Florida

Gee - why don't people trust the Bushes to protect our voting rights?

Here's the whole article in case you aren't registered:

Voter list mess shows officials can't be trusted

BY JIM DEFEDE

Sharon Lettman-Pacheco was driving to her office in Tallahassee Saturday when her cellphone rang with the news that Florida had just scrapped its voter purge list of 47,763 suspected felons.

''Completely?'' she asked. ``You mean we finally wore them down? Wow.''

As a national field director for People for the American Way, Lettman-Pacheco had been fighting the list for months. PFAW, along with the ACLU, the NAACP and other groups, were convinced that many of the names on the list were wrong, and that individuals -- especially blacks -- would be barred from voting this year as they were in 2000.

They wanted to verify the list's accuracy, but the state refused to make it public. The groups, along with members of the media and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, then sued the state.

On July 1, a Tallahassee judge ordered the list released, but before he did, The Herald obtained a copy, analyzed it, and found more than 2,100 people who were on the purge list despite having their rights restored through clemency.

Rather than admit the list was filled with errors, Secretary of State Glenda Hood defended her agency's shoddy work and attacked The Herald. She even had the chutzpah to offer a ''tutorial for all reporters'' last week on the purge list and how it was created, ''in order to prevent factually inaccurate articles such as those reported by The Herald'' from being repeated.

Turns out, it was Hood who needed the tutorial.

Since The Herald story, more revelations have followed. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported Wednesday that out of the nearly 48,000 names on the list, only 61 were Hispanic. Once again Hood and her boss, Gov. Jeb Bush, stood by the list.

Then on Saturday, The New York Times showed why Hispanics, who largely vote Republican, were kept from the list while blacks, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, remained. It turns out, the Department of Corrections database follows the federal standard for race, classifying Hispanics as white, and the election department rolls identify voters by ethnicity. Since the two databases didn't mesh, the identity of Hispanic felons couldn't be verified and were therefore kept off the list.

''Unbelievable,'' Lettman-Pacheco sighed. ``Unbelievable.''

Soon after the Times story broke, Hood, who, at this rate, may soon be as reviled as her predecessor, Katherine Harris, finally caved in and dumped the purge list.

''That's what I call justice,'' Lettman-Pacheco said, applauding the media and groups such as her own for discovering a serious flaw that would have been ignored by the state.

''At the end of the day, though, it is the state that has a responsibility to put in place systems that are fair and equal,'' she said. ``And Florida is simply not doing things fairly. With all the billions of dollars we have allocated in our state government, you would think they would have an information technology division that was objective and knew what it was doing. Or was this intentional?

''This kind of malfeasance of justice clearly has every degree of manipulation written all over it,'' she continued. ``But I'm going to let the public decide how deliberate it was.''

''I can tell you with the utmost certainty that it was unintentional and unforeseen,'' responded Hood spokeswoman Nicole de Lara.

I don't know how de Lara can be so certain. I don't know how she can so casually disregard the possibility there's been an orchestrated attempt to defraud the public and that no one in the state knew about the flaws.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no more trust. There are no more second chances. Glenda Hood must resign. She is either amazingly incompetent or the leader of a frightening conspiracy, but either way she should go.

Next, the governor should remove himself from matters affecting elections and an agency such as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights should step in and assume direct oversight of the state's election system.

Florida is simply a joke that just isn't funny any longer.