The US, UN & Iraq III

Scrat, here is the information you asked for, no I will not read it to you ..... just list the points you have direct knowledge of and hold in contention...... choose 'The 2000 Presidential Election'

http://www.usccr.gov/

Berry and company's paranoid fantasies of anti-minority conspiracies

Let us be reminded, readers, that ad hominem invective directed at the source or the poster is always the sign of a losing argument.

U.S. officials said the discoveries did not constitute final proof that Saddam had rebuilt his banned weapons program, as administration officials alleged in justifying the invasion of Iraq. But they said the materials were the best evidence so far that the Iraqi government could have done so

Richard Butler, the United Nations' former chief weapons inspector, told MSNBC TV's Lester Holt that he was "absolutely unsurprised" by the report. "We have known of [Saddam's previous plans] for a decade," he said.
Butler said that the discovery of components of a uranium enrichment system suggested that Iraq was far from production of actual weapons.

With a bit of forethought and organization, it could have been assured the "Potential" voters were able to fully exercize their right to vote, and additionally be inclined to vote Democratic. The folks who found themselve "Disqualified" due to bureaucratic error were unfortunate; those responsible for "turning out the vote" were practically criminally negligent to have failed to do more than take names, solicit donations, and provide rides to the polls.

Scrat wrote:

Berry and company's paranoid fantasies of anti-minority conspiracies

See what you get when you contend Scrat's "facts"?

Here's a link to Greg Palast's exhaustive investigation of the Florida voting fraud perpetrated on African-Americans by Katherine Harris' office:

Winning the Election the Republican Way

Scrat won't read it, though. It conflicts with his "facts'.

Here's an excerpt:

Quote:

Scrat is simply unable to see that he assigns that which agrees with his POV as "factual", and that which does not as "paranoid fantasies".

Scrat goes further and describes those who disagree as being "out of touch with reality", among other things.

Let us be reminded, readers, that ad hominem invective directed at the source or the poster is always the sign of a losing argument.

...Clearly, however, one of the major impediments to black voting was the purge of the voter rolls. Florida has one of the nation's strictest laws governing restoration of felons' voting rights. Thirty-one percent of the state's black men are barred from voting because of prior felonies.

The voter purge was mandated after the 1997 Miami mayoral race was overturned because votes were cast by felons and non-residents. Legislators ordered everyone off the voting rolls who did not belong. In the end, that proved to be tens of thousands of "probable felons." The purge of the voter rolls was previously described by several Florida newspapers and the Nation magazine.

The state mandated the hiring of an outside vendor for $4 million to compile a list of voters who had committed felonies in other states. Database Technologies (now ChoicePoint Inc.), creator of an Internet service widely used by law enforcement agencies for investigative purposes, was chosen to sort through state and national databases to identify felons.

From the beginning, Database Technologies raised serious concerns that non-felons could be misidentified. Florida does not regularly record Social Security numbers in its records, so its felons were identified by name and date of birth, including close but not exact matches.

That's how the state intended the plan to work.

"Obviously, we want to capture more names that possibly aren't matches and let the [county elections] supervisors make a final determination rather than exclude certain matches altogether," said Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell, who headed the state purge effort, in a March 1999 e-mail to Database Technologies product manager Marlene Thorogood, who had warned him of possible mistakes.

In an interview, Clay Roberts, director of the state's division of elections, confirmed the policy. "The decision was made to do the match in such a way as not to be terribly strict on the name."

In-house concerns persisted. "Let's remember there is a liability issue in our erroneously identifying individuals as felons or deceased," said George A. Bruder Jr., a company senior vice president, in a May 26, 2000, e-mail to Thorogood. "We need to be very careful in who we label as what. If we are unsure the default should be to NOT label them as anything."

The company admits it made some mistakes. One list sent to Florida officials inaccurately contained 8,000 people who had committed misdemeanors -- not felonies -- in Texas.

People wrongly tagged as felons because of the loose matching policy included judges and the father of a county election supervisor. Also on the list were at least 2,000 felons who moved to Florida from states that automatically restore voting rights.

It was left to local election supervisors to determine whether residents of their counties were accurately listed as felons. With little guidance from the state, county supervisors devised their own rules.

Many counties sent certified letters notifying residents that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had listed them as felons. People who did not respond were removed from voting rolls -- a practice criticized by the civil rights groups that filed the lawsuit.

In places like Escambia County, voters on the list were required to prove to election officials that they were not felons. In Lake County, by contrast, Supervisor Emogene Stegall decided the list of "probable felons" sent by the state was so flawed that she did not use it.

"They're not sending us what the statute requires them to do, so I feel we're not bound to process those," Stegall said. "They're not sure. There are so many people who have the same name, same date of birth."

The list did catch many felons who had voted illegally in previous elections. One was Jeffrey Key of Tampa, who served more than three years on a 1989 armed robbery charge and resumed voting in 1992 without applying to have his rights restored. In 2000, he was turned away from the polls....

Our BBC Newsnight cameras followed me up to the 18th floor of the Florida Capitol Building in Tallahassee for my meeting with Clayton Roberts, the squat, bull-necked director of Florida's Division of Elections.

Roberts, who works directly under Secretary of State Katherine Harris, had agreed to chat with me on film. We sat on the reception sofa outside his office. His eyes began to shift, then narrowed as he read the heading of the paper on the sofa next to me: "CONFIDENTIAL."

He certainly knew what I had when I picked up the paper and asked him if the state had checked whether DBT (the ChoicePoint company) had verified the accuracy of a single name on the purge list before they paid the company millions.

"No I didn't ask DBT...," Roberts sputtered, falling over a few half-started sentences--then ripped off his lapel microphone, jumped up, charged over the camera wires and slammed his office door on me and the camera crew...

What was so terrifying to this Republican honcho? The "CONFIDENTIAL" page (figure 1.3, page 50), obviously not meant to see the light of day, said that DBT would be paid $2.3 million for their lists and manual verification using telephone calls and statistical sampling. No wonder Roberts diid a runner. He and Harris had testified to the US Civil Rights Commission--under oath--that verification of the voter purge list was left completely up to the county elections supervisors, not to the state or the contractor, ChoicePoint DBT.

It was the requirement to verify the accuracy of the purge list that justified ChoicePoint's selection for the job as well as their astonishingly high fee. Expensive though that is to repeat thousands of times, it is necessary when civil rights are at stake. Yet DBT seemed to have found a way to cut the cost of the procedure: not doing it. There is no record of DBT having made extensive verification calls. It is difficult for DBT to squirm out of this one. If they had conducted manual verification as contracted, you'd think they would have noticed that every single record on the Texas felon list was wrong.