An Online Magazine in the Reality-Based Community.

Friday, August 20, 2004

Yes! Bless Bob Herbert on his slamdunk columns on the FL voting scandal. You MUST read Voting While Black in today's NYT. The FL goons are scaring elderly black voters (ones who would remember the intimidation back in the '50s and '60s). Jeb Bush isn't talking about this:
he 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.