Was this posted yet?
Talk about vote fraud....check the last paragraph....
Published Friday, December 1, 2000, in the Miami
Herald
Hundreds of felons cast votes
illegally
BY DAVID KIDWELL, PHIL LONG AND GEOFF DOUGHERTY
dkidwell@herald.com
At least 445 Florida felons voted illegally on Nov.
7, casting another cloud over a disputed
presidential election already mired in legal
challenges, a Herald investigation has found.
The tainted votes -- found in a review of nearly
half a million votes cast in 12 Florida counties --
provide evidence that the presidential race was
influenced by thousands of ineligible voters. Nearly
six million voters in Florida's 67 counties cast
ballots.
They also point out the failure of Florida's
multimillion-dollar effort to prevent election fraud
by eliminating dead and illegal voters from the
registration rolls.
``This just goes to show that the most expensive
voting equipment in the world is worthless when the
voting rolls are that filthy,'' said Deborah
Phillips, president of the nonprofit Voting
Integrity Project in Arlington, Va. ``It's just an
invitation to lower the integrity of the election.''
TWO KEY COUNTIES
The majority of the illegal votes -- 330 -- were
cast in Palm Beach and Duval counties, which decided
not to participate in the statewide effort this year
to purge felons, dead people and double registrants
from the rolls.
Elections supervisors in those counties argue the
state database compiled by the Florida Division of
Elections, at a price of $4 million, was peppered
with errors and mismatches.
Even so, most other counties -- including Miami-Dade
and Broward -- used it to scrub thousands of
ineligible voters from the rolls, as required by
state law.
LEGAL CHALLENGES
The lapses in Palm Beach and Duval counties could
become significant if Democrats win any of their
legal challenges and take the narrow lead away from
Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Nearly 75
percent of the illegal ballots discovered by The
Herald were cast by registered Democrats.
The votes could be seized upon by the Bush campaign
to argue that a large number of illegal votes were
probably cast for his opponent, outweighing the
effect of any recount.
``It's a very powerful argument,'' said Robert
Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern
University.
Since 1868, it has been illegal for felons to cast
ballots in Florida, one of 14 states with an arduous
paperwork process for felons to have their rights
restored. The provision has prompted a federal
lawsuit by civil rights groups who allege it is
discriminatory against blacks.
The Herald found 62 robbers, 56 drug dealers, 45
killers, 16 rapists and seven kidnappers who cast
ballots. At least two who voted are pictured on the
state's online registry of sexual offenders.
'TON OF US'
``There are a ton of us out there,'' said William
Herman, 37, of Lake Worth, sentenced to five years
in prison in 1989 for negligent homicide with a
motor vehicle. ``It shouldn't be that way, but when
they give you a voter registration card, hey, what
are you supposed to do?
Clarence Eden Williams, 77, of Pahokee, also voted.
His picture is posted on the state registry of
sexual offenders for his crimes against children.
His son was surprised his father cast a ballot.
``He's got Alzheimer's, and he can't even carry on a
conversation anymore,'' said Clarence Williams III.
The Herald review included counties where voter
lists could be obtained -- about 8 percent of the
5.9 million votes cast on Nov. 7. It encompassed all
votes cast in Palm Beach and Pasco counties, most
votes cast in Duval County, and only absentee votes
in Miami-Dade, Broward, Lee, Leon, Hillsborough,
Clay and the Panhandle counties of Escambia,
Okaloosa and Bay.
FINDING FELONS
To find felony voters, The Herald compared a list of
voters in those counties with a Department of
Corrections database listing felons who had served
at least a year in prison. If the pattern found in
the study is the same statewide, more than 5,000
felons likely cast illegal ballots.
Duval County had the highest turnout among convicted
felons with at least 235 voting illegally.
Elections Supervisor John Stafford, like several
other elections officials, said he didn't trust a
purge list provided by the state Elections Division
in Tallahasse.
``We weren't going to take that chance and delete
everybody,'' said John Stafford, Duval's election
supervisor. ``We'd have been in a world of trouble.
It is almost a joke because there are so many errors
in it.''
In fact, one of Stafford's employees found her
husband's name on the list of felons by mistake, she
said.
Stafford said his office sent out a letter to felons
identified on the state database, and were inundated
by telephone calls from irate residents -- some who
said they had been misidentified as felons and
others angry they'd been disenfranchised over
decades-old crimes.
```We're talking about a crime when I was 19,'' said
Theron McDaniel, of Jacksonville, convicted of
dealing in stolen property in 1977. ``I'm 42 years
old and they're still holding that over me?
``As a matter of fact I'm a deacon in my church,''
he said. ``I don't know anybody who's perfect in
this life.''
PURGE IGNORED
Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa
LePore ignored the state purge list after a
well-publicized error that mistakenly identified
thousands of Floridians guilty of misdemeanors as
having felony convictions. She declined comment for
this article.
Herald staff writers William Yardley, Sara Olkon,
Jason Grotto and Tina Cummings contributed to this
report. |
