by Eric Ture Muhammad
Staff Writer

CHICAGO�More than 80 Black leaders, at Final Call press time, prepared for a major meeting to address alleged voting rights violations during the recent presidential election. In addition, the head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission said she plans to hold hearings in Florida on similar issues, according to attorney Lewis Myers Jr., a civil rights attorney who already has filed a voting rights lawsuit in Florida on behalf of Rev. Jesse L. Jackson�s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

Atty. Myers also said that the New York-based Legal Defense Fund is planning a voting rights lawsuit in Florida arising out of investigations done by the NAACP and Rainbow/PUSH.

Speaking to The Final Call Dec. 16, attorney Myers said the 80-plus leaders decided during a Dec. 15 conference call that a meeting to plan strategy was necessary. He said that Mary Frances Berry, chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, announced her plans during the call.

"The fight is not over. If we sit by now we will have accepted all the illegalities and legitimized our own disenfranchisement," he said.

Atty. Myers filed a lawsuit in Tallahassee in December, alleging that 27,000 votes in Duval County, mostly from Black precincts, were excluded from the count, among other alleged illegalities. His lawsuit was dismissed because of the ultimate dismissal of Al Gore vs. Katherine Harris, calling for a recount of contested votes, he said.

Atty. Myers said lawyers for Vice President Gore should appeal to the Florida Supreme Court to reconsider Gore vs. Harris, the lawsuit against the Florida secretary of state, because "the recount was not the core issue, it was disenfranchisement of African American voters." The Florida Supreme Court dismissed Gore vs. Harris shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court�s Dec. 12 decision that, ultimately, time for a recount had run out, according to attorney Myers.

Gore lawyers should ask for reconsideration because in dismissing the case, the Florida Supreme Court "disregards legitimate complaints of African American voters; it legitimizes and condones all the chicanery, schemes and devises used by predominantly white voting officials," he said.

He said the court should be asked to remand cases from several counties where alleged abuses are prominent to circuit courts to conduct hearings into those allegations.

Remedies for abuses, if found, could be fines, injunctions, and criminal punishment for officials involved, he said.

One major act of alleged fraud, attorney Myers said, is the concealment� until after the deadline to contest certification of votes had passed�of the fact that 27,000 votes in Duval County had not been counted.

Attorney Myers was also critical of the Florida Democratic Party itself, saying it did not approach the recount challenges from the proper perspective and that Florida Congresswoman Corrine Brown (D) could not get her phone calls to Gore lawyers returned when she tried to apprise them of the Duval County irregularities.

"If Gore lawyers would have been perceptive enough to realize that the real issue was not chads and dimples � (but) voting rights violations as well as civil rights violations" then Gore would be president, he said. Challenging the recount based on rights violations would have put Gore lawyers in federal court instead of Florida state court, the attorney said.

"My concern as a Black person is that if we give our all to the Democratic Party, then the Democratic Party must give its all to us. The Democratic Party should, even now, make an affirmative statement on the disenfranchisement of Black votes," he said.