Florida Department of Law Enforcement Agents Intimidate Elderly Black Voters

via Florida Politics.

Ezzie Thomas . . . said that elderly voters from Orlando's west side are scared to cast ballots in the fall elections since being questioned by FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] agents.

He said the agency is working for Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, who is trying to make sure his brother President Bush wins re-election in November.

"It's because of the presidential election coming down the pike," Thomas said. "It's going to be a close race. If you can water down the African-American vote, which tends to go Democrat, you might tip the scales."

Thomas, a 73-year-old retired small-business owner, is president of the Orange County Voters League, a nonpartisan volunteer group that encourages minority voting.

FDLE investigators have questioned four women who volunteer with that group: Geraldine Jordan, Charlene Crume, Mamie Powell and Willie Thomas. They said Saturday that they worked on behalf of the Voters League -- not Dyer's campaign -- to get people to the polls and collect absentee ballots.

On Saturday, the women said the FDLE had sullied their reputations and the work of the Voters League. State agents have questioned many voters in the black community, the women said, including elderly people who can remember being discouraged from voting when they were younger.

"These are the people they seem to be preying on: older people who may be voting for the first time in their lives," Willie Thomas said.

One elderly voter said in a written statement that she felt intimidated after a visit from the FDLE: "The man informed me that I was part of a criminal investigation. I asked if I had done anything wrong and the man answered 'yes and no.' "

(emphasis added)

Read the whole thing and you'll see that Ezzie Thomas, head of the Orange County Voters League, has been accused of manipulating absentee ballots. The accusation sounds like Jeb Bush and Co. playing hardball.The charges are questionable, involving a total of four or five ballots, and came up in the context of Thomas' helping elderly voters to vote.