With nary a peep from the mainstream media, the US Supreme Court has stabbed yet another partisan knife into the American electoral system.
This time the court has let stand Florida's infamous 137-year-old ban on voting rights for ex-felons. It was this same Jim Crow ban that the GOP used to disenfranchise thousands of Floridians in 2000, providing the margin by which George W. Bush took the presidency. The ruling continues to take the vote from millions of African-Americans and non-violent offenders----and, in practice, others who have broken no laws at all. It is highly likely to strengthen the lock of the Republican party and its future candidates on the US presidency.
In Florida 2000, Republican Governor Jeb Bush used the ban as a pretext for disenfranchising tens of thousands of mostly black voters who committed no crime at all, but whose names allegedly resembled those who did. In the lead-up to his brother's test at the polls, Bush hired a Republican computer firm to compile a dubious list which Bush then used to deprive perhaps 120,000 Floridians, perhaps more, of their right to vote.
It has since been shown that thousands of those who lost their vote had never been convicted of anything. According to the Sentencing Project, the number of alleged Florida ex-felons effectively deprived of their right to vote in 2000 may have been as high as 600,000, roughly a thousand times as many as allegedly gave George W. Bush his margin of victory.
Ohio's laws encompass no ban on ex-felon voting rights. But Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell also served as the state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. As chief administrator of Ohio's 2004 election, Blackwell allowed county Boards of Elections to send threatening letters to thousands ex-felons or alleged ex-felons. Letters also went to many registered voters who had been convicted of no crime at all, helping give George W. Bush a second term.
Franklin County (Columbus) Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder, former head of the county's GOP, admitted to the Free Press that in an average year he cancels 200-300 felons voting rights. But he said in the 2004 election he cancelled the rights of 3500 alleged former felons to vote. Many of their convictions date back to 1998, and some who received letters had merely been indicted, and had never been convicted of any felony at all.
In 1870 the US adopted the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing all Americans the right to vote, regardless of race (but not gender). But white racist regimes in the former Confederacy quickly found ways to circumvent the Amendment.
One such tool was the ex-felon ban. Along with poll taxes, the grandfather clause (disenfranchising anyone whose grandfather had been a slave), lynching and other violent intimidation, the attack on ex-felon voting rights was aimed directly at a black community that had started to gain political power in the south. Under the white supremacist Democratic Party and its terrorist adjunct, the Ku Klux Klan, blacks were subjected to unjust and often absurd prosecutions that stuck them with felony convictions. As the 20th century dawned, very significant percentages of the black male population thus lost their vote.
When Richard Nixon launched the "War on Drugs" in the 1970s, Florida and other states were given a modern pretext by which to further attack the black community. The attack escalated in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, with a nationwide wave of arrests that shredded much of the Constitution. By 2000, much of the black male population in many states had been convicted of non-violent crimes, mostly involving controlled substances.
Some ten percent of the black population in Florida---possibly more---remains effectively disenfranchised. Since the black community now regularly votes 90% for Democratic candidates, this represents a huge and vital windfall for the GOP. Without it, Al Gore would have carried Florida 2000---and thus the presidency---by tens of thousands of votes, rather than allegedly losing it by several hundred.
Today only Florida, Kentucky and Virginia permanently deprive felons of their franchise once they have cleared parole. Ten other states restrict those rights in various ways. But especially in Florida, that ban remains a major key to Republican supremacy.
According to the Sentencing Project, some 4.7 million Americans---one in 43 adults---have currently or permanently lost their right to vote due to a felony conviction. The Project says some 1.4 million of those are African-American men, 13% of that group as a whole, more than seven times the national average. In Florida and other states where ex-felons are permanently or partially disenfranchised, fully 25% of the black male population cannot cast a ballot.
Among those legally challenging the ban has been Jau'dohn Hicks, a Florida fire fighter and Emergency Medical Technician freed from prison in 1991. Father of three daughters, Hicks says "I work. I pay taxes. I'm raising my children---I want my voice back."
Based in part on the federal Voting Rights Act, Hicks's case was carried by the Brennan Center, the Florida Justice Center, the UNC School of Law Center for Civil Rights and others. It was supported by leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The European Court of Human Rights has pointedly opposed blanket disenfranchisement of any specific ethnic or racial group.
But the US Federal Court of Appeals of the Eleventh Circuit has upheld it. The US Supreme Court's refusal to hear this challenge now effectively leaves it intact.
The Court's action is especially ironic in view of its 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, giving George W. Bush the presidency. That infamous 5-4 vote overruled the Florida Supreme Court and stopped a recount, sparing Bush "irreparable harm" under the 14th Amendment. The decision continues to astonish legal scholars worldwide, and on all sides of the American spectrum. At least two sitting Justices---Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas---had clear conflicts of interest, but refused to recuse themselves. The five pro-Bush Justices then warned that their partisan intrusion, trashing state jurisdiction, was a one-time decision, not to be used as precedent for future rulings.
It pleases me greatly to run across well researched commentary, and I appreciate the information. I had wondered how Florida got away with its political shenanigans, and this piece explained quite a lot. Now, let us know what we can do about it.
Thanks,
Jane Lenoir
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Jane Lenoir (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Thursday, November 17, 2005 at 2:14:31 PM
Paperless electronic voting machines, made by manufacturers who openly state that their objective is to insure that their candidates win the election, are used in most states. Paperless/receiptless voting machines increase the odds of manipulation and cannot be audited. Voter disenfranchisement would only be necessary in states that used traditional voting methods that can be verified and recounted.
Even though most states allow convicted felons to vote once they are off probation/parole, in all states a convicted felon cannot keep and bear arms.
Thus the frivolous felonies for non-violent crimes as described in the article also serves to remove the right to keep and bear arms from a select segment of the population for life.
Thank you for your informative well written article.
by
Ironhead (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments)
on Thursday, November 17, 2005 at 8:48:20 PM
I keep lecturing these blogs that democracy is a natural phenomenon, and a side effect of the worlds growing populations. We see it effecting the most repressive regimes from Ukraine to Bolivia just this year and the greatest democracy in the world can't be immune to it. Because of that the powers that greedily hold onto power have concocted some ways to steal our elections and the recent change to electronic voting is the most glaring fraud against the American people's intelligence. Even that form of election stealing, however is only effective when the margins are close and believable. The most clever political crooks still have much to fear from the American people and we see that every day in the small but significant victories Progressives have had recently while fighting the ridiculous legislation coming from a Republican Senate and Congress. We can overwhelm the next election in such a way that will only illuminate the election scandals occurring in 2000 and 2004. The truth is that elections have maybe never been more honest and transparent. Today's internet community is not easily fooled by election trickery and the voting reform revolution hasn't been quieted down much by the corrupt Help America Vote Act that only increased the number of these un-auditable abominations at the polls. Keep on voting America. I personally never voted before Bush's re-election campaign and I give that sad excuse of a President the credit for turning me into a voter. I'm going to keep voting till we fix this mess, and I advise my fellow Progressives to do the same whether they are stealing elections or not. They have rigged our elections because they do fear the will of the people and we need to keep putting their feet in the fire of the people's will. Keep the faith and believe along with me that Democracy is coming for Bush.
by
Davol (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 8 comments)
on Friday, November 18, 2005 at 4:09:14 PM
3 comments
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