Databases, Felons, and Voting: Errors and Bias in the Florida Felons Exclusion List in the 2000 Presidential Elections
This paper examines the production and use of the exclusion lists by the state, its private sector contractor, Database Technologies (DBT), and Florida’s 67 counties between 1998 and the 2000 elections. It places the exclusion lists in the context of the social and political structure of the United States and the state of Florida, and interprets its significance within that context. I provide a detailed accounting of the contents of the lists, identify ways in which the lists reveal weaknesses in Florida’s voter list maintenance procedures up to 2000, and identify the types of errors made and biases in the production and use of the lists. The three major findings of the analysis are: a) the 2000 felons’ exclusion list had a considerable number of errors in it, probably more than 25% of the names on the list were on there in error; b) these errors were racially biased, such that more African-American registered voters were on the list in error than either Whites or Latinos; and c) that the decentralized process by which the felons’ list was used to purge the voter rolls resulted in a sometimes judicious but sometimes partisan purging process – Democratic county supervisors were less likely to use the felons’ list than Republican ones, but even the latter found considerable, biased errors in the list.
Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution-Making, 1787-1865
During the period of the making of the constitution for the federal government and the states, developed considerable discussion and action concerning the suffrage for Negroes. It is interesting to observe that when our democracy was writing its beliefs into law there was either direct opposition to or neglect of a definition of the voting status of Negro citizens. Many Negroes had exercised suffrage in the colonial period. They had served as soldiers in the colonial wars and in the war of the American Revolution. They had been property owners and tax payers, heads of households, and members of the churches, but they were kept from the ballot boxes even when most of the constitutions were made. With so little definition of the meaning of the term "citizen" in the thinking of the makers of the constitutions, it was inevitable that misunderstandings should arise throughout this period between the states and their citizens and the federal government and the states. The Federal Convention, the state conventions, the United States Congress, and the state legislatures all followed the course of inactivity, neglect and indifference in reference to their citizens of color and their status as voters. It is of value to note, however, the aggressive attitude of Negroes and the friends
Urban Identities and Catastrophe: Izmir and Salonica at the End of the Ottoman Empire*
Two huge fires dramatically influenced the urban development of Salonica and Izmir, in 1917 and in 1922, respectively. These catastrophes occurred after the Ottoman Empire fell, and Salonica and Izmir had shifted into new national contexts. The fires mainly destroyed the districts that were transformed during the late‐Ottoman period. These districts became the cosmopolitan façades of modern Izmir and Salonica. The post‐fires' tabula rasa provided an opportunity for Greek and Turkish politicians and European planners to change the urban identity of both cities. Moreover, the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 transformed their multicultural societies also. Reconstruction plans had been thought to de‐Ottomanize and remove the previous idea of the towns and their multiplicity, interpreting new cultural and nationalist feeling. Here, I emphasize how modernity was interpreted before and after the fires, and point out contradictions between ideological aspects of planning and how the first urban districts were built during the 1920s.