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Statewide, based upon county-level statistical estimates, black voters were nearly 10 times more likely than nonblack voters to have their ballots rejected.
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Quote:
Estimates indicate that approximately 14.4 percent of Florida’s black voters cast ballots that were rejected. This compares with approximately 1.6 percent of nonblack Florida voters who did not have their presidential votes counted.
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The first issue here is in the definition of the word: deprived of the rights of citizenship especially the right to vote. It sounds all emotional and gushy, but it isn't.
Most of the people mentioned in this article are legally disenfranchised.
African-American voter disenfranchisement in Florida is a fact. Currently, this is a law that has been on the books for a long, long time. These people are not losing their right to vote because of some partisan game, they lost their vote because of a law that has been on the books longer then President Bush has been alive.
It is stricly a matter of convenience that this comes up during election years. It sounds like the evil Republicans are en mass to Florida to make sure that black people can't vote--hardly the case.
Scream about the law--change the law--but don't play petty games
Prior to Jeb, we had a very popular governor in Florida that was a Democrat (Chiles) and he never did anything to help get this law off of the books, and he had plenty of time. With as popular as Chiles was, if he had been behind a measure such as this, it probably would have passed without a problem. To blame this on Jeb or GW is just silly. To say that this is part of the Republican agenda is equally as silly.
/granted there were some people that were on the no-vote list that shouldn't have been. That should be corrected. But there are similar problems in other states that happen election after election that nobody screams about.