4 - 10 January 2001
Issue No.515
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 4 - 10 January 2001 Issue No.515 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
The Republican takeover
*Something close to a non-violent, rightist, political coup d'état has just occurred in the United States. Few in the country, other than politically astute African Americans, realise what happened. The prominent, black, civil rights activist and Democratic Party stalwart, Reverend Jesse Jackson knows. Chiding Vice President Al Gore for conceding to George W Bush following the US Supreme Court action stopping the ballot recount in Florida, Rev. Jackson described the up-coming Bush Presidency as "democratically illegitimate."
The pro-Bush coup was accomplished by disenfranchising thousands of black voters and black votes in his brother Governor Jeb Bushs' Florida. It was planned and executed by rightist elements in both the Republican and Democratic parties, in the Florida Circuit Courts and the Florida Supreme Court, and in the US Supreme Court sitting in the nation's capital. The Coup was effectively hidden from view by a cooperating, corporate-owned, allegedly "liberal" media.
In reaction to the massive National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) grass-roots, get-out-the-vote effort in black communities throughout Florida, drastic, wide-ranging, illegal measures were employed across the state to nullify black votes and black voters. Gore received 85 per cent of the recorded black vote in Florida. More than 893,000 blacks cast ballots on 7 November, a 65 per cent jump over 1996.
According to The Washington Post precinct-by-precinct analysis of voting in Florida, as many as one in three ballots in black sections of Jacksonville, Florida did not count in the contest. In Miami-Dade County precincts, where fewer than 30 per cent of the voters are black, about three per cent of ballots did not register a vote for president. In precincts where more than 70 per cent of the voters are African American, this number was nearly 10 per cent.
In the most heavily white precincts about one in 14 ballots were thrown out. However, in largely black precincts more than one in five ballots were rejected -- and in some black precincts it was almost one-third. The 180,000 invalid ballots in Florida were 335 times Bush's "win" margin of 537 votes. The computer analysis of election returns showed the more black and Democratic a precinct, the more likely it was to suffer high rates of invalidated votes.
African American leaders in Florida maintain that faulty ballot machines and long lines at polling stations "sowed confusion among many black voters and ended up nullifying many of their votes." According to The Washington Post analysis, "some 40 per cent of the states' black voters were new voters, and election experts say they were the most vulnerable to confusion about oddly designed ballots.
Vice President Gore received 338,000 more votes than Bush in the nationwide election. That number is more than the total number of people who voted in the state of Delaware, or Alaska or Vermont. The fact "matters not a jot," wrote Martin Kettle in The Guardian Weekly recently. "But in fairness it does matter."
The rules are that the electoral college chooses the president. So Florida, with its 25 electoral college votes, was key. Florida state NAACP President Anita Davis is quoted in The Washington Post as stating: "I'm proud of the turnout we had in Florida [but] I'm concerned that so many of our votes were being disenfranchised ... In a lot of Florida counties these [black] votes have been thrown out for years, and we had no idea about it."
John Mintz and Dan Keating, who wrote the report of The Washington Post precinct-by-precinct analysis, concluded: "Senior GOP (Republican) strategists say privately that a key reason the Bush campaign did not ask for a state-wide recount was it feared that Gore would pick up more votes than Bush because of the high rate of ballot spoilage in black precincts."
None of the parties, neither the Bush camp, the Gore camp nor the courts acknowledged the daily protests by black Americans, chiefly Florida residents, who had experienced the voting subterfuge. Press reports outside Florida were almost non existent. The high profile presence of Rev. Jesse Jackson in Florida could hardly be ignored completely by the media. But the spin put on his presence and his protests by the media was one of ridicule.
The protests in Florida began before election day when black voters all over Florida began receiving telephone calls, allegedly from NAACP headquarters, urging them to vote for Bush on election day. This tactic was soon exposed by the NAACP office itself and quietly discontinued. There were no press reports despite the NAACP revelation of the subterfuge. On election day black voters turned out in record numbers all over Florida. But in countless ways they were frustrated. Those who arrived early at polling stations were shunted off to separate lines that moved slowly or not at all. Elaborate, unfair demands for identification were rampant. Many who had registered were told their names were not in the books and were turned away.
Others were questioned indiscriminately about felony convictions or charges and were turned away. (In Florida law anyone charged with a felony crime is denied the right to vote.) As Edward Said points out, "This means that about half a million people, most of them poor and black, were denied the right to vote for President."
Many black voters were directed to the wrong polling station. Some were harassed by local and Florida State Police; questioned about drivers licenses, arrested for minor automobile or driving infractions. Polling stations in primarily black precincts were closed before the designated time. At others, black voters were told the station was closed while it continued to receive white voters. Boxes of marked ballots were found abandoned in a school building in a black precinct.
These and many, many more incidents were revealed in five hours of testimony by Florida residents at a public hearing held in Florida and conducted by the NAACP. The media all but ignored the hearings. The testimonies form the basis of a request for a formal investigation submitted to the Attorney General at the US Department of Justice. The Attorney General's office has dismissed the request as lacking sufficient evidence to justify an investigation.
Florida Circuit Court Judge N Sanders Sauls threw out every aspect of the Gore Camp's challenge for recounts of the certified results of the Florida polls, declaring: "This Court ... concludes the evidence does not establish any illegality, dishonesty, improper influence, coercion or fraud in the balloting and counting."
Edward Said writes: "What was revealed in the unending broadcast news from Florida was that US elections are a frighteningly antiquated, inequitable and undemocratic hodge-podge of rules and regulations designed to keep out the poor and disadvantaged in maximum numbers."
The studied manner throughout the five weeks by which the print and electronic media ignored, played down and ridiculed efforts by the NAACP, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and black leaders and residents of Florida to expose what was going on in Florida, confirms the media's commitment to Corporate power.
It is a sad time for American democracy. But a time from which the world must learn.
* The writer is president of the WEB Du Bois Foundation, Inc.
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