Retrospective on the 2000 Elections  

The following text was first published in December 2000.  In the light of recent events, the circumstances of the 2000 election must be carefully analysed. 

The President of the US was not elected but appointed. A de facto authoritarian regime has been installed with political power largely resting in the hands of the military-intelligence apparatus. Does George W. Bush as  an "appointed" President wield real political power or is he an instrument? In other words, who decides in Washington? In the context of America's war,  this question is of utmost significance... 

Excluding the African American Vote

Was George W. Bush Elected or Appointed

Rigging the Elections and excluding the African American Vote

The Florida State apparatus controlled by Governor Jeb Bush, brother of George W, has been involved in grossly manipulating the vote in African American precincts:

"Minority voters were discouraged from voting in a variety of ways. Some were turned away due to a lack of ballots or were subject to roadblocks within a few hundred yards of voting places. Others were refused the right to vote because they didn't carry enough forms of identification. Some could not bring translators to assist them with ballots that confused even native English speakers." (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 19 November 2000). 

According to ABC News:

" A number of African-Americans said they were turned away at the polls. Their names were not found on the voting rolls. And some cite intimidation by police. In addition, a report in the Washington Post finds that African-American neighborhoods in Florida lost many more presidential votes then other areas because of outvoted voting machines and ramped confusion about ballots. But according to the report, as many as one in three ballots in black sections of Jacksonville, did not count in the election. But canvassing officials say the voting process was fair to all voters." (ABC, 4 December 2000). Confirmed by several press reports (Miami Herald, Fox New, The Guardian) road blocks were set up by the State police to prevent African-American voters from reaching polling booths

"And because the police erected road blocks which deterred black people from voting, because Creole-speaking Haitian refugees were not helped to understand the ballot, and because so many thousands of black people with convictions, some very minor, were not allowed to vote at all, whatever is finally proved, it will be felt that that the Republicans came to power by excluding black voters". (The Guardian, London, 6 December 2000)

Gross irregularities and manipulations at polling stations in African-American precincts have also been reported:

"An analysis conducted by The New York Times this week showed that old and creaky electoral machinery in poorer precincts - notably the punch- card system that caused so much trouble with under-votes, over-votes and improperly punched out "chads" - discriminated against African Americans and potentially cost Mr. Gore thousand of votes. Black Floridians made up a record 16 per cent of Florida's electorate, up from 10 per cent in 1996, and voted for Mr. Gore by a margin of nine to one. But the punch-card machines that many of them used rejected about 4 per cent of their ballots. More affluent neighborhoods dominated by white voters tended to use a more reliable optical scanning system, which rejected only 1.4 per cent of theirs."(The Independent, 2 December 2000). National Public Radio (NPR) confirms in this regard that:

"We were really startled to see that in two black precincts, 31 percent of the ballots did not count as a vote for president, as compared to areas that were, say, less than 30 percent African-American where the highest amount was about 7 percent. So that's about one in three ballots vs. one in 14 ballots not getting a vote for president. And we were really surprised at how big that margin was". (Dan Keating of the Washington Post, National Public Radio, 3 December 2000)

According to The Palm Beach Post:

"�about two predominantly African-American precincts in Riviera Beach. In Precinct 66, the vote was 1,203 for Gore, 25 for Bush, and 256 ballots were thrown out. In Precinct 59, it was 1,206 for Gore, 21 for Bush, and 250 ballots discarded. If the invalidated ballots were intended for Gore in roughly the same proportion as the counted ballots, these two precincts alone might give Gore a statewide lead." (quoted in The Record, New Jersey, Bergen, November 14 2000) Confirmed by several press reports, computers were not made available to precincts populated by African Americans. According to the Boston Globe, amply confirmed by other press reports:

"�computer laptops that could have instantly cleared up voter registration problems at the polls were not distributed to heavily black precincts in Miami-Dade or the Tampa area. That left poll workers at the mercy of busy signals from county election headquarters. One poll worker at a heavily black precinct in Fort Lauderdale told the Times she turned away 100 people who said they were registered but whose names did not appear on voter lists� In addition, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel last week found that one-third of 22,807 disqualified votes in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties came from heavily African-American precincts. The Sun-Sentinel's analysis concluded that had those votes been counted, nearly 18,000 of those votes would likely have gone to Gore. Voters in heavily black areas of Palm Beach and Broward had their votes rejected at a rate more than twice as high as the rest of the counties.(Boston Globe, 6 December 2000)

Copyright, Michel Chossudovsky  2000 

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