Hood & Harris - spot the difference
By ADAM C. SMITH, St. Petersburg Times Political Editor
Published October 10, 2004

One can't help but wonder if Glenda Hood is on the verge of darkening her hair and adding more eye shadow. The secretary of state seems to be doing all she can to become Florida's new Katherine Harris.

At a time when the world is watching Florida's elections system with deep suspicion, Hood has an uncanny knack for providing fodder to those who suspect Florida's election administrators of working as an arm of the GOP.

"Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process," Jimmy Carter opined recently in the Washington Post, singling out Hood.

The column drew dismissive rebukes from Hood and Jeb Bush, but fairly or not, the scent of partisan election administration in Florida has never quite wafted away since 2000. Conspiracy theories abound, and Hood has done little to reassure the skeptics.

Gov. Bush appointed the former Orlando mayor to the post, which became an appointed position in 2003. Given the bitter partisanship over the last election, probably no Bush appointment would have appeased distrusting Democrats. Still, a seasoned elections bureaucrat would have been viewed with less suspicion than a Republican politician who served as a Bush-Cheney elector in 2000.

In contrast to Harris, Hood said from the start she would make elections administration her top priority. And she has had legal grounds for her controversial interpretations this year. But even if it's all completely aboveboard, Democrats can't help but note the trend: Her interpretations always seem to favor Republicans.

* When Democrats questioned whether the Reform Party had complied with state law in nominating Ralph Nader for president, Hood's office stood by their nomination, widely viewed as damaging to John Kerry. After a judge ruled against Nader and the Reform Party, Hood stepped in to order Nader back on the ballot. Ultimately, the state Supreme Court - including Democrat-appointees - backed her up.

* When Florida completed its supposedly improved list of more than 40,000 voters to be removed from the rolls for old criminal convictions (the list in 2000 improperly purged thousands of people, disproportionately African-Americans who overwhelmingly vote Democrat), Hood insisted that the new list be off-limits to public review.

A judge ordered her to release the list, and the media promptly found it riddled with errors. Hood stood by it. Not until the number of problems grew too numerous to ignore and became a national story did she decide to scrap the felon voter list.

* The latest question tossed at the Division of Elections concerns voter registration forms. Armies of Democratic groups have been registering voters across Florida this year, and in some cases people didn't fully complete their registration forms. Many, for instance, swore with their signatures that they were citizens but failed to check a box saying the same thing.

Hood's office decreed that registrations were invalid unless every item was properly checked. Some elections supervisors sought to help third-party groups correct the mistakes, but Hood's office ruled that they are not public records and should not be released to third-party groups to facilitate corrections. These were strict but defensible decisions, even if they have fueled growing mistrust over Hood's objectivity.

* Hood has not always appeared so determined to strictly follow the letter of the law, however. In July a Republican state Senate candidate, Michael Fletcher of Bonita Springs, withdrew his candidacy after revelations that his required paperwork included a forged signature. The deadline for candidates to qualify for the race had passed, but Hood backed a Republican plan to hold a special election to ensure a Republican challenger to Democratic state Sen. Dave Aronberg of West Palm Beach. The plan was shot down in court.

The New York Times, in a editorial headlined, "The Return of Katherine Harris," concluded last month that Hood "cannot be trusted to run an impartial election." Her office dismisses such skepticism.

"Secretary Hood's decisions are to ensure the integrity of the elections process and ensure a successful election. They have nothing to do with partisan politics," said Jenny Nash, her spokeswoman.

Which brings us to the heart of the increasingly partisan wrangling over Florida's elections system: Should the state err on the side of ensuring as many eligible voters as possible are able to vote, or should it ensure that as many ineligible voters as possible are removed from the list?

Either priority is imperfect, but which is worse? To deny some valid voters their voting rights? Or to allow some invalid voters to vote?

Democrats are crying foul over alleged voter disenfranchisement and suppression, often with little hard evidence. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into Orlando's last mayor's race included agents interviewing black voters. To some the law enforcement visits to African-American Democrats smacked of voter intimidation.

Republicans, meanwhile, are increasingly crying foul over alleged voter fraud. Mindy Tucker Fletcher, a top Republican communications adviser, was dispatched to Florida recently to focus on ballot and elections issues. In one of her first press releases she suggested, with no evidence, that a St. Petersburg voter registration group might be committing voter fraud because it was educating felons about how to apply to get their civil rights restored.

So here we stand barely three weeks before election day with an army of partisan lawyers from both sides poised to pounce. Three years after state leaders promised to make the Sunshine State the national model of election reform, lawsuits over the process are starting to look inevitable.

"The other side will stop at nothing to win the campaign. I'm not a black man with a conspiracy theory, I'm just telling you how these folks operate," said U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami, Kerry's Florida campaign manager. "(Republican leaders) will not stop until they feel they can win this campaign. That means on our side we cannot afford to go to sleep. We have to sleep in shifts."