WASHINGTON – An internal budget memo obtained by WorldNetDaily shows that Miami-Dade County, home to Florida's largest Haitian community, spent close to $50,000 on bilingual ballots, signs and translators to help Creole-speaking voters cast ballots properly in the November presidential election.
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The memo casts doubt on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission's just-released finding that "numerous Haitian Americans did not receive proper language assistance" and therefore "were denied the opportunity to vote."
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The findings are part of the commission's draft report on the Florida election, which concludes that black voters in the state were "disenfranchised."
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The report is expected to be taken up for review by the full, eight-member commission today. The commission includes four Democrats, three independents and one Republican. GOP officials have panned the report – which stops just short of accusing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush of racism – as partisan.
In his May 1, 2001, memo, Miami-Dade County Assistant Supervisor of Elections John R. Clouser, a Democrat, itemized for budget chief Suzet Alvarez-Tagle the costs associated with catering to Haitian voters in the election.
The county budgeted $15,830 to hire Creole translators to help voters at precincts, particularly in and around "Little Haiti."
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Printing signs and ballots in Creole totaled $11,420.
Publishing sample ballots in local newspapers, including the Miami Herald, cost $21,644.
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Total: $48,894.
That doesn't include costs from printing ballots and signs in Spanish.
Some polling places in the county were trilingual.
Half the voting booths in Precinct 147, for example, had ballots written in English-Spanish and half had them written in English-Creole.
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