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Republicans Plan Voter Challenges in Florida
An anonymous reader writes "Greg Palast, the journalist who first reported on the initial Florida voter scandal (Warning large PDF), thinks he's found a new threat for this election, reported here at the BBC. He did uncover some interesting shenanigans last time, is this significant, or is he just fishing this time?"
Ohio has counties with 30,000 more registrations than there are people, and we're talking about 1200 questionable registrations in Florida.
If they are so worried about keeping likely Democratic voters from casting ballots, maybe they really don't have root on all the electronic voting machines.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Isn't it possible that someone wanted to send letters them letters asking them to vote for Bush?
The idea behind voter challenges is that anyone can challenge the legitimacy and eligibility of a voter. This is especially important in states like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California where there are large numbers of illegal immigrants who may be influenced to illegally vote. This is also a problem because there are even American citizens who are not eligible to vote such as felons.
Unfortunately, this law is also a door to abuse. Indiscriminate use of the challenge procedure is akin to Scientology's use of lawsuits to silence the opposition. It produces a chilling effect and keeps people away from the polls.
However, despite this list being available, the article (neither of them) does not delve deeply into the names nor the reasoning behind them, only going so far as to say that it could possibly be a Republican plot. However, if the names all belong to felons who are not eligible to vote in the first place, such a list is absolutely necessary.
This is a story looking for more research, not more explosives. Unfortunately, most people would rather toss bombs than to do the hard work of finding out what is really going on.
Well, considering that the republican party in FL has tried a number of shennanigans (remember the felons list recently?) in the hope of preventing dems from getting to the polls it's bloody hard to trust them on this. Especially in an election where bush has all but given up the black vote (he didn't even meet with the NAACP!)
Photos.
You should try reading Palast's _The Best Democracy Money Can Buy_. He dissected that "felon list", and documents how something like 90+% of its names were wrongly listed. And how the Florida election board, run by Republican Katherine Harris (cochair of Bush's Florida campaign, and Secretary of State to Bush's brother, Governor Jeb), disqualified voters with any similarity to the listed names, including crossing gender lines, matching only initials, etc. The list was so bad that several counties refused to use it, but not enough.
Palast's "Best Democracy" has a preface where he makes his bias clear. He grew up poor in LA, and resents the privilege of rich people to rig the game so they always win. He's made careers out of finding these rigged games, and exposing them. He's not a scientist, creating a detailed model of the laws of the universe. He's an investigative journalist, who finds out about serious wrongdoings, learns the facts of the story, and tells it.
Read "Best Democracy". The stories he uncovered are shocking enough that you won't be bored, or find yourself reading any long, convoluted justification for conclusions hung on meager facts. Instead you'll find details about serious wrongdoings by the Bush Republican Party, as it sacrifices democracy without blinking, to grab power and abuse it. If you want balance, try another book by someone uncovering Democratic wrongdoing. When you weigh them against another, factoring in the actual evidence presented, you'll find Palast's work a heavier truth.
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make install -not war
What's interesting about this story is the way the it was uncovered. The "secret" email was only revealed because of the stupidity of the sender. Instead of sending it to an email address at the real bush campaign website, it was sent to georgewbush.org, an anti-bush website. georgewbush.org decided to post all email in their catch-all to in what they call the "dead letter office."
http://www.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/
Look for an e-mail with the subject "caging"
http://almostsmart.com
Let's see. There is some reported voter registration fraud. Here is a case in Ohio were a registrar was paid with cocaine and registered "Dick Tracy" and "George Foreman":s sf?/base/iscri/109818543096130.xml
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http://www.cleveland.com/crime/plaindealer/index.
along with non-anecdotal evidence of potential fraud (higher incidence of registrations from incorrect address).
There is record voter registration in important states:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
The democrats have supposedly hired many lawyers to monitor polls, etc.:
http://www.voanews.com/english/US-Democrats-Repub
Al Gore is telling blacks to "vote early" so their vote will count, presumably not like the last time:
"Early voting is a good idea," he said. "You want to give them plenty of time to count all the votes."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/24/gore.ap
In all, it seems like the making for a very big mess, and I think this election, with things so close, I for one would be suspicious and at least investigate.
One thing I find interesting about this story, is that there is no evidence of any actual wrongdoing, just innuendo, but perhaps this is just part of the democrat playbook, which is to allege claiming voter intimidation, whether it's true or not:
http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/12700
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
You should try reading Palast's _The Best Democracy Money Can Buy_. He dissected that "felon list", and documents how something like 90+% of its names were wrongly listed. And how the Florida election board, run by Republican Katherine Harris (cochair of Bush's Florida campaign, and Secretary of State to Bush's brother, Governor Jeb), disqualified voters with any similarity to the listed names, including crossing gender lines, matching only initials, etc. The list was so bad that several counties refused to use it, but not enough.
And yet, interestingly enough, when the USCCR held hearings, they were unable to find a single person that would testify that they were actually incorrectly prevented from voting because of the felon list.
Yes, the felon list had mistakes (nowhere near 90%, though). But the law was designed for that! The county election supervisors were responsible to verify the names as actual felons before any action was taken. If somebody was disenfranchised, the blame lies solely on the Election Supervisor of the county that he/she lives in.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush