Voter Suppression

I don't know what to make of this Bob Herbert New York Times column, which is circulating all over the left-wing web. Good for Herbert for not necessarily jumping to any conclusions while pointing out the obvious---Jeb Bush appears to be using literal police-state tactics to suppress the vote among a strongly pro-Kerry constituency. Unlike comparative Vietnam records, this is a story that really does matter in the 2004 election; but I suspect it's not going to get much play as long as the lib-ruhl media are more concerned about how bad John Kerry's Vietnam war wounds were (hint: worse than George Bush's).

There are three salient facts worth pointing out here: 1) Thousands of African-American voters in Florida were illegitimately purged from the voter rolls in 2000, with at least the indirect knowledge, if not necessarily direct complicity, of the Jeb Bush administrationl; 2) The same thing took place during the mid-term elections of 2002; 3) In 2004, the Jeb Bush administration has pursued an aggressive policy of purging voter rolls, either (we hope) mistakenly, or else deliberately rescinding the registration of legitimate eligible voters. So if Herbert's reporting is correct, we're merely witnessing an intensification of a policy that's been in place since 2000. Prove me wrong, lib-ruhl media; give this some attention.