December 24, 2000|By Jane Twomey
THE NEWS MEDIA have missed one of the most important stories of the presidential election - one that could provide a history and civics lesson many Americans desperately need. It's the story of alleged "voting irregularities" in Florida.
It's not that the media haven't covered the story. They have. In the weeks since the election there's been no shortage of media appearances by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, interviews with black leaders (many of whom we seldom see or hear from otherwise) and inquiries about the allegations themselves.
It's clear to anyone who can read a newspaper or watch television that many blacks are angry about the election results. But for all the apparent fact-finding involved in the coverage, the deeper race and civil rights issues at stake remain largely ignored.
It's not because there's some vast conspiracy to silence the issues. It's because the issues aren't easily understood by a mainstream media establishment that views the world largely through the eyes of white men who have never found themselves in the situations many black voters faced.
It's no wonder that the media can't really talk about the frustrations of blacks in Florida who worked to get the largest black voter turnout in the state's history - up more than 350,000 from the 1996 election - only to have their efforts effectively overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to stop the Florida recount.
What many whites might not understand is why many blacks were offended by the Bush legal team's successful "equal protection under the 14th amendment" argument.
The 14th amendment was originally ratified in 1868 to provide equal protection under the law for the newly freed slaves. Throughout the last century blacks and other minorities used the equal protection clause successfully to argue myriad civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
But increasingly, plaintiffs arguing for equal protection before the Rehnquist Court have had to show "irreparable damage" and "discriminatory purpose" - all plaintiffs, that is, except George W. Bush. That's what's so maddening. To have the amendment used to stop counting the disputed ballots - many of which were cast for Al Gore by black voters - is a painful reminder of just how tenuous civil rights gains have been. White males can't possibly understand this. Their voting rights have been secure for hundreds of years.
Of course, the news media could now investigate other aspects of the Florida voting story. But will they?
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has gathered more than 480 complaints and 300 pages of testimony from people who say they were blocked from voting in Florida.
The NAACP says it plans to sue the state of Florida and several counties, alleging voting rights violations. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has said it will investigate whether alleged voting rights violations were caused by the inefficiency of Florida's voting system or by out-and-out intimidation and fraud.
What is the public learning about these efforts? Some of the Florida complaints allege intimidation and harassment by law enforcement officials who set up roadblocks and randomly stopped black people on the way to the polls. Other black voters say they were forced to show identification before they could vote, while white voters were not.
To some whites, this probably sounds like whining compared to the ordeal the nation endured when Gore mounted his court challenge. But to black voters, especially those old enough to remember why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted, the alleged irregularities bring back the ghost of Jim Crow. The news media's coverage of this part of the story could actually educate the public about the history of voting rights in America. But media organizations aren't knocking over each other for the opportunity.
Other Florida complaints allege that voters were turned away from polls on election day because their names had been removed from Florida's central voter file. As part of Florida's 1998 voter fraud law, felons are supposed to be removed from this master file, and counties are supposed to use the list to remove felons' names from local voter rolls. The purging was conducted by a private company called ChoicePoint, hired by a division of the Secretary of State's Office.
The firm apparently did a very good job of removing about 173,000 names from the voter file before the November election. Unfortunately, many of these people were not felons. According to some estimates, thousands of voters were told that they could not vote because they had been flagged as felons. Many of them are black.
Several of ChoicePoint's directors and board members are high-profile Republicans. In 1998, ChoicePoint's founder gave the Republican Party $100,000. What has the public learned about this part of the Florida election story?
