to intimidate, threaten or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or not to vote as that person may choose.
The state of Florida also restricts the presence of law enforcement officers at polling places. Specifically, unless he or she enters the polling place to cast a ballot, no law enforcement officer may enter a polling place without the permission of the clerk or a majority of the inspectors. The clerk or inspectors are required to make an affidavit for the arrest of any law enforcement officer who does not comply with the law. Sheriffs also have a duty under Florida election law to “exercise strict vigilance in the detection of any violations of the election laws and in apprehending the violators.”
Charles Hall, director of the Florida Highway Patrol, testified at the Commission’s Tallahassee hearing. He explained that the history of increased checkpoints by the FHP began in the early 1980s, when the vehicle inspection laws were repealed. The FHP determined that the most effective way to inspect a large number of vehicles was through driver’s license/faulty vehicle equipment checkpoints. He also noted that he had no conversations with the office of the governor, the office of the attorney general, or the office of the secretary of state in preparation for the 2000 presidential election.
Colonel Hall admitted that on November 7, 2000, the FHP established a checkpoint on Oak Ridge Road in Southern Leon County between the hours of 10.00 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. The demographic makeup of the precincts surrounding the Oak Ridge Road checkpoint are as follows: (1) Precinct 107 is 82 percent Caucasian and 13 percent African American; (2) Precinct 109 is 37 percent Caucasian and 57 percent African American; and (3) Precinct 110 is 70 percent Caucasian and 24 percent African American. Approximately 150 vehicles were stopped as a result of the Oak Ridge Road checkpoint that day. According to FHP records, of the 16 citizens who received notices of faulty equipment, six (37 percent) were people of color.
On the afternoon of Election Day, the FHP received notice of a complaint to the attorney general’s office that FHP troopers had hindered people of color from arriving at polling places due to the Oak Ridge Road checkpoint. Colonel Hall indicated that “the FHP was the first statewide law enforcement agency in the county to voluntarily begin collecting data concerning traffic stops in response to the racial profiling issue.” The racial breakdown of the 150 drivers stopped at that checkpoint on Election Day, however, is not available.
As a result of its investigation, the FHP found that some policy violations had occurred, but concluded that no citizen was unreasonably delayed or prohibited from voting as a result of the Oak Ridge Road checkpoint. The policy violations cited by FHP’s investigators included the fact that the checkpoint site was not on the monthly preapproved list and the media notification policy was not followed. The investigators recommended “counseling” for the sergeant in charge of the checkpoint and the district commander in charge of the media notification.
Colonel Hall stated the FHP was “very concerned about the perception people may have about what the patrol did that day.” The Commission heard testimony from voters in Tallahassee regarding their reaction to the FHP’s actions on Election Day. Roberta Tucker, an African American woman and a longtime resident of Tallahassee, was driving along Oak Ridge Road on her way to vote. Before Ms. Tucker could reach her polling place, she was stopped at an FHP vehicle checkpoint conducted by approximately five white troopers. According to Ms. Tucker, the checkpoint was located at the only main road leading to her assigned polling place. One of the troopers approached Ms. Tucker’s car, asked for her driver’s license, and after looking at it, returned it to her and allowed her to proceed. Ms. Tucker considered the trooper’s actions to be “suspicious” because “nothing was checked, my lights, signals, or anything that [the state patrol] usually check.” She also recalled being “curious” about the checkpoint because she had never seen a checkpoint at this location. Ms. Tucker added that she felt “intimidated” because “it was an Election Day and it was a big election and there were only white officers there and like I said, they didn’t ask me for anything else, so I was suspicious at that.”
In response to the allegations of voter intimidation surrounding this checkpoint, Colonel Hall stated that “the checkpoint was properly conducted, and it was not anywhere near a polling facility, and I don’t see how that could affect anybody’s ability to vote.” He added that he was “not really” surprised to learn that a trooper may have asked for a driver’s license and not registration. He explained that such an action could occur if vehicles had begun to back up. Moreover, Colonel Hall stated he was “disappointed” that the FHP could not speak with Ms. Tucker because she refused to cooperate with their investigation. Ms. Tucker testified, however, that she reported the incident to her local NAACP and never returned the FHP’s calls because “I felt it was a civil rights issue… I felt like it was sort of discriminatory.”
[…]
A wide variety of concerns have been raised regarding the use and effectiveness of Florida’s voting system controls during the 2000 presidential election. Many Floridians were denied their opportunity to vote, in what proved to be a historic general election because of the narrow vote margin separating the candidates. Some voters were turned away from their designated polling places because their names did not appear on the lists of registered voters. Other voters discovered that their precincts were no longer being used or had moved to another location, without notice from the supervisor of elections office. In other instances, voters who had been standing in line to vote at their precincts prior to closing, were told that they could not vote because the poll was closed. In addition, thousands of voters who had registered at motor vehicle licensing offices were not on the rolls when they came to vote. The Commission also heard from several voters who saw Florida Highway Patrol troopers in and around polling places, while other troopers conducted an unauthorized vehicle checkpoint within a few miles of a polling place in a predominantly African American neighborhood.
The Commission’s investigation demonstrated an urgent need for attention to this issue by Florida’s state and local officials, particularly as it relates to the implementation of statewide election reforms. Without some effective redress, the pervasive problems that surfaced in the 2000 election will be repeated.
DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN
The most believable conspiracy theory as to
The evidence? The most interesting “proof ” from proponents of the Sarko-dunnit theory is the curious timing of a Tweet. Before the media broke the story of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, Jonathan Pinet, a youth activist in Sarkozy’s UMP party tweeted “a friend in the US just told me that #DSK was arrested by the police in a NYC hotel one hour ago”. The tweet was posted at 4.59 p.m. New York time, just ten minutes after Mr Strauss-Kahn was seized, raising questions on how Pinet had obtained the information so fast. And why he tweeted “hotel” when DSK was arrested on an Air France jet. Pinet’s tweet was almost immediately retweeted by Arnaud Dassier, a journalist known to be a DSK-loather, and who had published an infamous anti-DSK article featuring the IMF chief in a Porsche with his wife—not great publicity for a socialist man of the people. The first website to mention the news was 24heuresactu.com, a conservative operation. Meanwhile
