- TALLAHASSEE, Fla (AP) --
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating 1,500 voter
registration forms received by the Leon County (Tallahassee Fl.) elections
office that apparently were altered to register local students as
Republicans.
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- County elections supervisor Ion Sancho said it was
suspicious
enough that the registration forms were all photocopies, but the new voters
were also between the ages of 18-24, a group that often registers with
no party affiliation.
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- "When we saw that all of these individuals were
registered as Republicans, a buzzer went off," Sancho said.Most were
students at Florida A&M University, Florida State University or
Tallahassee
Community College. The office began calling the applicants, contacting
a couple of dozen before deciding to turn the voter forms over to the
FDLE.
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- "Once it became clear that their information did
not jibe with the information on the application forms, that's when we
decided to act," Sancho said.
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- "The overwhelming majority of them had not selected
the Republican Party as the party they wanted to be registered
in."
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- The Leon County case is one of several being looked at
around the state. In some cases, there are reports of bogus addresses,
forms coming in with false information and registered voters who are being
reregistered without their knowledge.
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- In St. Petersburg, former Mayor Charles Schuh received
a letter saying he was ineligible to vote in the Aug. 31 primary because
his registration application wasn't received on time. He later learned
that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now had turned
in a registration form with his correct name, address and phone number,
but the wrong date of birth, final four digests of his Social Security
number and gender.
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- "If I could find the guy I would make sure he was
prosecuted for fraud and forgery. They could have stopped me from voting
in the primary," Schuh, an attorney, said Tuesday. "That's wrong,
dead wrong." He was allowed to vote after showing elections officials
his voter registration card and telling them the incorrect registration
application wasn't submitted by him. Schuh said the registration form with
his name was turned over to the state attorney's office along with 14
others
that appear fraudulent.
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- State Attorney Bernie McCabe said all appeared to be
turned in by ACORN.
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- "It does not appear right now that it can result
in any impact on the election because the phony people aren't going to
be voting, but it certainly creates a lot of work for everybody,"
McCabe said. "The supervisors of elections have enough on their plates
than worrying about people turning in phony cards."
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- While he said ACORN is willing to help investigators,
he said the problem appears to be caused by paid workers falsifying forms
in order to make quotas.
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- "When you put quotas on people, you're asking for
trouble," McCabe said. Brian Kettenring, the head organizer for
Florida
ACORN, said, "We take these 1,500 cards as seriously as the 212,298
that we collected this past year. And for that reason we are working with
the state attorney to insure the integrity of every registration.
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- "The law is the law and everybody needs to know
they need to follow the law."
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- (Except Bush Republicans)
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- In Leon County, the alleged fraud could have meant the
1,500 applicants wouldn't be allowed to vote. Sancho, however, said he
is placing the people on the voting rolls with no party affiliation.
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- "They will be eligible to vote in November,"
Sancho said. "We are not going to allow lawbreakers to profit by their
actions." Both major political parties criticized the alleged fraud.
"It's absolutely despicable, but not surprising," said Florida
Democratic Party Chairman Scott Maddox. "After the year 2000, we
should
do whatever we can to make sure we have a fair electoral process.
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- Obviously, we still have attempts to try to defraud the
system." In 2000, George W. Bush defeated Vice President Al Gore by
537 votes in a hotly disputed election. During the five-week recount that
kept the world waiting to see who would be president, there were
allegations
that people were wrongly taken off voter rolls or turned away at the polls.
Republican Party spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher placed the blame for
some of this year's registration problems on the many independent groups
signing up new voters.
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- "It's unfortunate when you have all these groups
from outside the state coming in here and trying to take over the elections
process and they are motivated not by what's best for Florida, but by
making
money for themselves," she said.
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- Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All rights
reserved.
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