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The Justice Department says it may sue three Florida counties for violations of voting rights laws in the 2000 presidential election.
By STEVE BOUSQUET, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 22, 2002
TALLAHASSEE -- The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday rekindled long-simmering complaints of voting irregularities in Florida's 2000 presidential election by revealing plans to sue three counties for violating voting rights laws.
The disclosure by a civil rights lawyer to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee immediately reignited the partisan divisions of Election 2000 in the state that played a pivotal role in electing George W. Bush president.
Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd did not name the three targeted counties, but said the department has been working with officials in each. Miami-Dade County is one of them, said Miami-Dade Attorney Robert Ginsburg.
Ginsburg said county officials will meet with Justice Department lawyers in the next week or two. "I think it's going to be resolved amicably," Ginsburg said. "I think it may have been already, I'm not entirely sure, but they're going to come down and talk to us about that."
Boyd said the lawsuits will allege different treatment of minority voters, such as failing to provide bilingual assistance to Hispanics, improper purging of voter rolls, violations of the federal "motor voter" law and failure to provide access for disabled voters.
"My hope, my aspiration and my expectation is that in each of those, we'll reach an be filed even if an agreement is reached, he said.
Boyd said the three Florida counties, and unnamed cities in Tennessee and Missouri facing similar allegations, are cooperating in the investigation and have acknowledged "certain deficiencies we have identified."
The lawsuits are the result of more than 11,000 complaints from voters after the election, Boyd said. The complaints were whittled down to 14 active investigations and the five potential lawsuits, he said.
To justify a complaint of racial discrimination under the Voting Rights Act, minorities and the disabled do not have to prove that government officials acted intentionally to disenfranchise them. All they must prove is that the outcome showed evidence of bias.
Gov. Jeb Bush said he was unaware of the Justice allegations. "I know of no case where that actually happened," Bush said. "I know there were some accusations made and a lot of investigations."
Democrats were delighted at the prospect that the Bush Justice Department is lending new credibility to their longstanding allegations about a tainted election.
"It's a bombshell," said Democratic Rep. Christopher Smith, who represents a predominantly black area of Fort Lauderdale. "If your big brother is going to sue you, damn, you did something wrong. If this were the Janet Reno Justice Department, they could claim partisan politics. But this is the John Ashcroft Justice Department, and it gives credence that something was wrong."
U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Miami, said Boyd has been under intense pressure from the black caucus in Congress and the "civil rights community" to take action in Florida.
"We've been putting heat on the Justice Department," Meek said. "I know Boyd has been taking a lot of heat, and he deserves it. This was a serious violation, and the charges should be serious."
Boyd agreed on the importance of moving swiftly but said it was more important to proceed carefully and "get it right without regard to the political implications for anyone."
"We're going to follow the investigative trail, the evidence wherever it goes without regard to politics and without regard to whose, if anyone's, ox is being gored," he said.
"I'm very surprised," said U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, because of the Bush connections.
However, she added: "It's taken a long time . . . and I'm wondering why just three? Because there were many counties guilty of election irregularities."
She said she was particularly concerned about the practice of purging felons from voter registration rolls, which in Florida has been marred by flawed information. Scores of voters are believed to have been purged from the rolls by mistake.
The state's system for purging voters remains a big concern, said Deborah Clark, Pinellas County supervisor of elections. One problem is that the database of "convicted felons" used by the state includes the names of people who have been merely charged, and no one has checked to see whether those cases ended in a conviction.
The most-investigated election in U.S. history dragged on for 36 agonizing days of recounts and court battles until the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision, declared George W. Bush the winner by 537 votes.
But the battle waged for months, with Democrats complaining bitterly that their votes were stolen. Complaints were particularly bitter among African-American voters. A St. Petersburg Times analysis of the 175,010 rejected ballots statewide found that of the 25 precincts with the most rejected ballots, 21 were predominantly African-American.
The Legislature outlawed the use of the punch card ballot and forced counties to switch to costlier and more modern touch-screen machines. Many voters will use them for the first time Sept. 10.
The Legislature also forced Secretary of State Katherine Harris to sever ties with a private company that had developed a flawed voter database that critics said incorrectly categorized some people as felons. Harris is now building a new voter database. She also created a task force to improve voting accessibility for the disabled.
Justice Department spokesman Dan Nelson said his office hopes to reach settlements with the three Florida counties in 30 to 60 days. He added that Boyd's office has not notified any Florida member of Congress about it.
In correspondence with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission copied to Florida's U.S. senators, Boyd's office said it received more than 10,000 phone calls with complaints about the way the election was conducted.
Because so many complaints revealed "very little about potential federal violations," the government instead reviewed complaints by the NAACP's National Voter Fund, communicated with Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth and reviewed transcripts of the Civil Rights Commission's hearings.
The division opened 14 investigations in Florida.
"As far as career staff in the Voting Section can determine, this is the largest number of investigations ever opened after an election," wrote Andrew Lelling, counsel to the Civil Rights Division.
Lelling said the allegations under investigation also include complaints of voter intimidation, lack of language assistance to limited English-speaking voters, failure to permit those voters to bring helpers into polls and the form of the ballot used in some areas.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson called news of the lawsuits "encouraging" and said he and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham would continue to urge the Justice Department to hold the counties' "feet to the fire" until all allegations are resolved.
-- Times staff writers Sara Fritz, Adam C. Smith and Thomas C. Tobin and researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Information from the Associated Press also was used.