Appeals
In time, an appeals process was instituted, but in some cases it required ordinary citizens to be fingerprinted in order to prove they were not the felons they were accused of being. In the end, out of 4,847 people who appealed, 2,430 were judged not to be convicted felons. As Civil Rights Commission attorney Bernard Quarterman put it during testimony in Miami on February 16, "They were guilty until proven innocent". At least 108 legitimate voters were not purged from the list until after the election.
Some voters on the list did not receive advance notice that they were ineligible to vote until they appeared at the polls. Some had even received new voters cards in the mail.
Read more about this topic: Florida Central Voter File
Famous quotes containing the word appeals:
“Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.”
—Truman Capote (1924–1984)
“The values to which the conservative appeals are inevitably caricatured by the individuals designated to put them into practice.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate.”
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965)