Republicans Plan Voter Challenges in Florida

An anonymous reader writes "Greg Palast, the journalist who first reported on the initial Florida voter scandal (Warning large PDF), thinks he's found a new threat for this election, reported here at the BBC. He did uncover some interesting shenanigans last time, is this significant, or is he just fishing this time?"

Comments

What a sad state of affairs

[Dancin_Santa]

The idea behind voter challenges is that anyone can challenge the legitimacy and eligibility of a voter. This is especially important in states like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California where there are large numbers of illegal immigrants who may be influenced to illegally vote. This is also a problem because there are even American citizens who are not eligible to vote such as felons.

Unfortunately, this law is also a door to abuse. Indiscriminate use of the challenge procedure is akin to Scientology's use of lawsuits to silence the opposition. It produces a chilling effect and keeps people away from the polls.

However, despite this list being available, the article (neither of them) does not delve deeply into the names nor the reasoning behind them, only going so far as to say that it could possibly be a Republican plot. However, if the names all belong to felons who are not eligible to vote in the first place, such a list is absolutely necessary.

This is a story looking for more research, not more explosives. Unfortunately, most people would rather toss bombs than to do the hard work of finding out what is really going on.

Re:What a sad state of affairs

[BandwidthHog]

Unfortunately, most people would rather toss bombs than to do the hard work of finding out what is really going on.

Check back Nov. 3rd, when we know how the lists were used.

I agree with everything you said, but isn't this one of those situations where, according to prevalent thinking, you have to act preemptively, otherwise it'll be too late to avert whatever's about to happen?

Not at all

[metalhed77]

Well, considering that the republican party in FL has tried a number of shennanigans (remember the felons list recently?) in the hope of preventing dems from getting to the polls it's bloody hard to trust them on this. Especially in an election where bush has all but given up the black vote (he didn't even meet with the NAACP!)

Re:Yeah, yeah ...

[Lord Kano]

Actually it's around 1800 and the intent is to intimidate minority voters.

In short. I call bullshit.

Florida has a large number of minority voters who are Republicans. Miami Cubans alone are a huge block of Republican voters. Jeb Bush is married to a Latina.

If you're trying to argue that people who are voting illegally are more likely to vote Democrat. I won't argue, I don't know for sure, but minority does not equal Democrat. Especially in Florida.

LK

Re:Please...

[cheezedawg]

You should try reading Palast's _The Best Democracy Money Can Buy_. He dissected that "felon list", and documents how something like 90+% of its names were wrongly listed. And how the Florida election board, run by Republican Katherine Harris (cochair of Bush's Florida campaign, and Secretary of State to Bush's brother, Governor Jeb), disqualified voters with any similarity to the listed names, including crossing gender lines, matching only initials, etc. The list was so bad that several counties refused to use it, but not enough.

And yet, interestingly enough, when the USCCR held hearings, they were unable to find a single person that would testify that they were actually incorrectly prevented from voting because of the felon list.

Yes, the felon list had mistakes (nowhere near 90%, though). But the law was designed for that! The county election supervisors were responsible to verify the names as actual felons before any action was taken. If somebody was disenfranchised, the blame lies solely on the Election Supervisor of the county that he/she lives in.