GOP Dilemma: Challenge Voters, Risk Racial Backlash in Florida
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Republican lawyers are preparing to challenge suspected voter fraud in Florida, but they are uncertain how to proceed given a racial backlash from Democrats and civil rights groups who suspect such challenges would be targeted at minority voters or Democratic-leaning precincts.
Republicans deny the charge, and say they are concerned about false names, signature fraud, and voting by felons who have not been purged from the voting rolls. A group hired by Democrats to register voters – Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn – is under investigation for violating numerous election laws.
“We are planning to make sure that Floridians’ votes are protected from voter fraud,” said a spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Florida, Mindy Fletcher.
The party has not decided whether they will challenge registrations on Election Day, she said. But she questioned a pledge by Democrats not to challenge any registrations, asking whether Democrats would “sit idly by while people vote illegally?”
A coalition of national civil rights groups yesterday called on the Republican Party to “cease and desist” plans to challenge registrations in several states, including Florida.
“The insertion of large numbers of partisan challengers into an electoral mix that already includes new identification and provisional ballot procedures threatens to create chaotic conditions that will again disenfranchise large numbers of eligible minority voters,” said the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Wade Henderson, at a press conference in Washington, D.C.
A senior adviser to the Republican National Committee, Robert Traynham, dismissed the concerns and accused Democrats and “left-leaning groups” of spreading “falsehoods even when the facts tell a different story.” He said that nationwide, Republicans have registered 3.5 million new voters in diverse cities, including Miami.
Democrats are planning to have lawyers at polling stations to fight Republican challenges.
Challenges “will only serve to slow down lines and waste the time of the poll workers,” said a spokesman for the Florida Democratic voting rights team, Brian Richardson. He said Democrats will not challenge registrations because they “trust the system.”
Ms. Fletcher retorted that “they trust the system because it was a Democrat third-party group that was committing all of the voter registration fraud.”
Recent polls show President Bush and Senator Kerry deadlocked in the state, where officials expect record turnout, and where voters have already been waiting in lines for hours to cast their votes.
A Quinnipiac University poll announced a “dead heat” between Mr. Bush, who drew 49% of likely voters, and Mr. Kerry, with 46%, in a survey of 944 likely Florida voters conducted October 22 to 26.The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
“Florida has taken on its expected roll as a key battleground state in the 2004 election,” said the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, Clay F. Richards. A Reuters/Zogby poll of 600 likely voters on October 24-27 also showed a statistical tie of 48% to 46% for Messrs. Bush and Kerry. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points
Florida has a history of election problems, including fraudulent signatures on absentee ballots.
“We know that on all sorts of levels, our rolls are not perfect,” said a professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law, Fran Hill. However, she said any evidence of racial profiling in challenges would call for “immediate judicial intervention on Election Day, because there is nothing in American law that would allow this.”
The federal Department of Justice yesterday announced it is dispatching 840 federal poll observers and more than 250 lawyers from the Civil Rights Division to monitor voting in various states, including to eight counties in Florida. It has also set up a toll-free phone number for minority voters who believe their right to vote has been denied.
A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State, Alia Faraj, which oversees elections, said challenges would not be allowed to disrupt the voting process.
“Supervisors of elections have a very organized process in place. They will be ensuring that people can continue to vote without any disruptions. If there is a challenge, it will be addressed with the decorum of the polling place in mind, the right of the voter to participate in the process with the least amount of disruption,” Ms. Faraj said.
Also yesterday, Florida officials said they were mailing replacement ballots to registrants whose absentee ballots went missing on their way to voters’ homes; the postal service is investigating.
Florida election law allows poll watchers to challenge a registration in writing under oath, and a voter can dispute the challenge. County poll officials then decide by a majority vote if the person can vote or receive a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots are then reviewed by the county canvassing board, which decides whether the voter’s ballot is counted.
The Republican Party has also come under scrutiny after the British Broadcasting Corporation aired a report suggesting Republicans had created a list of voters with invalid addresses in Duval County in an attempt to find voters whose registrations they could later challenge.
In a letter to the BBC, Ms. Fletcher accused the network of “twisting information” for partisan purposes. She said the list kept track of returned mail from a mailing that the Republican National Committee sent to new registrants of all party affiliations, encouraging them to vote Republican.