by Eric Ture Muhammad
Staff Writer

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.�After two days of hearings and some 30 witnesses, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights ended up virtually at the same place where it began: It knew something went wrong with voting in Florida during November presidential elections, but couldn�t affix blame, or even say the irregularities were deliberate.

The commission, led by civil rights advocate Mary Frances Berry, convened hearings here Jan. 11-12, to investigate reports of voting discrepancies in the state. Another week of hearings is planned for March in Miami.

With the presidential election decided by a few hundred votes, amid court battles, confusing ballots and with the brother of the Republican winner governor of the state, the commission came to find out whether there had been violations of the Voting Rights Act or other federal laws.

In the end, the commission was left with more questions than answers, as Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris deferred questions to a subordinate and Blacks repeated charges that they were denied the right to vote.

"The thing that gets to me is that a hurricane was coming and somebody saw it," analogized Ms. Berry, commission chairperson. "Something happened here in Florida and everybody knows it, now it is just a matter of getting to the truth," she said, with a puzzled look on her face.

Across the state, which has 67 counties, 179,855 ballots were tossed out. They were under-punched, overpunched and in some places included the now-infamous "butterfly ballot" and two-sided punch card ballots.

There were also reports of precincts closing early, voting machine malfunctions, errors in voter registration and local officials who felt abandoned by the secretary of state�s office when they needed help most.

Points of view about problems broke down along racial lines, with whites, such as Gov. Jeb Bush and Sec. of State Harris, saying the glitches were unintentional. Blacks, such as NAACP state official Whitfield Jenkins and Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), said problems were concentrated in Black areas and purposely designed to dilute voter turnout.

Testimony from Ion Sancho, the Leon County, Fla., supervisor; state Attorney General Robert A. Butterworth (D); and Madison County, Fla. Supervisor Linda Howell shed light on problems many counties and voters faced.

Ms. Howell said Madison County received ballots and voting machines from the state, but no training on how to use the ballots, which were two-sided and listed 10 presidential candidates.

In addition, she said, the secretary of state�s office did not tell county officials how ballot challenges should be handled, nor give options for certifying people to vote if their names did not appear on voting rolls.

The result was 7.2 percent of ballots for her county were unusable, which was one of the highest rejection rates in the state. Madison County is nearly 46 percent Black. Gadsden County had the worst rejection rate at 12.4 percent. Blacks were 62 percent of Gadsden County residents.

With no money for sample ballots or education materials, Mr. Sancho of Leon County, Fla., held year round fund-raisers to produce a sample ballot and educate voters. The ballot rejection rate for his county was 0.18 percent. The county is 70 percent white. Mr. Sancho has been handling elections for 20 years and raises money as part of his normal operation to counter the lack of state funds.

Gov. Jeb Bush, who testified Jan. 11, conceded that he had heard Black misgivings about the election outcome and problems. He noted that a bi-partisan state inquiry is underway. It will make recommendations for any changes to the state legislature. Gov. Jeb Bush said he has removed himself from the process to avoid any hint of meddling on behalf of his brother.

When asked by The Final Call about the perception of many that he and President-elect George W. Bush rigged state election results, Jeb Bush responded: "I categorically deny it. It�s just ridiculous."

And, he added, the Civil Rights Commission can recommend Justice Department prosecution if violations of law occur. Gov. Bush argued that no conclusions should be reached until the commission renders its judgment.

Florida Democrat Corrine Brown countered that with state police roadblocks set up near Black polling places, missing motor voter registration cards, large numbers of spoiled ballots, and Sec. of State Harris� imposition of vote recount deadlines that curtailed election challenges�the evidence was clear.

"Democracy was stolen!" she declared.

Florida�s state Attorney General came to the hearings with hundreds of affidavits, reports and complaints of voter intimidation, fraud, registration abnormalities and demographic breakdowns that showed how Blacks were disproportionately impacted.

Since the election, state Atty. Gen. Robert Butterworth, a Democrat, said his office has received some 100,000 "contacts" about the election. Most letters should have gone to the secretary of state�s office, but 3,600 communications�phone calls faxes and letters�with some 2,600 complaints were received directly, he said.

The most heated exchanges at the hearings were between Ms. Harris and Ms. Berry. Ms. Harris consistently claimed to be unaware, ill informed or lacking in expertise, during her testimony. In the majority of her answers, she told Ms. Berry and commission members to ask L. Clayton Roberts, the director of Florida�s Division of Elections, who sat beside her.

Grilled about charges of a lack of standards for voting recounts, election procedures and training, Ms. Harris responded that she did not handle day-to-day operations for the 39-person Division of Elections.

Ms. Berry responded that as secretary of state, Ms. Harris was accountable for answering operational questions.

Defiantly, Ms. Harris retorted, "Well I still have to defer to Mr. Roberts in that I don�t manage the day to day operations and I stand accountable by what he says."

Mr. Roberts, however, said little when it came to answering how his division could apparently be so negligent and unresponsive to local jurisdictions. He did say Florida statutes didn�t give him the flexibility to allocate money for training, to educate voters or upgrade equipment.

The secretary of state also contracted with a firm, paying over $4 million, to have felons who are ineligible to vote removed from the rolls. Though it is clear some eligible voters were removed, their total number is unknown. Mr. Roberts said the list included 3,993 possible felons.

All of the county officials who testified condemned the way they were forced to operate under Ms. Harris.

"If you don�t deal with the issue of race as it relates to this problem, if you avoid race in the discussion or analyzation of what�s happened here, then any solution you come up with will be flawed," said Whitfield Jenkins, of the state NAACP, who told the commission that the civil rights group had filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida, its governor and secretary of state, calling for an end to unfair voting practices.

NAACP hearings in November uncovered stories of voter intimidation, police checkpoints, intentional discarding of Black ballots, malfunctioning voter machines, early precinct closings and wrongful voter role purges in Black communities, said Mr. Jenkins.

But Florida Highway Colonel Charles C. Hall told the commission no roadblocks intimidated voters driving to the polls in rural Black voting districts. "In no uncertain terms did our troopers do anything wrong," he said.

With the commission headed for Miami, the most telling observation may have come Jan. 11: Asked about the hearings, President-elect Bush told reporters, "Florida had four recounts and I won all of them. People can say what they want, but come Jan. 20, I will be elected president of the United States."