Florida again?!

Here are the second and third pieces from a recent series of columns by Bob Herbert from the NYT on recent shenanigans going down in the Sunshine State. In a nutshell, it seems that the powers that be in Florida (i.e., Governor Jeb Bush and Co.) are quietly but diligently working to intimidate black voters by investigating "charges" of voter fraud. The people who have been targeted have tended to be retired black citizens who have been active in voter registration drives. This from the state that demonstrated in spectacular fashion how to mismanage an election back in 2000 and 2002. And there's still the suspicious business about purging the names of former felons from the lists of eligible voters. Particularly the subtle point that those charged with removing the names of felons didn't seem to go to great lengths to check to see if they actually got the right person in the event that two people had the same name.

So much for my previous fretting about the subversion of the democratic process by the Democratic Party with regard to their efforts to undermine Ralph Nader's presidential bid.

(Note: the New York Times archives its online features about two weeks after they first go up. After that, the links will give you the first 50 words of the first paragraph of the article. If I get around to it, I'll try to figure out how to link the full text of both columns as independent HTML files rather than just as links.)