Consider the scene behind the tired-looking TV reporters in Florida. On November 8, African-Americans, Haitians, Central Americans, Jews, labor unionists, students and seniors rallied for voter justice with hand-lettered, not Democratic Party-printed, signs. In predominantly black and Jewish West Palm Beach, the idea that "butterfly" ballots might have thrown their votes to Pat Buchanan brought people out, if not in hives, then certainly in droves.

At the New Birth Baptist Church in Miami on November 9, an overflow crowd packed the pews and then spilled into a nearby school hall, connected to the congregation via large video screens. In a letter to friends, Catholic activist Mari Castellanos described the scene: "It felt like Birmingham. People sang and prayed and listened. Story after story was told of people being turned away at the polls, of ballots being allegedly destroyed, of NAACP election literature being allegedly discarded at the main post office, of Spanish-speaking poll workers being sent to Creole precincts and vice-versa."

Among the speakers were union leaders, civil rights activists, black elected officials, ministers and rabbis. Each, Castellanos reports, recalled "the price their communities had paid for the right to vote and vowed not to be disenfranchised ever again."

On November 12, in Miami's Temple Israel synagogue, local rabbis and other Jewish leaders shared the pulpit with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and Ralph Neas of People for the American Way. They announced their shared intent to ask for a federal investigation of possible violations of the Voting Rights Act. "I hadn't seen anything like it for as long as I can remember," says Mandy Carter, who's no stranger to nasty electoral politics-she once ran Harvey Gantt's campaign against Jesse Helms.

In a joint letter sent to Attorney General Janet Reno on November 14, the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus listed what they said were 11 specific types of discrimination directed at minorities. Their charges included one case of a voter, who had never been arrested, being denied the right to vote after being told he had a prior felony conviction. (Roughly half a million free Florida ex-convicts are currently disenfranchised under the state's 1868 election law.) In another incident, election officials failed to notify voters in a predominantly African-American precinct that their usual polling place-a school-had been demolished. They also failed to direct voters by signs or other means to the proper site. In addition, the letter cited reports from the Orlando area that 200 Puerto Rican voters in Orange County were denied the right to vote because they could only produce one piece of identification (they were asked for two) or were unable to understand the ballots (the county failed to produce Spanish language ballots or interpreters, despite a legal requirement to do so).

People with disabilities also joined the fray. According to Teri Mosier, a deaf civil rights lawyer, people have long complained that the polling booths in West Palm Beach are inaccessible. "If you were a person in a wheelchair, you could not see the ballot," Mosier says. "You had to run your finger down and count the number of holes. Hole No. 2 was supposed to be Al Gore, but instead you voted for Buchanan."

People with disabilities make up 20 percent of the voters in West Palm Beach, Mosier says, and they had particular incentive to go to the polls this year. "The Americans with Disabilities Act is already up for review in the Supreme Court, and our lives depend on one vote."

The Bush and Gore teams pontificate about the popular will, but even with $4 billion spent to doll them up, neither came anywhere close to "popular." The storm in the Sunshine State is between the one who persuaded just 24.931 percent of the nation's eligible voters to vote for him and the other who attracted 24.932 percent.

The presidency matters, but a much more important outcome of this tussle would be a movement to repopularize politics. Al Gore won't drive corruption out of the election process (though he's the preferred candidate of these protesters). Nor will an anti-corporate Nader campaign that's nowhere to be seen when a multiracial justice movement hits the streets. The good news is that the coalitions on display in Florida end the year as we began it, with reason to hope for something new. After all, some say the new millennium actually starts next year.

"The Laura Flanders Show" can be heard Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon (mountain time) on KWAB in Boulder, Colorado or at http://www.newsforchange.com/flanders

In These Times © 2000

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