I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Havana. June 30, 2004

2004 ELECTIONS IN FLORIDA

Will the 2000 farce be repeated?

• The surprise resignation of the head of Florida’s electoral system illustrates the disastrous situation in terms of the November elections in this state, where the president’s own brother is deciding the rules of the game

THE surprise resignation of Ed Kast, department head of the Division of Elections in Florida, under the pretext of following up other options, confirms the disastrous situation in this strategic state of the country that wishes to teach Cuba about democracy.

According to the local press, among other things Kast refused to proceed to purge the electoral rolls according to the dictates of the administration of Jeb Bush, state governor, and brother par excellence of President George W. Bush, despite the massive pressure brought to bear on him.

Three and a half years after the election farce of 2000 and five months prior to the November voting, the unbelievably anarchic situation of the Florida electoral system has not improved but has gotten worse, according to various analysts.

In any country of the world professing to be democratic, it is unthinkable that the very brother of a presidential candidate should be in charge of directing the elections applying the regulations. In Florida, nobody appears to be surprised at this gross conflict of interests that is provoking much of the current observable mess.

Jeb Bush wanted Kast, who had been in post for 10 years, to undertake the blind elimination or more than 47,000 ex-prisoners from the electoral rolls, based on a compilation whose content has been disputed by various inspectors.

Florida is one of seven states where the right to vote is not automatically reestablished after the completion of a prison term. (Maine and Vermont allow prisoners to vote while serving their sentences).

On resigning his post, Kast commented to his closest collaborators that he was not happy at the growing pressure on him to comply with that task.

“Ed had made a number of comments that the nature and timing of this felons’ list was not something he was responsible for. I think he felt in good conscience he could no longer be involved in the operations," affirmed Ion Sancho, former president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections).

Some hours earlier, Democrat Senator and ex-astronaut Bill Nelson added his name to a claim for the publication of the controversial list.

In a June 9 editorial, Florida Today noted an incredible fact, characteristic of this state that proclaims itself a model of democracy: its citizens do not have access to the electoral registers. According to legislation voted in 2001 - the year after the fraudulent election of the president - by the legislature of the state controlled by Jeb Bush’s Republicans, they are secret.

“Even more critical, the law refuses public access to a list of those the state says are felons to be removed from the rolls,” the newspaper commented.

Thus, the publication confirms, thousands of voters were erroneously eliminated from the 2000 rolls for having been designated ex-felons.

Glenda Hood, secretary of state appointed by Jeb Bush, is opposed to the publication of the list of voters under the pretext that it is “an invasion of privacy.”

Florida Today observes: “Hiding lists only undermines voter confidence, and Nelson is right when he says the public must have access, "to check and doublecheck" that the lists are not wrongly slamming the door on qualified voters.”

Hood is the former Republican mayor of Orlando and a personal friend of Mel Martínez, secretary of housing and godfather with Roger Noriega of the fascist Cuban Liberty Council at the White House. They are the same terrorist-related individuals that are trying to ensure a victory for Bush, whom they pressured into the recent anti-family measures decreed against Cuba by the U.S. administration.

Meanwhile Democrat Congressman Robert Wexler has demanded an investigation after confirming that Hood and other state officials have known for months that there was a problem with the computerized voting machines in use in 11 counties, while pretending that this only came to their attention recently.

On the other hand, in a letter directed to Attorney General Charlie Crist, Wexler, who represents Boca Ratón, has questioned the sudden resignation of the head of the electoral system. In that letter, Wexler describes Kast’s departure as highly suspicious.

The congressman recalls that testifying under oath before the courts on May 17 in the framework of a claim that he himself brought, the head of the electoral department stated that he did not know of the problem with the voting machinery until the previous day, when he read an press article about it.

Wexler affirms that a group of citizens from the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition had advised Kast and secretary Hood in writing way back in March.

Geoffrey Becker, who recently left the Florida Republican Party executive, admitted to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that it was very difficult to convince the public that the voting mechanisms are OK this time around.

"It's a sign of serious disarray and instability," Asaron Lettman, director of the People for the American Way Foundation chapter in Florida.

In a feature published June 21 in the St. Petersburg Times, journalist Mary Jo Melone, a journalist commented on the role of Buddy Jones, supervisor of the elections in Hillsborough County, who tried to explain to her how he was going to purge the ex-felons.

“He has a job no sane person would want. He's supposed to make sure that all those in Hillsborough County who are eligible to vote and want to vote get the chance. He's among that unlucky crowd, the elections supervisors of Florida, charged with getting the rest of the country to stop laughing at us.”

Melone recalled how in 2000 tens of thousands of persons were erroneously disqualified from voting through a “remarkably sloppy” list compiled by a private company. Many were African Americans and presumably Democrats, she added.

The current list, compiled from an analysis of the state database of 4.6 million people with a criminal record, including 400,000 to 600,000 ex-prisoners. Those names were compared with the electoral rolls and 48,000 came up on the lists.

However, the list is not at all reliable, and the names and data accompanying it have to be confirmed one by one, by hand, in the various state courts.

(To add to the difficulties, a few days ago, under pressure from civil rights groups, Jeb Bush announced that 20,861 ex-felons are to recover their rights and will be entered on the famous rolls in time for the next elections)

For his part, Buddy Johnson informed the journalist that in any event, he was going to send a letter to every person on the list of ex-prisoners asking for a written response. Those who fail to do so will be considered as ex-convicts and eliminated.

“Democracy isn't supposed to be this complicated. It's enough to make you long for a monarchy,” the reporter ironically commented.

Frank Cerabino of the Palm Beach Post also had recourse to humor in discussing a situation whose absurdity is all too evident for anyone genuinely interested in the matter.

“There apparently are so many ex-felons walking around Florida that restoring their voting rights would make them a significant election demographic,” he writes.

Cerabino went directly to the Florida Department of Correction, the agency for prisons in this state, to ask exactly how many ex-convicts there were. “I have no clue,” replied the official, adding that, in all events, the state spits out a fresh batch of some 25,000 names every year.

The reporter also noted that re-offenders also have to be taken into account, as well as those who leave the state and those who die.

Cerabino says that the Sentencing Project, a Washington NGO that has taken up the issue, has identified Florida as the state with the largest population of ex-offenders deprived of their right to vote. Marc Mauer, deputy director of the group, estimated that depending on what one wants to believe, there are between 400,000 and 600,000 ex-felons on the peninsula.

“That's a lot of people,” writes the Post columnist. “By comparison, there are 47,794 practicing lawyers, 47,323 medical doctors, 32,487 certified public accountants and 196,132 licensed real estate agents in Florida. So if you add up all the state's doctors, lawyers, accountants and real estate agents you get 323,736 people, which is still about 75,000 people shy of the conservative estimate of ex-cons in the state.”

As far as the computerized voting machines are concerned, secretary Hood is now charging Constance Kaplan, the Miami-Dade supervisor, of being responsible for the delay in solving the problem. In a letter dated March 13, Hood informed Kaplan that she should have advised her in June 2003, when she became aware of the problem.

For her part, Lida Rodríguez-Tasef, president of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, affirms that Kaplan has been distorting the problems for months: ''On April 19, 2004, she told the County Commission's subcommittee on elections that she only learned about the problem in December from the coalition,'' Rodriguez-Taseff said. ”We later found e-mails sent to her detailing the problem back in October.''

Five months prior to the elections, confusion is mounting among those responsible in the country that proselytizes democracy where it suits it.

In California, Kevin Shelley, the state secretary, has just “de-certified” all the touch-screen machines (when you touch a screen to cast your vote) and established new regulations for the use of computerized voting equipment.

The touch-screen machines were eliminated for having the same defects and the Florida ones to be utilized in November.

“If we counted every vote in Florida, Jeb's brother would be spending all of his time -- and not just some of his time -- falling off his bicycle on his Texas ranch,” recently commented Jim DeFede of The Miami Herald.