The Fix Done Been In

Impeachment. How is it impeachment when they were never elected in the first place? More like a correction. More like the right thing to do.

To this day, a statewide recount of the Florida 2000 presidential vote has never been conducted, as was mandated by Florida law. Prior to the 2000 election, a Republican governor, brother of the Republican candidate for president, quietly presided over an illegitimate purge from the voter rolls of the voters most likely to vote Democrat: African-Americans. Blacks got the vote in this country in 1870, but in 2000, in Florida, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris and co. decided they were the deciders on whether a black man or woman’s vote counts.

Jeb Bush, who, when asked what he would do for African-Americans in his state, had just two words to say: “Probably nothing.” (I did a story in 2003 on what was in all likelihood a lynching in the little farming town of Belle Glade, Florida; see “Somebody Hung My Baby” by clicking above on “Stories.” Jeb showed absolutely no interest in seeing the case properly investigated. Nor did his brother, George, through the Justice Department. To this day it remains unsolved.)

A good accompaniment to the current celebration of the triumph of civil rights in “Hairspray” (which is a fun enough little romp) would be “Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election," which documents our more recent, racist past. What happened in Florida was evil, a word not to be thrown around. Al Gore won the popular vote, and yet it was Florida that decided the election, with the help of a Supreme Court packed with Republican appointees—a Court which ignored longstanding Florida laws legislating the right to a hand recount. How do you like your hand-picked president now, Justices, that he treats you like the people of Florida, and America, flaunting your decisions?

And now, in many states—including Georgia, scene of several recent Republican "upsets"—we have voting by electronic machine, the results of which can never be checked, because the manufacturers say that information is "proprietary." Ha!