[1]An Election Spoiled Rotten
Greg Palast
November 01, 2004
It's not even Election Day yet, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign is
already down by a almost aÊmillion votes. That's because, in
important states like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico, voter names have
been systematically removed from the rolls andÊabsentee ballots have
been overlooked÷overwhelmingly in minority areas, likeÊRio Arriba
County,ÊNew Mexico, where Hispanic voters have a 500 percent greater
chance of their vote being spoiled. Investigative journalist Greg
Palast reports on the trashing of the election.
Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated
the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. The
documentary, [2]Bush Family Fortunes based on his New York Times
bestseller, [3]The Best Democracy Money Can BuyÊhas been released
this month on DVD.
John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not
one ballot has yet been counted. He's also losing big time in Colorado
and Ohio; and he's way down in Florida, though the votes won't be
totaled until Tuesday night.
Through a combination of sophisticated vote rustling÷ethnic
cleansing of voter rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that
spoil votes÷John Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could
easily exceed one million votes.
The Urge To Purge
Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davidson just weeks ago removed
several thousand voters from the state's voter rolls. She tagged
felons as barred from voting. What makes this particularly noteworthy
is that, unlike like Florida and a handful of other Deep South states,
Colorado does not bar ex-cons from voting. Only those actually serving
their sentence lose their rights.
There's no known, verified case of a Colorado convict voting illegally
from the big house. Because previous purges have wiped away the rights
of innocents, federal law now bars purges within 90 days of a
presidential election to allow a voter to challenge their loss of
civil rights.
To exempt her action from the federal rule, Secretary Davidson
declared an emergency. However, the only emergency in Colorado
seems to be President Bush's running dead, even with John Kerry in the
polls.
Why the sudden urge to purge? Davidson's chief of voting law
enforcement is Drew Durham, who previously worked for the attorney
general of Texas. This is what the Lone Star State's
currentÊattorney generalÊsays of Mr. Durham: He is, unfit for
public office... a man with a history of racism and ideological
zealotry. Sounds just right for a purge that affects, in the
majority, non-white voters.
From my own and government investigations of such purge lists, it is
unlikely that this one contains many, if any, illegal voters.
But it does contain Democrats. The Dems may not like to shout about
this, but studies indicate that 90-some percent of people who have
served time for felonies will, after prison, vote Democratic. One
suspects Colorado's Republican secretary of state knows that.
Ethnic Cleansing Of The Voter Rolls
We can't leave the topic of ethnically cleansing the voter rolls
without a stop in Ohio, where a Republican secretary of state appears
to be running to replace Katherine Harris.
In Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), some citizens have been caught
Registering While Black. A statistical analysis of would-be voters
inÊSouthern statesÊby the watchdog group Democracy South indicates
that black voters are three times as likely as white voters to have
their registration requests returned (i.e., subject to rejection).
And to give a boost to this whitening of the voter rolls, for the
first time since the days of Jim Crow, the Republicans are planning
mass challenges of voters on Election Day. The GOP's announced plan to
block 35,000 voters in Ohio ran up against the wrath of federal
judges; so, in Florida, what appear to be similar plans had been kept
under wraps until the discovery of documents called caging lists.
The voters on the caging lists, disclosed last week by BBC
Television London, are, almost exclusively, residents of
African-American neighborhoods.
Such racial profiling as part of a plan to block voters is, under the
Voting Rights Act, illegal. Nevertheless, neither the Act nor federal
judges have persuaded the party of Lincoln to join the Democratic
Party in pledging not to distribute blacklists to block voters on
Tuesday.
Absentee Ballots Go AWOL
It's 10pm: Do you know where your absentee ballot is? Voters wary
about computer balloting are going postal: in some states, mail-in
ballot requests are up 500 percent. The probability that all those
votes÷up to 15 million÷will be counted is zip.
Those who mail in ballots are very trusting souls. Here's how your
trust is used.
