http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Election-Lawsuit.html
Quietly Florida Admits 2000 Election Fraud
By The Associated Press
April 26, 2002 | Filed at 10:17 p.m. ET
MIAMI (AP) -- A federal judge has approved a settlement between Leon
County and civil rights groups that sued over widespread voting problems
in the 2000 presidential election in Florida.
The state and six other counties remain in the case brought by the
NAACP and four other groups who sued in a dispute that grew out of
the long-uncertain results of Florida's vote for president.
"There was nothing they were seeking that was impossible to achieve,"
Ion Sancho, Leon County supervisor of elections, said Friday. "I've
been a proponent of settlement from the moment the lawsuit was filed."
Thomasina Williams, one of the attorneys for voters, said settlement
talks are under way with other counties, and she was optimistic that
some will follow Leon's move. Trial is set for Aug. 26.
State lawmakers changed election laws in response to complaints after
the 2000 election, but critics said the changes didn't go far enough.
In the biggest departure from current procedures, Leon agreed to
give a written explanation to voters whose ballots are rejected. The
idea to make that a state standard was discarded by the Legislature.
The groups that sued agreed that the settlement "achieves some if
not all of the relief" they could have obtained at trial, according
to the court order dropping Leon from the lawsuit last week.
The county agreed to address disputes over voting, voter registration
and voting lists and will meet with community groups to boost registration,
with special efforts targeting minorities and college students. Sancho
said he was doing all of that before.
Many voters said their votes didn't count or they were turned away
from polls due to mistakes on voter lists, busy telephone lines at
election headquarters, punch-card voting machine foul-ups and other
problems.
Statewide, the largest numbers of voting problems were found in precincts
with high proportions of black and elderly voters.
Under the settlement, both sides will work to restore voters who
were wrongly removed from voters lists in the 2000 election. Many
law-abiding voters across the state said their names were dropped
because they were mistakenly pegged as ex-cons, who generally aren't
allowed to vote in Florida.
The county also agreed to improve communication and training for
staffers who work on election day.
Leon County includes the state capital of Tallahassee.
