Bush, George W. (1946–)

Voter Discrimination

The earliest problems surrounding the election between Republican Bush and Democrat Al Gore began with the hiring of Database Technologies (DBT) by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican. DBT is based in Florida, and is a smaller division of Choicepoint. It was the job of Harris and DBT to go through the eligible voters list in Florida and determine if anyone was ineligible to vote, and if they came across someone who was not eligible, then they removed the person's voting rights.

At the time of the election, Florida state law prohibited convicted felons from voting. The problem with the list of people who had their voting rights taken away was that thousands of them were legally entitled to vote, yet were prevented. What adds to this embarrassment is that most of the voters who lost their rights were minorities in historically democratic counties who would have overwhelmingly voted for Gore. Over 90 percent of African-Americans who voted in the election voted for Gore.

According to acclaimed British BBC television journalist Greg Palast, Harris removed 57,700 names from the registered voters list, meaning that those names could not vote. In addition, 8,000 other names gathered by DBT were removed on the basis of having felony charges. However, these 8,000 names were not convicted felons, but rather were convicted of misdemeanor crimes, which would not prevent them from voting. Palast traced the bogus list to its originators, which were state officials from Texas who sold the list to Choicepoint.

The list of 8,000 names were predominately minority voters, as well as poor white voters, all of whom statistically voted Democrat. Following this admitted mistake, DBT and Harris came forth with the before-mentioned list of 57,700 ineligible voters. Again, the basis of this list was that these people were convicted felons.

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