Reply #5: More about voters being deprived of rights...who said.

[madfloridian]

"I spoke to African-Americans who said the Florida election debacle, with the reports of election-night police roadblocks in black neighborhoods, the wholesale removal of African-Americans from the voting rolls, and poll workers who turned black voters away brought back all too recent memories of the Jim Crow South. The whole experience had convinced them that the political system was hopelessly fixed against their interests. For a community already suspicious of our government institutions, this was a terrible blow -- not just for them but for democracy. "People already didn't believe their votes counted," I heard. "Now they know they don't count."

This feeling of disenfranchisement wasn't limited to African-Americans or to the 2000 presidential vote. It came, more globally, from living in a society where ordinary people's problems and interests didn't seem to matter to their government. As the Bush administration passed measure after measure for the benefit of super-wealthy individuals and big corporations -- the tax-cut bill, the Medicare prescription-drug act, and a whole slew of pro-industry environmental measures -- it became increasingly clear that its true constituents were the people who paid for its campaigns.

And the Democrats -- where were the Democrats? "