Voter Registration Caging-Florida Style (aka watch out in November 2008!)

[Sancho]

If you control the election supervisors and registration, then you control the election!

http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/article498787.ece

"TAMPA — It had taken almost three weeks to track down Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson to hand him a subpoena for his testimony in a federal voting rights case brought by the NAACP. When Johnson finally sat for his deposition, he said he didn't know the answers to dozens of questions about procedures in his office.

---snip----

The NAACP suit challenges a law that disallows voter registrations when personal information on applications does not match existing driver's license and Social Security databases. Adherents say the law fights voter fraud. But according to the lawsuit, it tends to disenfranchise minority voters who have unusual or hyphenated names.

Filed in September in federal court in North Florida against Secretary of State Kurt Browning, the case is still pending.

Johnson was one of six county elections supervisors asked in depositions about procedures used to handle the voter registration "matching" law. When the NAACP attorneys asked which Hillsborough elections employees could best respond to questions about the registration process, Harris said Johnson "will speak to the issues."

------snip------

Johnson also gave testimony recently in a second, unrelated voting rights case.

His deposition answers prompted one side to call him to testify at trial. But there he gave different answers, prompting the lawyer who put him on the stand to attack his own witness' credibility.

The case was filed in federal court in South Florida in 2004 by several labor unions and minority voters, including Emma Yaiza Diaz.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

1. I'm glad NAACP is pushing this... this guy is awful:

He says in all seriousness:

When Johnson finally sat for his deposition, he said he didn't know the answers to dozens of questions about procedures in his office.

He was unable to describe details of the voter registration process and unwilling to respond to routine questions, including the degrees he held and where he lived. Johnson complained that an NAACP lawyer treated him with condescension, and he briefly donned a football helmet before beginning the second day of testimony.

"I don't like these (questions)," Johnson told the NAACP attorney at one point. "You have no idea. That language is really bothersome to me, really is offensive, I'll be honest with you."

http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/article498787.ece

[tbyg52]

2. Thank you to NAACP!

Message to Johnson: Hey guy, you are a *public* *servant* - go look it up if you don't get it.

[bleever]

3. If you can't take the heat,

then resign to spend more time disenfranchising your own family.

[EFerrari]

4. They've set these operations up all over the country.

This is ground zero for 2008.