Harrasing Black Voters in Florida

FYI for Harris County Nov 2 election

Last day to register to vote - Oct 4
First day to apply for ballot by mail - Sept 3
Last day to apply for ballot by mail (received) - oct 26
First day of Early Voting - Oct 18
Last day of Early Voting - Oct 29

 

Where is info like this for the whole state? state.tx.us?

 

Some of you are trying to make the Democrats look like heros in Florida and the Republicans the villians. The people that went to Florida to protest went because they lost -- not because they are concerened about disenfranchised voters.

The Democrats protested the election because they lost. If the Democrats would have won they would be silent and the Republicans would be protesting.

 

A side note....

People of Color United, a Washington-based group bankrolled by a Republican insurance executive, is assailing Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, in ads on black radio stations and in mainstream newspapers that reach into heavily black neighborhoods.

One commercial says: "Our community doesn't need another wishy-washy, rich, white politician. And boy, does Kerry come across as rich, white and wishy-washy." Another says: "His wife says she's an African American. While technically true, I don' t believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants qualifies." Referring to Heinz Kerry, newspaper ads ask: "African-American? Or elitist, rich and white?"

People of Color United is spending a small amount, about $150,000, on ads. But they could pack a large punch because they are aimed at a specific demographic. Kerry's campaign has denounced the spots.

Virginia Walden Ford, the group's president, said she just wants to make blacks "more informed voters."

But Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist who speaks for a cluster of independent groups working to defeat Bush, said the group's ads clearly are meant to suppress the black vote — not attract them to Bush's ticket.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=7&u=/ap/20040820/ap_on_el_pr/targeting_media

 

AMEN this is just not right .

 

There's an altenative this election?

This stuff baffles me.

 

Correct. The question is why the "winning" side is unwilling to acknowledge that there are indeed problems with the system and finding a way to fix it.

 

What a joke some of you people are. You know little facts about what is going on in this voter fraud investigation, yet you are positive that the Republicans are wronging black people. One incredibly biased article by this New York Times writer should not convince you. That newspaper and his opinion are incredibly biased towards a liberal democrats point of view.

Where is the evidence that there is wrongdoing? The author only knows that the Department of Law Enforcement is investigating voter fraud. That's their job for crying out loud! Absentee voter fraud has existed for years! The writer conveniently ignores that fact, instead chosing to point how how this department reports to Jeb Bush (as would any state department of this scale...) and how blacks have been wronged over the course of history. Guess what, other groups have been wronged throughout the course of history as well. This is a pathetic link and completely irresponsible reporting. I'm not sure which is worse, the author's amateur reporting or you people who fall for his partisan garbage so easily.

 

texxx, I don't need an op-ed column in the NY Times to tell me that the Republican party doesn't give a sh-t about black people.

 

Thanks for the deep analysis, Samuel. I believe I gave you an assigment a while back to list the atrocities that the Republican party has committed against black people in the past 10 years and compare and contrast that with the democratic party's actions. Still waiting on that. Get to work, son.

 

update:
Democrats vote Nov 2
Republicans vote Nov 3

 

Another update

If you support the policies and character of John Kerry please drive with your headlights on during the day this coming Sunday.

If you support our current President, George W. Bush, please drive with your headlights off that night.

 

More info...
___________________

Group Runs Anti-Kerry Ads on Black Radio Stations


By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A01


A group financed by a major Republican contributor has begun running radio ads in about a dozen cities, many in battleground states, attacking Sen. John F. Kerry as "rich, white and wishy-washy" and mocking his wife for boasting of her African roots.

The D.C.-based group, People of Color United, has substantial financial backing from J. Patrick Rooney, the former chairman of Golden Rule Insurance Co. and the founder of a new firm, Medical Savings Insurance Co. Both firms specialize in medical savings accounts, created by Republican-backed 1996 legislation, and health savings accounts, which were created by President Bush's 2003 Medicare prescription drug legislation.

One of the radio ads addresses Kerry's failure to vote on a bill to extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks: "It needed 60 votes to pass. Ninety-nine out of 100 senators voted -- Kerry did not! It lost by one vote! Maybe Kerry thought the more of us who are unemployed and hurting, the more likely we would vote Democrat."

Another ad attacks Teresa Heinz Kerry, who, at the Democratic convention last month cited her birth and upbringing in Mozambique and who has described herself as African American. In the radio commercial, the announcer says: "His wife says she's an African American. While technically true, I don't believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies."

The Kerry campaign denounced the ads, all of which are being aired on radio stations with largely black audiences. "It's disgusting that the president's political allies are now using race as a political weapon," said Bill Lynch, deputy manager of the Kerry campaign. "First a group of right-wing Swift boat veterans began smearing John Kerry's military service, and now another group has resorted to playing racial politics."

Kerry missed the May 11 vote on unemployment benefits while he was campaigning. Democrats charged that the Republican leadership engineered the vote to make sure the legislation would fail by one vote to embarrass Kerry, and that at least one of the 12 Republican senators who voted yes would have switched had Kerry arrived.

People of Color United is the latest in a rash of nonprofit, tax-exempt groups not affiliated with either party that are trying to influence the outcome of the presidential campaign by pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into television and radio ads. Many of these groups, sanctioned by various sections of the federal tax code, have come from the political left. This new group has largely attracted Republican money.

Campaign watchdog organizations contend that some of these groups are violating the law and should register with the Federal Election Commission as political action committees.

Rooney, who is white, said in an e-mail response to an inquiry from The Washington Post: "I support [the] group because the genuine word from the black community should be heard, not white folks saying for them."

Rooney has put $65,000 of his own money and $475,000 of his company's money into Republican campaigns and causes over the past four years. He gave $30,000 for People of Color United's radio ads that are being aired in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City and other urban areas with large minority populations.

In all, the group has spent $70,000 to buy air time on black radio stations for ads designed to undermine African American support for the Democratic presidential nominee, according to Virginia Walden-Ford, a Republican advocate of school vouchers who runs People of Color United. She described Rooney as the largest donor, adding that her group has received other "smaller contributions."

Walden-Ford said she was disturbed by conversations with people in the black community who said they plan to vote for the Democratic ticket "because we [African Americans] are Democrats. I think that is a bad way to vote. I want people to be informed."

Rooney, she said, has been an active supporter of her efforts to create a school voucher program in the nation's capital. "Pat is a good friend, an ally in the school choice effort," she said.

Rooney sold Golden Rule to UnitedHealth Group Inc. for a reported $893 million in September 2003, just as Congress moved toward passage of a tax break for health savings accounts that will cost the Treasury $16.5 billion in lost revenue over the first five years. Rooney established Medical Savings Insurance this year. The firm's Web site tells prospective customers: "We offer a low-cost, high deductible major medical insurance policy that pays for those big bills. You pay the small bills, and the insurance company pays the big bills. And, thanks to new federal legislation, you can pay the small bills with a new Health Savings Account tax-free!"

After the 2003 passage of the Medicare bill, the Democratic National Committee released a report headlined "Bush's Medicare Bill Provided Major Payoff to Golden Rule." It charged that "in their 10 year campaign to promote the accounts, Rooney's family, companies and employees have given $3.6 million to political candidates and committees, with 90 percent going to Republicans."

Rooney disputed that there is a financial motivation behind his support for the People of Color United radio ads.

"I have a long history of involvement with and support of the black community," Rooney said. "For 21 years I have gone to an all-black church. They finally elected me over other black people to their church board. I'm one of them. I don't know what it has to do with health savings accounts."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58006-2004Aug11?language=printer

 

And I'm still waiting on you to tell me what the Southern Strategy was.

 

Poison politics, again

GOP scheme to supress the black vote is back, nastier than ever



In 1993, after winning a tight contest that put Republican Christie Whitman in the New Jersey governor's mansion by 26,000 votes, Whitman's campaign manager, Ed Rollins, triggered a national uproar about race, money and voting rights.

Boasting to reporters, Rollins said the GOP margin of victory came from the payment of $500,000 in "street money" to African-American ministers who agreed to "forget" to urge black voters to go to the polls.

Rollins quickly recanted his statement, particularly when federal investigators began asking questions, but many people believe to this day that he wasn't kidding. And with just 73 days to go before the presidential election, a disturbingly similar case of political mischief is afoot.

In nine urban communities throughout the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri, poisonous ads have popped up on black radio shows from a group calling itself People of Color United. The ads feature purely personal, racialized attacks on Democrat John Kerry - in fact, none of them mentions President Bush or asks listeners to vote for him.

Here's a sample:

"Our community doesn't need another wishy-washy, rich white politician, and boy, does Kerry come across as rich, white and wishy-washy."

Another ad says: "His wife [Mozambique-born Teresa Heinz Kerry] says she's an African-American. While technically true, I don't believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies."

Hard-hitting messages, even negative ones, are fair game in American politics. But the garbage being peddled by People of Color United is different: It's an attempt to make black voters so cynical and disgusted by politicians - all politicians, and politics in general - that they stay home on Election Day. It's Rollins 1993 all over again.

Print versions of the attacks have emerged. Earlier this week, The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an ad from the same group. According to the paper's editor, Doug Clifton, the ads were purchased only in the northeast and southeast editions of the paper, where Cleveland's black population is clustered.

People of Color United is a sham. The District of Columbia-based group (for which directory assistance has no phone listing) is headed by Virginia Walden-Ford, a local advocate for school vouchers. Her voice is the one on the ads calling Kerry "rich, white and wishy-washy."

On a recent National Public Radio broadcast, Walden-Ford acknowledged that the money behind her ads came from the same conservative donors who fund her voucher efforts. In fact, about half the money for the ads is from a single source: J. Patrick Rooney, an insurance tycoon from Indianapolis who happens to be rich and white.

Rooney, who has donated more than $1 million to Republican causes over the years, told The Washington Post he's bankrolling the ads "because the genuine word from the black community should be heard, not white folks saying it for them."

Rodney Capel, New York director of the Kerry campaign, predicts the tactic won't work. "We have no doubt these Republican-

financed attacks ads are absolutely designed to suppress voter turnout," he says. "We believe African-Americans will tune them out and instead tune into the positive message of the Kerry-Edwards campaign."

Here's hoping Capel's right. As word spreads about the way the GOP is mouthing equality rhetoric while giving a wink and a few big checks to efforts like the racial ads, the response from voters may not be apathy but the kind of outrage that boosts turnout.

While the Democratic Party often takes black voters for granted, as Bush has charged, the Republicans seem determined to take them for fools.


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/223754p-192245c.html

 

Screw the partisan games. We shouldn't sweep this under the rug by accusing those who do speak up of sour grapes. This is bigger than Democrat -vs- Republican; neither party has done much of anything in Congress for these disenfranchised voters. We all lose, no matter who we let lead us by our nose hairs, if we let these kinds of tactics succeed in establishing our leadership. This stuff isn't Democracy. It is Facism.

 

More from Herbert...
_____________

Voting While Black
By BOB HERBERT

The smell of voter suppression coming out of Florida is getting stronger. It turns out that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, in which state troopers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando in a bizarre hunt for evidence of election fraud, is being conducted despite a finding by the department last May "that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud."

State officials have said that the investigation, which has already frightened many voters and intimidated elderly volunteers, is in response to allegations of voter fraud involving absentee ballots that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March. But the department considered that matter closed last spring, according to a letter from the office of Guy Tunnell, the department's commissioner, to Lawson Lamar, the state attorney in Orlando, who would be responsible for any criminal prosecutions.

The letter, dated May 13, said:

"We received your package related to the allegations of voter fraud during the 2004 mayoral election. This dealt with the manner in which absentee ballots were either handled or collected by campaign staffers for Mayor Buddy Dyer. Since this matter involved an elected official, the allegations were forwarded to F.D.L.E.'s Executive Investigations in Tallahassee, Florida.

"The documents were reviewed by F.D.L.E., as well as the Florida Division of Elections. It was determined that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud concerning these absentee ballots. Since there is no evidence of criminal misconduct involving Mayor Dyer, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement considers this matter closed."

Well, it's not closed. And department officials said yesterday that the letter sent out in May was never meant to indicate that the "entire" investigation was closed. Since the letter went out, state troopers have gone into the homes of 40 or 50 black voters, most of them elderly, in what the department describes as a criminal investigation. Many longtime Florida observers have said the use of state troopers for this type of investigation is extremely unusual, and it has caused a storm of controversy.

The officers were armed and in plain clothes. For elderly African-American voters, who remember the terrible torment inflicted on blacks who tried to vote in the South in the 1950's and 60's, the sight of armed police officers coming into their homes to interrogate them about voting is chilling indeed.

One woman, who is in her mid-70's and was visited by two officers in June, said in an affidavit: "After entering my house, they asked me if they could take their jackets off, to which I answered yes. When they removed their jackets, I noticed they were wearing side arms. ... And I noticed an ankle holster on one of them when they sat down."

Though apprehensive, she answered all of their questions. But for a lot of voters, the emotional response to the investigation has gone beyond apprehension to outright fear.

"These guys are using these intimidating methods to try and get these folks to stay away from the polls in the future,'' said Eugene Poole, president of the Florida Voters League, which tries to increase black voter participation throughout the state. "And you know what? It's working. One woman said, 'My God, they're going to put us in jail for nothing.' I said, 'That's not true.' "

State officials deny that their intent was to intimidate black voters. Mr. Tunnell, who was handpicked by Gov. Jeb Bush to head the Department of Law Enforcement, said in a statement yesterday: "Instead of having them come to the F.D.L.E. office, which may seem quite imposing, our agents felt it would be a more relaxed atmosphere if they visited the witnesses at their homes.''

When I asked a spokesman for Mr. Tunnell, Tom Berlinger, about the letter in May indicating that the allegations were without merit, he replied that the intent of the letter had not been made clear by Joyce Dawley, a regional director who drafted and signed the letter for Mr. Tunnell.

"The letter was poorly worded,'' said Mr. Berlinger. He said he spoke to Ms. Dawley about the letter a few weeks ago and she told him, "God, I wish I would have made that more clear." What Ms. Dawley meant to say, said Mr. Berlinger, was that it did not appear that Mayor Dyer himself was criminally involved.

 

According to the woman who wrote the letter, the investigation only found that the Mayor was not involved. That certainly leaves open the issue of voter fraud.

 

Maybe the investigation has something to do with this:
Thousands registered to vote in two states