6225: Fwd: Jackson guilty of 'Haiti crimes'? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radman <resist@best.com>


>Jackson guilty of 'Haiti crimes'?
>Miami election official insists he
>printed info in Creole for boat people
>---------------------------------------
>By Paul Sperry
>© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
>
>WASHINGTON -- Despite Rev. Jesse Jackson's charges that Haitian voters were
>"disenfranchised" in Miami-Dade County because of language barriers at polls,
>a local elections official says the county increased spending on translators
>and bilingual printing to aid the immigrants.
>Jackson on Monday decried what he calls a "scheme to disenfranchise Haitian
>survivors who could not get language support who speak Creole."
>
>But Miami-Dade's assistant supervisor of elections says he published sample
>ballots in Creole, the native language of Haiti, in local newspapers.
>
>The official, John Clouser, says he also assigned Creole-speaking
>interpreters at precincts in Haitian communities and posted signs in Creole
>at polling places.
>
>In addition, Clouser, a Democrat, says he printed voter information and
>instructions in Creole.
>
>"How do I know this? Because I'm paying for it, bubba. No, let me correct
>that -- you're paying for it. Taxpayers are paying for it," Clouser told
>WorldNetDaily.
>
>Jackson and other black leaders argue that allegedly hundreds of Haitian
>voters who wanted to vote for Al Gore couldn't because they weren't able to
>read the official ballot questions, which were printed only in English and
>Spanish.
>
>According to a complaint that the NAACP sent to the Justice Department,
>Haitians in Miami-Dade who weren't given questions in Creole were allegedly
>denied their civil rights.
>
>Jackson on Monday suggested that President-elect George W. Bush doesn't care
>about Haitian citizens.
>
>"You can't say to the Haitian boat people, 'Well, you can't read and write
>well, but tough, you should go to Yale, like I did,'" Jackson said. "That's
>not the spirit of democracy."
>
>But Jackson and the NAACP did not protest the county's lack of Creole ballots
>in the 1996 presidential election, or the elections before that.
>
>The vendor who contracts with Miami-Dade to print the voting booklets listing
>the questions says they've always been printed in English or English and
>Spanish, but never in Creole.
>
>"We've never done that," said Randy Stiles, a 12-year production manager at
>the Dallas plant that prints the booklets and punch-card ballots used by the
>county.
>
>The plant is owned by Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software Inc.
>