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Non-Voted Ballots and Discrimination in Florida
John Lott, American Enterprise Institute
ABSTRACT:
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' Majority Report on the 2000 Presidential vote in Florida
presents two types of empirical evidence that African-Americans were denied the right to vote. The
report concluded that, "The Voting Rights Act prohibits both intentional discrimination and
'results' discrimination. It is within the jurisdictional province of the Justice Department to pursue
and a court of competent jurisdiction to decide whether the facts prove or disprove illegal
discrimination under either standard." To reach their conclusion that discrimination had occurred,
the majority examined the impact of race on spoiled (or non-voted) ballot rates as well as the impact
of race on the exclusion from voter eligibility lists because of past felony criminal records. They
relied on empirical work regarding non-voted ballots and this empirical work relies solely on cross
county regressions or correlations using data from 2000 alone. The evidence that African-
Americans are erroneously placed on the ineligible list at higher rates than other racial groups is
based upon a simple comparison of means.
SUGGESTED CITATION:
John Lott,
"Non-Voted Ballots and Discrimination in Florida"
(July 9, 2001).
Yale Law School.
Yale Law School John M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy Working Paper Series.
Paper 256.
http://lsr.nellco.org/yale/lepp/papers/256
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