Black Voters Allege Irregularities in Florida

Nov. 30 -- This presidential election was the first in which Chonchitia Mitchell was eligible to vote.

The 22-year-old Jacksonville, Fla., native, who is black, was looking forward to it: She was, she says, particularly concerned about the issue of Social Security.

But when Mitchell, the mother of two young children, showed up at a local church where she thought she was supposed to vote, she says the elections clerk told her she wasn’t on the list of registered voters.

Then, Mitchell says, the woman, who was white, told her to come back the next day. By then, of course, polls would have been closed.

“I didn’t know what to do and it upset me,” says Mitchell. “She asked me who was influencing me to vote. And I was like, ‘No, I am a grown woman and it is my right to vote.’”

Mitchell did not vote that day.

Complaints Across Florida

While the battle over chad, dimpled or otherwise, continues on across Florida, another argument is gaining steam: Black and Latino voters and civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, are questioning whether minority voters were disproportionately disenfranchised.

Like Mitchell, hundreds of voters have claimed they were unfairly turned away from voting on Election Day or to have become so confused by the ballot that they voted incorrectly. In Duval County, where Mitchell lives, 27,000 ballots, or nearly 10 percent — multiples higher than the state average — were not counted because the voters did not vote properly. Of those, 42 percent came from the county’s four predominantly black voting precincts.

Four days after the election, the NAACP held hearings and has since compiled 300 pages of testimony that include accusations of voter intimidation, people being turned away at the polls, polling sites being closed without notice and legitimateinterpreters barred from helping non-English speaking voters, said John C. White, a spokesman for the civil rights group.