While much is being made in Florida about the disputed ballot in Palm Beach County, relatively little attention has been paid to the voting irregularities that have had the most pronounced effects on low-income and minority voters.

Minority voters were discouraged from voting in a variety of ways. Some were turned away due to a lack of ballots or were subject to roadblocks within a few hundred yards of voting places. Others were refused the right to vote because they didn't carry enough forms of identification. Some could not bring translators to assist them with ballots that confused even native English speakers.

Such discrimination is meant to stifle efforts to revive Democratic support in a New South that has become almost wholly Republican, with the possible exception of Florida. Minority advocacy groups, such as the NAACP, made significant investments in get-out-the-vote campaigns this year. The NAACP spent $12 million on the most extensive voting initiative in the association's 91-year history. And, because of current complaints of fraud and minority-vote tampering in Florida, the NAACP has asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate irregularities there.

This kind of voter discrimination is nothing new for African Americans in this country. Throughout history, whites have resolved serious differences among themselves with compromises that sacrificed the rights of blacks. An especially relevant example is the hotly disputed 1876 presidential election involving Samuel J. Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes.

When the votes were counted, Tilden, the Democrat, had 250,000 more actual votes than his opponent, and one more electoral vote. However, the returns from South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana (three states where blacks maintained significant political influence) were challenged. Recounts did not resolve the issue, and it was turned over to a special electoral commission, with a Republican majority.

The Democrats accepted the commission's recommendation to elect Hayes after being assured that the remaining federal troops would be withdrawn from the South and that the popularly elected Democratic governors for Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana would be able to assume their offices without interference from the Republican-controlled state legislatures.

While this compromise resolved conflicts between whites in the North and South, it resulted in significant civil rights losses for blacks in the political, economic and social arenas. They lost businesses, farms and hard-won rights to their children's education in public schools. And shortly after the election, Jim Crow laws responsible for segregating blacks and whites began to appear.

Nixon's example

Vice President Al Gore is being asked to concede the presidential election to Gov. George W. Bush. This proposed concession is being painted as the noble and honorable thing for Gore to do. Even former President Richard Nixon is being held up as a paragon of nation healing, thanks to his concession to Kennedy in 1960.

Given historical precedents, it is crucial that our country's compromise in this critically important matter not be made at the expense of minority voters and their civil rights. One of the few silver linings in this entire election fiasco is that a spotlight will be focused on uneven election procedures in the United States. This will encourage us to squash unethical and illegal procedures experienced during this month's election, and do better by the candidates in the future.

Meanwhile, if the ballots in Palm Beach County are found to be illegal, the rights of all voters will have been violated and their right to take part in a fair process will have been thwarted. This country cannot be healed if there is a stain of unfairness on our newly elected president.

Quoting 19th-century democracy essayist Alexis de Tocqueville has become very popular lately. However, it's impossible to resist sharing his response when he found in 1832 that blacks were not voting, even in areas of the North known for their staunch abolitionist positions.

In response to his request for an explanation, he was told: "The truth is that they are not disinclined to vote, but they are afraid of being maltreated _ the law is sometimes unable to maintain its authority without the support of the majority . . . the majority entertains very strong prejudices against the blacks and the magistrates are unable to protect them in the exercise of their legal rights."

"Then the majority claims the right not only of making the laws but of breaking the laws it has made?" de Tocqueville asked pointedly.

It seems we've made little progress in the past 150-plus years. We are poised again to disfranchise black and other minority voters. Must history repeat itself again in order for us to learn from this painful lesson?

john a. powell, Executive Director, Institute on Race & Poverty and Marvin J. Sonosky Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, Minn. powell worked in Miami from 1981-1983 as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Miami Law School and as Executive Director of Legal Services of Greater Miami.