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Justice Dept. Threatens
Florida Counties for Election 2000 Theft

Federal Officials Expect $ettlements Before They Sue the Guilty

Miami Herald Misleads the Public Again on Behalf of Jeb Bush

By Jack Nichols

Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris wonder why Election 2000 won't just die already

Miami, Florida-Gubernatorial candidate Bob Kunst was receiving his second wind when he heard that the U.S. Justice Department had just announced plans to sue three Florida counties over voting irregularities during Election 2000.

Accusations include discriminatory treatment of minority voters, purging of voter rolls and failure to provide assistance to voters with limited English proficiency. Kunst, as recorded in GayToday, had called on Janet Reno to investigate the irregularities while she was still U.S. Attorney General.

Tuesday, Senator Edward Kennedy, who sits on the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee, criticized the slow arrival of the Justice Department's threatened suits:

"I question why these investigations have taken 18 months and why, with the primary season only a few months away, the Department of Justice has not mobilized a plan to make sure these voting rights abuses do not occur again."

Kunst had been on South Florida's Randy Rhodes Show (WJNO, 1290 AM) yesterday discussing the Stolen Election and his own anti-Bush protest on Monday, at the site of W's speech to the Cuban Right Wing.

He told GayToday:

"Randy Rhodes invited me to ask (Janet) Reno, who will be on her show tomorrow (Thursday) about her non-role in the Stolen Election. Janet did nothing about it while she was in office-nada- and she's said nothing about it since. The program starts at 3 P.M."

Kunst is particularly critical of The Miami Herald---which sided with the voter-manipulative Bush camp using statistical hocus pocus. The newspaper has never credited Kunst as the candidate emphasizing the Stolen Election most. Instead it has principally noted that he is a gay activist.

In the wake of the Justice Department's threatened suits, Kunst says he believes the Herald is now pushing what he calls a "big lie" about Janet Reno-namely by saying that she "often mentions the possible (voting) irregularities in (campaign) speeches."

"What a pile of Bushit, Yellow Journalism, and lies," Kunst fumes.

Only Kunst has regularly discussed the stolen election on the gubernatorial campaign trail and has confronted Janet Reno publicly on nine separate occasions asking why, when she was Attorney General, she hadn't investigated "the 20 points he'd brought forth making it worthy of such an effort and she's refused to touch the Stolen Election issue."

"It only validates in my mind," Kunst says, "that a vote for Reno is a vote for Jeb, and The Miami Herald wants both these opponents in the final electoral round and then they'll support Jeb. Point is, I'm doing the screaming and shlepping on this Stolen Election issue, the Herald ignores me and then gives credit to 'savvy' Reno, who is part of the 'cover up'."

When John Ashcroft visited Miami and spoke to the Cuban community, Kunst says it was then that he provided the Bush administration's Attorney General with his "20 points of contention."

A coalition of civil rights organizations including the NAACP brought the suits. By January 2001, the civil rights division of the Justice Department had received 11,000 complaints involving voting rights violations. But Kunst in unhappy, he said on the Randy Rhodes Show, "that the NAACP isn't after the conspirators, but only wants to stop some of the problems, which is more Bandaids on the cancer.

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
Florida's Plan: Deny Voting Rights to African-Americans

Second American Revolution says Activist Bob Kunst

Big Brother is Watching You

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Bob Kunst for Governor

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"Jeb says he didn't believe any voters were deprived of their right to vote. 'I know of no case where that actually happened,' he said."

The New York Times raised a concern Wednesday as to why the Justice Department has focused' on counties and cities rather than state-level agencies.

"In the state-level agencies," mused Kunst,"are Jeb's and George's helpful friends."

The Justice Department has been refusing to discuss which three Florida counties (along with two more in Missouri and Tennessee) are targeted for suits. Ralph Boyd, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division says:

"My hope, my aspiration and my expectation is that in each of those we'll reach an enforceable agreement prior to the filing of the lawsuit."

"They want the Stolen Election kept quiet," nods Bob Kunst assuringly.