We are in the habit of being proud of our American democracy, sincerely believing that our elections are conducted without major mistakes. What about the Florida recount of 2000? Yes, some will say there are slip-ups. Human error, however, is not the issue here; if only it were that simple.

It turns out that election gaffes occur even in the most democratic country in the world. Information gathered by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights speaks to this fact. So what did they establish?

Attempts to suppress the registration of potential voters were noted in Georgia and Arizona. Severe processing delays of voter registrations occurred in Virginia, Florida, Louisiana and several other states. The clash over voter registration at George Mason University in Virginia serves as an example. The Virginia Board of Elections was unwilling to accept the voter registration forms of mainly minority students on the grounds that students indicated the university campus as their permanent residence. The students acted in accordance with state laws and the refusal of their registration forms was clearly arbitrary on the part of the authorities.

The violation of citizens’ voting rights can be attributed to blunders (were they indeed blunders?) in compiling lists of ineligible voters, for example, based on former felony convictions.

For instance, Florida, one of the key swing states in the current presidential race, recently composed a disqualified voter list consisting of 48,000 names. When the list was disclosed and reviewed, the ensuing scandal broke out. It turned out that several thousand voters on the list were excluded from voting even though they were pardoned for their offenses and were fully permitted to vote by law. It is hard to believe that the Florida Election Commission was unaware of this fact, but more on that later. It also turned out that the list of ineligible voters had only 61 Spanish-speaking Florida residents and 22 thousand African-American residents. It is commonly understood that there are many more Spanish-speaking felons in Florida and clearly something was amiss.

We should note here that Florida’s Spanish-speaking residents, mostly Cubans, are generally more closely aligned with the Republican party, while African-Americans tend to side with the Democratic party. There are roughly 100,000 more registered Spanish-speaking Republicans than Democrats in Florida, meanwhile 90 percent of the registered black voters are Democrats.

If we recall that George W. Bush’s advantage over Al Gore consisted officially of only 537 votes, then one can imagine what challenges would have awaited John Kerry in the southern-most state of our country had everything remained quiet. As The New York Times reported in an investigative piece, of the 48,000 "disenfranchised persons" on the list, 28,025 are registered Democrats, while Republicans are considerably less at 9,251. What is interesting here is that in June of this year, the Florida legislature voted in favor of a law to restore individual voter’s rights in cases where the Election Commission erred and took those rights away. Essentially, the law freed officials from any responsibility for their mistakes in this critical matter.

Nevertheless, how did the list of 48,000 end up having so few Spanish-speaking felons? Members of the election commission, and representatives of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the president’s younger brother, all declare that they had nothing to do with it. Nicole Delara, press secretary for Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood – a Jeb Bush appointee – stated that the criteria for its compilation was decided by the interested parties: the state government and former criminal offenders. The Governor’s press secretary, Jill Bratina, emphasized that the administration of Governor Bush acted in accordance with the law.

Meanwhile, attorneys representing the interests of the disenfranchised Floridians noted that they were not granted access to the lists during its compilation when there was an opportunity to correct potential errors. But even if they had been allowed, mistakes would nevertheless have been made. The reason lies in the method used in the compiling names of ineligible former convicts for the list. If the name, surname and birth date of a former felon matched those of a registered voter, but the race or ethnicity did not match, the person was left off the ineligible voter list. The database of law-enforcement agencies in Florida only has five race/ethnicity categories: black, white, descendants of Asian countries, American Indians, and “unknown.” Therefore, if Spanish-speaking felons were registered to vote as "Hispanic," they successfully avoided being added to the disqualified voter list.

As the Florida Department of Law Enforcement representative Christina Peres-Hula indicated, the FBI database of felons has never included "Hispanic" as a category.

Problems with the list of disqualified voters also occurred in the 2000 election. Jeb Bush gave his word that similar disgraces, to put it mildly, will no longer be repeated. However, when a court forced the Election Commission to make the list accessible to the public two weeks ago, it turned out that the Governor made an empty promise and thousands of people’s right to vote was violated.

Like the above-mentioned case of Virginia students’ voting rights, students in Wisconsin and Minnesota met with a similar fate.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights write in their report about the practice of intimidating black voters in a number of the states such as Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Of course, this was not done directly but in the form of leaflets mailed home, suggesting that voters should think twice before going to the polling booth if they had unpaid traffic or parking tickets, or unpaid rent or alimony. In other words, they were hinting to people that if they showed up at the voting polls, they would have serious problems.

In some states – particularly Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida – have widely accepted the practice of opening the voting stations late and closing early in densely minority-populated districts.

The Lawyers’ Committee report points to other violations, but the examples discussed here are sufficient to draw conclusions. It’s difficult to disagree with Barbara Ernwine, executive director at the Lawyers’ Committee, who stated that the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, a special subdivision of the Department of Justice, bears direct responsibility for failing to eliminate the problem of the violations of the citizens’ constitutional rights.

What happened? Was the Voting Section unable or unwilling to deal with the problem?

The “Asian-American Access to Democracy” report prepared by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, serves as yet another confirmation of the widespread problems with the American electoral system. This document sheds lights on the conscious refusal of individual workers of the New York Board of Elections to assist the American citizens of Chinese and Korean origin in voting.

"Just as minorities during the presidential elections of 2000 in Florida faced discriminatory barriers in voting,” emphasized the report, “so too did U.S. citizens of Asian origin face the same discriminatory barriers during the election campaign of 2003."

It should be noted that the Voting Rights Acts requires electoral workers to assist American citizens who do not speak English well through the electoral process.

So what were the problems pointed out by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund?

The report revealed that election workers were rough and hostile and made humiliating remarks to Chinese and Korean voters, who were turning to the election workers with questions. The election workers demanded proof of identification from the Asian voters, without having the right to do so. Many of these naturalized citizens could not understand the polling booth machine instructions because the translated instructions were not accessible. If a voter’s name did not appear on a list of voters from previous elections, election workers simply refused to talk to the individual and advised them to go home.

What is the New York Board of Elections reaction to this report?

"The information in the report distorts the actual picture,” stated John Ravitz, head of the Board of Elections. “Even if violations occurred in isolated polling locations, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund should have contacted me or one of my deputies. We would have dealt with the problems."

Mr. Ravitz, you are quite right in that problems should have been brought to your attention immediately, although it is difficult to believe that you were unaware of your departmental affairs until the publication of "Asian-American Access to Democracy" report. However, hope remains that similar disgraces will not be repeated in the elections this November.