Did Teresa LePore design Florida’s voter registration form?
by digby
You’ve probably heard by now that Jeb Bush checked the box that says “Hispanic” on his voter registration form in Florida. He says it was an accident and everybody’s havin’ a laugh over the whole funny thing. Andrea Mitchell explained “in fairness, one box was just above the other.”
I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Butterfly Ballot debacle which was one of several different factors that would have given us Al Gore for president in 2000 instead of then-Governor Jeb Bush’s brother. Recall that the boxes didn’t line up there either.
Is there something about Florida under Republican rule that makes official forms incomprehensible? I’m sure this is just another one of their cock-ups, but you do have to at least consider the fact that if someone is relying on voter registration data, it’s quite helpful to Republicans that Democrats think there are more Hispanics in a district than there are. Democrats would likely run campaigns with an appeal to a diverse population while Republicans could run as the old-fashioned conservatives they are and win. And Democrats wouldn’t have a clue as to how it happened.
Again, Occam’s Razor says these are just accidents of lousy form design. They seem to be especially prone to this in Florida. But it is interesting how all these accidents seem to favor the GOP.
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