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GOP dirty tricks aimed at suppressing vote

Remember one thing: George Bush , his brother Jeb!, and the rest of the Republican party will stop at nothing to win. They will walk all over the constitution, they will bend and break rules. They will intimidate and lie and use every means at their disposal to suppress votes, and those means include armed state agents.

Here in Tampa, we recently learned that a traditionally black church is being targeted by the IRS simply because Democrat Janet Reno stopped there during a campaign for governor 2 years ago. Campaign stops at churches are traditional and very legal. The church has curtailed all political activity until the investigation is over. My bet is that the investigation will end on November 3.

In Orlando, there are two separate and very questionable investigations in progress that are succeeding in chilling the activities of traditionally Democratic organizers. The case of Ezzie Thomas, Orlando’s “Absentee Ballot King,” drags on, with empty allegations of fraud being thrown around, and agents fingering their sidearms and spouting vague tales of criminal activity while visiting the homes of black absentee voters.

The lesson: vote, and you will be investigated, possibly prosecuted. Don’t vote, and you will be left alone.

Local politicians call him the absentee ballot king.

Before each election, Ezzie Thomas appears at the homes of hundreds of black voters and picks up their absentee ballots.

In a predominately black Orlando neighborhood, it seems everyone knows the 73-year-old Thomas. He was the local television repair man for years, extending credit to black residents when no one else would.

But now Thomas' tactics in the spring Orlando mayoral election are at the center of a controversy that once again has put Florida elections in the national spotlight. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated Thomas, closed its case, then reopened it. Now the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are investigating the FDLE investigation.

Critics of Thomas' methods argue they are illegal and give Democrats an edge. Critics of the FDLE investigation say all candidates go after absentee ballots like Thomas does and call the probe an attempt to scare black residents into not voting in November, which would help Republicans.

"If there was evidence of widespread absentee ballot fraud, I don't think anyone would question their right to investigate," said Democratic lawyer Joseph Egan, who wonders why the FDLE would focus so hard on someone like Thomas.
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In early June, FDLE agents began knocking on voters' doors in Lake Mann Homes, a public housing complex on Orlando's west side.

When they first stopped by Hattie Bowman's house, she wasn't home. So agents questioned her 9-year-old daughter. They wanted to know where mom was, who she was with, what type of car she drove.

When Bowman returned, she could see firearms under the agents' coats. They told her they were conducting a criminal investigation.

"When they said "criminal,' I said, "Oh my God,"' Bowman said. They wanted to ask her 19 questions - on tape.

"As scared as I was," she said, "I didn't believe it."

She knew it was legal to vote by absentee ballot. And she did that again during the Aug. 31 primary.

About a mile away, agents asked voter Annie Justice if Thomas bribed her.

"If he bought votes, I want my money," she joked.

The agents didn't frighten her either, she said.

"I am not easily intimidated - believe me," she said.

In late June, Thomas called a news conference to decry the FDLE's tactics. Democratic activists claimed scores of voters were too scared to vote absentee.

"There are African-Americans who believe that if you vote absentee, you will have cops showing up at your door," said Egan, the Democratic lawyer.
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Meanwhile, Thomas spends his days behind the screen door of his ranch house. For November's general election, he doesn't plan to collect a single absentee ballot.

Chalk one up for Jeb!.

The Thomas case has garnered national attention, but a lesser known investigation is also paying dividends to the Bush family.

In Orlando, the Florida home of Disneyworld and a vital political battleground, the campaign for the November presidential election is getting sly, nasty and very, very personal. Normally, at this stage of the proceedings, Ezzie Thomas, a well-known character on the predominantly African-American west side of town, would be out chatting to the people, registering them to vote before the 4 October deadline and helping them with absentee ballots if they do not think they will have time to make it to the polls on election day. But the 73-year-old Mr Thomas, an affable ladies' man, is staying out of public view for fear of exacerbating what is already a highly controversial - and highly political - criminal investigation of his election-related activities.

A similarly low profile is being taken by Steve Clelland, the head of the local firefighters' union. Last week, he did not even dare attend a local appearance by John Kerry, the candidate he is supporting for President, in case it added to the legal troubles facing his own organisation. The firefighters are also subject to a criminal investigation, the chief allegation - for which no evidence has been produced - being that they colluded with City Hall to set up an illegal slush fund for political campaigning.

What makes the troubles facing the two men particularly sinister is that they are declared Kerry supporters, with the power to bring in hundreds if not thousands of votes for the Democratic Party. The investigations are being conducted by the state police, known as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), which reports directly to Governor Jeb Bush, brother of President George Bush.

The Republicans, naturally, deny the investigations are politically motivated. But even they acknowledge that a chill has spread through Orlando's overwhelmingly Democratic black voting community after a flurry of unannounced visits by armed state police to at least 52 homes whose mostly elderly residents had signed up for an absentee ballot with Mr Thomas's help.

The Republicans have been hard put to explain what exactly the two men have done wrong. The media has aired official allegations ranging from vote fraud to campaign finance irregularities to racketeering, but no charges have been brought, despite exhaustive investigations. A grand jury examining allegations concerning the firefighters' union concluded that no laws had been broken, which has not deterred the FDLE from pursuing the case.
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One added wrinkle is that Orlando's mayor, Buddy Dyer, is one of only two prominent Democratic public officials along the I-4 corridor. Clearly, if he is discredited, the Democrats will be deprived of a vital figurehead in the run-up to 2 November. As it turns out, he is directly implicated in both of the FDLE's investigations. The intrigue began with Mr Dyer's election last March. It was a two-round election, but Mr Dyer finished with just over the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a run-off. His closest opponent, a Republican called Ken Mulvaney, cried foul, saying the 234-vote margin putting Mr Dyer over the threshold was fraudulent.

Since Mr Mulvaney's campaign manager was a prominent local talk-radio host called Doug Guetzloe, his allegations had a wide airing. But most of them, if not all, were demonstrably untrue. Mr Guetzloe claimed illegal absentee votes had been faxed into the elections supervisor's office, but the office accepts only originals. He also said people had been paid for their votes, but offered no evidence of this.

The greatest suspicion fell on Ezzie Thomas, because he had personally witnessed applications for 270 absentee ballots, a figure big enough to force a run-off election if it could be shown the votes were fraudulent. The city attorney's office cross-checked the signatures on the absentee ballots with the original application forms and concluded they were valid. Intriguingly, the FDLE did the same thing and stated, in a letter written to the state attorney in Orlando in May, that there was "no basis to support the allegations" and that the case should be considered closed.

"They've been trying to explain away that letter ever since," said one senior city employee who did not wish to be identified. Something caused the FDLE to change its mind, because in early June uniformed officers began knocking on doors and asking threatening questions of dozens of black voters who had been in contact with Mr Thomas. Several said the FDLE officers took off their jackets and exposed their firearms while questioning them. In at least one case, the officer crossed his legs and tapped a 9mm pistol sitting in an ankle holster while he asked detailed questions about the interviewee's reasons for voting absentee. (Absentee voting is a choice under Florida law, so one can wonder about the line of questioning.)
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As it happens, Mr Thomas had been been hired before by Republican candidates to perform exactly the same services he provided for Mr Dyer, without falling foul of the law. Among his past clients are two names with particular resonance in the 2004 presidential race. One is Mel Martinez, the Bush administration's outgoing Housing Secretary who is now running for the Florida Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Democrat, Bob Graham. (Mr Thomas helped Mr Martinez run for chair of the Orange County commission a few years ago.) And the other is Glenda Hood, who was mayor of Orlando for 12 years before being appointed Jeb Bush's Secretary of State, the office responsible for running Florida's elections.

And Mayor Hood, not Mayor Dyer, allowed the firefighters' union to spend up to $40,000 a year in city funds on political activities. In those days, the firefighters were considered allies of the Republican establishment in Orange County and had endorsed George Bush for President in 2000. But Mr Clelland and his members were deeply disappointed by the White House's failure to follow through on promises to put an extra 100,000 firefighters on American streets and update their equipment. So, in early June, they joined a statewide union vote endorsing Mr Kerry for President in 2004.

Days later, the FDLE, with television cameras in tow, raided City Hall, seized several computers and announced that the union and its so-called "leave bank" were being investigated. The beefy Mr Clelland said he was scared to death in his interview with the FDLE supervisor in Orlando and was told he might be slung into jail if he insisted on having his lawyer present. He duly asked Mr Egan to leave the room.

Like the black absentee voters, Mr Clelland also noticed the officer tapping the 9mm pistol in his ankle holster as he let loose his barrage of questions. "You would think these investigators were going after John Gotti [the late Mafia don]," he said bitterly. "Their actions have gutted this organisation locally." After the grand jury ruled that the union leave bank was legal, Mayor Dyer asked Florida's attorney general for a ruling to get the FDLE off their backs. But Mayor Dyer's bad luck was that he had run for the office of attorney general in 2002, and his successful Republican opponent, Charlie Crist, was not about to cut him any slack. Mr Crist has refused to offer an opinion either way.
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Orlando is also in a state of major flux. For years, the big citrus farmers, as well as the land developers who came in Disneyworld's wake, made it a reliable Republican stronghold. Then an influx of low-wage service workers, including a growing tide of immigrants from Puerto Rico, changed its complexion.

The Republicans were shocked when Al Gore beat George Bush in Orange County in the presidential race in 2000, and vowed not to be taken by surprise again. The party identified the Puerto Ricans - many from middle-class backgrounds back home - as the key constituency and set to work to win over as many as possible.
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With workers from both parties rushing to register as many voters as possible while there is still time, the race remains nerve-rackingly close, close enough that the votes controlled by Ezzie Thomas and the firefighters might just make the crucial difference.

So, after the election, there will be much hand wringing and soul searching and Jeb!’s office will issue a non-apology, saying that the Jeb!’s jack booted thugs were just protecting the integrity of the election and if they intimidated any coloreds into not voting, well, of course, that was never their intent, and it’s not their fault if things worked out that way...

Successful campaigns rely on grass roots organization. Getting supporters to actually cast a ballot is perhaps the single most important duty of local activists. Regardless of the international attention that the bogus Orlando investigations are garnering, the Republican party has already met its goal of suppressing the vote through old-fashioned state-sponsored intimidation.

More on the Ezzie Thomas case.

More on GOP voter suppression.