Disenfranchised voters from Florida and around the country sounded the alarm over unequal, archaic and inadequate voting systems, but it was too little, too late to correct the 2000 presidential election. And too late for Al Gore who shot himself in both political feet when he thought he was aiming for the centrist vote between.

Even adding the race card to the Democratic Florida Supreme Court couldn't beat the pat hand of George W. Bush. Alas, there wasn't much that could overcome the U.S. Supreme Court's Republican majority backed up by Florida's Republican legislature.

But the results of the election are far from over. The news media and other organizations are buried in the process of a Florida recount. And African American leaders are committed to more than just recognition of Al Gore winning the popular contest by 500,000 votes, which they claim as theirs.

In the "African American Voters in the 2000 Presidential Election" meeting covered live by C-Span on January 2, 2001, a panel of prominent black leaders discussed the problems of disenfranchised voters in no uncertain terms. It was made very clear that Gore's efforts to turn out more African American voters were successful and that he should have won Florida's electoral vote, and then some.

It was crystal clear when the National Newspaper Publishers Association's executive director Benjamin Jealous declared, "We won the election." Indeed, the election isn't over.

Daniel B. Jeffs, founder
The Direct Democracy Center