DU: Respond to Katherine Harris's letter to the Palm Beach Post!

[JohnLocke]

DU! I want everyone who can to write a letter to the Post in response to Katherine Harris' letter to the editor:

In her July 16 column "Election 'mistakes' no accident," editorial writer Elisa Cramer states that "the sin of omission can be a sin of commission." Ms. Cramer proves her point by omitting critical facts about the 2000 presidential election in Florida from her commentary.

Ms. Cramer claims that "eligible voters were denied ballots in 2000" due to a "list devised by Republican campaign supporters." She neglects to mention that the development of this list was required by a 1998 law that was signed by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles and sponsored by two Democratic legislators (one of whom was Rep. Kendrick Meek, an outspoken civil rights advocate who now is a member of Congress). This legislation contained provisions that virtually compelled my predecessor as secretary of state to choose DBT Online as the firm responsible for matching the names of registered voters with the names of convicted felons prohibited from voting by Florida's Constitution.

Ms. Cramer also bandies incendiary charges of African-American "disenfranchisement" without noting that during the 18 months of hearings and litigation after election 2000, only two people testified that they were not allowed to vote because their names erroneously appeared on the DBT Online list. In similar fashion, she fails to mention what The Post's own investigation found, that race never was used as a factor in the development of the list. While the wrongful denial of this sacred right to one person constitutes an intolerable injustice, knowingly overstating the extent of this problem also is an abomination.

Finally, Ms. Cramer fixates on my role as one of eight honorary co-chairs of George W. Bush's campaign in Florida without noting that then-Attorney General Bob Butterworth actually ran Al Gore's campaign out of his office in Tallahassee. She also excludes the fact that as an independently elected member of Florida's Cabinet, I was fulfilling a traditional role for my office. Cabinet members (including my predecessor as secretary of state) always had served as state chairs or co-chairs for presidential campaigns. This tradition does not apply to the current secretary of state, a gubernatorial appointee who is not a member of the Cabinet and who thus has refrained from partisan involvement.

Surely, Ms. Cramer's oversights, which have the effect of stoking racial division and advancing a partisan agenda, are "absolutely unintentional."

REP. KATHERINE HARRIS
R-13th Congressional District
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2004/07/23/a11a_letters_0723.html

Respond here: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/info/mail.html
Tell them you're from Palm Beach County.

Let's go, DU!

[SoCalDem]

1. Katherine, you ignorant...

oh nevermind :)

[fearnobush]

2. Done!

We have the proof, they have the lies - we'll see who wins.

[Mr_Spock]

3. I hate Katherine Whoress more than any other human being on this planet

I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. Fucking Whore.

[Flubadubya]

15. Why don't you tell us how you really feel Mr. Spock...

Bwahahaha!!!

[Mr_Spock]

17. LOL - oh, did that seem a bit strong??

That Republican piece of shit could've ordered a recount, but instead was political. This makes her an unacceptable form of life.

[MikeG]

51. She has nice legs.

[Window]

65. Lordy! That was funny.

I'm still giggling.

[JohnLocke]

4. Kick

[JohnLocke]

5. Kick

[GoldenOldie]

6. Katherine Harris has a Ghost Writer

After listening to her pass the buck during the Civil rights hearings regarding the complaints of disenfranchaisment and to dicover what happened in Florida, no way did she write this letter. She is not that intelligent but only a shill .....a well paid shill, for the Bush's.

I would wager that if asked about her ltr, she would be unable to tell you the contents.

[JohnLocke]

7. Kick

[JohnLocke]

8. Kick

[JohnLocke]

9. Kick

[JohnLocke]

10. Kick

[Jack Rabbit]

11. Ms. Harris knew what she was doing

Ms. Harris almost certainly knew what she was doing and should be investigated for possible federal charges of violating voter rights.

In her defense, Ms. Harris raises a number of red herrings about Democrats pushing through legislation that allowed her to do what she did and of Democrats in similar positions as hers also holding high positions in the Gore campaign. This neither addresses the wisdom of the legislation or the propriety of allowing any state chief elections officer to hold a position in a partisan political campaign. On the other hand, Ms. Harris' behavior before and immediately after the 2000 election speak volumes the folly of both.

Mr. G. W. Bush did not win the 2000 election honestly. The vote in Florida was deliberately rigged. The question becomes: Who was involved?

Many of us are familiar with the excellent work on the Florida election done by investigative reporter Greg Palast. This is the important thing to note: The Florida election was not stolen so much by Ms. Harris' refusal to recount votes after the election or the judicial manipulation that culminated in the outrageous decision Bush v. Gore, but rather Ms. Harris' efforts at getting alleged felons off the voter rolls.

The truth is that voters were targeted for removal from Florida's voter roles. They were Afro-Americans voters who had names similar to convicted felons in other states. Their names were provided to Ms. Harris, then Florida's Secretary of State and also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida by ChoicePoint, a data processing firm with GOP connections. According to ChoicePoint's spokesmen, Ms. Harris was warned about the accuracy of the data she was presented. Nevertheless, Ms. Harris simply had the voters removed without critically reviewing the list. She knew exactly what she was doing. As Mr. Palast said, "Harris's crew lit this database fuse, then acted surprised when it blew up."

For the moment, let us put aside allegations of conspiracy between Ms. Harris, Jeb Bush and the G. W. Bush presidential campaign in the theft of the 2000 election. There can be no doubt that voters were removed from the rolls. There is no mere allegation of a crime here; a crime was actually committed.

Even if every name on the list Ms. Harris received from ChoicePoint was that of a felon, it was the name of a felon convicted in a state other that Florida. Under the law, Florida may ban a felon from voting only if that person was convicted of a felony under Florida law. Ms. Harris had no right to remove any voter from the roll merely because that voter had been convicted of a felony in Texas or Illinois. Yet that is exactly what she said she was doing.

Thus, even by Harris' own admission, she was violating the law. There was nothing casually indiscriminate about this. The fact that most of those on Ms. Harris' scrub list were guilty of no felonies is irrelevant. As long as they were not suspected of being felons convicted in Florida courts, Ms. Harris had no right to instruct county officials to remove their names. If she had no criminal intent and was acting on good faith, she is guilty of some incredible incompetence. If she didn't knowingly violate the law, it is because she didn't know the law that concerned what the Florida Secretary of State could or couldn't do in the first place. However it is sliced and diced, she is responsible for the fiasco that characterized the Florida election of 2000 and should pay a price for it.

Furthermore, there was something about this list that targeted Democratic voters. As one learns in PoliSci 101, Afro-Americans vote for Democrats 90% of the time. That's not a exaggeration; that's a verifiable statistic. We also know that Afro-Americans are convicted of crimes out of proportion to their percentage of the population. Consequently, if one has a list of names of felons and starts to associate those names and other characteristics, such as race and gender, with real voters in Florida, guess what? You're going to scrub a lot of Afro-American voters from the rolls.

It is difficult to conceive how such a scheme could have carried out innocently. Is Ms. Harris really that stupid? Or did she scrub the names of people from the list knowing that they represented a demographic that is associated with voting for Democrats and knowing that she had no legal cause to scrub them? Was there nobody in her office to point this out to her?

It is a federal crime to deny citizens their right to vote based on race. That is what Harris did. She did this deliberately and with malice aforethought. She had means, motive and opportunity. Federal prosecutors should make the decision, but I believe Palast presents enough in his writings, if his facts stand up under a legal investigation, to begin criminal proceedings against Katherine Harris.

At this point, we don't need to ask if there was a coordinated effort to steal the election. We could state a hypothesis based on what has been presented so far that Katherine Harris single-handedly stole the election from Al Gore and presented it to G. W. Bush. Even if Harris did this all by herself, it means that Bush did not win the election honestly.

That leaves the question of whether Katherine Harris committed her crimes alone or with the active assistance of others who were also aware that they were engaging in a plot to illegally deprive Afro-Americans of their right to vote.

It is very unlikely that Harris could have carried out this scheme without active assistance. Palast names some others who may have assisted her who were also in a position to know that as elections officers in Florida they had no right to scrub voter rolls of those convicted of felonies in other states.

However, while Palast makes suggestions, he doesn't go further that stating what he knows. Just because ChoicePoint's corporate officers contribute to GOP campaign coffers does not mean that they would do something as unprofessional as engage in a criminal conspiracy to rob citizens of the right to vote. However, this should be the subject of a wider investigation that is yet to take place.

The results of that investigation aside, should it ever take place, Mr. Palast's writings demonstrate to my satisfaction that G. W. Bush is in the White House as the result of deliberate election fraud perpetrated by his campaign co-chair in Florida. Her name is Katherine Harris and she does not deserve to be running freely anywhere, let alone the corridors of Congress.

Anybody who says Bush won the 2000 election honestly is either a liar or a fool. He won it fraudulently with Ms. Harris' active participation. Whether he or anybody else knew of her activity is a separate question, but an important one.

[DaveSZ]

12. Who do we have opposing her for the House seat?

Wouldn't it be sweet justice to get rid of her/?

Let Justice roll down like waters in a mighty stream!

[democraticinsurgent]

13. "virtually compelled to choose DBT????"

this is another thing that should be looked at. According to Palast Florida fired another firm that was charging a small fee to process voter lists and remove felons, in order to hire Choicepoint/DBT for millions of dollars.

Did the legislation really "virtually compel" the state of Florida to hire THAT firm or did it compel them to hire A firm? Did it compel them to fire the first company that was charging reasonably or did it compel them to hire Choicepoint/DBT for ridiculous sums and did it compel them to instruct Choicepoint/DBT to make the list as big as possible and not to cross check, error check or contact voters--even a sampling of voters--on the list to be sure the methodology was sound?

Harris' letter is an incredibly fortuitous opening for DU and especially Floridian DU'ers to call her bluff and demand that she answer the above specifics.

Anyone with direct connections to Carl Hiaasen or someone else with a large Florida readership? How about Randi Rhodes?

Anyone?

[Flubadubya]

18. Is this the letter you sent Jack Rabbit?

If so, you have outdone yourself. KUDOS!!!

[Jack Rabbit]

19. No, I haven't sent it. But what do you say that we use it as the basis

of a good letter?

It's sure beats "Katherine Harris stinks."

[Flubadubya]

20. You bet Jack...

Just a little editing, make it succint and short enough to attract a read, and you've definitely got a winner!

[Jack Rabbit]

21. Fine. Let's work on it together.

And then decide how we can send it all our names attached.

[JohnLocke]

24. Be sure to mention how they conveniently left off all the Cubans.

[Bunny]

25. Thanks for this post.

Very well-written and informative!

[tkmorris]

34. Jack, great letter

I've been sort of mentally using it as a template for a letter of my own, but I like your idea better. Let's fine tune yours and use it. It's probably superior to what I was coming up with anyway.

In one paragraph you say: "Even if every name on the list Ms. Harris received from ChoicePoint was that of a felon, it was the name of a felon convicted in a state other that Florida. Under the law, Florida may ban a felon from voting only if that person was convicted of a felony under Florida law. Ms. Harris had no right to remove any voter from the roll merely because that voter had been convicted of a felony in Texas or Illinois. Yet that is exactly what she said she was doing."

I think this point needs to be made more strongly. My first attempt at is is as follows.

In a Democracy such as ours one of the most sacred rights an individual has is the right to vote for representative government. As such, the decision to remove that right should be one of the most grave and examined decisions a government undertakes. Ms. Harris, as Elections Supervisor, was certainly aware that Florida law only permits felons prosecuted under Florida law to be disenfranchised. That is as fundamental a fact to an elections supervisor as say, the value of pi is to a Geometry instructor. It simply isn't permissible nor believable to claim that one doesn't know it.

As such, it is clear that Ms. Harris did intentionally remove from the voter rolls citizens who had every right to vote, and in so doing broke one of the most sacrosanct covenants of a free society. She did so in order to help ensure that the man she championed won an election that she was tasked to see was impartial. That she got away with this criminal act is abhominable; that she continues to proclaim her innocence on the public stage is downright petrifying.

Hmm. Needs work I'm sure. Help me out here Jack.

[timtom]

35. This is a keeper, JR

And if there's anything I can do (I live in FL) let me know. I will gladly be a signee on this as a letter.

[Generic Other]

45. Well said!

Thanks for the summary of the facts.

[kaitykaity]

14. Done.

She's a self-serving hack. Gawd, I hope she
loses this November.

[linazelle]

16. My remarks....

Ms. Cramer also bandies incendiary charges of African-American "disenfranchisement" without noting that during the 18 months of hearings and litigation after election 2000, only two people testified that they were not allowed to vote because their names erroneously appeared on the DBT Online list....

The issue is not how many complained, it's whether they were indeed dienfranchised--and they were.


...she fails to mention what The Post's own investigation found, that race never was used as a factor in the development of the list...

Why was one of the fields of information collected specifically dedicated to the race of the voters then? If this information was not used, why was it collected?


Finally, Ms. Cramer fixates on my role as one of eight honorary co-chairs of George W. Bush's campaign in Florida without noting that then-Attorney General Bob Butterworth actually ran Al Gore's campaign out of his office in Tallahassee. She also excludes the fact that as an independently elected member of Florida's Cabinet, I was fulfilling a traditional role for my office...

The point is, that while it may be a tradition to serve as a chair for a presidential election--when the election results directly conflict with the power you have to influence the election, then you are no longer in a traditional role and should exhibit integrity to preserve the rights of voters and the election itself.

[Jack Rabbit]

22. Bump

:bounce:

[WoodrowFan]

23. kick

good response (the long one above).

[JohnLocke]

26. Keep them short, sweet, and punchy, people.

[JohnLocke]

27. Kick

[laylah]

28. Keepin' this

kicked cuz Cruella is an unpatriotic, America hating bitch from hell...and THOSE are her finer points!

Jenn

[JohnLocke]

29. Kick - NOMINATE THIS FOR HOMEPAGE

[JohnLocke]

30. Kick

[JohnLocke]

31. Kick (nt).

[nofurylike]

32. thank you for the info and links, JohnLocke! doing. n/t

[shraby]

33. I have a question....

when contracting for a service for a state, doesn't the state have to ask for the companies interested to submit bids and are required by law to consider what was included in the company's bids and have to take the lower bid if the services offered are similar?

[MUSTANG_2004]

36. Sort of, but

Frequently the project specs are designed to give specific companies an edge.

[JohnLocke]

41. No problem (nt).

:kick:

[BlueCollar]

37. kick

:kick:

I think we have a diverse enough group of people on this board to make a damn fine letter writing campaign

I'll check back later..

[spotbird]

38. Didn't she stop the recount ?

As for the list being racist, weren't Latino names excluded from the list? We're supposed to beleive that is a computer "glitch," but even they don't expect that dog to hunt.

[vetwife]

39. My letter to the paper on Old Katy..Remember me?

I found the letter that Ms. Harris wrote to be quite comical considering the fact that when she testified before the Civil Rights commission, she admitted she delegated most if not all of her duties. I did not believe her testimony. She had found time to
create the debacle in Florida and the company that created the Felon list was as everyone knows, very connected to Ms. Harris and the Republican party.

I will take this opportunity to ask again to Ms. Harris the same question I asked her on The Wolf Blitzer Show after her return from Iraq. Only this time I will ask her about the person who now holds the position of Secretary of State in the State of Florida. I asked Ms. Harris, is when she went to Iraq did she encourage the women to go into public office and follow her lead so they too could disenfranchise voters. She gave a ridiculous answer but never denied the fact that she was part of disenfranchising voters. The question now is this part of the job qualifications as a Secretary of State to encourage people to follow Harris's lead to disenfranchise voters?

The woman who claims to be delegating all of her duties, gets elected to congress, and from what I have studied, delegates that part of her job as well. The only time she looks as though she belongs there is when she is sitting in the Speakers's seat and then she appears to need someone to tell her what to do. Has America really become this dumbed down? Or are people really this greedy, to put a rich, bored, unethical, person in office because the color of Florida did not go red, but was definately the color of money. How sad for the American women of intelligene and acountability today to have to try and overcome this woman, who clearly represents no thought process and hides behind a Tammy Faye mask.

I clearly and earnestly hope this one embarrasing question that I posed to Ms. Harris on CNN live tht played across the world had some inpact on her to withdraw her bid for a senate bid. I am sure others would have demanded questions she just could not answer. The truth is, she can't take the heat, that can't be delegated !

[vetwife]

40. Kick for more writers

[JohnLocke]

42. Kick

[JohnLocke]

43. Kick

[Jack Rabbit]

44. Bounce

:bounce:

[JohnLocke]

46. I think the Post is going to get at least 15 letters from this - Kick!

[JohnLocke]

47. Kick

[JohnLocke]

48. Kick

[vetwife]

49. Kick

[JohnLocke]

50. Kick

[JohnLocke]

52. Kick

[JohnLocke]

53. Kick

[Jack Rabbit]

54. Bounce

:bounce:

[JohnLocke]

55. Kick! Write those letters!

[mitchum]

56. Katherine Harris' mouth is so big because...

as everyone knows, the Bush brothers aren't very deep, but they sure are thick.

I hope that bitch (she DESERVES the slur) rots in hell

[kimchi]

57. Here's mine.

Any discussion of the 2000 election must focus on the voters themselves. Mrs. Harris leaves out the fact that citizens were denied the vote-shall we say-pre-emptively. That is, those purged had committed crimes in states OTHER than Florida. Under Florida law, only a felon convicted in the state of Florida may be banned from voting. Ms. Harris admits that neither she nor ChoicePoint verified the names.

I will accept the admission of incredible incompetence; although everyone know you aren't "virtually impelled" by a law to give jobs to your friends and then not check their work in the interest of democracy.

Voters were illegally removed from registration lists in Florida--this is a fact. Ms. Harris is either grossly incompetent or guilty of far greater crimes against our country.

[JohnLocke]

58. Good.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Jack Rabbit]

59. To the top

:bounce:

[JohnLocke]

60. And again! I want letters pouring into the Post newsroom!

[ClassWarrior]

61. kick

:kick:

[JohnLocke]

66. Kick

[JohnLocke]

62. Kick

[JohnLocke]

63. Kick

[JohnLocke]

64. Kick (nt).