If your name is Ken Lay or G. Gordon Liddy or you were any white, upper-class criminal (with which the US abounds), chances are you did your time and now can vote again for the white collar criminal-favoring Repug of your choice. But if you are poor, especially black and poor and committed a crime, chances are you will never vote again. Why? Because the Jim Crowe-style felon laws in 48 states and DC purge felons from the voter lists, even decades after a relatively minor crime unless the "felon" pays substantial - often impossible to obtain - resititution. As a result a staggering ONE IN 43 AMERICANS is unable to vote. And guess what party this ban on the largely poor and disenfranchised benefits? You guessed it: the Repugs. This is an unconstitutional situation: once a sentence is served, the debt to society has been paid. Adding loss of suffrage AFTERWARD is indeed cruel and unusual punishment.

When Jeb Bush wanted to keep felon purge data secret, who did he turn to? EVIL TRIAL LAWYERS! "A politically connected Miami law firm wants Florida taxpayers to pick up a $5,000-plus tab for its chairman's private jet ride to Tallahassee. That bill is part of the approximately $149,000 in legal fees and expenses that Steel, Hector & Davis says it's owed for representing Secretary of State Glenda Hood in her unsuccessful bid last month to keep an error-riddled list of suspected felon voters out of the hands of the press. 'Because of short notice, we had to use a private jet to accommodate Mr. Klock's schedule,' the firm wrote to state officials to justify the $5,385 flight. The letter refers to Steel, Hector & Davis chairman Joe Klock, the election-law specialist who represented Hood when she was sued last month by Cable News Network and a host of Florida news outlets, which demanded the right to investigate a list of 48,000 suspected felons on the state voter rolls."

Jim DeFede writes, " 'I can tell you with the utmost certainty that it was unintentional and unforeseen,' [Glenda Hood's] spokeswoman told me three weeks ago. At the time I questioned how Hood or de Lara could be so certain no one in their office knew the databases had trouble identifying Hispanics. De Lara was indignant that I would suggest anyone in the secretary of state's office would have known about the problem. Oops. Turns out that was a big mistake, too. On Tuesday, the company that started assembling the felon purge list in the late '90s said election officials knew [in 1998! that] Hispanics were unlikely to show up on any list that used race as a criteria... Firing Hood and replacing her with a nonpartisan individual or group to oversee the state's election would be only the first step to restoring voter confidence. After that, we need a grand jury to start issuing subpoenas to find out exactly what people knew, and when they knew it. Only then will we get to the truth."

"Members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called Thursday for a federal investigation to determine whether Florida officials violated the Voting Rights Act when they put together an error-plagued list designed to purge felons from the state's voting rolls. The state Division of Elections scrapped the list Saturday because it is riddled with mistakes, including the omission of nearly all Hispanic felons in the state. Civil-rights commissioners also expressed concern that scrapping the list could lead to the unequal treatment of voters as election supervisors in all of Florida's 67 counties scramble to remove the names of those who are ineligible to cast ballots... 'This is not just about sloppy databases; it's not just about bureaucracies strapped for resources,' commission member Christopher Edley said. 'It's about the possible deprivation of a civil right, possibly criminal.'"

From People for the American Way: "In a victory for Florida voters, Circuit Court Judge Nikki Clark ruled today that the list of 47,000 'potential felon matches' who the state claims may be purged from the voter polls must be made available to the public. This is a huge step forward in heading off potentially massive voter disenfranchisement the likes of which occurred in 2000. 'This is great news for democracy and for the state of Florida,' said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way Foundation. 'We encourage the state to accept Judge Clark's order, forgo an appeal, and make the list public immediately. An appeal will only delay justice for voters who have been wrongly placed on the list.' "

In Florida, "County elections supervisors peppered state officials on Wednesday with questions about purging felons from their voter rolls, suggesting at a meeting here that numerous attempts to clarify Florida's policy had not ended confusion on the issue... Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, told the supervisors it was illegal to deny anyone the right to vote based on an out-of-state conviction. In a brief presentation, Mr. Simon also told the 67 supervisors that they should focus on restoring the voting rights of people who were incorrectly purged from the rolls in 2000. But some supervisors said they were overwhelmed with investigating a new list of possible felons, as the state requires, and determining which should be disenfranchised." Remember how the Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore that variations between counties in election practices (such as how to count hanging chads) were intolerable? Nah, don't remember.

On 5/24/04, Florida "denied a CNN request for a copy of the list of up to 48,000 people [who] could be ineligible to vote because they are felons or have multiple registrations -- or have died since the last election... The state said that only government officials, candidates for office, and political parties can be provided copies of such records under state law. CNN as well as members of the general public were invited to view the documents in the Florida Division of Elections headquarters in Tallahassee, on the condition that there be no photocopying or note-taking. 'Unless people look at the list and see their names and know that it's wrong, then they could end up in a situation where they don't have the right to vote,' said Tampa attorney Gregg D. Thomas of the law firm Holland & Knight, who is representing CNN in the matter. 'It is incredible that information this important to a constitutional right, the right to vote, is not freely and openly disseminated.'"

When the NY Times editorialized against the Phony Felon Purge of 2000, Danny Schechter called investigative journalist Greg Palast to read it to him. "'What? ' he shouted at me on the phone.' You must be kidding.' He couldn't believe it because the New York Times refused to carry the story at the time when it might have done some good. It didn't even report on the Civil Rights Commission's findings it references in the editorial, only on Republican OBJECTIONS to those findings. You would think that the 'MASSIVE PURGE' they cite in 2004 might have been news fit to print back in 2000. The Washington Post carried Greg's article on the subject but not until June 2001. The NATION ran it and followups earlier. CBS News wouldn't run it, Greg was told by a staffer, because Harris office denied it. Huh?"

Three years after cheering on Bush's Theft of the Presidency, the NY Times seems to be having a slight change of heart. "The morning after the 2000 election, Americans woke up to a disturbing realization: our electoral system was too flawed to say with certainty who had won. Three years later, things may actually be worse. If this year's presidential election is at all close, there is every reason to believe that there will be another national trauma over who the rightful winner is, this time compounded by troubling new questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines." All true - but when will the NY Times apologize for helping Bush steal the White House - and for lying about the results of their own Media Consortium recount?

"French irritation over US controls on transatlantic flights was reinforced yesterday when the interior ministry revealed that American intelligence based its suspicions on passengers' surnames only. This led to a child with a name similar to a Tunisian terrorist, a Welsh insurance agent and an elderly Chinese woman restaurant owner being questioned by counter-terrorist police when several flights from Paris to the US were cancelled before Christmas. Three other 'suspects' who were questioned were French citizens with Arab-sounding names. All the suspects' names, supplied by the US, were found merely to be homonyms - similar in sound or spelling to those of wanted al Qaeda... 'Unfortunately the Americans did not supply either birthdate or first name in any of these cases, so we had to hold up all passengers and in some cases carry out lengthy inquiries into family backgrounds in case there was a link.'" It's just like the felon purge in Florida - Katherine Harris must be in charge!

"Early this year Bev Harris... found Diebold software... on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled 'rob-Georgia.zip.')... This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so... Meanwhile, leaked internal Diebold e-mail suggests that corporate officials knew their system was flawed, and circumvented tests that would have revealed these problems... Why isn't this front-page news? In October, a British newspaper, The Independent, ran a hair-raising investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold affair has been treated as a technology or business story -- not as a potential political scandal... But there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks."

In 2000, Gov. Jeb Bush defied 2 court orders by refusing to process clemency applications from thousands of ex-felons. (This is different from the false felon purge - these ex-felons never even made it on to the voter list). "The recent court order could make 20,000 to 30,000 felons eligible to vote without a hearing, says attorney Randy Berg of the Florida Justice Project, which advocates liberalizing clemency laws. Florida Parole Commission Chairwoman Monica David estimates the number at 15,000 to 17,500. The speedier clemency is available to those who did not commit crimes such as murder, robbery or drug trafficking, do not have multiple felony convictions and who meet other criteria." But this is a drop in the bucket: "More than 827,000 Floridians were ineligible to vote in 2000 because they were incarcerated, on probation or parole or had felony convictions." Florida is one of only six states where ex-felons cannot vote unless they are granted clemency. Defeat ALL Republicans!

There were many crimes committed in stealing the 2000 Florida election, but the most heinous was the phony felon purge. This purge was only possible because Florida prohibits ex-felons from voting. But Florida is hardly alone - Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming all have the same law, and most states have restrictions of some kind. This is a racist legacy of the South's segregationist past - exactly what the Trent Lott furor was about. Yet no one in Congress or the media is raising this issue. Get involved in changing the law in your state!

George W. Bush tried to distance himself from Senator Trent Lott's racism by criticizing Lott's remarks about Strom Thurmond. But Bush would not be in the White House if his brother Jeb had not overseen the systematic and illegal purge of thousands of mainly black voters from the voter registration file before the 2000 election. Investigative journalist Greg Palast has extensively documented the fraudulent "felon purge" in Florida, but the Republican Media adamantly refuses to report this story. Call/write the media and demand coverage of Greg Palast's explosive expose of the racist felon purge that allowed George Bush to steal the Presidency.

Nicholas Kristof writes, "The intelligent left is dumbing down and showing signs of slipping into a similar cesspool of outraged incoherence. It's debasing and marginalizing itself by marshaling epithets rather than arguments. Bush is criticized not just for catastrophically frittering away our budget surplus or for rushing us into a mess in Iraq. Rather, Citizens for Legitimate Government put it this way in its e-mail newsletter: 'We have an Idiot Usurping Lying Weasel for a President.' [Gee, those are incontrovertible facts!] The latest leftist silliness is the suggestion that Senator Paul Wellstone was assassinated. Liberal Web sites are suggesting such a conspiracy." Hey Nick - are we not allowed to even ASK the question? Nick, when will you - or the Times - admit that Bush stole Florida by persuading the Republican Supreme Court to throw out 175,000 votes? When will you report on the Felon Purge of 91,000 legal voters? We're waiting! Send your thoughts to nicholas@nytimes.com

Shortly after the 2000 Election, Greg Palast reported on the Florida Voter Purge. Nearly 60,000 names were on the original lists, and more than a thousand predominantly minority and Democratic voters were wrongly removed from the rolls. The original lists included 8,000 names of individuals from Texas who were wrongly identified as having felony convictions. In May 2001, at the DNC Voting Rights Institute hearings in Florida, it was reported that a similar voter purge had been attempted in Texas in 1982. The Florida and Texas voter purges have one thing in common - Karl Rove. Long before the Supreme Court installed him in the White House, George W Bush appointed himself Commander in Chief - of a Criminal Conspiracy to Steal the Election.

Writes Nancy Kuhn: "The purpose of this letter is to bring to the attention of this commission an outline of the very extensive and strong evidence that Democrats.com is compiling in our extensive investigation of the 2000 Presidential election in Florida and to relate this evidence to the issues outlined in the commission's press release that announced this 6/20/02 hearing in Miami."

Greg Palast's continuing reports on the Florida felon purge "are devastating: disclosing e-mails and internal Florida state documents indicating that Harris' office KNEW the purge swept away the civil rights of innocents - and changed the outcome of the election. Counsel for the US Civil Rights Commission has said that Palast's reports provided, "The first hard evidence of systematic violation of civil rights.... Palast says, 'The US Justice Department's suit is a sham - the beneficiaries of the voting disaster, Bush's agencies, have figured out a way to do the least possible political damage to candidates Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush. They have aimed their fire at blameless county officials when the disaster was created in Tallahassee - a disaster for Black voters, though a blessing to the highly partisan Secretary of State's office. I fear this is an attempt to undercut the suit by the NAACP against Harris and others more directly responsible.'"

After receiving 11,000 complaints from Florida voters, Ashcroft's Justice Dept sent a letter to Congress with its conclusion: "The Civil Rights Division found no credible evidence in our investigations that Floridians were intentionally denied their right to vote during the November 2000 election," according to Asst AG Ralph Boyd. That is PURE BUSHIT! Even worse are the headlines on CNN (Florida voting rights not denied, Justice finds), the NY Times (DOJ: Floridians Weren't Denied Vote), and the Washington Post (Report: No Intentional Rights Denial). What about the 8,000 Floridians who were scrubbed from the voter rolls in the fraudulent felon purge, and could not cast a vote? What about the 175,000 voters whose votes were never counted because of the Supreme Court? What about the DOZENS of crimes committed by Florida election officials (see http://democrats.com/floridagate ) ?? We demand hearings on the Justice Dept's coverup of Stolen Election 2000 by the Senate Judiciary Committee!

The Republicans - led by Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and Clay Roberts - stole the Florida election by disenfranchising thousands of African-American voters. Their primary tool was the intentionally fraudulent "felon" purge, in which African-Americans were disproportionately included. It was a "high-tech lynching," to quote Supreme Injustice Clarence Thomas (from the Anita Hill hearings), a 21st-century version of Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised Florida's black voters for a century after Reconstruction. The Justice Dept. recently announced legal action against 3 Florida counties, but 2 of those - Miami-Dade and Osceola - focus on language problems facing immigrants. If there is NO JUSTICE over the felon purge - including CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS - there will be NO PEACE - at least from Democrats.com!

Damien Cave and Anthony York write that on 12/4/00, "Salon broke the story [written by Greg Palast] of how Florida contracted with a private firm to purge its voter rolls of felons and other people ineligible to vote, but in the process used faulty information to cast thousands of eligible registered voters off the rolls as well. The voter purge hit minorities particularly hard in Florida, where 31% of all black men are denied the right to vote due to the ban on felons voting. [The U.S. Civil Rights Commission] picked up the Salon investigation in its own report on Florida's 2000 voting woes, which concluded that minority voters rights had been violated... Salon talked to some of the people involved in voting rights cases... to get their reaction to Tuesday's announcement." Unfortunately, not ONE of the people interviewed points out that the intentionally fraudulent purge was a CRIME, and that the architects of the purge belong in JAIL, and the beneficiary - Bush - should be IMPEACHED!

"The latest crime of the stolen 2000 Presidential election is blaming the victim of the stolen election - Al Gore - for the numerous illegal acts committed by the Bush campaign and its surrogates in their broad daylight theft of the Presidency. Both the evidence that Democrats.com has collected in its extensive investigation of the stolen election, and the election laws and procedures of the state of Florida, prove this 'blame the victim' attack to be totally wrong." So writes Nancy Kuhn.

It has taken 495 days, but an American newspaper has FINALLY acknowledged that 8,000 or more voters were illegally disenfranchised in Florida. In an editorial entitled "Stolen Votes," the Concord (NH) Monitor writes: "No matter how successful George W. Bush proves to be as president, a pall will forever hang over the 2000 election. In national scrutiny of the way Americans cast and count their ballots, many states were found wanting. The chief among them was Florida, where the outcome, with the help of the U.S. Supreme Court, gave Bush his victory over Al Gore... Had thousands of voters not wrongly been turned away from the polls, the outcome in Florida probably would have been different and Gore, not Bush, would be in the White House. Most of the disenfranchised voters were black." The editorial cites Greg Palast's most recent article in Harpers Magazine. Send your letters of appreciation to letters@cmonitor.com

Ashcroft has NEVER released the results of his investigation into crimes committed in Florida in 2000 - and now he's putting the criminals in charge! "Of the two political operatives hired, one is a former employee of the Voting Integrity Project, which ran the disputed purging of Florida voter rolls of alleged felons during the 2000 election, and the other is a former senior counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, an organization that has been sharply critical of preferential affirmative action policies. They will be part of a voting-rights task force Ashcroft announced last year, to be headed by a political appointee... Civil Rights Assistant Attorney General Ralph F. Boyd Jr... acknowledged hiring Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former board member of the Voting Integrity Project, and Hugh Joseph Beard, former senior counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, as career lawyers in the voting rights section." We demand a Senate investigation!

In an online chat with members of Democrats.community, investigative journalist Greg Palast shared his trademark humor - and some intriguing revelations as well. Palast discussed his new book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." which covers the broad range of Palast's work. Topics include the Stolen Election (Palast uncovered Katherine Harris' Fraudulent Felon purge) ... Bush's interference with FBI efforts to trace Al Qaeda's roots in Saudi Arabia ... and Enron's criminal manipulation of California electricity prices. Palast's most dramatic revelation was that he has videotape proving that George W. Bush LOBBIED for Enron in 1988 - 6 years BEFORE he says he "really got to know" Bush! Stay tuned for an EXPLOSION when Greg reveals the videotape.

After 18 months of research, Greg Palast has obtained the "scrub list" that Katherine Harris and her predecessor sent to county officials to remove "felons." Highlighted examples include "David Butler," a name which appears 77 times in Florida phone books; Thomas Cooper, flagged for a conviction in 2007 (!); Rev. Willie Dixon, scrubbed despite a rare official pardon; and Johnny Jackson Jr., who never went to Texas but matched the name of a Texas felon; and Wallace McDonald, who was scrubbed for the misdemeanor of sleeping on a bus-stop bench in 1959. "Of the 'matches' on these lists, the civil-rights commission estimated that at least 14 percent - or 8,000 voters, nearly 15 times Bush's official margin of victory - were false." No corporate media outlet has ever reported on the felon purge - because it proves Jeb helped George steal Florida in a "high-tech" stolen election.

Democrats.com will host an online chat on March 8 with Greg Palast, author of the brand new book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." Palast is America's leading investigative reporter, but he works in exile from London because no US corporate media outlet wants to pay him to expose corruption in America's inner circles of power. Democrats.com has frequently cited Palast's exposes, including his discovery of Katherine Harris' fraudulent felon purge in Florida, a crime for which she still has not been punished. The chat will be at our regular time, 8 pm EST. To participate, first register as a member of Democrats.community.

Katherine Harris refused to let Florida officials create a system for correctly purging ineligible felons, and instead hired yet another private company. "A preliminary sampling last month of data on 1,328 people from seven counties identified by FDLE as felons found that 5.3 percent were incorrectly tagged as ineligible to vote." Sounds like just enough votes to steal a close election for her hero, Jeb Bush. Democrats will need a massive GOTV effort in 2002 - not just in Florida, but everywhere in the USA.

Writes the Village Voice's Donna Ladd: "'Katherine Harris belongs in jail, not the U.S. Congress,' wrote Democrats.com founder Bob Fertik... Harris violated a list of state and federal laws including the Votings Rights Act, the Ballot Design Law, and the American With Disabilities Act. They are collecting signatures (and donations) to encourage Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth and Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs to bring up charges against Harris on 14 points associated with the 2000 presidential election. For one, Harris contracted with a private company for a 'fraudulent felon purge,' costing Democrat Al Gore thousands of votes, the group alleges. [She] allowed Republican operatives to work inside her office, draft speeches for her, and coordinate with Bush-Cheney attorneys on interpretation of election laws. And she allowed county canvassing boards to count 680 clearly illegal overseas military ballots, including some cast after Election Day."

The Tallahassee Democrat is one of many newspapers across the country that calls itself "Democrat," but has no detectable connection to the Democratic Party or its principles. Still, we were happy that TalDem reporter Nancy Lauer followed up on the Democrats.com expose by Paul Lukasiak (http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=4169) about Florida's NEW Secret Felon Purge. Once again, Katherine Harris' office told Lauer that Harris doesn't "intend" to enforce the law. But who can believe anything Katherine Harris says? We demand a clear and unambiguous written declaration - with no hanging or dimpled chads! And we also want to know WHO inserted this secret provision into the law?

"The U.S. Justice Department blocked implementation of part of the voting reform package that Florida adopted after the November presidential election, seeking more data to decide if it discriminated against minorities... The Justice Department action came at the request of a voting rights coalition led by the American Civil Liberties Union, which also sued in a federal court in Miami last week to block provisions of the new law that it said discriminated against members of minority groups." The challenged provisions include the posting of a list of "voters' responsibilities," which amounts to an illegal "literacy test," as well as the felons purge scheduled for 2002. The Justice Department's action does not address the secret felon purge law for 2001, which was recently exposed by Democrats.com (http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=4169).

Clay Roberts, who directs Florida's Division of Elections for Secretary of State Katherine Harris, is personally responsible for the fraudulent felon purge that illegally disenfranchised thousands of voters, most of whom were Democrats and black. Roberts belongs in jail for those activities. But according to Salon, Roberts is now fighting his fellow Republicans in the state senate who want future felon purges handled by Florida's county clerks, rather than by Harris and Roberts. Katherine Harris should fire Clay Roberts immediately, and Jeb Bush should urge the Florida legislature to join the rest of the country in allowing ex-felons to vote.

As always, we are in awe of the quality of the letters we have received from our incredibly caring, morally passionate readers. Alas, the insight and intelligence in your comments stands in painful contrast to the double-digit quality of the "bright lights" now "illuminating" the White House.

Jeb Bush has put Roy Cales in charge of a new state Technology Office, with 1,760 technology employees and a $600 million annual budget. There's only one problem: Cales is an admitted embezzler. Cales' position as technology czar presumably puts him in charge of election technology, which would allow him to conduct more illegal felon purges and manipulate the results of computerized vote counting. Florida beware!

Nixon had his "Plumbers." Woodward and Bernstein had "Deep Throat." Lucianne Goldberg had her "Elves." And at the heart of the Florida Felon Purge conspiracy is a "Little Bird" who told George Bruder of Database Technologies to multiply his initial contract bid - by 100! Who was the "Little Bird"? Was it someone who wanted to quietly and invisibly use the felon purge process to disenfranchise black voters by the thousands? Was it someone close to Jeb or George?? Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, it's time for you to do your job and launch a thorough investigation!

In 1998, the state legislature mysteriously allocated over $4 million for a future felong purge. Why was it so expensive? Whoever knows the answer won't talk about it. We demand an investigation!

Florida's felon purge illegally removed thousands of voters - mostly black - from the voter rolls. This was largely because of "fuzzy" programming - such as an 80% match of the letters in the last name. But this fraud-prone practice was recently adopted by state legislatures in CO, GA, IN, KS, MT, SD, TX, VA, and WA. Moreover, 16 other states are considering such bills. Meanwhile in Congress, "Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) has introduced a bill in which certain conditions in any state would trigger mandatory voter list purges." This is exactly the WRONG approach, as reporter Greg Palast details in this important article. Tell your Senators: outlaw felon purges!

When "Washington Post" reporter Howard Kurtz threw out the question "Is the media giving Bush a free ride?", the proverbial doo-doo hit the fan and our readers started shouting, loud and clear. Problem was, none of their letters made it into the main "letters to the editor" section. So we promised that their voices would be heard here at Democrats.com!

The Washington Post has joined the small group of US newspapers that have suddenly discovered the fraudulent felon purge. The Post adds two new bits of info. 1) A clear warning from ChoicePoint to Florida officials on 5/26/2000: "Let's remember there is a liability issue in our erroneously identifying individuals as felons or deceased. We need to be very careful in who we label as what. If we are unsure the default should be to NOT label them as anything." 2) A confirmation from Clay Roberts that the state knowingly and intentionally disenfranchised voters by ordering a sloppy match. "The decision was made to do the match in such a way as not to be terribly strict on the name," Roberts said, using the passive "mistakes were made" voice. Hey Clay - EXACTLY WHO made that decision - and WHO was consulted? Whoever they are belong in jail for conspiring to deprive citizens of their civil rights - and to steal the Presidency.

"The Florida Democratic Party, Salon has learned, hopes to raise at least $15 million in its campaign to unseat Bush in 2002. For the first time in its history, the state party will be targeting donors in the other 49 states for at least half that sum. The campaign, called 'Focus on Florida,' will include direct mail solicitations as well as a series of fundraising events throughout the country, kicking off on June 11 in New York... 'A lot of people's anger about what happened during the recount may come out,' says Washington-based political consultant Nick Baldick." Democrats plan to highlight the fraudulent felon purge and Jeb's conspiring with the state legislature to overturn a recount.

Although Democrats barely control the Senate, they don't control the House or the White House - so little of their legislation is likely to pass. But they do have the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. Writing in TomPaine.com, David Corn offers a number of suggestions: energy price-gouging, prescription price-gouging, Republican fundraising and influence-peddling, Bush's AWOL, Florida's false felon purge, etc. Will they be accused of playing "politics"? Of course! But if Democrats are afraid of "politics", then we demand a refund of all of our POLITICAL contributions.

Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile said, "There was a systematic disenfranchisement of people of color and poor people. I think in all the years I've spent organizing, I've never seen anything like it." Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said something went awry with the felons list, even if it could not be proved. "You won't find any memos. This kind of documentation is hard to come by. It doesn't lend itself to any kind of scrutiny." Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) said "There was a deliberate, systematic effort to weed out all possible African-American voters and to use this thing about people being felons, sending out mailings. The whole thing was a deliberate effort to suppress the black vote... There's no question. There's a long history of the Republican Party doing this. They knew there was going to be massive input from black voters in Florida during this election, so they wanted to find a way to suppress this pent-up feeling on the part of the black electorate in Florida to turn out."

No doubt afraid of massive lawsuits for disenfranchising at least 1,100 voters - and helping Bush steal the Presidency - ChoicePoint is pointing the finger at Florida officials. ChoicePoint "wanted to compare its felons lists with several other databases, including property tax records, to correct any inaccuracies. But the state of Florida did not let the company do so." ChoicePoint also "recommended to the state that county elections supervisors undergo training to help them work with the felons database. Florida turned down the offer." Clay Roberts, director of Florida's Division of Elections, says these actions would not have prevented voter disenfranchisement. Tell that to a jury, Clay!

Under contract with Florida election officials, ChoicePoint "produced a list of 42,389 'probable' and 'possible' felons before last year's election. The list identified thousands of legal voters as criminals, forcing them to prove their innocence before they could cast a ballot." 6,500 of these "felons" were not exact matches - due to instructions from state elections lawyer Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell, who belongs in jail. 5,400 appeals were filed, and over 2,500 were upheld. But "at least 108 law-abiding people were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election... Florida officials cut from the rolls 996 people convicted of crimes in other states, though they should have been allowed to vote" - due to instructions from Janet Keels, head of the Office of Executive Clemency, who also belongs in jail. The Post's data is incomplete, so the 1,100 tally is low - and the real total could still be in the "thousands." But even 1,100 votes could have allowed Al Gore to eclipse Bush's 537-vote margin.

Assessing the now-mainstream reports of the false felon purge, the San Francisco Examiner went straight to the point. "The whole episode smells awfully fishy and does little to assuage the suspicion among Democrats that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and other state officials pulled some serious strings to keep presumed Gore supporters from voting. The emphasis on butterfly ballots, overvotes, undervotes, and dimpled chads in the wake of the Florida election fiasco wasn't the smoking gun in the 2000 election after all. It turns out that a professed effort to purge voter rolls of felons, which instead resulted in law-abiding Americans having their right to vote stolen from them, swung the deal." We demand an investigation!

Five months after investigative reporter Greg Palast broke the Florida felon purge story in Salon.com, a mainstream US media outlet has finally covered the story. The report by Lisa Getter in the Los Angeles Times adds no new facts, and fails to examine the legal or political implications of this scandal. But the story proves what we have been saying all along: that Florida election officials illegally deprived thousands of voters of their sacred right to vote - and these voters were disproportionately black and Democratic. A crime was committed, and we demand the prosecution of those responsible!

Jeb Bush went on CNN to discuss changes to Florida's election law, and anchor Carol Lin asked Jeb about racial discrimination against black voters. "I don't think that there was any overt discrimination," Jeb said. Lin pressed him on specific complaints from black voters: "being rejected at the polls, lists that were supposed to contain names of felons and yet also contained names of legitimate voters who were not able then to cast their ballots." Jeb said "many of those questions that you just posed have been looked at by the Justice Department and by the attorney general's office in our state. And they have been rejected as -- in terms of not having any kind of systemic effort to restrict people's right to vote." Jeb is LYING! Neither the Justice Department nor the Florida AG have examined the Felonious Felon Purge. We demand a full report by CNN about Jeb's lie - and about the Felon Purge itself, which has NEVER been reported on CNN!

It looks like the NY Times is working with Karl Rove to "scrub" the truth about Florida's illegal felon purge - and to keep its readers ignorant. For the second time in two weeks, the Times editorial page has obliquely mentioned the purge. But there has not been a single news article about it, explaining the facts. And this editorial dismisses it as "an error" - when it was in a fact a criminal conspiracy by Florida's top Republicans to prevent thousands of minorities from voting, and that conspiracy succeeded in stealing the Presidency. We demand the truth!

Florida's legislature will vote to ban punch cards as part of a minimal election reform bill. The state will provide $12 million to help counties upgrade to optical scanners with instant-check verification, which produced the lowest error rates in 2000. But in order to keep Jeb from being swept out of office, they prohibited matching funds for out-of-state contributions. And they maintained the racist denial of voting rights to ex-felons - and budgeted another $2 million for more fraudulent felon purges.

On December 4, Greg Palast broke the story of Katherine Harris' felonious purge of so-called "felons" in Salon. That story was Salon's "Political Story of the Year." Palast has done additional reporting on the story for The Nation, the UK Guardian, and the BBC, and uncovered important details about the conscious and criminal efforts of Florida's top election officials to remove eligible voters from the voter registration lists. Amazingly, this story has NEVER been picked up by any mainstream US news organization. The ice may be cracking, however - the New York Times obliquely cited the story in an editorial complaining about the lack of progress on election reform. Memo to the Times: why don't you tell your readers about Palast's explosive story? Is it not "fit to print"? Or are you afraid that this one simple story would cause Bush's entire house of cards to collapse?

Investigative reporter Greg Palast, who exposed the Florida felon purge scandal, has produced a documentary that is being carried on the PBS series "The Calling." As a result of calls and e-mails from grassroots activists, a number of PBS affiliates have scheduled the show (see the growing list at http://gregpalast.com), but a few are still hesitating. You can get Palast's show on the air - and have fun while you're at it - by playing the "Media Un-Twister."

Investigative reporter Greg Palast broke the story about Florida's illegal felon purge, which certainly cost Gore the election. In an interview with Michael Rectenwald, founder of Citizens for a Legitimate Government, Palast revealed some new details from his coming PBS documentary, "The Calling." This includes more proof that Katherine Harris knowingly approved of "loose" matching standards for felons, which violated the civil rights of an unknown number of legal voters. He also disclosed that Jeb Bush's Clemency Board has been illegally scrubbing its files, including one letter dated 9/18/2000 of which Palast has a copy. Once again, we demand an investigation!

Greg Palast, who broke the phony felon purge story, speaks in Cleveland on April 17.

Investigative reporter Gregory Palast of the BBC and London Examiner has broken a number of important stories about the stolen election, including the illegal felon purge by Katherine Harris. You can hear him discuss these issues - and his upcoming documentary - on Meria Heller's radio show on April 10, webcast live.

The Miami Herald and USA Today claim that their recount of Miami-Dade proves that Bush won Florida. This claim is a lie, because Gore's gain of 682 votes in Palm Beach would have forced Katherine Harris to certify Gore as the winner by 194 votes. But this four-county recount was rejected by the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered a recount in ALL of Florida's counties. As of today, Al Gore leads in this recount by 1,017 votes, but we are still waiting for the media to complete the recount before we know who actually won Florida.

Testifying before the US Commission on Civil Rights, Database Technologies executive George Bruder said Katherine Harris' office didn't care about the accuracy of the list of felons they compiled for removal from the voter rolls. "What we did was as per specifications of the division of elections," Bruder said. "They wanted false positives on search parameters to cast as broad a net as possible." While many counties refused to use this inaccurate list, the elections supervisor in Miami-Dade thought it was "mandatory" to use the list. As a result, an unknown number of valid voters - disproportionately black - were unable to vote.

The last time President Clinton ordered an attack on Iraq, he was accused by Republicans and the media of "wagging the dog" - creating a bogus military distraction from other administration troubles. Now let's make a list of news the Cheney/Bush administration doesn't want to divert us from. A big Bush donor among the Greeneville civilians... Key Republicans coming out against the Bush tax plan... The BBC expose of the phony felon purge that stole Florida for Bush, underscored testimony before the US Commission on Civil Rights... Or maybe the worst possible news: another Cheney heart attack?

Database Technologies Inc. will come under scrutiny from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Katherine Harris paid the company $4 million to compile a list of felons, but the list was inaccurate, and contained many common names that resulted in the removal of fully qualified voters. The panel is rushing to publish preliminary findings and recommendations by the end of March to impact the legislative session, which starts in less than three weeks.