Tuesday, November 27, 2012

PALM BEACH POST Exposes Racist, Political Motives of Florida Republican Governor Richard Scott's Early Voting Suppression Law

Click here to go to Palm Beach Post article & comments
Updated: 9:58 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012 | Posted: 7:00 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012
POST EXCLUSIVE EARLY VOTING CONTROVERSY

Former Florida GOP leaders say voter suppression was reason they pushed new election law

Former GOP chair, governor - both on outs with party - say voter fraud wasn’t a concern, but reducing Democratic votes was.

Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.
Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.
Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.
“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.
“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”
Greer is now under indictment, accused of stealing $200,000 from the party through a phony campaign fundraising operation. He, in turn, has sued the party, saying GOP leaders knew what he was doing and voiced no objection.
“Jim Greer has been accused of criminal acts against this organization and anything he says has to be considered in that light,” says Brian Burgess, Florida GOP spokesman since September.
But Greer’s statements about the motivations for the party’s legislative efforts, implemented by a GOP-majority House and Senate in Tallahassee in 2011, are backed by Crist — also now on the outs with the party — and two veteran GOP campaign consultants.
Wayne Bertsch, who handles local and legislative races for Republicans, said he knew targeting Democrats was the goal.
“In the races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines. And in 2008, it didn’t have the impact that we were afraid of. It got close, but it wasn’t the impact that they had this election cycle,” Bertsch said, referring to the fact that Democrats picked up seven legislative seats in Florida in 2012 despite the early voting limitations.
Another GOP consultant, who did not want to be named, also confirmed that influential consultants to the Republican Party of Florida were intent on beating back Democratic turnout in early voting after 2008.
In 2008 Democrats, especially African-Americans, turned out in unprecedented numbers for President Barack Obama, many of them casting ballots during 14 early voting days. In Palm Beach County, 61.2 percent of all early voting ballots were cast by Democrats that year, compared with 18.7 percent by Republicans.
In 2011 Republicans, who had super majorities in both chambers of the legislature, passed HB 1355, which curtailed early voting days from 14 to eight; greatly proscribed the activities of voterregistration organizations like the League of Women Voters; and made it harder for voters who had changed counties since the last election to cast ballots, a move that affected minorities proportionately more than whites. The League and others challenged the law in court, and a federal judge threw out most of the provisions related to voter registration organizations.
Various voter registration organizations, minority coalitions and Democratic office holders are now demanding investigations either by state or federal officials.
On Oct. 26, The Post published a story citing a deposition by Florida GOP General Counsel Emmett “Bucky” Mitchell IV in litigation between Florida and the U.S. Justice Department over HB 1355. Mitchell described a meeting near New Year’s Day 2011, in which he was approached by GOP staffers and consultants to write the bill that would become HB 1355.
He said the meeting had followed other conversations with those same GOP officials and consultants since the fall of 2010.
Crist said he was asked
to curb early voting
Crist said party leaders approached him during his 2007-2011 gubernatorial term about changing early voting, in an effort to suppress Democrat turnout. Crist is now at odds with the GOP, since abandoning the party to run for U.S. Senate as an independent in 2010. He is rumored to be planning another run for governor, as a Democrat.
Crist said in a telephone interview this month that he did not recall conversations about early voting specifically targeting black voters “but it looked to me like that was what was being suggested. And I didn’t want them to go there at all.”
About inhibiting minority voters, Greer said:
“The sad thing about that is yes, there is prejudice and racism in the party but the real prevailing thought is that they don’t think minorities will ever vote Republican,” he said. “It’s not really a broad-based racist issue. It’s simply that the Republican Party gave up a long time ago ever believing that anything they did would get minorities to vote for them.”
But a GOP consultant who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution said black voters were a concern.
“I know that the cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day was one of their targets only because that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves,” he said.
GOP spokesman Burgess discounted Crist’s statement to The Post.
“Charlie Crist speaks out of both sides of his mouth,” he said.
Former Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning, a Republican, has spoken favorably about HB 1355, because he believes its 12-hour early voting days — the law previously limited them to eight hours a day — give voters more flexibility to vote before or after work.
“But reducing early voting days does not attack voter fraud and given the longer days, it certainly does not save money,” Browning has said.
In a 2011 deposition in the litigation over HB 1355, Browning said that while he was always concerned with voter fraud, he did not see it as a large problem in the state and that was why he did not include any mention of it in his legislative goals for 2011.
“It wasn’t an issue that rose to the level to place it in our package,” Browning said.
Greer told The Post that people who attended the GOP’s behind-the-scenes meetings on early voting included: Andy Palmer, former state GOP executive director, now a Tallahassee political consultant; Bret Prater, head of party development; Randy Enwright of Enwright Consulting, a veteran Tallahassee political consultant; Jim Rimes, former state GOP executive director and now a consultant with Enwright; Kirk Pepper, a former top aide to House Speaker Dean Cannon; and Rich Heffley, a former top aide to Crist.
The Post contacted all of them. GOP spokesman Burgess responded for Palmer and Prater and also for Frank Terraferma, director of state House campaigns, who had been named in the Bucky Mitchell deposition as attending the meeting about the drafting of 1355.
“If what Greer said had happened, that would be wrong and he should have fired those men,” Burgess said. “Why didn’t he fire them? They said they were never in any meeting with Jim Greer of that kind. They never had meetings of that kind.”
The other four did not respond.
Ex-House speaker:
Law meant to curb fraud
Cannon, who took over as House speaker in 2010, said he had no conversations about early voting with GOP strategists and that he believed HB 1355 was aimed at voter fraud.
“I don’t recall anybody talking about some tactical advantage or need to curtail early voting,” said Cannon, who has launched a lobbying business in Tallahassee since his term as a state representative ended this month.
But Crist, who extended early voting hours in 2008 by executive order to address long lines during that presidential election, said he was approached about early voting but told the GOP consultants and staffers that he would veto any proposed legislative changes that would reduce early voting.
“The people that worked in Tallahassee felt that early voting was bad, ” Crist said. “And I heard about it after I signed the executive order expanding it. I heard from Republicans around the state who were bold enough to share it with me that, ‘You just gave the election to Barack Obama.’”
It wasn’t until Gov. Rick Scott took office in January 2011 that the idea went anywhere. It passed the legislature that session and Scott signed it into law.
“I assume they decided, ‘It’s 2011, Crist is gone, let’s give it a shot,’” Crist said. “And that’s exactly what they did. And it is exactly what it turned out to be.”
Before signing the law, Scott said he wanted to make voting easier and to eliminate voter fraud. Recently, he asked Secretary of State Ken Detzner to look into problems with the November election and to recommend changes if necessary.
Purging of non-citizens
off voter rolls discussed
Besides early voting, Greer said other issues discussed at the behind-the-scenes meetings were voter registration organizations, attempts to have Florida Supreme Court judges defeated at the polls and the purging of voters on the rolls who might not be U.S. citizens.
“There is absolutely nothing with their absolute obsession with retaining power that they wouldn’t do — changing the election laws to reduce early voting, to keep organizations like the League of Women Voters from registering people, going after the Supreme Court justices,” Greer said of his former colleagues.
HB 1355 greatly reduced the time voter registration organizations had to hand in registration applications and imposed hefty fines for any violation of the time guidelines, which forced the largest voter registration organizations to suspend activities, afraid they might incur fines they couldn’t afford. The League of Women Voters suspended its activities in Florida for the first time in nine decades.
A federal judge subsequently struck down those parts of 1355 and registration organizations resumed their activities over the summer of 2012.
The Division of Elections under Scott also issued purge lists for non-citizen voters, which several county elections supervisors have criticized as being filled with errors. The attempted voter purge resulted in several lawsuits against Scott’s administration, and nearly all of the state’s elections supervisors abandoned the effort in the months leading up to the presidential election.
And the Republican Party of Florida waged a campaign to defeat three Supreme Court justices this fall. Voters chose to retain all three.
Staff researcher Michelle Quigley and staff writer Christine Stapleton contributed to this story.

Key dates
  • 2006: Jim Greer becomes chairman of Florida Republican Party.
  • 2007: Republican Charlie Crist takes office as governor of Florida.
  • November 2008 — President Barack Obama wins Florida, in part due to Democratic majority in early voting.
  • 2009 — GOP staffers and consultants begin talking about ways to inhibit early voting, according to Greer. Crist and two GOP consultants confirm.
  • January 2010 — Greer, accused of stealing from GOP, resigns as chairman. Arrested six months later. Greer then sues party, saying it owed him money. Both cases are pending.
  • Fall 2010 — Conversation begins between GOP staffers and consultants and Florida GOP General Counsel Emmett “Bucky” Mitchell IV about drafting legislation to reduce early-voting days, what would eventually become HB 1355.
  • November 2010 — Republican Rick Scott elected governor.
  • May 2011 — Scott signs HB 1355 passed by GOP-majority legislature. Parts of law later overturned by federal judge, but reduced days of early voting remain.
  • November 2012 – Despite long lines at early voting sites, Obama re-elected president, Democrats pick up seven seats in Florida Legislature.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Ten Threatened St. Augustine Police Firings -- It is Retaliation for First Amendment and Union Protected Activity, Illegal, Unseemly and UnAmerican








Defending Public Employees' Right to Unionize

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.” Errantly assuming public employees have no rights, a St. Augustine Record editorial November 18 stated that St. Augustine Beach policemen – facing firing for Furst Anendment protected activity – should never have made their concerns public and have “no one to blame but themselves.”

Tell that to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., murdered by bigots for advancing civil rights.

Tell that to Saint Thomas More, beheaded by King Henry VIII for refusing to sign an oath against his conscious and religious scruples.

The police officers' First Amendment rights are being violated. The Record should be defending them and not attacking them, blaming the victims. This same “viewspaper” prints anti-union right-wing columnists most days (including Ann Coulter, who has bragged that her late father was the most successful union-busting attorney in American history, winning a “decertification petition” at Phelps-Dodge Copper in Arizona).

For years, unionized St. Augustine Beach officers tried to negotiate a union contract. St. Augustine Beach officials balked at the proposed grievance procedure in the collective bargaining agreement. SAB insisted that officers' grievance rights stop at the Chief of Police, inflicting a “chain of command,” which despots everywhere throughout history have used to suppress dissent.

The Record ignored these facts in its reporting and editorializing.

The St. Augustine Record too often acts like a “cognitive miser,” withholding material facts from its news and opinion pages, while vastly shrinking the quantum of news that was provided to readers only a dozen years ago when it was (affectionately) called “the mullet wrapper.”

For its errant editorial, the St. Augustine Record owes an apology to the officers and people of St. Augustine Beach, whose rights are being violated by St. Augustine Beach Mayor Gary Snodgrass, Vice Mayor Richard O'Brien and Commissioner Andrea Samuels, who spouted animus toward the officers' protected activity in voting to can them. The Record avoided quoting the concerns of citizens about retaliation for free speech, omitting them from its news stories and now from its opinon column.

In contrast, after the extremely close November 6 Commission election, SAB Commissioners had a change of heart, voting to let the new police chief decide.

The fascistic police-firing “Final Solution” to a non-existent problem – First Amendment protected activity was the reflexive retaliatory notion of St. Augustine Beach Mayor Sherman Gary Snodgrass, former Excelon/Commonwealth Edison/Philadelphia Electric nuclear powerplant utility Human Resources czar. Snodgrass proposed “impact negotiations” to resolve his retaliation. What nonsense.
At the November 12, 2012 SAB Commission meeting, steam was nearly coming out of Snodgrass' ears, as the voice of public opinion is finally being heard and heeded. Even Vice Mayor Richard O'Brien campaigned on the basis that he supported the SAB Police. The notion of firing ten policemen for First Amendment protected activity is anathema and unAmerican. So did Mayor Snodgrass have a meeting with the editorial board of the St. Augustine Record, soliciting such an uninformed, unenlightened and unAmerican editorial?

Thomas Jefferson said, "I have sworn upon the Altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind." 

I support the St. Augustine Beach Police. I support their right to unionize – three years without a contract is too long. I support their right to criticize. There is no requirement under our labor laws or our First Amendment to fit inside authoritarians' cabined “chain of command,” a construct ex-Chief Hedges tried to inflict of policemen concerned about his own possible lawbreaking.

The late Attorney General Robert Kennedy said, “It is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from.”

St. Augustine Beach officials must end their retaliatory threats. As we prepare to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida (2013), we do not need a national police and union tourism boycott because of SAB's anti-union animus.

Our First Amendment, in its majesty, protects the rights of St. Augustine Beach officers. It also protects the right of the Record to be wrong.









Monday, November 05, 2012

NY Times 538 blog rates Florida a tossup (St. Augustine WRecKord banner headline quotes its own poll, favoring Romney)


Florida

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT PROJECTIONSDEMREPMARGIN
Polling average47.548.2Romney +0.7
Adjusted polling average47.948.1Romney +0.2
State fundamentals45.849.3Romney +3.5
Now-cast47.848.1Romney +0.3
Projected vote share ±2.849.649.9Romney +0.3
Chance of winning44%56%
POLLS538 WT.DATEDEMREPMARGIN
InsiderAdvantage11/447.052.0Romney +5.0
PPP11/450.049.0Obama +1.0
Ipsos (online)11/446.046.0Tie
Ipsos (online)11/347.047.0Tie
YouGov11/347.048.0Romney +1.0
Mellman11/247.045.0Obama +2.0
Ipsos (online)11/248.046.0Obama +2.0
Ipsos (online)11/148.046.0Obama +2.0
NBC/Marist11/149.047.0Obama +2.0
Mason-Dixon11/145.051.0Romney +6.0
Ipsos (online)10/3147.047.0Tie
We Ask America10/3048.949.8Romney +0.9
Gravis Marketing10/3047.050.0Romney +3.0
Grove10/2948.047.0Obama +1.0
Pulse Opinion Research10/2948.050.0Romney +2.0
The New York Times/Quinnipiac10/2848.047.0Obama +1.0
PPP10/2849.048.0Obama +1.0
CNN/Opinion Research *10/2848.048.0Tie
Mellman10/2749.047.0Obama +2.0
SurveyUSA10/2747.047.0Tie
Rasmussen10/2548.050.0Romney +2.0
Grove10/2447.045.0Obama +2.0
Gravis Marketing10/2449.050.0Romney +1.0
Susquehanna10/2446.051.0Romney +5.0
Mellman10/2147.047.0Tie
Angus Reid10/2044.049.0Romney +5.0
Rasmussen10/1846.051.0Romney +5.0
PPP10/1847.048.0Romney +1.0
CNN/Opinion Research10/1848.049.0Romney +1.0
Grove10/1848.045.0Obama +3.0
SurveyUSA10/1847.046.0Obama +1.0
Fox News10/1845.048.0Romney +3.0
PPP10/1448.049.0Romney +1.0
Gravis Marketing10/1448.049.0Romney +1.0
American Research Group10/1146.049.0Romney +3.0
YouGov10/1148.047.0Obama +1.0
Rasmussen10/1147.051.0Romney +4.0
Mason-Dixon10/1044.051.0Romney +7.0
U. North Florida10/949.045.0Obama +4.0
NBC/Marist10/948.047.0Obama +1.0
Hill Research Consultants10/743.047.0Romney +4.0
We Ask America10/446.049.0Romney +3.0
Rasmussen10/447.049.0Romney +2.0
NBC/Marist10/147.046.0Obama +1.0
Gravis Marketing9/3049.048.4Obama +0.6
Suffolk *9/3046.043.0Obama +3.0
InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion9/2449.046.0Obama +3.0
The New York Times/Quinnipiac9/2453.044.0Obama +9.0
The Washington Post9/2351.047.0Obama +4.0
PPP9/2350.046.0Obama +4.0
American Research Group9/2250.045.0Obama +5.0
Mason-Dixon9/1948.047.0Obama +1.0
Purple Strategies9/1947.048.0Romney +1.0
We Ask America *9/1849.145.5Obama +3.6
Fox News9/1849.044.0Obama +5.0
Gravis Marketing9/1647.147.7Romney +0.6
YouGov9/1449.047.0Obama +2.0
McLaughlin9/1243.847.7Romney +3.9
Rasmussen9/1248.046.0Obama +2.0
Marist9/1149.044.0Obama +5.0
Consensus Communications9/1142.042.0Tie
McLaughlin9/1047.050.0Romney +3.0
SurveyUSA9/948.044.0Obama +4.0
Gravis Marketing9/246.748.0Romney +1.3
PPP9/248.047.0Obama +1.0
CNN/Time/Opinion Research8/2650.046.0Obama +4.0
The New York Times/Quinnipiac8/2149.046.0Obama +3.0
Gravis Marketing *8/2044.546.3Romney +1.8
FMW/Baydoun Consulting8/1839.954.5Romney +14.6
Rasmussen8/1543.045.0Romney +2.0
Purple Strategies8/1447.048.0Romney +1.0
The New York Times/Quinnipiac7/3051.045.0Obama +6.0
PPP7/2948.047.0Obama +1.0
SurveyUSA7/1948.043.0Obama +5.0
Purple Strategies7/1345.048.0Romney +3.0
Mason-Dixon *7/1146.045.0Obama +1.0
Rasmussen7/945.046.0Romney +1.0
We Ask America7/246.145.3Obama +0.8
Quinnipiac6/2545.041.0Obama +4.0
Quinnipiac6/1846.042.0Obama +4.0
Purple Strategies6/545.049.0Romney +4.0
PPP6/350.046.0Obama +4.0
Quinnipiac5/2141.047.0Romney +6.0
NBC/Marist5/2048.044.0Obama +4.0
Suffolk5/846.045.0Obama +1.0
Quinnipiac5/143.044.0Romney +1.0
Rasmussen4/2545.046.0Romney +1.0
Purple Strategies4/2345.047.0Romney +2.0
Fox News4/1745.043.0Obama +2.0
PPP4/1550.045.0Obama +5.0
Quinnipiac3/2649.042.0Obama +7.0
Rasmussen3/1346.043.0Obama +3.0
Rasmussen2/947.044.0Obama +3.0
NBC/Marist1/2749.041.0Obama +8.0
Mason-Dixon1/2644.048.0Romney +4.0
Suffolk1/2442.047.0Romney +5.0
Quinnipiac1/2345.045.0Tie
Quinnipiac1/843.046.0Romney +3.0
NBC/Marist12/748.041.0Obama +7.0
Quinnipiac12/542.045.0Romney +3.0
PPP12/145.044.0Obama +1.0

Iowa