Politics

Tough Questions For Harris

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 12, 2001 / 9:47 AM EST / CBS

A civil rights panel investigating alleged voting irregularities in Florida sought answers Friday from Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the woman Democrats charge delivered the White House to George W. Bush.

Harris faced an hour of intense questioning from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

CBS News Correspondent Bobbi Harley reports Harris appeared to be someone either removed from or ignorant of polling procedures, deferring again and again to her subordinate.

She defended the way her office prepared voters in the state, and blamed any blamed any shortcomings on a lack of resources.

"With additional funding, I believe we could do ever so much more in terms of voter education and other issues," Harris said. "But I believe within our budget constraints and limited resources, I have confidence that our division of elections has done a very good job."

The commission's chairwoman, Mary Berry, disagreed. "I thought Katherine Harris' role was laughable," Berry said. "I thought it was laughable, laughable. Ha ha ha."

But Berry said that the person ultimately responsible for the state's election problems is the governor, Jeb Bush.

Bush, the brother of the president-elect, is the "glue that holds all these things together," said Berry. "The (state) constitution gives the overall authority for elections, like everything else, to the governor."

The governor, who testified on Thursday, said he was limited in his powers over the election and that state law made Harris and the 67 county election supervisors responsible for ensuring election are properly held.

He pointed to an elections task force he created to address voting problems and make recommendations to the state Legislature. The elections panel held its first meeting Monday.

"We're going to change this, I hope, with the elections task force recognizing that some counties handled this in a way that has been dramatically different than others," Bush said.

Last year Bush vetoed a $100,000 voter-education measure that might have helped avoid some of the problems in Florida's 2000 election now being examined by the federal panel, a county elections supervisor said Friday.

On its second and final day of hearings, the panel sought to discover if some Floridians were kept from exercising their right to vote. The panel is investigating hundreds of complaints, most made by African Americans, of downright discrimination at polling places.

Rev. Willie Whiting Jr. says he was mistakenly identified as a convicted felon by election officials and dropped from the voter rolls.

"Slingshotted back to slavery," said Whiting. "That's how I felt."

While he and the two others who testified were eventually allowed to vote, they claim they are victims of an institutional bias — its roots in past and recent state politics.

Last year, Tallahassee saw its biggest protest ever after Gov. Jeb Bush eiminated affirmative action policies.

African Americans promised a payback at the polls. They delivered in record numbers, but on Election Day, thousands of their votes weren't counted.

"All of this is highly charged and to some extent linked together, and linked around the issue of race and the legitimacy of the outcome of this election," said Lance DeHaven Smith of the Florida Institute of Government. "I don't think this is going to go away."

Berry said many of the problems surrounding the election, which resulted in a five-week wrangle, could have been avoided had state officials prepared beforehand.

Berry was surprised that Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford, a member of the state canvassing board, testified that he hadn't heard of any complaints in the week following the disputed election results.

And Phyllis Hampton, general counsel for the Florida Elections Commission, said she hadn't received any complaints.

"The public officials in the state apparently don't read the papers, they don't watch television, they don't know anything about what's going on in the state," Berry said.

The results of the Nov. 7 election were contested for more than a month until George W. Bush finally captured Florida's 25 electoral votes, and thus the White House.

The commission is also looking at possible election irregularities in other states, but says it has found nothing so far like what it's seen in Florida.

Federal Election Commission records indicate chairwoman Berry has donated to a number of Democrats in the past two years. She gave $1,000 to New York Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton last year and $525 to Vice President Al Gore in 1999 and 2000, and made several donations to other candidates.