(Washington, DC) With regard to the United States Department of Justice’s recent comments about the 2000 elections in Florida, Congresswoman Corrine Brown made the following statement:

“Once again, the United States Department of Justice failed to protect the interests of our nation’s minorities. Once again, African Americans will go unprotected.

“My first question for the U.S. Department of Justice is the following: how is it that they decided to choose just three Florida counties in the first place? If they were serious about uncovering and perhaps even rectifying the multitude of voting rights violations committed during the 2000 election, they could have begun by at least including the other counties with pending lawsuits by the NAACP and other civil rights groups: Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Leon and Volusia.

Even under the Clinton Administration, the cries of minority voters fell on deaf ears at the Department of Justice. On November 14^th, 2000, the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to the Justice Department begging them to conduct an investigation into civil rights violations committed during the election. Today, nearly two years later, we are still waiting for a meaningful response.

I am simply astonished that Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd claims that there were only minor mistakes during the 2000 election. I would like to remind him and other Justice Department officials that thousands upon thousands of complaints from voters after the election were made to the U.S. Department of Justice. These ranged from African American voters being singled out for criminal background checks, to first-time voters whose names did not appear on the registration forms.

In Duval County, there were approximately 22,000 ballots that were tossed out. A disproportionately large percentage of these votes came from City Council Districts 7, 8, 9 and 10, primarily African American residential areas. Even more disturbing to me is that the Supervisor of Elections’ office didn’t release these figures to local officials until after the deadline had passed. Consequently, we were unable to demand a recount.

One of the most egregious problems that occurred during the 2000 election had to do with motor voter registration. During the last election, many voters, especially African Americans, were erroneously purged from registration lists, and many, who had signed up at state motor voter vehicle offices never had their voter registration fully processed.

Additionally, the Duval County Supervisor of Elections issued a sample ballot that was different from the official ballot, in complete violation of the law that mandates them to be the same. This proved more than confusing to voters since the sample ballot instructed people to vote on every page, while the actual ballot instructed people to vote on appropriate pages. Since there were two pages of presidential candidates, the 22,000 over-votes for president should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Moreover, the Governor of Florida spent $4 million dollars of taxpayers money to purge a list of suspected felons from the rolls across the state of Florida - but whether or not this list of felons was accurate was not anyone’s concern. Apparently, it was the responsibility of the accused citizen to correct his or her status.

Duval County still faces lawsuits from the state NAACP and various other civil rights groups. Apparently these suits, as well as the numerous voting rights violations listed here, are too insignificant to form a part of the U.S. Justice Department’s current suit.”