Michael Moore to tackle voting rights issues in Florida

KEN THOMAS

Associated Press

BOSTON - Coming soon to Florida: Filmmaker Michael Moore.

Moore, the director of "Fahrenheit 9/11," said Wednesday he would make stops throughout Florida in October to focus attention on voting rights issues and try to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election debacle.

"I am going to be in Florida," Moore said to cheers at a delegation breakfast, "and together - together, we will guarantee to every Floridian that their vote will be counted this year.

"I will have my cameras. We will put a huge spotlight on them. They will not get away with it this time."

Moore stoked the passions from the 2000 election, when recounts in some Florida counties lasted for 36 days until they were halted by the U.S. Supreme Court. President Bush won a 537-vote victory in Florida and enough electoral votes to win the presidency.

Moore, whose blockbuster documentary criticized the president's handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq, said he remains worried that voters could be disenfranchised or face intimidation at polling places.

He promised to donate money to bring "an army of lawyers" who will serve as poll watchers in November.

"The second anyone tries to prevent a voter from voting, we will go down to the courthouse, we will get the judge immediately and we will stop it at that moment," Moore said.

His speech followed news of more voting problems in Florida: officials in Miami-Dade County said Tuesday a computer crash erased detailed records from the 2002 primary, the county's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines.

Earlier this month, the state's top elections official ordered a review of the state's voter database after the discovery that a list of 48,000 potential felons was flawed and scrapped. The list held thousands of people who are eligible to vote and was flawed by a technical glitch that excluded many possible Hispanic felons.

U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., who served as Florida House Speaker during the 2000 recount, said Moore lacked "one shred of credibility among swing voters" and said most of the errors in 2000 occurred in counties with Democrats serving as supervisors of elections.

Bush campaign spokesman Reed Dickens called Moore "a guy who spent his entire career capitalizing on other people's tragedies and has never been confined by accuracy or the facts."

The filmmaker was mobbed by supporters after his speech and led a crowded pack of reporters and delegates down the hotel hallway. About a half dozen Boston police officers responded to the scene to maintain order.

Moore was joined by U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch, a Democratic Senate candidate from Fort Lauderdale, and U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat who was featured in footage in the movie.

Deutsch had introduced a motion in Congress on Jan. 6, 2001, to challenge the electoral college verification. Brown and Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., are shown in the film asking for a senator to step forward to trigger an inquiry.

Moore's film criticizes the Senate for not stepping forward to challenge the verification of the electoral votes. Deutsch and Brown have introduced legislation to remove the current requirement that a senator and a member of Congress must both sign a challenge to the certification of the presidential election results.

Moore called Deutsch "the man of courage who's on the ballot and is going to stand up for all the people of Florida."