Is DOJ Saying That Gore Won Florida?
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Is DOJ Saying That Gore Won Florida?
truthout.org
by Jennifer Van Bergen
t r u t h o u t | Sunday, 26 May, 2002
Why is the Justice Department filing suit over voting irregularities in Florida
(and why now) when the NAACP already filed over a year ago on the same
issue? The NAACP recently settled with several counties over their suit. Does
this mean that Gore would have won if thousands of black voters were not
disenfranchised?
Assistant attorney general for civil rights Ralph F. Boyd Jr. announced the
Department of Justice plan to sue, but since no suits have been filed yet, it is
unclear what these suits will do that the NAACP suit hasn't.
According to the Associated Press, the DOJ has 14 active investigations
and five potential lawsuits. These proposed suits allege different treatment of
minority voters, improper purging of voter rolls, "motor voter" registration
violations, and failure to provide access to disabled voters.
According to the DOJ, by January 2001 they had received over 11,000
complaints. Not all of these related to voter irregularities. Some were about the
election, some were about the recount, some on other issues, according to the
Bill Nelson of the Public Affairs Office of the DOJ. Many of these complaints did
not fall under the Voting Rights Act, which is the only basis for DOJ voting law
suits.
If the DOJ had this information back in January 2001, why did it wait a year
and a half to bring suit?
The suit brought by the NAACP in January 2001 was on behalf of black
voters only. The DOJ suit appears to cover largely the same issues.
A St. Petersburg Times editorial claims that the DOJ's intention is "to get
voluntary admissions of wrongdoing from the counties and a plan to fix the
problems before it files the lawsuits." Fixing the problems, the writer claims, is
what counts.
The two settlements in the NAACP suit focus on this, as well. Leon and
Broward Counties have agreed to revise their laws and voting procedures.
Specifically, the counties agreed to "provide a written explanation to voters
when ballots are rejected, review disputes over voter registration, the voting
process and voting lists," according to a May 9, 2002 NAACP press release.
The trouble with both the NAACP suit settlements and the DOJ proposed
suits is that they do not address the results of the election itself. If a
substantial block of voters was admittedly disenfranchised, what does this
mean about Bush's election?
Back in November 2000, George W. Bush brought suit against Al Gore on
numerous different claims. Indeed, Bush changed his arguments so many
times that the Florida Supreme Court, in their December 8, 2000 decision
ordering statewide recounts, noted the "substantial and dramatic change of
position after oral argument in this case" as being "in stark contrast to his
position both in this case and in the prior appeal."
The equal protection claim that narrowly prevailed in the U.S. Supreme
Court was the absence of specific standards for determining valid votes on
manual recounts. Because, according to the Court, there was no standard and
no time left to apply a better standard, the Court ordered the Florida Supreme
Court to throw the uncounted votes out, unabashedly handing the presidency to
Bush.
In the midst of this supposed constitutional crisis, while the U.S. Supreme
Court was deciding to throw out uncounted votes in the name of Bush's equal
protection rights, tens of thousands of minority voters were actively being
discriminated against. And now we are supposed to believe that revising a few
laws corrects the wrongs committed during that election?
Let me add here that there was no genuine constitutional crisis, since the
Constitution stipulates that a presidential election tie is to be resolved by the
U.S. House of Representatives. The Supreme Court did not save this country
from a crisis. It saved Bush from embarrassment, and, if anything, precipitated
a far greater crisis in the people of this country.
Secondly, on a quite different note, there is a good question whether Bush
even had standing to bring the suit against Gore in the first place. Was Bush
claiming that his rights as a candidate had been violated? No. He was claiming
that the rights of HIS voters had been violated. In other words, he was already
claiming to represent the voters.
Now, finally, the DOJ jumps into belated action, just a few months before fall
congressional elections. The NAACP lawsuit may bring greater equity to
minority voters, but Bush's DOJ is riding on the NAACP's coattails and using
the voters disenfranchised by the Bush Supreme Court to claim DOJ rectitude
and success on an issue it has ignored for a year and a half. Not to mention
that the suits do nothing to rectify past wrongs which still affect this country
and will continue to do so for many years to come.
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