A Times Editorial

Politics taint voter rights inquiry

It looks as though the U.S. Justice Department lied to the American people when it said it would not let partisan politics interfere with its inquiry into violations of voter rights in Florida's 2000 presidential election. After 11,000 complaints and an 18-month investigation, the department reduced the case to one charge against only three of the state's 67 counties. The department said it would sue Orange, Osceola and Miami-Dade counties for denying Spanish-speaking voters adequate help at the polls.

While the rights of Hispanic voters are important, a dearth of bilingual poll workers was far from the worst problem to plague the botched 2000 election. A letter to Congress from Ralph Boyd, the Justice Department's chief enforcer of civil rights laws, only made matters worse.

Just 26 voters left the polls because of a language problem, said Boyd, who then drew a conclusion that can only be read as politically motivated. That low number "doesn't reasonably cast any doubt on President Bush's several hundred vote margin of victory in Florida," Boyd concluded.

Ah! So that was the aim of the Justice Department's legal action -- to legitimize the election. That wasn't necessary. The U.S. Supreme Court settled that matter before George W. Bush took the oath of office. It was the duty of the Justice Department to protect the rights of voters and to resolve any violations that occurred during the election, without regard to partisan politics.

If the Justice Department had conducted a proper investigation, it would have let Americans know what it was going to do about the hundreds, maybe thousands, of voters who were disenfranchised when their names were wrongly purged from the voter rolls. It would have addressed the thousands of spoiled ballots in black precincts. It would have answered the complaints from disabled voters that some polling places did not accommodate their needs.

Observers have not missed the point that no Republican officials were sued. The elections supervisors in Orange and Osceola counties are Democrats, and the Miami-Dade official is appointed to a nonpartisan job. Wasn't Duval County, where the supervisor of elections is a Republican, deserving of legal scrutiny, as well? By focusing solely on the harm done to a small number of Hispanic voters, the Justice Department could be seen as pandering to a constituency that Republicans are wooing in the upcoming governor's race.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson has suggested that Congress may now have to investigate the investigators, but that would only prolong the inquiry and further politicize the process. While the state has made a number of improvements to the electoral process, some of the worst abuses in 2000 remain unresolved.

We took Boyd at his word when he told Congress that the department would "follow the investigative trail, the evidence, wherever it goes without regard to politics. . . ." But with its incomplete, partisan inquiry, the Justice Department has let the American people down.

No right is more sacrosanct in a democracy than to vote freely in a fair and accurate election. Officials entrusted with defending that right should hold themselves above the political fray. In this case, they did not.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright