[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 24106]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                    VOTER IRREGULARITIES IN FLORIDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want the gentlewoman from 
Georgia (Ms. McKinney) to know that this is a very touchy situation for 
me, because so much happened in Florida. In fact, former President 
Jimmy Carter said that if Florida had been any other country, it would 
not have been certified, because when you had Republican operatives 
going into the supervisor of elections filling out forms and sending 
them out, it was totally illegal. But that happened in Florida.
  Some of the things that happened in Florida you would not believe. It 
is just so hard for me to talk about. In my county alone, 27,000 of my 
people, voters, were thrown out; thrown out. Let me tell you, 16,000 
said it was overvotes. We never saw them. But 10,000, let me tell you, 
the machines were old, there were undervotes, and the machines kicked 
them out. So, to date, they have never been counted.
  Ms. McKINNEY. If the gentlewoman will yield, there was serious 
disenfranchisement that took place. It was systematic, it was 
purposeful. It was stolen, because we are talking about 2,800 people 
who Florida took the right to vote away from just because they came 
from other states. But let me just add that they lied to the Department 
of Justice, because they told the Department of Justice that our little 
election thing here that we are trying to do, this little thing here is 
race-neutral, is not going to have an effect. And what did it do? It 
had an effect. It took away the right to vote for African Americans and 
other minorities.
  I know the gentlewoman lived it and breathed it every day, but I am 
here to tell you that Florida was not the only place that it happened. 
We now know that it happened in too many places all over America, 
including Georgia.
  But I am going to give the gentlewoman the last word, because in 
Florida, Florida certified the national election, and we have some 
serious questions about the validity of the Florida election and the 
Florida outcome.
  Ms. BROWN of Florida. The one thing that I want to say on that, and 
it goes back to what I said earlier, the letter that Jimmy Carter, 
former President Carter and former President Ford said was give the 
American people a Christmas President. Give them election reform. What 
happened in Florida in that election, a black eye is not what it was.

                              {time}  2100

  It goes against who we are as Americans. It is bigger than that. 
Because if someone cannot win the election without stealing it, they do 
not deserve the office that they are running for.
  One of the things I can say that happened in the last election in 
Virginia, there was close to 1,000 attorneys in all of the precincts. 
People are committed to making sure that what happened in Florida 
never, ever happens again in another election. We have had other 
elections in Florida where still, we have, from the governor's office, 
highway patrols park in front of the precinct all day.
  Ms. McKINNEY. But, Mr. Speaker, the question I have is, in the State 
of Florida, the Governor, Jeb Bush down there has declared a state of 
emergency. I wonder how long that state of emergency is going to last 
and if it is going to allow this kind of thing to happen again and the 
kinds of things that happened with the State patrol parked outside 
polling precincts and that kind of thing, if that is going to happen 
again as a result of this state of emergency.
  Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the point of the matter is that 
the gentlewoman talked about what happened with the voters, but keep in 
mind that the system broke down before then, because we had Motor Voter 
where people went to the driver's license place, they received their 
driver's license, and they signed up to register to vote and to this 
day, they have not received their cards. So we had thousands of people 
that was registered to vote that never got the opportunity because that 
office did not turn it into the Supervisor of Election's office.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, we had similar problems in Georgia in my 
district as well. This is a sad day when we can provide for the people, 
for the Record, a piece of information like this that shows that people 
were designed to take away their right to vote just so that they could 
have a predetermined outcome.
  Ms. BROWN of Florida. God bless America.

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