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“VOTER IRREGULARITIES IN FLORIDA” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H8946 on Dec. 5, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
VOTER IRREGULARITIES IN FLORIDA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney) to know that this is a very touchy situation for me, because so much happened in Florida. In fact, former President Jimmy Carter said that if Florida had been any other country, it would not have been certified, because when you had Republican operatives going into the supervisor of elections filling out forms and sending them out, it was totally illegal. But that happened in Florida.
Some of the things that happened in Florida you would not believe. It is just so hard for me to talk about. In my county alone, 27,000 of my people, voters, were thrown out; thrown out. Let me tell you, 16,000 said it was overvotes. We never saw them. But 10,000, let me tell you, the machines were old, there were undervotes, and the machines kicked them out. So, to date, they have never been counted.
Ms. McKINNEY. If the gentlewoman will yield, there was serious disenfranchisement that took place. It was systematic, it was purposeful. It was stolen, because we are talking about 2,800 people who Florida took the right to vote away from just because they came from other states. But let me just add that they lied to the Department of Justice, because they told the Department of Justice that our little election thing here that we are trying to do, this little thing here is race-neutral, is not going to have an effect. And what did it do? It had an effect. It took away the right to vote for African Americans and other minorities.
I know the gentlewoman lived it and breathed it every day, but I am here to tell you that Florida was not the only place that it happened. We now know that it happened in too many places all over America, including Georgia.
But I am going to give the gentlewoman the last word, because in Florida, Florida certified the national election, and we have some serious questions about the validity of the Florida election and the Florida outcome.
Ms. BROWN of Florida. The one thing that I want to say on that, and it goes back to what I said earlier, the letter that Jimmy Carter, former President Carter and former President Ford said was give the American people a Christmas President. Give them election reform. What happened in Florida in that election, a black eye is not what it was.
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It goes against who we are as Americans. It is bigger than that. Because if someone cannot win the election without stealing it, they do not deserve the office that they are running for.
One of the things I can say that happened in the last election in Virginia, there was close to 1,000 attorneys in all of the precincts. People are committed to making sure that what happened in Florida never, ever happens again in another election. We have had other elections in Florida where still, we have, from the governor's office, highway patrols park in front of the precinct all day.
Ms. McKINNEY. But, Mr. Speaker, the question I have is, in the State of Florida, the Governor, Jeb Bush down there has declared a state of emergency. I wonder how long that state of emergency is going to last and if it is going to allow this kind of thing to happen again and the kinds of things that happened with the State patrol parked outside polling precincts and that kind of thing, if that is going to happen again as a result of this state of emergency.
Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the point of the matter is that the gentlewoman talked about what happened with the voters, but keep in mind that the system broke down before then, because we had Motor Voter where people went to the driver's license place, they received their driver's license, and they signed up to register to vote and to this day, they have not received their cards. So we had thousands of people that was registered to vote that never got the opportunity because that office did not turn it into the Supervisor of Election's office.
Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, we had similar problems in Georgia in my district as well. This is a sad day when we can provide for the people, for the Record, a piece of information like this that shows that people were designed to take away their right to vote just so that they could have a predetermined outcome.
Ms. BROWN of Florida. God bless America.
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