Florida, Through A Third World Lens
November 24, 2000
A friend in South Africa sent me an e-mail, which mentioned a politician from Zimbabwe. This politician was quoted as saying children in his African nation should study the current American presidential vote crisis in Florida because it shows that election fraud is not just a Third World phenomenon.
While I haven’t seen any evidence of vote fraud in the re-counting activities in Florida (according to CNN, sporadic Bush allegations apparently were based on isolated, immediately-corrected accidents), I have heard from colleagues that there were instances where black voters in Florida were stopped or otherwise intimidated by police (allegedly for activities such as driving unrelated passengers without a taxicab license).
As an exercise in how our own prejudices and preconceptions can shape our perception of an event, take a minute to think about how you would react if you read the following news account:
“Former president Jimmy Carter and United Nations special observers held a news conference yesterday in Tallahassee, the capital of the small African nation known as the Republic of Florida. They expressed their concern that the results of the Nov. 7 election were tainted, based on both direct and circumstantial evidence. Out of six million votes cast, the lead of the self-declared winner was a mere 327 votes by the day after the election.
“On the night of the election, first one candidate and then the other was declared the winner. By morning, it was clear that one candidate had won the popular vote, but that the other was planning to use an old colonial, pre-democratic device known as the Electoral College to declare victory. Compounding the concerns were the fact that the self-declared winner was the son of a former head of the secret police, known here as the CIA, who later became prime minister. The head of the province where major voting irregularities were charged was the self-declared winner’s brother, Jeb.
“Of special concern to United Nations observers were reports that hundreds of members of the nation’s most despised caste were intimidated or turned away from the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner’s brother. Fearing for their lives and livelihoods, members of this caste had turned out in record numbers and voted, according to exit polls, nine to one in favor of the self-declared winner’s opponent.
“Observers also were shocked that the self-declared winner and his party were opposed to manual recounts of the ballots. Poorly constructed ballots in districts inhabited by supporters of the self-declared winner’s opponent led to thousands of mistaken votes for a marginal third party candidate.
“International attention had been focused in the months before the election on the fact that the self-declared winner was head of a province that led the nation in death penalty executions. On several occasions, foreign heads of state had tried to appeal to his sense of justice to prevent executions that internationally-respected jurists had seen as based on faulty evidence or otherwise tainted. None of these appeals had been successful. In fact, many leaders in his own nation had expressed concern that someone with the power to appoint lifetime members of the nation’s highest court could come from the province with the worst human rights record of any in the nation.
“While clearly concerned about the future of democracy in this tiny African nation, former president Carter expressed hope that, with the help of experts in American election law, the leaders of the Republic of Florida could make progress toward a more democratic voting process by the next national election, which is slated for 2004.”
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