When it came to lost election data in Miami-Dade County ? information that was nearly two years old ? Secretary of State Glenda Hood sent in a team to make sure that local errors didn't make the state look bad. If only she had worried as much about the actions of her own Division of Elections.
Ms. Hood oversaw distribution of a faulty list meant to block felons who had not obtained clemency from voting. She wasted $150,000 trying to keep the list from being made public. Within weeks of its release, newspapers documented errors that made the state look as if it was trying to keep blacks, but not Hispanics, from voting. Ms. Hood dumped the list.
...
Mr. Roberts hired Accenture, a Bermuda-based company that used to be called Andersen Consulting, a subsidiary of Arthur Andersen. It changed its name after the accounting firm became caught up in the Enron scandal. Accenture's lobbyists included former Jeb Bush aide Brian Yablonski and the law firm of Van Poole, a former state Republican chairman. Accenture gave $300,000 in campaign contributions, favoring Republicans two-to-one, the Herald-Tribune reported.
Mr. Roberts also decided to use race to match felons on one list with voters on another list, even though the felons list didn't offer Hispanic as a choice. The move guaranteed that Hispanics wouldn't make the list. This week, The Miami Herald reported that a state memo that Ms. Hood had ordered said, "It becomes apparent... that Accenture's Fayetteville office does not understand the relationship between the matching tables." Even though some state workers recognized the problems, Ms. Hood moved blithely forward, distributed the flawed list to county election officials in May and retracted it only after public scrutiny in July.
The state paid Accenture $1.8 million to compile the list. Katherine Harris told legislators that an audit of the list, costing $300,000, would be a waste of money. It turns out she was right. The newspapers did it for free.
Harris and Hood should be behind bars. They are willfully trying to thwart people's right to vote.
Many connected to the Bush Administration and the Bush Administration itself often seem to act as if they dislike democracy. Do they?
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As Bush said, he's a "uniter." Many of us have never even met.
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not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
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- Teddy Roosevelt
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for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering
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- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
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"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain
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"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
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