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Town Hall Meeting: Blacks Must Insist on Fair Elections

by Hazel Trice Edney, NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA)—With revelations of yet another voting rights fiasco in Florida during last week’s primary elections, Black newspapers, churches and civic organizations are being implored to insist on fair elections even if it means civil disobedience. “Every time they think we’re moving an inch, they move the goal post,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told a town hall meeting on election reforms in Washington.

“What do we do about a state that continues to violate the rights of citizens and not guarantee that every person that claims to be registered can vote? What do you do? …We’ve got to give ourselves to civil disobedience. We’ve got to take it,” she said as the audience responded with applause. “It’s going to take all of this to straighten out this mess.”

Former U. S. Attorney General Janet Reno is disputing the results of the Sept. 10 Democratic primary for governor of Florida against Tampa lawyer Bill McBride in which McBride has claimed a narrow victory. This came after voters, mostly in predominately Black precincts of Miami-Dade County, encountered malfunctioning voting machines, polls that opened late, live voters listed as dead, Democratic voters receiving Republican ballots and some voters having received addresses to the wrong polling places.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush extended the voting hours because of the fiasco. But Reno refused to immediately concede to McBride.

Separately, Rep. Carrie Meek, a Black Democrat, attempted to vote by special ballot before Election Day, but was told that her name was not on the voting rosters. The mistake was because of a computer malfunction, but people behind her in line left during the dispute, her staff says.

The latest violations in Florida—and how to stop them in the future—was the central focus at the National Town Hall Meeting, the third of a series sponsored around the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), People for the American Way and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. It was held at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, only a few blocks from the Congressional Black Caucus annual legislative conference at the Washington Convention Center, which was abuzz about the new incidents in Florida. The first two town hall meetings, resulting in calls for record registration and an organized voter turnout, were held during NNPA’s January conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and its June conference in Jacksonville, Fla.

The new ineptness rekindles the still smoldering anger after Election 2000, when between and estimated four million and six million votes were lost nationally, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That includes nearly 200,000 votes in Florida alone because of faulty voting machines and ballots, voter intimidation and confused poll workers, according to the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission also reported that Black voters in Florida were nearly 10 times more likely than non-Black voters to have their ballots rejected.

“Because it was Florida, you can imagine that the temperature was kind of hot,” said NNPA President John “Jake” Oliver Jr. “Now, low and behold, we’re in D. C., and we find that we’ve been once again deprived.”

Rev. Timothy McDonald of Atlanta, a PFAW board member and chair of its African-American Ministers Leadership Council, suggested that Blacks draw a line in the sand over fair elections.

“Sometimes God is calling upon us wherever we might be, whatever our environment, whatever our community, whatever our persuasion to say this is a line that’s not going to be moved,” he said. “We’re going to commit ourselves tonight to do whatever it takes, to do whatever history advances upon us to protect the right to vote.”

Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington Bureau of the NAACP, agreed, saying: “We’ve got to stop asking real nicely.”

Shelton emphasized that the new violations are especially alarming with the upcoming election in which Democratic voters will have a chance to elect a majority to the U.S. House of Representatives. Such an outcome would give unprecedented power to Black members, including Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, who would become chairman of Ways and Means.

To avoid violations in November, volunteers are needed to train people how to use voting machines before the election, as well as watch the polls and monitor voter intimidation hotlines, and lawyers are needed to advise people during the election, said Melanie Campbell, executive director and chief executive officer of the Citizens Coalition for Black Voter Participation.

Other panelists and audience members focused largely on the need for voter education and turnout.

Kirk Clay, of Washington, co-chair of Black Youth Vote, a coalition program that focuses on mobilizing teens and young adults, said the movement will increasingly use hip-hop and spoken word events to attract and inspire young voters.

Denise Rolark Barnes, publisher of the “Washington Informer,” emphasized the need to fight for voting rights for the district’s congressional delegate. She also said Black newspapers should lead the voter-education process. “We need to go back to the old-fashioned voters guide in Black newspapers, focusing on those issues that are important to us,” she said.

NNPA Editor-in-chief George Curry, the moderator, held up pages from the “Dallas Examiner,” an NNPA newspaper, which contained row after row of names of voters in predominately Black precincts in 1994 and showed whether they had voted in the previous primary, its runoff or both.

In an interview after the forum, James C. Belt, who co-publishes the Examiner with his wife, Mollie, said the number of people who subsequently voted in the general election tripled after publication of the names. The paper also featured a separate list for elected officials and high-profile people.

“The people in the community were excited. The word spread like wild fire. People scooped up the papers,” Belt said.

Many other NNPA newspapers are considering following the Belts’ example.

Both Congress and the Justice Department have been slow to resolve the problems that occurred during Election 2000. An election reform bill, HR 3295, which was passed more than five months ago, will die if it is not signed by President Bush by the end of the 107th Congress on Oct. 4.

Although passed by the House and Senate, the bill has not yet reached the White House. Republican and Democratic conferees have failed to agree on differences between the two. The bill would require states and localities “to meet uniform and nondiscriminatory election technology and administration requirements,” including the establishment of a grant program with $400 million to help states pay staff, for improvements to voting machines and an Election Administration Commission to oversee the changes to meet federal requirements.

“The congresswoman talked about we need civil disobedience. We need civil disobedience prior to election day,” said Campbell. She suggested that voters take action to push for the president’s signature on HR 3295 before it expires.

With President Bush and his brother, Jeb, the governor of Florida, the focus of both election fiascos, some see the solution as getting them out of office.

“This is going to take all of us,” said panel member Richard Womack, director of civil rights for the AFL-CIO. “To mobilize, get them excited and beat these Bushes out of power.”

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2002