Today, Jeb Bush tried again to rewrite history, pretending flawed voter purges under his watch as Florida governor did not disproportionately disenfranchise African Americans.
From earlier today in Iowa:
REPORTER: Do you think that African-Americans were disproportionately affected by the felon voter purge in Florida in 2000 and 2004?
BUSH: Um, I don’t think so, I don’t think there was any—no. I mean if you’re saying that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement targeted African-Americans? No.
Unfortunately for Jeb Bush, Floridians most certainly have not forgotten the blatant and unforgivable disenfranchisement of minority voters in 2000, and neither have the experts at the United States Commission on Civil Rights:
“Florida’s overzealous efforts to purge voters from the rolls, conducted under the guise of an anti-fraud campaign, resulted in the inexcusable and patently unjust removal of disproportionate numbers of African American voters from Florida’s voter registration rolls for the November 2000 election.“
Florida Democratic Party Chair Allison Tant said, “While it’s certainly no surprise that Jeb Bush wants to run and hide from his record of implementing overzealous voter purges, Floridians have not forgotten. The fact is that Jeb Bush supports harsh restrictive voter ID laws that make it harder for women, African Americans, Latinos and young people to vote, and he has a history of pushing for new barriers to the ballot box. Florida Democrats — and all Democrats — believe that democracy works best when every eligible American has the right to vote, and while we are working to make voting easier, Republicans like Jeb Bush are trying to make it harder.”