Duval symbolizes black voters' anger
Frustration builds in the county that had the most spoiled ballots during the 2000 election.
By ADAM C. SMITH, St. Petersburg Times Political Editor
Published October 8, 2004

JACKSONVILLE - This Navy town bills itself the "Bold New City of the South," and the shiny skyscrapers, riverside cafes and stadium preparing to host the 2005 Super Bowl attest to the claim.

But the scene at the Duval elections office this week looked more 1964 than 2004:

Nearly a dozen African-American civil rights leaders stood at a counter, demanding the white elections boss help them ensure that as many of their constituents as possible can vote.

Tightening his lips, the voting official curtly replied that they were out of luck. No, he could not try to correct voter registration forms that were turned in incomplete. No, he would not consider opening early voting offices convenient for African-American neighborhoods.

"So you take the position that you're not going to do anything we want?" the Rev. Levy Wilcox asked, incredulous, at the end of a 10-minute brushoff.

"That is correct," responded assistant elections supervisor Dick Carlberg, standing a few feet from a "Partners in Democracy" banner.

* * *

Palm Beach County, with its butterfly ballot, took the main spotlight in Florida's 2000 election debacle, but this northeast Florida community was ground zero for discarded black votes.

No county produced more spoiled ballots than Duval - nearly 27,000 - and they were concentrated in African-American neighborhoods. An estimated one in five black votes was tossed out in Duval, three times the rate of white votes.

"People still talk about what happened in 2000 all the time. That's going to be an ongoing conversation for a long time," 53-year-old transportation worker Joe Trottie said over lunch at Denmark's restaurant in a gritty neighborhood north of downtown.

"We fought hard, especially my generation, to make sure we have the rights we're supposed to have today, and in 2000 we basically lost them."

At Denmark's, gospel music plays and signs warn, "To be served, your pants must be above your buttocks." African-American patrons sport ties, office dresses and T-shirts. When they discuss the coming election, without fail they raise the disqualified votes of four years ago.

"I don't think so, but people I know actually think the election's fixed. They see that elections (supervisor) still in power, and don't trust the system," said Cornelius Johnson, a painter. "But I still think it's going to be another record turnout in this community. People are talking about the election, and I have friends who didn't vote in 2000 who will this year."

More than 300 miles south, maps on the wall of John Kerry's Florida campaign headquarters in Fort Lauderdale include bold circles around predictable political regions: the Democratic bastions of southeast Florida and swing voter battlegrounds of Tampa Bay and Orlando. Less predictable are the circles around Duval County. This, after all, is a conservative area where Bush won nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2000.

This Republican stronghold is a crucial piece of the Kerry-Edwards Florida strategy. The campaign is paying for a steady run of TV ads and has planted at least three paid staffers in Duval.

Al Gore put no paid staffers in the area, bought limited advertising, and visited Jacksonville once early in 2000. Kerry has visited twice and John Edwards once.

The goals are modest.

"If Kerry gets 42 percent of the vote in Duval, he wins Florida," predicted Mike Langton, chairman of Gore's northeast Florida campaign.

Gore won 41 percent of the Duval vote thanks to heavy turnout among African-Americans, who backed Gore nine to one.

Mike Hightower, Republican chairman for Duval County, brushes off the Democratic optimism, noting 40,000 new Republican voters since 2000.

"It doesn't matter what resources they put on the ground. This is a pro-business, conservative, family values community," he said. "We will get our 60 percent."

Many Democrats believe Gore would be in the White House but for the massive voting problems in Duval. Voters complained of longtime polling places being moved, of their names missing from voting rolls and phone lines jammed at elections offices amid all the questions arising Election Day.

The biggest problem, though, was the ballot. Elections Supervisor John Stafford printed the lengthy list of mostly obscure presidential candidates on two pages. Many, including first-time African-American voters mobilized by church and union groups, cast a vote on the first page and another on the second. A ballot with two presidential votes is invalid and not eligible for recount examination.

In Duval, about 22,000 presidential ballots were uncounted because of double votes and 5,000 because no presidential vote was recorded. Most spoiled ballots came from predominantly African-American precincts that Gore won with at least 80 percent.

Some still call it a concerted effort to disenfranchise Democratic voters, but a bipartisan Jacksonville commission concluded the problems stemmed from mismanagement and were unintentional.

Duval now has optical scan machines, which prevent double voting. Some strategists think that change will add thousands of votes to the Democratic column.

* * *

Duval's election system remains a source of anxiety and motivation for many Democrats.

"We've made record-breaking registration numbers in a city that didn't allow 27,000 people to vote!" Bruce Lane, Jacksonville director of America Coming Together, boomed to canvassers in a pep talk before sending them out to mobilize minority voters.

ACT is targeting minorities who rarely participate in elections, and along with other Democratic groups has flooded strained elections offices with thousands of registrations to process.

"Duval really does stand out as a problem area," said Phil Compton, an organizer with the Florida Consumer Action Network, which has been running registration programs throughout the state. "They've been very hostile to the whole notion of outreach in the community, of registering voters where they live."

Last month, FCAN and other groups filed a formal complaint with the state Division of Elections about Duval's elections office potentially failing to process registrations in time for the Oct. 4 deadline. The complaint noted that the leader of the office complained of "too much" voter registration in Jacksonville.

Hightower, the Republican chairman, dismissed the critics as partisans with agendas. "The supervisor of elections is better prepared than ever before," he said, noting that most complaints started just as the election loomed. "I have no patience for people who come in at the last minute and Monday morning quarterback."

The elected supervisor, Stafford, has had health problems, including a heart attack, and has not been in the office for much of the year. His top deputy, Carlberg, has generated skepticism.

Jacksonville activists say they worry about how many registration forms will be discarded because of missing information and question how aggressively elections officials have tried to correct them. Thousands have yet to be processed, but elections officials say they know of about 1,500 registrations that are invalid because of missing information.

Then there's early voting. Elections offices must open 15 days before Nov. 2 to make voting more convenient. Early voting, which can be done at elections offices and designated city halls and libraries, is a crucial part of get out the vote efforts.

Miami-Dade has 20 early voting sites, Hillsborough 11, Pinellas nine, Orange nine. Jacksonville, which covers most of Duval County, in land area is the largest city in the contiguous United States. It will have a single early voting site.

It's in downtown Jacksonville, with scarce parking and nearby construction projects that complicate access. It's miles from black neighborhoods.

"I went to early vote at the supervisor of elections office in August, and there was a line out the door. By the time I got to the front to vote the line had dissipated because a lot of people got frustrated and left," said Melanie Hopkins, an ACT organizer.

On Wednesday, the same day the local Florida Times-Union newspaper editorialized that people should feel no obligation to vote, a group of black ministers and representatives of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference visited Duval's elections office. Reporters in tow, they asked for at least four more early voting sites.

Carlberg said that he lacked adequately trained personnel and that it's too late to consider.

"I never thought about (adding early voting sites) at all," Carlberg said, stressing that he was complying with state law.

"I wouldn't say it's incompetent, I would say it's almost criminal for us to deny our citizens the opportunity to vote early, especially after the fiasco we had in 2000," the Rev. Wilcox said.

"We won't allow 2000 to happen again."