VOTER BLACKOUT?

• Author: Vilbig, Peter
• Position: Possible discrimination against African-American voters in Florida

The question looms in Florida, where civil rights groups say many black voters were shut out of the election

Dedrana McCray, 18, was psyched. It was Election Day, and with voter registration card in hand, she was turning out to cast her first vote. But poll workers in Florida's Miami-Dade County told her no dice: She wasn't on the voter list. After an hour of trying to sort out the mix-up, she gave up, went home, and cried.

"I thought it'd be a happy day," she says. "I would never want to vote again."

Civil rights groups say Dedrana, who is African American, was not alone. They charge that similar problems kept thousands of legally registered black Florida voters out of the Voting booth, possibly costing Vice President Al Gore the presidency, while souring the voters on the election process.

Among the other difficulties: African-American voters were more likely to live in counties that used relatively inexpensive punch-card ballots, which were more prone to voter error and miscounts. A New York Times analysis shows that 64 percent of Florida's black voters live in punch-card counties compared with 56 percent of whites. No one knows if the difference would have tilted the election to Gore. Yet in Miami-Dade, ballots in predominantly black precincts were thrown out for irregularities at nearly four times the rate as those in white precincts. With more than 90 percent of black voters choosing Gore, those uncounted ballots could have gained him 7,000 votes. He lost the state by 537

At one black college, voter registration cards did not arrive until 2 p.m. on Election Day. In some precincts with an increase in new black voters, poll workers calling to confirm names not on their lists got busy signals for hours. Critics also say a company hired to cleanse voter rolls of felons, who are not permitted to vote in Florida, removed an unknown number of voters who had no felonies. State officials admit to problems, but say they weren't serious enough to influence the outcome. Mindful of the dispute, President-elect Bush has promised to reach out to the black community.

Still, the issue isn't going away...