Text 4152, 135 rader
Skriven 2004-10-28 00:24:33 av Ed Connell (1:379/1.6)
Kommentar till text 4119 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Re: Lawsuits
====================
Hey, Jeff.
JB> ============================================
JB> http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041027-123332-5663r.htm
JB> Democrats file 9 suits in Florida
JB> By Jerry Seper
JB> THE WASHINGTON TIMES
JB> Democrats in Florida already are pursuing nine election-related
JB> lawsuits, accusing state election officials of conspiring to
JB> disenfranchise minority voters.
JB> Led by the Florida Democratic Party, the People for the American
JB> Way, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
JB> and the AFL-CIO, the lawsuits target, among others, Florida Secretary
JB> of State Glenda Hood, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush,
JB> President Bush's brother.
JB> The suits say Republican officials refused to count provisional
JB> ballots, improperly disqualified incomplete voter registrations,
JB> established overly restrictive rules to disproportionately hurt
JB> minority voters and actively sought to disenfranchise blacks.
JB> Matt Miller, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, said Republicans are
JB> "trying to scare people away from the polls."
JB> But Mrs. Hood's spokesman, Alia Faraj, described the lawsuits as
JB> politically motivated, saying they were eroding public confidence in
JB> the election process by challenging "every single law we are
JB> following."
JB> One suit challenges a ruling by Mrs. Hood to throw out forms on
JB> which new voters had failed to check a box indicating whether they were
JB> U.S. citizens, and another argued that although only 17 percent of the
JB> voters in Broward County and 20 percent in Miami-Dade County were
JB> black, more than a third of the voter-registration forms that were
JB> determined to be incomplete and invalid in both counties involved black
JB> voters.
JB> The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has successfully
JB> challenged a ruling on how counties with touch-screen voting should
JB> conduct manual recounts. The state had banned the recounts, but an
JB> administrative-law judge agreed with the ACLU challenge and tossed that
JB> rule in August.
JB> Mr. Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, yesterday predicted that
JB> Mr. Kerry would employ "fraud, intimidation and lawsuits" in an attempt
JB> to overturn a Bush victory on Tuesday. He said if Democrats lose at the
JB> ballot box, they would use lawyers "to try to shoehorn a victory."
JB> "What you're seeing is an attempt, through lawsuits and through
JB> intimidation, by Democrats to convert their allies' registration fraud
JB> into voter fraud on Election Day," he said. "What you're going to see
JB> is an attempt by them, regardless of what the outcome is, to say: 'It's
JB> unfair. We're going to sue.' "
JB> Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Ed Gillespie said the
JB> lawsuits are part of a Democratic plan to "use lawyers and baseless
JB> allegations to skew the results in their favor." He said the RNC thinks
JB> that "no legitimate voter should be disenfranchised, either by being
JB> denied a vote or by having an honest vote canceled out by a fraudulent
JB> vote."
JB> Mr. Gillespie said teams of Democratic lawyers will seek to change
JB> the rules in ways that would make it easier to engage in systematic
JB> voter fraud on Election Day.
JB> "The American people should be confident that legitimate voters
JB> casting legitimate votes determine the outcome of this election," he
JB> said.
JB> Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe has
JB> accused Republicans of engaging in "systematic efforts" to
JB> disenfranchise voters, imposing unlawful identification requirements on
JB> voters, throwing eligible voters off the rolls and depriving voters of
JB> their right to cast a provisional ballot.
JB> "Regardless of party or candidate, it is the civic and moral duty
JB> of both parties to encourage complete and full participation in the
JB> democratic process," he said in a recent letter to Mr. Gillespie.
JB> In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a Florida recount be
JB> halted after 36 days, giving the state's 25 Electoral College votes to
JB> Mr. Bush, which put him in the White House. The high court, according
JB> to public statements by several justices, did not think the ruling
JB> would prompt a flood of lawsuits in future federal, state and local
JB> elections. But both major parties since have hired an army of lawyers
JB> to respond to potential legal challenges this year.
JB> The DNC has 10,000 lawyers on call, including six "SWAT squads"
JB> that are ready to deploy on the orders of Mr. Kerry and his campaign
JB> staff. The team is headed by Steven Zack, whose law partner, David
JB> Boies, argued for former Vice President Al Gore before the Supreme
JB> Court in 2000.
JB> The RNC is coordinating a countervailing force of lawyers to
JB> respond to voter challenges in 30,000 key precincts, mostly
JB> battleground states. The effort is being directed through Republican
JB> state party officials. Former Bush administration Solicitor General
JB> Theodore B. Olson, who argued for Mr. Bush in the Supreme Court case,
JB> is expected to be a key player in any Republican legal challenges.
JB> "We will have the folks on the ground, we will have the strategy to
JB> deal with that and we will protect the integrity of the election
JB> process," Mr. Mehlman said.
JB> In 2001, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said after a three-
JB> month investigation that the Florida presidential election was rife
JB> with "injustice" and "ineptitude" that resulted in the
JB> disenfranchisement of black voters.
JB> But two members of the eight-member panel, Abigail Thernstrom, a
JB> Republican, and Russell G. Redenbaugh, an independent, disputed the
JB> findings in a 50-page dissent, saying commission investigators used
JB> flawed data to justify a "preconceived, partisan belief" the election
JB> was marred by discrimination and disfranchisement of minority voters.
JB> Mrs. Thernstrom said at the time that a more rigorous statistical
JB> analysis showed that race was unrelated to the rate of ballot spoilage
JB> and that no evidence supported accusations of disfranchisement or
JB> discrimination of minorities. She said the Florida election was
JB> "hampered only by problems that were neither motivated by racial
JB> discrimination nor served to disfranchise minority voters."
JB> During hearings in Tallahassee, Fla., the commission called three
JB> black voters to substantiate what the panel said was a "conspiracy" to
JB> block minority voters from polling places, but none of three could show
JB> that they had been denied their right to vote. No other witnesses were
JB> called.
JB> John Nelson, the Rev. Willie D. Whiting and Roberta Tucker, all of
JB> Tallahassee, testified under oath that they had concerns and had read
JB> about problems concerning voter irregularities, but all of them voted
JB> at their polling precincts.
JB> Mr. Nelson said he saw unmanned police cars near different polling
JB> places on Election Day and thought that was "unusual." Mrs. Tucker said
JB> she was detained at a routine police driver's license checkpoint that
JB> had been functioning for weeks before the election, but was waved on
JB> after producing her valid license. Mr. Whiting said his name had been
JB> purged by mistake from the voting rolls when he had inaccurately been
JB> identified as a felon, but was allowed to vote after a call to an
JB> election supervisor.
JB> Commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry, an independent who has
JB> supported Democratic candidates and causes, said at the time that even
JB> though none of the witnesses had been denied access to a polling site,
JB> "we know some bad things happened."
JB> ?Bill Sammon contributed to this article.
Democrats!
--- Fidolook Lite FTN stub
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