Repub voter suppression machine in full swing

[Cuchulain]

This election may turn out to be the biggest joke ever.

CNN finally wakes up:
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- College senior Kyla Berry was looking forward to voting in her first presidential election, even carrying her voter registration card in her wallet.

"Vote suppression is real. It does sometimes happen," said Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University.

But about two weeks ago, Berry got disturbing news from local election officials.

"This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote," a letter from the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said.

But Berry is a U.S. citizen, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a passport and a birth certificate to prove it. Watch some of the concerns of voting experts »

The letter, which was dated October 2, gave her a week from the time it was dated to prove her citizenship. There was a problem, though -- the letter was postmarked October 9.

"It was the most bizarre thing. I immediately called my mother and asked her to send me my birth certificate, and then I was like, 'It's too late, apparently,' " Berry said.

Berry is one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been "flagged" because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote.

Experts say lists of people with mismatches are often systematically cut, or "purged," from voter rolls.

It's a scenario that's being repeated all across the country, with cases like Berry's raising fears of potential vote suppression in crucial swing states. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/...ion/index.html

[Cuchulain]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast

Virtually the entire mainstream electronic media drank ACORN Kool-Aid this month brewed up by the Republican National Committee. Almost no one seriously challenged John McCain's comical assertions that ACORN, a grassroots voter registration group, "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

While the Republicans had the distracted media searching for links between Obama and ACORN, RNC operatives were busily completing one of the most massive voter suppression and purging efforts in American history, stealing hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes across the embattled swing states and striving to arrange chaos and endless lines at the voting booths next week.....

The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC's election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. "We took over 100 complaints," from the GOP, he told us, "We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn't find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico."

Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. "They were looking for politicized -- for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases."...

Jailed GOP activist Jack Abramoff and his fellow convict, Congressman Bob Ney, wrote the most sinister provisions of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which Congress passed in 2002 creating a series of diabolically cunning new voting impediments. HAVA, for example, allows state voting officials to purge tens of thousands of voters from the polls using algorithms and voter ID requirements that disproportionately disenfranchise black, Hispanic and minority voters, and other Democratic demographics including senior citizens and young people.

In 2004, highly organized GOP tacticians helped disenfranchise no less than 2.7 million American voters. Almost a million of them were African Americans. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found black voters were nine times more likely to have their votes discarded than white voters and that over one-third of the million provisional ballots cast in 2004 -- ballots handed disproportionately to African Americans -- were never counted but simply thrown into dumpsters.

In a technique known as "caging" RNC operatives send millions of first class letters to black voters across the country marked 'do not forward.' Republican operatives armed with lists then invade black precincts on Election Day to challenge those voters whose letters were returned to the RNC because the voter was not home to sign when the mail arrived. That tactic deliberately targets black voters, resurrecting Old Dixie's Jim Crow procedures designed to rid the lists of black voters and create long lines in black precincts.

In this election, new HAVA mandates permit voting officials to precisely match registration form information with the voter's driver's license and Social Security application. While it may sound reasonable, in practice, any change, even a dropped hyphen, is cause for eliminating the voter from the rolls. Since 2004, Colorado's Republican Secretaries of State have purged one out of every five voters from the rolls. The current Secretary of State, Mike Coffman, a Republican also running for office, recently purged an additional 37,000 voters and discarded 6,400 new voter registrations -- overwhelmingly Democratic -- based upon an obscure technical mistake that Coffman's office encouraged voters to make in the first place.

The GOP "anti-fraud" campaign resulted in one in nine New Mexico Democratic voters finding their names had disappeared from voter roles during this year's caucus.

Despite a recent Supreme Court decision upholding Ohio's refusal to disenfranchise 200,000 legitimate voters based on this absurd demand to "match" voter names to databases, White House operatives are still fighting to purge these names from the rolls. President George Bush last week personally asked his Attorney General Mike Mukasey to renew Republican efforts to disenfranchise these voters.

Contrary to Mr. McCain's assertions, the real threat to democracy is from the GOP itself. ACORN has served as a good distraction from Republican efforts to steal the vote from hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters, a genuine threat that has received almost no media attention....

At the polling station, should you find yourself one of the 2.7 million purged, or your ID rejected, then do your best to resist a "provisional" ballot--one third of which are not counted. Return with proper ID, or call 1-800-OUR VOTE for legal assistance. And never just walk away discouraged. That's just what they want you to do. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert..._b_138390.html

[chefmike]

MSNBC just reported that flyers were being given to dems in VA telling them to vote on the 5th instead of 4th. Typical GOP BS. I still think it looks like Obama will carry the Old Dominion state. Virginia's results will be in fairly early and Chuck Todd(MSNBC) said that if it's reported early that Obama carried VA(and a few other key states) then it spells doom for McSame. Lets hope so.

[trish]

worthy2 doesn't know it, but he's the corporate clown. He's been brainwashed into trying to divert as many people from voting as he can. Why would the corporations want to keep people from voting? Because the people of the U.S. are right now in the process of prying those corporate fingers off the controls of government. How are they doing that? By supporting Obama. Tons of people sent Obama checks for $200 dollars and less. That's where the bulk of his support comes from. Even more than corporate America, conservatives are running scared. Just listen to the fear in Palin's speeches. The PEOPLE are wresting control and supporting THEIR candidate. The candidate of the people ain't some silly assed trickle down theorist who's against a woman's right to her own body. It ain't Ron Paul, and it ain't John Sydney McCain III. It's Barrack Obama.

[Cuchulain]

As the election nears, examples of political dirty tricks are emerging with greater frequency.

On Tuesday, the Virginia Pilot reported that a phony Board of Elections flier was circulating the state "advising Republicans to vote on Nov. 4 and Democrats on Nov. 5." Voting, of course, is on the 4th only, creating fear among neutral observers and the Obama campaign that people were simply going to miss the opportunity to go to the polls.

Earlier this month, meanwhile, an anonymous flier was circulating in predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Philadelphia telling voters they could be arrested at the polls if they show up to vote with outstanding arrest warrants or unpaid parking tickets. This is also untrue.

Dirty tricks and phony fliers represent the dark underside of nearly every election. And certainly, when it comes to the current contest, these tactics started long ago. Last March, as Time Magazine noted, a letter was being sent around Colorado, warning that out-of-state students could not register if their parents claimed them as dependents in another state." One of the more common falsities making its way through email chains has warned voters in some states (updated below) that they will be turned away from the polls if they wore paraphernalia demonstrating their support for one particular candidate.

Since these antics are becoming more and more common we encourage readers to send in tips or episodes they have witnessed to the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/1..._n_138607.html

[Cuchulain]

HuffPo has devoted an entire page to voting problems:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/voting-problems

[NYBURBS]

worthy2 doesn't know it, but he's the corporate clown. He's been brainwashed into trying to divert as many people from voting as he can. Why would the corporations want to keep people from voting? Because the people of the U.S. are right now in the process of prying those corporate fingers off the controls of government. How are they doing that? By supporting Obama. Tons of people sent Obama checks for $200 dollars and less. That's where the bulk of his support comes from. Even more than corporate America, conservatives are running scared. Just listen to the fear in Palin's speeches. The PEOPLE are wresting control and supporting THEIR candidate. The candidate of the people ain't some silly assed trickle down theorist who's against a woman's right to her own body. It ain't Ron Paul, and it ain't John Sydney McCain III. It's Barrack Obama.

Trish honestly you're fucking kidding yourself if you think this is the case. Even if you wanted to argue that he was not chained to the corporations, the rest of his party that actually can create legislation is. This is no popular revolution, this is simply people excited about a minority becoming president. Great for him and good for them, but it certainly is not some political revolution.

[yodajazz]

worthy2 doesn't know it, but he's the corporate clown. He's been brainwashed into trying to divert as many people from voting as he can. Why would the corporations want to keep people from voting? Because the people of the U.S. are right now in the process of prying those corporate fingers off the controls of government. How are they doing that? By supporting Obama. Tons of people sent Obama checks for $200 dollars and less. That's where the bulk of his support comes from. Even more than corporate America, conservatives are running scared. Just listen to the fear in Palin's speeches. The PEOPLE are wresting control and supporting THEIR candidate. The candidate of the people ain't some silly assed trickle down theorist who's against a woman's right to her own body. It ain't Ron Paul, and it ain't John Sydney McCain III. It's Barrack Obama.

Trish honestly you're fucking kidding yourself if you think this is the case. Even if you wanted to argue that he was not chained to the corporations, the rest of his party that actually can create legislation is. This is no popular revolution, this is simply people excited about a minority becoming president. Great for him and good for them, but it certainly is not some political revolution.

I think there is a greater possiblity of change than any time in the last 40 years. Legislators still have to answer to the electorate. Public dissatisfaction is at an all time high. And then you have young people, seeing a fresh face at the top. I predict this election will have the highest turnout ever, number-wise, and percentage wise. But that's just the start. It's not a revolution, but I certainly expect a change in direction from Republican rule.

[NYBURBS]

Dude it's not republican or democratic "rule" and hasn't been in a long time. It's some special interest, corporate fuck fest/money orgy. As for young people being energized, I remember those same speeches being made when Clinton ran for office and MTV started up its Get Out the Vote.

The only two spots I see his presidency making any big impact will be in repairing some relationships with other nations and in getting to make appointments to the Supreme Court that will keep the current liberal/conservative (bad terms for it but will have to suffice) split that currently exists there.

[Cuchulain]

HEY! I created this thread about VOTER SUPPRESSION to inform you people about this ugly threat to democracy. Please don't water it down with your bickering about other issues. There are PLENTY of threads for that. And why am I almost the only one who seems to give a shit about this outrage? The election is just days away. People are being denied their fundamental right to vote, fer chrissake.