- It's no accident that Florida is where rock star Bruce
Springsteen will end his headline-grabbing "vote for change"
tour in October. Or that President Bush and Democratic contender John Kerry
have visited the sunshine state about 50 times already this year, and there
are still 12 weeks of campaigning left. Or that anti-Bush film-maker Michael
Moore is promising to take his camera to Florida hotspots on election day
on November 2.
-
- Few Americans can forget that four years ago the president
won Florida by 527 votes.
-
- That was after a bitterly contested 37 days of recounts
and lawsuits. In African- American and other poor Democratic-leaning precincts
many voters had been turned away from polling stations.
-
- Florida, centre of the most egregious mishaps in 2000,
is too close to call. If Ohio is the foremost battleground for campaigning,
Florida is the election's swamp of controversy and fraud. Florida is also
the largest swing state, any of which could tip the final result. More
money is being spent on registering voters here than in any other while
billions in public money has been spent to clean up the system.
-
- Yet the upcoming vote could be 2000 redux. "Florida's
election system was a national disgrace, and it is well on its way to becoming
one again," warned the New York Times.
-
- Most of Florida's electorate will vote electronically,
an attempt to avoid "hanging chads" ñ tiny pieces of paper
ñ that so famously jammed punchcard machines in 2000. But the electronic
systems do not produce paper records.
-
- Florida's governor Jeb Bush, the president's brother,
is accused of refusing numerous requests for a paper trail. The Republican-led
state legislature has also exempted the machines from recount rules that
are required for other voting methods.
-
- In March, during the Democratic primary, precincts with
touch-screen rather than optical machines registered eight to nine times
as many blank ballots. "There is no reasonable reason for the discrepancy,"
said Ion Sanchoone, an election supervisor.
-
- Secretary of State Glenda Hood countered that those using
touch-screen machines must have intended to cast no vote. She said critics
were trying to destroy Florida's credibility.
-
- But in the state's first major test of touch-screen voting,
in Miami in 2002, almost all of the records disappeared in two computer
crashes a few months later. The loss only emerged in July after a citizens'
group demanded an audit.
-
- The results, for the Democratic governor's primary, were
eventually found on stray CDs. Also, on the day of the election, computers
had failed to start properly and clerks seemed confused by the technology.
-
- Janet Reno, President Clinton's former Attorney General,
lost by a slim 4,794 votes. "This is disturbing news and casts doubt
on Florida's ability to run a fair election this fall," said the New
York Times.
-
- On Friday, a state appeals court dismissed a lawsuit
that sought a paper trail, ruling that voters are not guaranteed "a
perfect voting system".
-
- Florida is having problems, too, with its list of registered
voters. Officials secretly purged tens of thousands of felons earlier this
year ñ 2500 of them erroneously.
-
- The state is one of only a handful that prohibits criminals
from voting for life even after they have served their sentence, unless
they are granted clemency.
-
- According to the Miami Herald, the purging was systematically
biased against African-Americans. The majority were Democrats.
-
- But that was not the case with Hispanics because of a
difference between two lists of data. In Florida, Hispanic voters tend
to support Republicans, note critics scathingly.
-
- The private company that conducted the purge, Accenture,
is Bermuda-based and recently secured a ëhomeland security' contract
worth up to $10 billion. It says it repeatedly warned the state about the
bias but was ignored.
-
- Wednesday's Palm Beach Post noted that Accenture's state
lobbyists include a former aide to Jeb Bush and a former state Republican
chairman.
-
- Accenture has also given $300,000 in campaign contributions,
favouring Republicans two-to-one, says the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
-
- Betty Reed, of the National Association for the Advancement
of Coloured People, says she meets too many young blacks who tell her that
their vote will never be counted, so they will not register.
-
- Batteries of lawyers and observers are being lined up
for November 2. Democrats have assembled a team including a former Florida
attorney general, and a former federal prosecutor. Janet Reno said she
might help.
-
- The issue was a rallying point during the Democratic
convention. When Michael Moore told the Florida delegation that he would
be in Florida on November 2, the crowd rushed the stage.
-
- "We're going to put up a huge spotlight and they
will not get away with it this time," he shouted. Some delegates wore
badges saying "527", the margin by which Al Gore lost Florida
in 2000. Others had "Re-defeat Bush!" buttons.
-
- Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, has announced
that he will tour the state by bus to help register voters. Jackson suggests
that yellow crime-scene tape should be strung along Florida's borders,
so likely is the fraud.
-
- "People are honestly pissed off," Florida Congressman
Ed Jennings, an African- American, told the Miami Herald. "It's like,
four years later and here we go again." 'Nam was dirty Ö but
politics is dirtier With 86 days until the election, it's dirt, lies and
videotapes. A TV advert and upcoming book by a group of war veterans slams
Kerry as a liar who exaggerated his Vietnam bravery. According to Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth, Kerry shot a Vietcong teenager in the back while
the victim was fleeing. The ad, paid for by a pro-Bush building contractor
in Texas, also claims Kerry lied about an incident in 1969 that earned
him a Bronze Star.
-
- "I know, I was there," fumes 2nd class gunner's
mate Van O'Dell in the advert. Kerry commandeered a Navy swift boat in
the Mekong Delta for four months. "Kerry has not been honest about
what happened in Vietnam," adds George Elliott, Kerry's former commanding
officer.
-
- Kerry often appears with his "Band of Brothers,"
political supporters who served with him in Vietnam. The senator opened
his convention speech with a boyish smile, a salute and the embarrassingly
mawkish, "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty!"
-
- But there's a problem. None of the 250 veterans in the
advert served in Kerry's boat. All surviving members of Kerry's crew back
him.
-
- According to the Boston Globe, Kerry's home town paper,
one of the anti-Kerry vets in an interview withdrew a key accusation ñ
that Kerry did not deserve a Silver Star.
-
- But Elliott now insists Kerry was undeserving and that
the Globe misquoted him. The conservative online Drudge Report claims the
reporter in question, Mike Kranish, is signed up to write the forward to
an official pot-boiler on the Kerry campaign.
-
- The anti-Kerry book, Unfit For Command: Swift Boat Veterans
Speak Out Against John Kerry, is top of amazon.com's best-seller list based
on advance publicity on Drudge. It will be published on August 15.
-
- A confused Bush meanwhile provided fodder for his enemies,
saying: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.
They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people,
and neither do we."
-
- © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights
reserved
-
- http://www.sundayherald.com/43943
|
