jeb Bush to lobby for business with the state, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_TECHNOLOGY_CONTRACTS_FLOL-?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=STATE&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

What a mess this is. Almost four years and here we are again.