Bad News For Bush

[jpn of Seattle]

For those of you who are unaware, one of the reasons that Bush was appointed President in 2000 by the Supreme Court is that thousands of blacks (who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic) were not allowed to vote via a sneaky mechanism in Florida.
Looks like Bush's brother, who is the govenor of Florida is having trouble trying to do the same thing this year. In other words, Bush may have to try and win the election fair and square for a change.
The horror...

Fla. Scraps Flawed Felon Voting List
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 10, 2004

MIAMI (AP) -- Florida elections officials said Saturday they will not use a disputed list that was designed to keep felons from voting, acknowledging a flaw that could have allowed convicted Hispanic felons to cast ballots in November.
The glitch in a state that President Bush won by just 537 votes could have been significant -- because of the state's sizable Cuban population, Hispanics in Florida have tended to vote Republican more than Hispanics nationally. The list had about 28,000 Democrats and around 9,500 Republicans, with most of the rest unaffiliated.
``Not including Hispanic felons that may be voters on the list ... was an oversight and a mistake,'' Gov. Jeb Bush said. ``And we accept responsibility and that's why we're pulling it back.''

[Francois Cellier]

JPN:

Why do you start a new thread on this issue? We already have a thread on this very same topic, which is still on page 1, and which was furthermore created yesterday by yourself. So, why didn't you simply add a new post to that thread?

This is precisely what Zan was complaining about. People, like Silver, start one thread after another on election topics, thereby pushing everything else quickly to page 2. When you look at page 1 right now, it is swamped by election threads.

A little more discipline by everyone could take care of the problem quite effectively.

[jpn of Seattle]

I see your point. I guess I use this forum differently that you and perhaps others do. I just scan the top 10 or 20 topics to see if there's anything of interest. When something new develops that I want to comment on, it is easier to start a new topic than to search for the topic on an "old" page.

I don't really see a big difference in keeping all the posts to a single thread or multiple threads. What bothers me is not multiple posts on a subject, but rather people's irritating inability to converse reasonably about the issues they disagree with.

But if multiple threads on a single issue bothers people, I can start hunting them down.
I guess...

[kramsret]

Aint it funny?

Bush and Republicans shat all over blacks for four years running. But now they're going to scrap the list because their pander-target HISPANICS might be effected! Horrors! Scrap the list!

[Silver]

What's really funny is the proclivity on Forums to think that the members do not have enough intelligence to look past the first page of topics when they return to the Forum from a prior visit. :eyes

[Francois Cellier]

No, Silver. That is not the problem.

The issue is that other topics get pushed unduly fast to page 2. The issue is also that it is curteous to keep related topics (such as the Florida situation) on a single thread to make it easier for other posters to check what has already been posted about that topic, before they comment by themselves.

Only two weeks ago, Goddesscon locked a thread by Bobboi for precisely that reason. A thread had been started about Bush telling the Europeans to admit Turkey to the EU. Bobboi contributed to that thread. The very next morning, Bobboi started a second thread on precisely the same topic. Goddesscon locked the second thread, telling Bobboi to post his comment on the previous one, rather than starting a new thread on the same topic.

Now that we have a separate forum for the U.S. election, it evidently no longer makes sense to treat the election issue as one big thread (it got elevated to the next higher level of organization), but it still makes sense to post articles or comments on a particular narrow aspect of the election together in a single thread to make it easier for other posters (and lurkers) to find their way around.

P&CA is a nice board w.r.t. bulkiness. Some boards are so slow that you don't find new and interesting information from one visit to the next. Thus after some time, you'll probably stay away. Other boards are so fast that it becomes impossible to read everything that has been posted in between visits. If you come back three hours later, three or four pages of new threads with dozens of posts each have meanwhile been produced. This makes it hard on the posters, because they never know whether they are duplicating what other posters have already said or posted. P&CA doesn't fall into either of these two extremes, which is one of the features that makes this board attractive to me. You get a broad spectrum of opinions (from right to left) about many current issues, yet it is still possible to digest pretty much everything that has been posted within limited time resources.

Yet, to keep it that way requires a bit of discipline on the posters. I don't think it is asked too much to check what other people have said about a particular topic before posting your own story. If stuff has already disappeared to page 2, you can still find it easily, as the search feature of P&CA works actually quite well ... much better, in fact, than on the old EZBoard.

[kramsret]

Again, Silver is not even a member of this board. She's just posting, probably on several boards, as fast as her little mouse can post. She doesn't usually take time to even read.

For some reason, probably because I busted her, she decided to even answer once.

She's a troll. An election year plant. I know them well, and she is it.

[Francois Cellier]

Kramsret:

Get off Silver's case, would you? Give her (him?) the benefit of inexperience. Silver joined this board only a few days ago. Everyone is entitled to go through a learning period.

I suspect that if Silver's political convictions were more in line with yours, you would be much less critical.

P&CA is welcoming all types of political perspectives - the wider the spectrum, the better we are off. We don't need indoctrination, neither from the left, nor from the right. We all (I believe) are capable of thinking with our own brains and making our own judgment calls as to what to believe.

What makes the board interesting though are meaningful discussions born of intelligent reflection upon the news. Just dumping stuff without willingness to discuss if someone picks up the topic and runs with it is less interesting, as are the one-lined tit-for-tats that have swamped a number of threads lately.

So far, I have not seen anything that would convince me that Silver is one of the basket cases.

[Petra]

I bet you anything that that was Jeb's wifey's doing. She's of cuban descent. Which is why the Cubans have such high standing (compared to any other immigrant group) in South Florida.

oh well, what's good for her, is even BETTER for the dems ;)

[suedanim]

ok... heres another article.. different... just as important perspective.

'Mess In Florida' (http://www.bet.com/articles/0,,c1gb10043-11076,00.html//url)
By Bill Alexander, BET.com Staff Writer

Posted July 8, 2004 –Florida politics too often have been birthed in outrageousness and burped by shamelessness.

The notoriously controversial Florida presidential vote count of 2000 is on its way to a sequel as the Miami Herald revealed last Friday that 2,100 eligible voters, mostly Black, could be barred from voting because they were incorrectly placed on the state’s new purge list of 47,000 “ineligible” voters who are ex-felons.

Just weeks before this disclosure, the newly appointed head of the state’s elections division resigned after just five months following inquiries over how the list was compiled.

An analysis of the 2000 election by author Greg Palast revealed that then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris (now a congresswoman) wiped 8,000 Floridians who committed misdemeanors off the voter rolls after she counted them as felons.

She also ordered the names of 173,000 “convicted felons” purged from state voter roles, using a database that included the names of ex-felons from 36 states that supposedly “matched” the names of Floridians, Palast writes in his book, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”

Critics argue that George W. Bush, who won Florida by 537 votes, only did so because this list canceled out many Florida voters whose name only approximated that of out-of-state felons. For example, an Illinois felon, say John Michaels, was linked to a legitimate Florida voter, named John, Johnny, Jonathan or Jon R. Michaels, who would be deemed ineligible to vote. After the election, it was determined that about 90 percent of those scratched from the voter rolls were innocent and the overwhelming majority was African American.

When asked about the high proportion of Blacks on the purge list, Harris’ office responded: “Well, you know how many Black people commit crimes,” Palast said in an interview.

“We’ve got a mess down here in Florida,” says State Sen. Mandy Dawson (D‑Fort Lauderdale). Dawson, who serves in a majority Republican Senate which has killed her pro‑felon legislative petitions, is now seeking 500,000 signatures statewide for a ballot initiative that would remove the lifetime voting rights ban against felons who’ve completed their sentences.

“We’re not getting any help in money or resources from the Democrats or the labor unions, either nationally or locally,” complains Dawson. “I guess neither party wants to see too many Black folks voting.”

Randy Berg, lead counsel for the Florida Justice Institute, says Florida has the highest number of people disenfranchised, and “the numbers are building and accumulating each year.”

He says that 85 percent of nearly 125,000 convicted felons released between 1992 and 2001 have to go before the Clemency Review Board (composed of Gov. Jeb Bush and his cabinet) to have their rights restored.

But the review board only convenes quarterly and, as the Florida ACLU’s Courtenay Strickland points out, “Last March, the board met with 55 people,” about .04 percent of those waiting for a review. A determination on their rights restoration may take up to a year or longer, and most, if not all (according to Berg), will be denied.

“These men and women can’t get jobs and feed their families because an employer finds out they can’t vote and won’t hire them. These people continue to be punished. They’ve served their time, so they ought to be free,” Berg says.

Strickland agrees: “This system sets up degrees of citizenship. This doesn’t look like a democracy.”

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, says that since 2002 there have been modifications in the law that “will prevent [voter role] omissions due to mistaken identity this time around.”

Says Nash: “We have more stringent [felon] matching criteria, such as only Florida convictions can be used for those on the list.”

But many critics contend that “the fix” already is in for this year’s Florida presidential election sweepstakes.

Just weeks ago, state officials sent a new purge list of 47,000 names to county election supervisors around the state. When pressed by the media for the names on the list, the state refused to comply, resulting in a lawsuit by CNN demanding release of the names. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D), says, “The list should be open to the public.” He has filed a friend‑of‑the‑court suit on behalf of First Amendment advocates.

The head of the state’s elections division, Ed Kast, resigned in June amid reports of political heat blowback that caused him to wilt following the flap over the new purge list.

“Jim Crow is very alive in Florida,” says the Rev. James Phillips. Phillips is a member of the Florida Rights Restoration Committee, one of many local groups taking to the streets and courts in an attempt to win voting rights for felons.

But as recently as June 23, the Republican National Committee indicated that it’s in no rush to extend such rights, blasting the rival party for even allowing ex-offenders to pass out election flyers.

“It is disturbing that the voter mobilization arm of the Democratic party is proudly hiring felons convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary to go house to house [distributing campaign literature]…,” says RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie in a statement. “Democrat voters should be leery of opening their doors.”

Labeling the statement both “unfair” and “racist,” Robin Templeton, director of the New York-based Right to Vote Campaign, says the issue is simply that “the people who have the most to gain in the voting process are the very ones spreading the word about our civic duty to vote.”

Templeton says, in effect, they should be commended – not denigrated – for what they’re doing, “because no one is breaking a law here; their sentences are up.”

Do you think there will be a repeat of the 2000 election shenanigans this year in Florida? What can be done to prevent manipulation of the voting rolls?

[thaanatos]

“These men and women can’t get jobs and feed their families because an employer finds out they can’t vote and won’t hire them.

this has got to be one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in print.....

I can see where some might be reluctant to hire someone who has a felony conviction on his record, but only an idiot would claim the reason for non-hiring is their ability to vote.......

[lily]

http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/nono.gifHow eaisly we forget WHO the main complaint was about in the Florida elections..........the old and infirmed who couldn't read the ballot or punch the hole all the way through. Yes I could live the rest of my life without ever hearing the words hanging chad or dimpled chad. Although we did hear about how blacks were turned away, if I remember correctly, it was the elderly that people were complaining about the most......at least at the boards I posted on when it happend. I wasn't here then, but it was a pretty universal bitch.

I bet you anything that that was Jeb's wifey's doing. She's of cuban descent. Which is why the Cubans have such high standing (compared to any other immigrant group) in South Florida.

Poor Jeb. He married the woman he loved. Everytime anything even remotely comes up Hispanic, she's brought up.

If stuff has already disappeared to page 2, you can still find it easily, as the search feature of P&CA works actually quite well ... much better, in fact, than on the old EZBoard.

Ok, I swear I'm not having a blond moment, not meant to flame any natural blonds ;) .................but there's a search engine? Where?

[Francois Cellier]

There's a search engine?

At the top of each page, just below the big title, on the right hand side, there are four special features: "FAQ," "Search," "Memberlist," and "Usergroups."

If you click on "Search," it opens a window that allows you to formulate your search. Just type in a few keywords separated by AND, and hit the search button. You'll then get a page specially produced for you with all of the threads from all of the fora that contain these keywords.

The engine is fast and reliable!

[lily]

I found it after I asked. I'm going to have to give it a try. My way seems to be taking up way too much time......either that or the really good conversations are taking too much time from the real world. Either way, an hour passes by, dinner is burning and nothing else is getting done.......I think I need an intervention :pooter