Herbert: Sacrifice and Sabotage (Black Voter Disenfranchisement FL)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

<snip>

Last night's presidential debate was an important exercise in American-style democracy. But democracy has no real meaning when citizens qualified to vote are deliberately prevented from casting their ballots, or are intimidated to the point where they are too frightened to vote.

Disenfranchisement comes in many guises. Two professors at the University of Miami did an extensive analysis of so-called voter errors in Miami-Dade County that has not previously been reported on, and that gives us an even more troubling picture of the derailment of democracy in Florida in the 2000 presidential race.

Bonnie Levin, a professor of neurology and psychology, and Robert C. Duncan, a professor of epidemiology, said the purpose of their study was to examine the demographics associated with the uncounted votes in Miami-Dade, a county that disqualified 27,000 votes.

Most of the public attention surrounding Florida's disputed election focused on "under-votes," when machines failed to record a vote for some reason - because of the notorious dimples or hanging chads in punch-card ballots, for example.

Professor Levin told me yesterday that the study convinced her that a much bigger problem in Miami-Dade involved "over-votes," instances in which ballots were reported to have been disqualified because individuals cast votes for more than one presidential candidate.

[scarletlib]

1. Thanks to Mr. Herbert for staying on this.

[Fridays Child]

2. Is this not evidence of a huge crime? Specific precincts? Were ballots...

...pre-punched? What was the pre-election chain of custody on ballots?

[teryang]

3. Wow!

Hats off to the authors of this groundbreaking study.

There were numerous vote fraud scams going on in Florida 2000. I was the victim of one myself.