Goron has been preaching "count all the votes" but check this out:
Why Is Al Gore Ignoring Black Voters In Duval
County?
If you have listened to Al Gore of late you are
very familiar with the line of reasoning he has
offered during his court challenges of Florida's
election results. He says that he "wants every vote
to count". He has contested the election results in
Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties on the grounds
that votes were under counted. And he has offered
his support for voters in West Palm Beach who say
that they were confused by the layout of the
"butter-fly" ballot, which supposedly caused them
to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore.
Gore very adamantly states that he would not feel
comfortable with the results of an election where
every vote was not counted, especially when the
amount of the "not counted" votes potentially
reaches into the tens of thousands.
If that is the case, then why hasn't Al Gore
included in his court challenges or offered public
support for Black voters in Duval County whose
votes were "not counted" and who may have an even
stronger argument than their counterparts in Palm
Beach and Miami-Dade counties?
In Duval County, as many as 27,000 votes were
disqualified. Much more than the amount of ballots
tossed out in Palm Beach County. And of this 27,000
as many as 42% of these came from Black districts.
The total amount of votes rejected are more than 9%
of the total Duval county turnout of 292,000. And
the 27,000 votes are more than three times the
7,800 votes that were tossed out in 1996 and more
than four times the number of votes struck in 1992-
6,100 votes.
Of the 27,000 votes up to 22,000 are "overvotes"
and over 5,000 are "undervotes".
Overvotes occur when a voter selects more than one
candidate and an undervote occurs when a candidate
is not selected or when voters don't punch a hole
in the ballot hard enough when they make their
choice.
It is these undervotes that Gore has, in great
part, centered his Palm Beach and Miami-Dade County
court cases around.
Yet in Duval County, Gore ignores almost 6,000 of
these votes.
But it is on the issue of the 22,000 overvotes
where most of the controversy in Duval has
centered. Why?
Because voters are complaining that the sample
ballot that was displayed prior to the election and
in the local newspapers, was designed differently
than the actual ballot that was used during
election day.
If that were the case it would appear to be a
violation of Florida state election laws that
mandate that sample ballots and actual ballots be
the same. The state law, in part, says that sample
ballots, "shall be in the form of the official
ballot as it will appear at the polling place on
Election Day."
Presidential candidates were listed on one page on
the sample ballot but were listed over two pages on
the actual ballot. On the sample ballot it was
written, " vote every page", on the actual ballot
it was written, "vote appropriate pages".
Assistant Supervisor of elections in Duval County,
Dick Carlberg, told the Florida Times-Union that
while to him, the ballot instructions are very
clear, he does believe that the two-page ballot
design did confuse voters.
But the debate over the sample and actual ballot is
only the tip of the iceberg.
The deadline for requesting manual recounts passes
after 72 hours. Democrats claim that they were not
informed of the massive amount of disqualified
votes until 11PM on Nov. 10.
In fact Mike Langton, the Northeast Florida
chairman of the Gore campaign has publicly stated
that Duval's Republican election supervisor, John
Stafford, misled him and other Democrats as to the
actual size of the disqualified votes.
Langton claims that Mr. Stafford told him, in the
presence of a lawyer, that only 200-300 votes were
disqualified as opposed to the actual 20,000 plus
votes.
Democratic Party officials in Florida are aware of
what happened in Florida, as are attorneys in the
Democratic National Committee's headquarters in
D.C. Still, nothing has been done by Al Gore or the
Democratic Party to contest the election.
And even the claims made by some in the Democratic
National Committee that they missed the deadline to
ask for a recount and therefore are out of luck,
ring hollow.
BlackElectorate.com spoke to lawyers who reject
such arguments and are confident that the Democrats
and Al Gore could and can challenge the election
results in Duval County and demand a recount,
especially if they originally missed the 72-hour
deadline due to the alleged error or deliberate
deception of an election official.
In fact, Florida law is very liberal about
overturning election results. Among some of the
grounds under Florida state law on which an
election can be challenged is "receipt of a number
of illegal votes or rejection of a number of legal
votes sufficient to change or place in doubt the
result of an election".
And Florida law also contains a catch-all provision
that certainly seems to be applicable to what
happened in Duval County. In the law it states that
an election contest can succeed if there exists, "
any other cause or allegation which, if sustained,
would show that a person other than the successful
candidate" was declared the victor. Under these
circumstances, Florida law states that judges are
authorized " to provide any relief appropriate".
And Black leaders have recognized the apparent
strength of the case in Duval County, and legally
independent of the Gore campaign, have filed a
lawsuit of their own challenging the Duval results
and asking for a hand-count of all disputed votes.
The lawsuit is being filed by Congressional Black
Caucus member Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Florida) and
Rainbow/PUSH.
However, there is no reason why the Gore campaign,
itself, could not challenge the result in court.
And the Gore decision to not do so has upset many
Black leaders and elected officials.
And these Black leaders are not just disappointed
in Al Gore's missing-in-action status in Duval
County but by his lack of support for Black voting
right violations throughout the state of Florida.
Dwayne Wickham wrote about this in his recent
column in USA Today. He wrote:
Last week, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume accused the
Justice Department of being "the Just-Ice
Department" following the tepid response he said he
received when he asked Attorney General Janet Reno
for a formal federal investigation of the mountain
of voting-rights complaints his organization
received from Florida. (This past weekend, the
Justice Department did send two investigators to
Florida to see whether such an investigation is
warranted.)
But the NAACP's harshest attack was aimed at Gore,
who has said nothing publicly about the alleged
acts of intimidation black voters encountered on
Election Day. "I'm extremely upset," Julian Bond,
the NAACP board chairman, said Sunday on BET.
"We expected the Democrats to behave a little
better in this post-election season. Black voters
supported Al Gore like nobody's business. We expect
some payback."
If Al Gore is in constant contact with Black
leaders and particularly Rev. Jackson as he claims,
and if Democratic National Committee lawyers and
representatives are aware of what has happened in
Duval County and in other parts of Florida then it
is apparent that the Gore campaign has deliberately
decided to not take the allegations of voting
rights violations, undervotes, and overvotes to
court and has even decided to keep a low-profile on
what happened to Blacks throughout the state.
Gore has not even publicly acknowledged the
connection between his electoral misfortune and
what has happened to blacks in Florida. And he has
not encouraged, enthusiastically supported or
promised to encourage Janet Reno to have the
Justice Department investigate the matter, as has
been his custom response when dealing with the
complaints civil rights organizations.
Several representatives of Congressional Black
Caucus members told BlackElectorate.com that in
essence Gore has decided which battles to fight and
that he has made poor decisions.
And they add that Gore did not have the stomach to
bring in race-sensitive issues into his court
challenges no matter how strong the evidence. They
offered that Gore is as much interested in how this
all looks in the court of public opinion among
white Americans as he is in winning in the court of
law.
Maybe Al Gore had something else in mind when he
said he wanted every vote to count.
Cedric Muhammad
December 7, 2000 |
