The Tides of Change Reach Vote Fraud

News from Florida
First, the big story: Florida has rolled back its odious voting restrictions for ex-felons. The story begins many years ago, at the tail end of the Civil Rights era. Many states were frustrated at their powerlessness to deny the vote to black people, so they restricted voting by ex-felons, who they knew would be mostly black as a result of other existing inequities.

As bad as that sounds, in Florida's case it has actually been worse than that. The 2000 presidential election is mostly remembered for the recount debacle in Florida, but there is a racial story behind that debacle. What jumps to mind about that election are images like little old ladies (lifelong Democrats) having their ballots counted for Pat Buchanan, chads hanging, and protesters (who turned out to be paid GOP operatives rather passionate citizens) demanding an end to the recount.

It just so happens that there is pretty solid evidence that Gore really did win that election by a couple hundred votes, which would be common knowledge if the recount had been allowed to proceed. Unfortunately, in one of the most disgraceful moments in its history, the Supreme Court stepped in with a highly biased, partisan, and poorly reasoned ruling to stop the recount, which legal scholars have strongly criticized.

But Gore would have won by a much more comfortable margin if ex-felons, who are disproportionately black and therefore disproportionately Democratic, had been allowed to vote. And Gore's margin would have been much larger still if the ex-felon voting restriction hadn't been illegally applied to tens of thousands of non-felons. Greg Palast explained in 2002:

Two of these “scrub lists,” as officials called them, were distributed to counties in the months before the election with orders to remove the voters named. Together the lists comprised nearly 1 percent of Florida's electorate and nearly 3 percent of its African-American voters. Most of the voters (such as “David Butler,” (1); a name that appears 77 times in Florida phone books) were selected because their name, gender, birthdate and race matched - or nearly matched - one of the tens of millions of ex-felons in the United States. Neither DBT nor the state conducted any further research to verify the matches...

Thomas Alvin Cooper (2), twenty-eight, was flagged because of a crime for which he will be convicted in the year 2007. According to Florida's elections division, this intrepid time-traveler will cover his tracks by moving to Ohio, adding a middle name, and changing his race...

Rather than release this whacky data to skeptical counties, Janet Mudrow, state liaison to DBT, suggested that “blanks would be preferable in these cases.” (Harper’s counted 4,917 blank conviction dates.) The one county that checked each of the 694 names on its local list could verify only 34 as actual felony convicts.

(my emphasis; original emphasis removed)

Florida's move to finally allow many ex-felons to vote is therefore not just a breakthrough for the civil rights of ex-felons. It also has huge implications for the civil rights of every black person in Florida, any one of whom could have been removed from voter roles very easily through this type of chicanery.

Nationwide Implications
The roll-back of ex-felon restrictions in Florida was spearheaded by a Republican, new Governor Charlie Crist. I was shocked to hear that a Republican had led the charge, but apparently Crist was genuinely struck by a sense of injustice tugging at his conscience. It's an inspiring example that goes to prove that merely being a Republican doesn't automatically entail being a bad person inside.

But it helps. For example, former governor Jeb Bush, who presided over the illegal felon disenfranchisement in 2000 to help his brother, is a rotten shell of a human being. Less publicized than even the 2000 disenfranchisement in Florida was the 2004 disenfranchisement there, which Jeb also presided over.

The 2004 edition was actually led by Karl Rove protégé Tim Griffin. After the recent purge that has become such a scandal, Griffin was nominated to take over as US Attorney in Arkansas. As I mentioned in Wednesday's entry, it should be no surprise that Republicans want subpoena powers for one of their dirtiest thugs in the state where Hillary Clinton spent most of her adult life.

The 2004 voter suppression, as orchestrated by Griffin, is emblematic of the new approach Republicans take to voter suppression in general: challenging the ballots and registrations of regular minorities, regardless of their criminal record. Griffin was challenging absentee ballots from black communities in Florida, but a favored tactic in other states has been to challenge registrations from registration drives by Democratic groups. This tactic is likely to have played a large role in deciding Ohio in 2004, for example.

But Griffin isn't the only connection between this tactic and the US Attorney scandal. It turns out some of the purged attorneys were fired for inadequately prosecuting such cases of alleged voter fraud.

This recent tactic is directly connected to Karl Rove (via Griffin), but aggressive pursuit of voter fraud has Rove written all over it, anyway. The defining Rove strategy, generally speaking, is to take your own weakness and turn it into your opponent's weakness. Think of how in 2004 draft-dodging George W. Bush somehow looked like the patriotic defender of his country while decorated veteran John Kerry looked like the pansy. It's the same deal in this case: Republicans commit massive voter suppression, yet they try to make it look like Democrats are the ones manipulating the voter roles.

Conclusion
The recent Florida decision and the uncovering of the crass politicization of justice represented by the US Attorney purge are steps in the right direction. I compliment Crist for listening to his conscience and helping more people vote instead of less, like the rest of his party seems to be doing. Ken Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of State in 2004, lost badly in his bid for the Ohio governor's mansion last year. Conscientious liberals have launched a project to get responsible people in Secretary of State offices across the nation. We're not there yet, but the tides of voter suppression may be turning.