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July 08, 2004

The Million Man Myth

Via Will over at Vodkapundit's site comes this from a John Kerry speech:

Don’t tell us disenfranchising a million African Americans and stealing their votes is the best we can do. This time, in 2004, not only will every vote count – we’re going to make sure that every vote is counted.

I can only guess that Kerry is referring to the Florida voting debacle. The first problem is that, as Will points out:

For one thing, it's a flat-out lie, as reluctantly found by the partisan Democrat-dominated US Civil Rights Commission, which despite months of investigation, noted only 26 people with "disenfranchisement" complaints, most of which were found to be specious (link is to a .pdf file of the minority dissent, see page 32).

And also, let's do some math.

The population of Florida in 2000 was around 15.9 million, some 14.6% of whom were black* according to Census figures. That comes out to roughly 2.33 million blacks in the Sunshine State.

So, assuming that every one of them voted, Kerry is saying that fully 43% of the black population was disenfranchised during the 2000 election.

Just a few problems: they don't all vote and they're not all of voting age.

Thus, the actual number of voting blacks in Florida is far less than 2.33 million, meaning that Kerry is saying that far more than 43% of voting blacks in Florida were denied their Constitutional rights.

Which, in the language of blog shorthand, is - well - an absolute crock of steaming bullshit**.

* No, I won't say "African-American" any more than I would demand you call me an "Irish-German-English-Whatever-American." Get over it.

** You know, assuming he was talking about Florida.