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Jeb at it again - 91,000 legal voters barred from poll

Florida moves to bar 91,000 legal voters - mostly Democrats - from Tuesday poll
Jeb Crow?

There they go again.
Today's Salon.com exclusive by investigative reporter Greg Palast:

Florida moves to bar 91,000 legal voters - mostly Democrats - from Tuesday poll

From the Salon.com article:

In December 2000, we reported that Florida's use of a faulty and politically questionable list of felons and dead people "scrubbed" from voter rolls -- half of them African-Americans -- may have cost Al Gore the 537-vote margin of victory claimed by George W. Bush in Florida.

Fast-forward two years. There's another close race in Florida. This time, younger brother Jeb is fighting to fend off a challenge from Bill McBride for the governor's race. The Nov. 5 face-off could again come down to thousands, if not hundreds, of votes.

And even though the list has been widely condemned -- the company that created it admits probable errors -- the same voter scrub list, with more than 94,000 names on it, is still in operation in Florida. Moreover, DBT Online, which generated the disastrously flawed list, reports that if it followed strict criteria to eliminate those errors, roughly 3,000 names would remain -- and a whopping 91,000 people would have their voting rights restored.

Eventually the list will be fixed, state officials have promised, in accordance with a settlement with the NAACP in its civil rights suit against Florida following the 2000 election. But not until the beginning of next year -- and after Jeb Bush's reelection bid is long over.

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Catch the rest of the story on www.Salon.com.

Media requests for entire article and/or interview with author, contact: Fredda (at) GregPalast.com

or (561) 499-4291 or Patrick Hurley at Salon (415) 645-9320


This month, PBS stations nationwide will broadcast "Counting on Democracy," featuring Palast's investigation of state manipulation of the vote in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. Local broadcast times for the film, directed by Emmy award-winner Danny Schechter, can be found at at www.GregPalast.com (Events) - where you can also read and subscribe to Greg Palast's London Observer columns and view his reports for BBC Television's Newsnight.

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