HE REV. JOHN SALES laughed over the telephone about his clairoyance. ''I told my congregation that I've never heard the word from God that I'm a prophet, but I must be one,'' he said.
Sales is the minister of First Baptist of Brownsville in Miami. Two weeks before one of the most deadlocked presidential elections in American history, Sales told 22 other ministers at a get-out-the-vote meeting in Liberty City, ''The black vote is the balance of the scale in this election. White folks are split 50-50 on Gore and Bush. We hold the balance of the weight on the scale. We can determine if Gore wins. We must use our weight.''
Sales and the ministers used their weight, only to wonder if Florida dropped it on the floor. African-American turnout in this election swelled by 50 percent, from 10 percent of the state's voters in 1996 to 15 percent. While 57 percent of the white vote in Florida went to George W. Bush, and Latinos were split evenly between Bush and Al Gore, 93 percent of the African-American vote went to Gore.
Without the African-American turnout, Gore would have no Florida recount. But the outpouring at the polls was accompanied by thousands of disqualified ballots and widespread complaints that black voters were subjected to more chaos and scrutiny than white voters before being allowed to vote.
The NAACP quickly took complaints at a day-long hearing four days after the election. NAACP President Kweisi Mfume filed a complaint with the Justice Department. But in the three weeks since, the Justice Department has done nothing. An angry Mfume said, ''The silence from Justice has been deafening.''
Calling the Justice Department the ''Just-Ice'' Department, Mfume this week announced plans for the NAACP on its own to sue Florida and several of the most trouble-plagued counties. He said the silence was part of what he thought was a national ''whitewashing'' of the black voter story in Florida.
Mfume cited the vastly white parade of pundits and legal experts on the networks, ''as if African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians had nothing to say.''
In the last few days, major newspapers have run stories on the black vote, but, with over three weeks gone since an election, no can tell how many possible violations of voter rights may have been missed by a media that otherwise has provided blow-by-blow, chad-by-chad coverage of the recount.
Moreover, civil rights activists are insulted by the tone of some of these tardy stories, which focus as much on voter faults as any charges of disenfranchisement.
''That sounds like blaming the victim to me,'' said Barbara Arnwine, executive director of national Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and who helped gather testimony in Florida. ''How do you explain all the stories out there? These issues go way beyond education. I hope people aren't implying that all the Jewish voters in Palm Beach aren't educated.''
Asked why a Justice Department under Bill Clinton and Gore would be so silent, given the overwhelming black support of the two, Mfume said he did not know.
''All I can guess is that they are already packing their bags for the transition,'' Mfume said. ''We know we're only a piece of the story, but when it comes down to it, we are the biggest piece.''
In Miami, where the ministers had helped assemble the pieces that were so powerful and yet may have been so powerfully deflected on Election Day, there was a range of resignation and anger. Sales thinks Bush will ultimately become president despite feeling that the black vote was ''badly mishandled.''
Rudolph Daniels of Macedonia Missionary Baptist in Coconut Grove said he personally had problems in voting. He voted with an absentee ballot in a previous local election, and the polling clerk at first told Daniels that he could not vote because the records showed he had been sent another absentee ballot.
''Now I'm 70 years old and I come from the back of the bus days,'' Daniels said. ''I'm not one to fool with, with any technicality. I said right there, `I will vote TODAY.' Luckily for me, I knew one of the clerks, and I had my cellphone on me. The clerk called some number; they said it was OK to vote.
''So when I heard about all these other people having trouble at the polls, it rang true. It should never be this hard to vote. Until we address all these complaints, you cannot call this election fair. They should go to the furthest extent to make sure this election was honest and fair. Right now, we know the black vote counted, but somehow it still doesn't count.''
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.
