With each new look at the November election in Florida, the argument of the Bush Five on the Supreme Court–that manual recounts would lead to the unequal treatment of voters–appears more ludicrous. The election itself was a statewide orgy of unequal treatment. In a draft report, the US Commission on Civil Rights, which investigated election irregularities in the Sunshine State, depicts a voting system rife with bias. “African American voting districts were disproportionately hindered by antiquated and error-prone equipment like the punch card ballot system,” the commission notes. Which means more black and low-income voters–who tend to vote Democratic–had their ballots invalidated. The commission confirms what The Nation and other publications have found: The sloppy and inconsistent use of error-laden purge lists prevented eligible voters from casting ballots. “The purge system,” the commission observes, “disproportionately impacted African American voters who are placed on purge lists more often and more likely to be there erroneously.” In some counties voters of Hispanic or Haitian origin were not provided ballots in their native language–despite federal laws that require it.
There were other inequities. When Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered a recount, eighteen of Florida’s sixty-seven counties didn’t recount the votes; they merely checked the math from the original count. In two counties, elections officers shut off the mechanisms on the voting machines that identified errors on ballots and allowed the voter a second chance. Other counties kept these devices on.
According to the commission, “widespread disenfranchisement and denial of voting rights” occurred, but “it is impossible to determine the extent of disenfranchisement or to provide an adequate remedy to the persons whose voices were silenced…by a pattern and practice of injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency.” And Jeb Bush, Harris and other state officials were to blame–not for having “conspired to produce the disenfranchisement of voters” but for having ignored the needs of voters. The draft, which Jeb Bush denounced as unfair, notes that it would be appropriate for the Justice Department to investigate whether Florida state and county officials violated the Voting Rights Act. Jeb Bush’s office squealed bias and grumbled about the timing of the draft’s release.
As the commission’s report and various media investigations show, thousands of Florida voters were the victims of widespread institutional neglect. That neglect may not have been designed as a campaign strategy, but it worked as well as if it had been. Republicans, after all, have long believed that their candidates fare better in races with low turnout. There is no question that Bush’s twisted path to the White House was paved by voting-system problems unaddressed by his brother and Harris–and that he got the presidency because of the unequal treatment of Florida citizens.
