Privatizing Public Defenders

Florida’s lack of commitment to the welfare of its citizens has once again gotten national attention.

This time, budget cuts are forcing overworked public defender’s offices to sue for the right to refuse cases. PD offices around the state are already spread so thin they can’t properly defend their poor clients. Now they say any additional cases will make their workload so overwhelming as to violate their clients’ constitutional right to an attorney.

Either way, thousands of poor people accused of minor felonies – mostly nonviolent offenses like robberies and cocaine possession – will be left without real legal defense, forced to turn to private attorneys or charitable legal aid groups.

Under Bill White, the 4th Circuit PD office  built a staff that pushed each other put in 60 and 70-hour workweeks for less pay than they would have made in private practice, out of a commitment to the integrity of our judicial system.

But this was a “change” election, according to a Florida Times-Union puff piece on Matt Shirk, the Republican who ousted White from office this election. Shirk plans on saving taxpayers money by requiring his office to charge fees. Most of White’s dedicated staff will be resigning in January.

Public defenders are often called liberty’s last champion. In Florida, Bill White’s office in Jacksonville was one of the few public defender’s offices in the state that hadn’t completely crumbled under budget  cuts and rising caseloads. Liberty’s last-last champion – low-cost private attorneys and charitable legal groups – will have to step into the void.

The Perils of Privatized Elections

Change has come to America – sketchy computer glitches no longer decide our presidential elections, perhaps because the McCain campaigned lost the services of Karl Rove’s vote-flipping wizard Mike Connell.

Connell’s role in stealing the 2004 election, namely in Ohio, remains under investigation. A Republican computer expert has explained the problem. You don’t need  a paper trail to audit a computer voting system, but Diebold will not release its computer architecture, which appears designed to steal votes, because it does not want to reveal “trade secrets.”

Problems with Florida voting machines are coming to light – which will usually doesn’t happen right away. Signs of trouble tend to emerge during the month following an election, as results are analyzed. Just because the Democrats won where they were supposed to does not mean votes were counted properly.

Private companies that provide equipment for the fundamental public process in a democracy shouldn’t have trade secrets. I’m not saying the government should nationalize voting-machine factories, but the mechanisms of the vote-counting machines that failed to count 50,000 votes in Manatee County this election, and the computer architecture that appears designed to change vote totals in Ohio should be opened to public scrutiny.