Hightower Lowdown

Then you’ll want to hear about a new federal law that promises to bring about the Floridation of the Nation. Florida, of course, was the villain of the 2000 presidential conflagration, when the GOP used its political might to rub out the votes of more than 57,000 of Florida’s qualified African-American vot ers, handing a tainted presidential victory to George W. The instrument of their political mugging was Katherine Harris, then the Secretary of State of Florida and, coincidentally, the chairwoman of Florida’s “Bush for President” committee. In his book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, BBC investigative digger Greg Palast reveals that Harris used a Republicanconnected computer-list firm to purge those African- Americans from the roll of eligible voters, claiming that they were felons who were not legally entitled to vote. But Palast found that 97% of these people were innocent of any crime! (See Lowdown, March 2003.) Oh well, can’t cry over spilt milk, can we? Yes, we can--we can cry for reform. The NAACP sued Katherine Harris, who promised to put these voters back on the rolls. But few of the 57,000 were reinstated by 2002-- when, as it happens, Gov. Jeb Bush was running for reelection and Harris herself was running for Congress. Now comes a new law cynically titled the “Helping America Vote Act.” This Republican bill requires every state to embrace the Florida system of computerized voter files, and it authorizes the Katherine Harrises of all 50 states to purge the lists of “suspect” voters. Martin Luther King III, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has joined Palast and others to stop this. Sign their petition at www.workingforchange.com /activism/petition.cfm?itemid =14993.