Blacks did not win full voting rights until 1975. Yes that is only 29 years ago. MLK and others offered up their blood sweat and tears to make this happen. Many people gave their lives to make this happen.
Forward to the year 2000, "up to 57,000 persons, the majority of them African American and Democrats, had their voting rights removed."
Something continues to puzzle me. Where is the righteous indignation, the outrage? Was a third party progressive legaly running for office more of an outrage than Republicans turning back the clock on civil rights, while the Democratic leadership rolled over? The Democratic party for the most part has taken African American voters for granted.
If one of these purged voters expressed an interest in withholding their vote or going third party in 2004, would you respectfully try to convince them to do otherwise, call them traitors or any other number of names, tell them to get over it, or respect their choice and let it be?
I'll be voting Dem, but I am curious about why this issue doesn't raise blood pressure in the same way as the mere mention of you know who.
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http://www.usdoj.gov/kidspage/crt/voting.htmVoting Rights
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits discrimination in voting practices or procedures because of race and color. In 1957 and 1960, Congress had enacted voting rights laws that took small steps toward increasing minority voting participation for all Americans. The 1965 Act, however, made huge strides towards making voting rights a reality. The Act prohibited literacy tests and poll taxes which had been used to prevent blacks from voting (see Background and Introduction). In 1975, Congress recognized the need to protect citizens who did not read or speak English well enough to participate in the political process and expanded the protections of the Voting Rights Act to them.
In 1963, civil rights activists began an effort to register black voters in Dallas County, Alabama. During 1963 and 1964, although they brought potential voters by the hundreds to the registrar's office in the courthouse in Selma, they were unable to get them registered to vote. In January and February 1965, protests were held in Selma to bring attention to this violation of rights. The protests were met by violence by Sheriff James Clark and his deputies. On February 17, a small civil rights march ended in the shooting of Jimmy Lee Jackson who died from his wounds several days later. The civil rights activists decided to hold a memorial march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery on March. 7.
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http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=182&row=1Tuesday, November 5, 2002
ISAAC HERNANDEZ. Special for EL MUNDO
LOS ANGELES.- The last presidential election, Greg Palast, journalist for the BBC and the newspaper The Guardian, investigated a voters purge list in the Florida electoral list. According to his investigation, up to 57,000 persons, the majority of them African American and Democrats, had their voting rights removed. The story is repeated in today´s election. In his book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast tells how the State of Florida hired a company named DBT for four million dollars to remove felons from the electoral list to keep them from voting. Palast demonstrates how Jeb Bush´s office asked DBT to grow the list to the max, including voters with similar names and born on the same date as the felons.
Thousands of people came to the electoral office to vote only to find out that they were felons.
Originally we thought it was 57,000 people that were purged. Now I got the info from DBT that there were 94,000 people in this list. 91,000 were innocent. If those people have voted, Al Gore would most likely have received the 537 votes that he needed to win. What makes the story so sad and rotten is that the Secretary of State of Florida, Katherine Harris, has agreed that innocent people were removed, but they dragged their feet and have used this same list in this election.
According to the settlement from the NAACP lawsuit, the State has to revise the list and return the voting rights to the innocent ones. But they are going to wait until after the elections to do so.
Jeb Bush arranged to steal the election in 2000 for his brother, and is keeping it stolen for his own re-election. Election 2000 is not old news; it’s what happening on Tuesday. On top of that, computerized voting - it’s a real nightmare. Machines continue to fail in black districts in Florida. It happened in September and we will see it on Tuesday. All the problems of 2000, but it’s going to be worse. -What is surprising is that the main media channels are not talking about this.
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http://www.house.gov/corrinebrown/press107/pr020529.htmMay 29, 2002
Congresswoman Brown Denounces U.S. Department of Justice Decision
(Washington, DC) With regard to the United States Department of Justice’s recent comments about the 2000 elections in Florida, Congresswoman Corrine Brown made the following statement:
“Once again, the United States Department of Justice failed to protect the interests of our nation’s minorities. Once again, African Americans will go unprotected.
“My first question for the U.S. Department of Justice is the following: how is it that they decided to choose just three Florida counties in the first place? If they were serious about uncovering and perhaps even rectifying the multitude of voting rights violations committed during the 2000 election, they could have begun by at least including the other counties with pending lawsuits by the NAACP and other civil rights groups: Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Leon and Volusia.
Even under the Clinton Administration, the cries of minority voters fell on deaf ears at the Department of Justice. On November 14th, 2000, the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to the Justice Department begging them to conduct an investigation into civil rights violations committed during the election. Today, nearly two years later, we are still waiting for a meaningful response.
I am simply astonished that Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd claims that there were only minor mistakes during the 2000 election. I would like to remind him and other Justice Department officials that thousands upon thousands of complaints from voters after the election were made to the U.S. Department of Justice. These ranged from African American voters being singled out for criminal background checks, to first-time voters whose names did not appear on the registration forms.
In Duval County, there were approximately 22,000 ballots that were tossed out. A disproportionately large percentage of these votes came from City Council Districts 7, 8, 9 and 10, primarily African American residential areas. Even more disturbing to me is that the Supervisor of Elections’ office didn’t release these figures to local officials until after the deadline had passed. Consequently, we were unable to demand a recount.
One of the most egregious problems that occurred during the 2000 election had to do with motor voter registration. During the last election, many voters, especially African Americans, were erroneously purged from registration lists, and many, who had signed up at state motor voter vehicle offices never had their voter registration fully processed.
Additionally, the Duval County Supervisor of Elections issued a sample ballot that was different from the official ballot, in complete violation of the law that mandates them to be the same. This proved more than confusing to voters since the sample ballot instructed people to vote on every page, while the actual ballot instructed people to vote on appropriate pages. Since there were two pages of presidential candidates, the 22,000 over-votes for president should not come as a surprise to anyone.
Moreover, the Governor of Florida spent $4 million dollars of taxpayers money to purge a list of suspected felons from the rolls across the state of Florida - but whether or not this list of felons was accurate was not anyone’s concern. Apparently, it was the responsibility of the accused citizen to correct his or her status.
Duval County still faces lawsuits from the state NAACP and various other civil rights groups. Apparently these suits, as well as the numerous voting rights violations listed here, are too insignificant to form a part of the U.S. Justice Department’s current suit.”
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