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Duval county does not want blacks to vote

Jacksonville, which comprises the whole of Duval County, is infamous for having thrown out 25,000 or so ballots cast in predominantly black precincts during the 2000 election.

Apparently the game plan for 2004 includes throwing out new registrations and making it all but impossible for black people to vote early.

Voting early in Florida is a relatively new phenomena. It allows busy voters a chance to vote in person for 2 weeks before the election, including Saturdays. Most counties set up early voting locations in many convenient places. Duval is setting up only one early voting place, and it is far away from any black neighborhoods.

This Navy town bills itself the "Bold New City of the South," and the shiny skyscrapers, riverside cafes and stadium preparing to host the 2005 Super Bowl attest to the claim.

But the scene at the Duval elections office this week looked more 1964 than 2004:

Nearly a dozen African-American civil rights leaders stood at a counter, demanding the white elections boss help them ensure that as many of their constituents as possible can vote.

Tightening his lips, the voting official curtly replied that they were out of luck. No, he could not try to correct voter registration forms that were turned in incomplete. No, he would not consider opening early voting offices convenient for African-American neighborhoods.
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No county produced more spoiled ballots than Duval - nearly 27,000 - and they were concentrated in African-American neighborhoods. An estimated one in five black votes was tossed out in Duval, three times the rate of white votes.
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More than 300 miles south, maps on the wall of John Kerry's Florida campaign headquarters in Fort Lauderdale include bold circles around predictable political regions: the Democratic bastions of southeast Florida and swing voter battlegrounds of Tampa Bay and Orlando. Less predictable are the circles around Duval County. This, after all, is a conservative area where Bush won nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2000.

This Republican stronghold is a crucial piece of the Kerry-Edwards Florida strategy. The campaign is paying for a steady run of TV ads and has planted at least three paid staffers in Duval.

Al Gore put no paid staffers in the area, bought limited advertising, and visited Jacksonville once early in 2000. Kerry has visited twice and John Edwards once.

The goals are modest.

"If Kerry gets 42 percent of the vote in Duval, he wins Florida," predicted Mike Langton, chairman of Gore's northeast Florida campaign.

Gore won 41 percent of the Duval vote thanks to heavy turnout among African-Americans, who backed Gore nine to one.
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Many Democrats believe Gore would be in the White House but for the massive voting problems in Duval. Voters complained of longtime polling places being moved, of their names missing from voting rolls and phone lines jammed at elections offices amid all the questions arising Election Day.

The biggest problem, though, was the ballot. Elections Supervisor John Stafford printed the lengthy list of mostly obscure presidential candidates on two pages. Many, including first-time African-American voters mobilized by church and union groups, cast a vote on the first page and another on the second. A ballot with two presidential votes is invalid and not eligible for recount examination.

In Duval, about 22,000 presidential ballots were uncounted because of double votes and 5,000 because no presidential vote was recorded. Most spoiled ballots came from predominantly African-American precincts that Gore won with at least 80 percent.

Some still call it a concerted effort to disenfranchise Democratic voters, but a bipartisan Jacksonville commission concluded the problems stemmed from mismanagement and were unintentional.
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Last month, FCAN and other groups filed a formal complaint with the state Division of Elections about Duval's elections office potentially failing to process registrations in time for the Oct. 4 deadline. The complaint noted that the leader of the office complained of "too much" voter registration in Jacksonville.
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Jacksonville activists say they worry about how many registration forms will be discarded because of missing information and question how aggressively elections officials have tried to correct them. Thousands have yet to be processed, but elections officials say they know of about 1,500 registrations that are invalid because of missing information.

Then there's early voting. Elections offices must open 15 days before Nov. 2 to make voting more convenient. Early voting, which can be done at elections offices and designated city halls and libraries, is a crucial part of get out the vote efforts.

Miami-Dade has 20 early voting sites, Hillsborough 11, Pinellas nine, Orange nine. Jacksonville, which covers most of Duval County, in land area is the largest city in the contiguous United States. It will have a single early voting site.

It's in downtown Jacksonville, with scarce parking and nearby construction projects that complicate access. It's miles from black neighborhoods.
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On Wednesday, the same day the local Florida Times-Union newspaper editorialized that people should feel no obligation to vote, a group of black ministers and representatives of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference visited Duval's elections office. Reporters in tow, they asked for at least four more early voting sites.

Carlberg said that he lacked adequately trained personnel and that it's too late to consider.

"I never thought about (adding early voting sites) at all," Carlberg said, stressing that he was complying with state law.