Here comes the race card:
news.excite.com
NAACP Plans Suit Over Voting Biases
Updated 12:23 PM ET November 29, 2000
By SHEILA HOTCHKIN, Associated Press Writer
BALTIMORE (AP) - NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said Wednesday that the nation's largest civil
rights organization plans to sue over alleged voting irregularities in the presidential election in Florida.
Mfume said the NAACP will sue the state and several counties, seeking unspecified relief. The
NAACP also is asking local chapters to hold hearings into whether voting irregularities occurred in
other states.
The NAACP president said he already has presented the Justice Department with complaints of voting
irregularities, but the NAACP has received only one telephone call in response, simply thanking him
for the referral.
"This is a strange stance from this Justice Department, which continues to get colder as it nears the
end of its term," Mfume said.
The NAACP hopes to sue soon, perhaps by next week, Mfume said.
The civil rights group also plans to organize demonstrations nationwide protesting the treatment of
minority voters on Election Day, Mfume said.
Two days after the election, Mfume called for sweeping federal involvement in the Florida presidential
race, asking the Justice Department to investigate complaints of election irregularities and for federal
marshals to supervise the ballot recount.
NAACP field workers in Florida alleged then that four ballot boxes in heavily black precincts, including
the Richmond Heights section of Miami, were not picked up. Mfume also cited several other incidents
at the time, which he said suggested efforts to dilute the minority vote in Florida. |
