FL-13

The Smoking Gun: Another Florida Election Gone Awry

I wrote about this yesterday, but I am revisiting it with the smoking gun letter uploaded rather than just linking as a PDF. I want to emphasize that this is a scan of the letter sent by the company that makes the voting machines Sarasota County used warning of a glitch. This warning was ignored by Kathy Dent, the Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections. The result was an election with an unprecedented, and HIGHLY suspicious, 18,000 vote undercount for Congress and that undercount is believed by election experts to have changed the outcome of the election, essentially stealing the election from Democrat Christine Jennings. Here's the letter:

This letter suggests a specific action...which the Sarasota election board NEVER ACTED UPON. Furthermore, posters were sent by the company that were meant to be posted at each polling place to warn voters of the delay. The posters were never posted. Finally, and probably criminally, Kathy Dent never released this letter when Christine Jennings' legal team filed a letter of discovery. That essentially is a cover up.

You can help Christine Jennings fight this by donating here. Anyone who felt disappointed that John Kerr

Fighting For Fair Elections in Florida

Back in November there was a blatant case of a defective election. Without accusing anyone of wrongdoing, SOMEHOW 18,000 votes for Congress were missing (an unprecedented "undervote") the vast majority of them coming from Democratic leaning districts. This loss of 18,000 votes almost certainly altered the result of the election, depriving Democrat Christine Jennings a win. This particularly bothers me since Christine was one of the candidates I raised the most money for last year and I was very impressed with her as a candidate. But partisanship aside, the loss of 18,000 votes is just plain unacceptable. Yet the Republicans in Florida did all they could to prevent an analysis of this problem and Florida remains one of the states with the most dubious of elections. Remember, the Carter Center, which monitors elections all over the world and is one of the most respected election monitoring organization in the world, refused to monitor Florida elections because Florida did not meet their minimum requirement for fair elections.

Christine Jennings is fighting back. As I said, I was impressed with her. She is one of only a handful of women who successfully founded her own bank (she gives credit to the Clinton economy for her success!). She reminded both my wife and myself of Ann Richards in a way. So she clearly is not the type to give up easily.

Here is a message from Christine Jennings about her fight to make elections in Florida more reliable:

Submitted by mole333 on 14 February 2007 - 8:02am.
election fraud | FL-13 | verified voting | Christine Jennings | Florida

Visit our sponsors

culturekitchens

The Publisher
Liza Sabater

Daily servings of political dissent
culturekitchen

Grassroots News and
Activism for New Yorkers
Daily Gotham

Feminist Bloggers
Network
BlogSheroes

A new kind of vouyerism
Voogling

Art + Code + Philosophy
Potatoland.blog

Got any dirt, tips, leads or money for us? Then drop us a line or two at editors [at] culturekitchen [dot] com or use our general contact form to reach everybody in the editorial team ASAP.

Words to live by

But, when it came down to, this case was made into a racial issue, which it shouldn't have been. It should have been an issue about a woman who was raped by three men. Case closed.

The fact that she was black and they were white only plays into the fetishization of Black women and white men that has developed through years of inequal treatment. This also biased many people because it made this case into a national spectacle. It split people along racial lines instead of factual lines and investigating the story that the woman told instead of going on a witch hunt.

Additionally, this case was turned into an issue of class as well. The Black, poor woman was raped by the rich white kids. Many wanted to see these men be charged because they felt it would put them in their rightful place, strip them of the privilege that they had been so accustomed to all of their lives.

All of the things that this case stood for are all of the things that were wrong with the media's coverage of the case, the national obsession with the case, and the prosecution of the case. It became an issue of stripping privilege and proving that white people were not superior instead of ensuring that this woman was actually treated properly and had her CORRECT assailants brought to justice, not for political reasons but for criminal reasons.

— From Ace Solylent's comment over at The Smoking Gun publishes Duke Lacrosse accuser's photograph