GREG PALAST:
Washington, the marine band plays 'Hail to the
Chief' for George W Bush, 43rd President of the
United States. But in Florida, some are singing
'Hail to the Thief'.
COUNTRY SONG:
After hundreds of lies
Fake alibis
PALAST:
We are coming into Tallahassee. We want to
know whether George W Bush won the election
or did brother Jeb steal it for him? Our
investigation suggest the answer lies in this
shuttered building and in a very expensive
contract between Governor Jeb's division of
elections and a private company named DBT,
which accidentally wiped off the voter rolls
thousands of Democratic voters. 18th floor
division of elections, we have come to ask Mr
Clayton Roberts, the director, a few questions.
Roberts agreed to talk, but became a bit
uncomfortable when he learned that we had
obtained the secret DBT contract, and asked
him if he knew what DBT were up to.
CLAYTON ROBERTS:
Florida Director of Elections
No, I didn't ask DBT. They do what we
contract them to do. We have a statute that
says we have to have a private company to do
this. We put it out for bid, we put it out for
bid, and I think I'm done with this interview.
PALAST:
Let me just show you the contract if I could
Mr Roberts. It says here in the contract that
the verification is supposed to be done by
DBT. That you paid them $4 million. It could
look to others don't you think that you paid $4
million to purchase this election for the
Republican party. 95% wrong on the felon list.
Mr Roberts, could you answer the question
regarding the contract... Instead, Mr Roberts
called out State troopers. It's interesting here?
STATE TROOPER:
Oh, man! Never a dull moment.
PALAST:
I don't know why he had to call the police. We
hadn't gotten to our difficult questions yet!
The difficult questions are:
Did Governor Jeb Bush, his Secretary of State
Katherine Harris, and her Director of Elections,
Clayton Roberts, know they had wrongly
barred 22,000 black, Democrat voters before
the elections? After the elections did they use
their powers to prevent the count of 20,000
votes for the Democrats? The Democrats say
the answers to both questions are yes.
COMMISSIONER:
In any other country in the world, if this had
occurred, there probably would have been riots
or military troops throughout the streets.
PARTY CHAIRMAN:
Al Gore won the election. He won the popular
vote and he won the vote in Florida. I think
that that's pretty clear.
VOTER:
It wasn't done fairly. They shouldn't allow you
to contest an election then give you no way
to contest it.
LEGISLATOR:
Jeb Bush promised his brother he was going to
deliver Florida. I believe the Republicans
strategy was at all costs we deliver Florida.
CAMPAIGNER:
Were people taken out of polls and stopped
from voting? Yes, I think that was not right. I
smell a rat!
PALAST:
This is Database Technologies. This is the
company that the state of Florida hired to
remove the names of people who committed
serious crimes from the voter lists. I have
obtained a document marked "confidential and
trade secret". It says the company was paid
millions of dollars to make telephone calls to
verify they got the right names - but they
didn't. There is nothing in the state of Florida
files that says they made these telephone
calls. So the question remains, why did the
Republican leaders of this state pay millions for
a list that stopped thousands of innocent
Democrats from voting? The first list from DBT
included 8,000 names from Texas supplied by
George Bush's state officials. They said they
were all felons, serious criminals barred from
voting. As it turns out, almost none were.
Local officials raised a ruckus and DBT issued a
new list naming 58,000 felons. But the one
county which went through the whole
expensive process of checking the new list
name by name found it was still 95% wrong.
Reverend Willie Whiting was one of those
removed from voter roles after DBT wrongly
labelled him a serious criminal.
REVEREND WILLIE WHITING:
I have never spent a night in jail.
PALAST:
Were you ever busted?
WHITING:
No. I had a speeding ticket probably 25-30
years ago, I guess, but that's about it.
PALAST:
Do you think you should be allowed to vote if
you had a speeding ticket?
WHITING:
Absolutely.
PALAST:
The Florida legislature likes to see young
prisoners paraded in front of the capital in old
cavalry uniforms.
PRISON GUARD:
Me and superman had a fight
PRISONERS:
Me and superman had a fight
PRISON GUARD:
I hit him in the head with some Kryptonite
PRISONERS:
I hit him in the head with some Kryptonite
PALAST:
More often than not in America, the prisoner's
colour is black. Because of the way DBT
generated the list, every genuine black felon in
the United States could knock out every black
voter in Florida with the same surname and
similar date of birth. That's why the NAACP is
suing Florida for violating voters' civil rights.
LARRY OTTINGER:
Lawyer for NAACP
Governor Bush, the Secretary of State
Katherine Harris, Clayton Roberts, the head of
elections, all knew or should have known in
advance that certain election policies and
practices would disproportionately impact
low-income areas, and in particular black
citizens and other minority citizens, and that
this would disproportionately impact
Democratic voters, based on historical voting
trends.
AL GORE:
Thank you, Florida!
PALAST:
Altogether, it looks like this cost the
Democrats about 22,000 votes in Florida,
which George Bush won by only 537 votes.
The US civil rights commission is also on the
trail. They called in Bush, Harris and Roberts.
Bush did not convince his critics.
UNNAMED MAN:
You screwed up this state. You sealed the
ballot.
PALAST:
Commissioner Edley and his colleagues will be
in Miami tomorrow to hear from voters wrongly
disqualified.
DR CHRISTOPHER EDLEY:
US Civil Rights Commissioner
If you are going to do it, by all means as a
matter of due process and fairness, it's got to
be done with excruciating care. It's a
democracy, the vote counts. There is a lot of
public concern that the contractor selected is
a firm that seems to have ties to the
Republican party.
PALAST:
They will be putting our evidence to Database
Technologies. Their vice-president told us that
"manual verification by telephone calls" does
not mean ringing people up to check they have
got the right person. So were they paid to
produce a list which they knew would name
thousands of innocent black people? In fact
DBT told Newsnight that Clayton Roberts and
the State of Florida:
"... wanted there to be more names than were
actually verified as being a convicted felon."
So did they use their powers to prevent the
count of 20,000 votes for the Democrats? You
don't have to be black. In Palm Beach,
America's privileged nurse their tans and their
anger.
UNNAMED WOMAN:
I thought I voted for Al Gore but unfortunately
I voted for Pat Buchanan, and I wasn't happy
about that, because I am a Jewish voter and
he would have been the last person in the
world I would have voted for.
PALAST:
Whacky butterfly ballots caused thousands in
this Democrat town to accidentally mess up
and they were refused replacement ballots
promised them by state law.
JOANNE CARBONE:
From the time the elections started until that
awful decision that the Supreme Court made, I
came across hundreds of people who made a
mistake and I saw over 13,000 complaints filed
by people who live in Palm Beach county.
PALAST:
In all, Palm Beach voting machines misread
27,000 ballots. Jeb Bush's Secretary of State,
Katharine Harris, stopped them counting these
votes by hand. She did the same to Gadstone,
one of Florida's blackest, poorest and most
Democrat counties, where machines failed to
count one in eight ballots. Again Harris stopped
the hand count. This alone cost Gore another
700 votes, in an election in which Harris
declared George Bush winner by only 537
votes.
KATHARINE HARRIS:
In accordance with the laws of the State of
Florida, I hereby declare Governor George W
Bush the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes
for the President of the United States.
PALAST:
Harris was a busy woman. In charge of
Florida's vote count and co-chair of Bush's
presidential campaign.
LOIS FRANKEL:
Had she really been unbiased? Wouldn't the
appropriate actions for her to be to say - let's
really get to the bottom of this election and
let's make sure every vote is counted.
PALAST:
Lois Frankel represents Palm Beach, in the
State legislature where she leads the
Democratic opposition.
FRANKEL:
She wanted George Bush to win. She
interpreted every rule, every law in a way to
help George Bush.
PALAST:
We are driving down to Miami to witness an
American ritual. In Britain, you count the
votes, then announce the winner. In Florida
they declare the winner first and here we are,
still counting the votes.
WOMAN'S VOICE:
She is showing the ballot in front of the light.
They can see the light through where the
chads have been punched through. Then she
holds it in front because sometimes you can
see things in different light. They have a whole
column.
PALAST:
Normally these are machine-read, right?
UNNAMED WOMAN:
Right.
PALAST:
They are carefully going through the 179,855
uncounted ballots that Harris did not want
tallied. They'll know the winner next month.
Sources tell Newsnight that Gore's ahead by
20,000 votes. The Biltmore, grandest hotel in
Miami. Democrats are upstairs eating with their
richest friends charging $5,000 a plate. Let's
see if we can get in. Not far away from the
millionaires on the balcony a voter had taken
hostages at gun point protesting against the
election fraud. But here it is back to
champagne politics as usual. One Democrat
whispered they would have done the same as
Katharine Harris if they had the chance. But
another, party chairman, Bob Poe remains
bitter about this.
BOB POE:
Chairman, Florida Democrats
Jeb Bush, Katharine Harris, Clay Roberts did
everything they could to stop every legitimate
count of the vote. And that's what did us in.
PALAST:
All fingers point to the Jeb Bush crew in
Tallahassee. Investigators want to
breakthrough the iron shutters.
EDLEY:
I have to say that thus far we have been
disappointed by the explanations, or perhaps I
should say the lack of explanation provided by
the state officials. When we spoke with the
Governor and the Secretary of State and even
with the Director of the Bureau of Elections
underneath the Secretary of State, they were
pointing fingers at everybody else, saying "look
it wasn't our responsibility", they were in
charge, which is a disheartening disquieting
thing for us to hear - who should be held
accountable for what clearly was a system
that broke down.
PALAST:
State officials point the finger at the counties
and say it is their responsibility to check if the
names on the list are real felons before
disqualifying them. Clayton Roberts says his
job is just to pass on the list. Roberts now
admits he didn't bother to check with DBT, if
innocent people were on it.
ROBERTS:
Please turn off that camera.
PALAST:
Off camera he said:
We did not call and say did you check the list
again... the whole tenor of this is like OK you
screwed up you didn't check with DBT and if
you want to hang this on me that's fine. It is
certainly fine for George W Bush. Even if
investigators conclude that Jeb Bush and the
Republicans conspired to steal this election,
the man in that house for the next four years
will be George W Bush.
This show will air tomorrow night - Thursday (see schedule on front page)