Repub voter suppression machine in full swing

[Cuchulain]

They're at it again. The same vote caging and other schemes to suppress minority votes. Remember Katherine Harris and ChoicePoint Inc. in Florida in 2000? The shenanigans in Ohio in '04?

http://www.michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote

http://www.truthout.org/article/nearly-600000-voters-subject-possible-caging-ohio

This crap is going on all across the country. Here's an explanation:
http://www.clcblog.org/blog_item-152.html

http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/a_guide_to_voter_caging/

[Cuchulain]

I told you so....

New film by Greg Palast w/RFK jr, 'Steal Back Your Vote'. Check out the trailer. Fired DOJ attorney (attorney-gate) David Iglesias is near the end of the clip.
http://www.stealbackyourvote.org/

Rolling Stone article by Greg Palast and Robert Kennedy Jr:
Don’t worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of "GOP vote tampering" on a massive scale.

- Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls.

Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge - ten times the average state's rate of removal.

- While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures signed into law by George Bush.
Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of 'Jim Crow' tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.

- A fired US prosecutor levels new charges - accusing leaders of his own party, Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block legal voters as "fraudulent."

- Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging” ultimately took away the rights of 1.1 million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict that, this November 4, it will be far worse.

There's more:

- Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list management' rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls."

Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's purging his registration was particularly shocking - he's the county elections supervisor.

The Kennedy-Palast revelations go far beyond the sum of questionably purged voters recently reported by the New York Times.

"Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics," report Kennedy and Palast, under the cover of fighting fraudulent voting, are "systematically disenfranchis[ing] Democrats."

The investigators level a deadly serious charge:

"If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering."

Block the Vote by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Greg Palast in the current issue (#1064) of Rolling Stone.

[Media enquiries - Dave Falkenstein, Sunshine Sachs & Assoc, via interviews@gregpalast.com.]

Note - Kennedy and Palast are releasing, simultaneously with the Rolling Stone investigative report what they call, the vote-theft 'antidote': a 24-page full-color comic book, Steal Back Your Vote, which can be downloaded or obtained in print from their non-partisan website, StealBackYourVote.org http://www.gregpalast.com/rolling-stone-its-already-stolen/

Interview w/Mr Iglesias on PBS:
NOW: In retrospect, do you believe they were rightly motivated or do you believe they were motivated by partisan politics?

DI: They were clearly partisan. I can't reach into their minds and tell you what they were thinking but I am very disturbed to read accounts of what appears to be "voter caging" in Arkansas and other parts of the country. There appears to be a growing body of evidence that suggests that there's voter suppression going on throughout the country. I'm not sure if that happened in New Mexico. All I know is there was an attempted pressure put on me by local Republicans to indict voter fraud cases. I resisted that. I thought I was going to be protected by the Bush Justice Department and I was wrong in that assumption.

NOW: How would you characterize the act of enlisting a U.S. attorney in activities that will benefit a political party at the polls?

DI: It's reprehensible. It's unethical. It's unlawful. It very well may be criminal ... I know it's a marked departure from prior administrations, both Republican and Democrat, who understood that U.S. attorneys, as chief federal law enforcement officials, have to stay out of politics. And that's consistent with what Former Attorney General John Ashcroft told me in the summer of 2001. When he said, "Politics cannot enter into your decision making as a US attorney." http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/david-iglesias.html

Bush WH, as it has done so often, alters report from it's own agency:
'The original report said most experts believe that “false registration forms have not resulted in polling place fraud,” but the final report cites “registration drives by nongovernmental groups as a source of fraud.”
“By attempting to sweep this draft report under the rug, the E.A.C. is throwing out important work, wasting taxpayer dollars and creating a cloud of suspicion as to why it is acting this way,” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/washington/11voters.html

[yodajazz]

Thank you, thank you. But where do you get such good information? I have already sent this to some people but didn't know how to name the source. I just called an un-named source.

As for the content, being from Ohio, and doing some reading, I know well things can be done to suppress voters right's. I know that Republican leadership would spread some of the techniques if they were not already in practice. In 2004 here, Black did a purge of voter rolls three times the margin of the Republican victory margin. I'll have to check my facts on this. In addition people with disputes were allowed to cast provisional ballots, Blackwell decided not to count them. He had misinformation on the states own website. People who went to the wrong precincts as a result, were told to cast provisional ballots, which were then not counted.

Also people need to know if private contractors with political ties are responsible for tabulating the electronic vote.

[Oli]

Yoda, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday on the Voter Registration Challenges.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/122431875061480.xml&coll=2

Good news for the folks in Ohio.

[Cuchulain]

Thank you, thank you. But where do you get such good information?

You're very welcome, yodajazz. What can I say? I'm a political junkie. I like to understand what's going on.

Thom Hartmann of Air America has been all over the Republican voter suppression ploy and the Diebold horseshit. Here http://airamerica.com/content/thom-hartmann-voter-fraud-update he talks with Brad Friedman of http://www.bradblog.com/. Brad says that the ACORN lies are the October surprise, but the millions of Americans who will find themselves illegally purged from the voting rolls will be the NOVEMBER surprise.

I've been following Greg Palast's (http://www.gregpalast.com/) work for years and RFK Jr has been another heavyweight on voting rights.

Don't get too confident about an Obama victory regardless of the polls. These REICHwing scum will do anything to keep the WH. They're scared to death of a Democratic Attorney General.

[Cuchulain]

ACORN responds to REICHwing attacks and explains ongoing Republican efforts to supress Democratic voters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdNgMKPV9xQ Check out the other vids from brave new films.

[Cuchulain]

Here's a simple explanation of the lies about ACORN. My earlier posts in this thread explain why The Republicans are attacking ACORN. And yes, I'm gonna keep bumping this because it's too important to be ignored.

The Truth About ACORN
Cynthia Gordy

For the past year and a half, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now-the national community organizing group better known as ACORN-coordinated a massive voter registration campaign. The group enrolled 1.3 million mostly young, mostly poor voters around the country. But when some voter registration cards were reportedly found to be signed by Mickey Mouse and members of the Dallas Cowboys, among other suspicious names, John McCain and other Republicans accused ACORN of padding the rolls with thousands of phony voters. ACORN is now reportedly under investigation for "voter fraud" in at least 12 states, including the battleground state of Ohio and Nevada, where the organization's Las Vegas office was raided by state authorities earlier this month. ESSENCE.com asked Bertha Lewis, national chief organizer for ACORN, about these charges and why the organization says the accusations are unfounded and overblown.

ESSENCE.COM: ACORN's voter registration campaign turned in applications signed by phony names or multiple applications for the same person. How did this happen?
BERTHA LEWIS: I think it's important for people to know exactly what is happening. We do massive voter registration to low- and moderate-income folks. The Right Wing and Republicans, specifically, have been coming for us since the 2000 and 2004 elections. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sent U.S. attorneys after us to investigate and try to find a prosecutable action. In 2006, the reason he stepped down is that he fired eight attorneys because they kept coming back to him saying, "There's no evidence; ACORN is clean." They constantly tried to come after us and attack us, and not once anywhere has it been proven that we systematically engage in this activity.

[Editor's Note: Gonzales resigned as attorney general in 2007 amid controversy over his handling of the firings of several U.S. attorneys, which members of Congress alleged were politically motivated. He also faced allegations that he had lied to Congress under oath.]

ESSENCE.COM: Okay, but how do you explain these latest charges?
LEWIS: All we have are unfounded allegations and exaggerations. We find it peculiar that two weeks before the election, all of a sudden they find a few thousand suspicious cards. This was an 18-month effort by 13,000 workers. So naturally, less than 1 percent of our cards may be suspicious. But all of this so-called evidence they have against us-we're the ones that said, "Look at these cards and investigate." We flagged any suspicious cards because when you do voter registration you have to turn in every card, even if it has Mickey Mouse on it. We have to turn it in. We're the ones that fired workers for turning in suspicious cards. We believe this is really about the Republicans' attempt, once again, to suppress the vote. We believe the reason behind it is because we've registered 100 percent low- and moderate-income people. Seventy percent of those folks are Black and Brown and half of them are under the age of 30. So at the very least, you will have over a million new Black and Brown lower- and moderate-income young voters coming out to the polls. They historically have been disenfranchised, and now you have this enormous turnout, and most of them arguably are Democratic.

ESSENCE.COM: How did the fraudulent registration cards come about? Are you saying they were all accidental?
LEWIS: For those who are actually serving time right now, they have said on television and in the press, "Hey, I wanted to get paid. Why should I stand in the hot sun, why should I stand in the freezing cold, why should I walk block after block? I can just sit down, make up these names, and get paid." They've confessed to this. So if anyone has been defrauded, it's ACORN. We had 13,000 workers for over 18 months. We know a couple bad apples may defraud us. We were paying them by the hour; they came back with suspicious cards just to get a paycheck. If we think they're doing this, we fire them immediately and turn in their personnel records to law enforcement. Every ACORN worker over the past eight years who's been convicted-guess who turned them in? ACORN did.

ESSENCE.COM: How might voter registration fraud lead to actual voter fraud?
LEWIS: What they're trying to put into people's minds is that Mickey Mouse and Tony Romo would actually show up to vote. Let me give you some real facts: Between 20002 and 2005, only 38 people were accused of attempting to vote under someone else's name. None of them had anything to do with ACORN. Your chances of being hit by lightning are greater than the chances of people actually doing a fraudulent vote.

ESSENCE.COM: Some Republicans have tied voter registration problems to Barack Obama, claiming that he once worked for ACORN. Isn't there a conflict of interest here that taints his campaign?
LEWIS: Let me go all the way back. ACORN is the largest grassroots community organization in the country. We are community organizers. As you know, Barack Obama was a community organizer. As a young attorney, he, along with a lot of other attorneys, represented a coalition of community organizations that were trying to make sure that the Justice Department enforced the motor voter law [also known as the National Voter Registration Act, which requires state governments to provide uniform voting registration opportunities at drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools, libraries, and mail-in registration]. The Department of Justice was actually his partner in that. Now, our ACORN Political Action Committee has endorsed Barack Obama. They are trying to say that because they (the Obama campaign) gave money to an organization called Citizens Service-which subcontracted with us to do nominal get-out-the-vote activities for the primaries-that somehow or another there's an evil connection.

ESSENCE.COM: You're talking about the $800,000 that the Obama campaign provided for Citizens Services?
LEWIS: The Obama campaign gave Citizens Services $800,000 to conduct get-out-the-vote activities in the primaries. Citizens Services hired a few of our organizers to work on a couple of weekends. They subcontracted with us and a number of other groups. We got a total of approximately $80,000 to do "get out the vote" for the primaries. The Republicans are trying to make it seem as though ACORN got all of this money, but it's not true. We never received a penny from the Obama campaign to do any voter registration. In fact, we've never received a penny directly from their campaign to even do voter work.

ESSENCE.COM: If the investigation continues into November 4, does that mean people who registered with ACORN may not get to vote?
LEWIS: Well, they're claiming that the organization is under investigation. Here's what we're encouraging everyone to do. If you have registered, especially with ACORN, contact your local board of elections and tell them your name, where you live, and that you registered to vote. Tell them you want to make sure that you are on the rolls to vote. You can also go to our Web site, Acorn.org, and contact us. We will make sure that attorneys and election specialists can help people make sure that they're on the rolls. We are confident that everything will be fine.

ESSENCE.COM: If Obama wins, are you prepared for accusation that you've helped him steal this election?
LEWIS: I think it will be a way of setting up doubt, and challenging the results by saying they're tainted. We've seen it happen before. But we have hundreds of chapters across the country, and ACORN members are going to be vigilant because we will make sure that low- and moderate-income folks aren't left out. So we are going to fight, whether it's in the courts, at the ballot box, or challenging regulations. We are geared up and prepared for the dirty tricks that the Republicans have perpetrated before. They might come up with some new ones, but we're going to be prepared. http://www.essence.com/news_entertainment/news/articles/thetruthaboutacorn?xid=102208-CNN-Acornlink

[Cuchulain]

BILL MOYERS: What's the evidence that say the Republican Party is disenfranchising millions of people?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, first of all, all of these voter purges, the caging of voters, as I described before.

BILL MOYERS: Well, I mean, the Brennan Center report two weeks ago said perhaps hundreds of thousands of people have been improperly purged from the rolls without even knowing about it. But they didn't talk about millions.

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, I, in the aggregate, it does and could easily add up to millions of voters because we're talking about a very, very broad range of devices, you know, both legal and illegal that will have a dramatic effect and that will add up. If hundreds of thousands of people are disenfranchised nationwide simply through voter purges alone, you see? That is significant. If the caging of voters results in the disenfranchisement of another 200,000, 300,000, we're talking here about numbers that definitely do add up, you see, and that make a difference, are meant to make a difference come Election Day.

BILL MOYERS: This term "caging," what's a simple understanding of that?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: It's really very simple. The Republican Party, in a particular state, will get a list of the names and addresses of Democrats and send them letters that look sort of like junk mail, you know? Often they'll have windows in the envelope, the kind of thing that people are going to be inclined to throw away. And if people don't open those envelopes and take out forms that are in them and fill them out and send them in, their names will be stricken from the voter rolls on that basis. They've also been known to send these kinds of forms to people who are overseas serving in the military. Well, they're not home to check their mail, so if they don't fill out the forms, their names are stricken from the voter roll. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10172008/transcript3.html

[thx1138]

Repubs fighting back the only way they know how: voter fraud:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6559

[Cuchulain]

Thanks thx1138.

[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/10/26/voter.suppression/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-f-kennedy-jr-and-greg-palast/drinking-the-acorn-koolai_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/2008/10/28/as-election-nears-dirty-t_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.

[NYBURBS]

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.

Because it happens every 4 years like clock work, and it is engaged in by whatever party controls a particular state. So it's not that I don't find it outrageous, but it comes back to the dangers of political parties (especially a 2 party system), which most on here seem to think there is nothing wrong with.

[Cuchulain]

Because it happens every 4 years like clock work, and it is engaged in by whatever party controls a particular state. So it's not that I don't find it outrageous, but it comes back to the dangers of political parties (especially a 2 party system), which most on here seem to think there is nothing wrong with.

Greetings Comrade BURBS. Please show me some links to Dems engaging in the same massive voter suppression we're seeing from the GOP - vote caging, roll purging, disinfo fliers and calls, etc. I'd like to look into it. Certainly the national Dems don't have an injunction against them prohibiting the practice like the Rethugnicans do. I did a bit of googling and couldn't find anything but the ACORN lie. Since higher turnout usually helps Dems, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me but like all good Progressives, I like to keep an open mind.

Btw, I'd love to see an end to two party dominance, but it won't happen w/out full public funding of elections.

[NYBURBS]

Dems do engage in it, but not to the same level as the republicans. Democrats engage in it through the use of partisan decisions when they control for instance the Secretary of State position in a State. They are also quick to challenge the signatures that 3rd party candidates collect to be placed on a ballot (getting our choices removed is indeed a form of abuse toward voters).

As for the ACRON assertion, contrary to what you posted it is my understanding that even such outlets as the NYTimes are reporting that as much as 1/3 of the newly "enrolled" voters submitted by ACORN may be improper or fraudulent. That is rather massive and is really the other side of this coin. The republicans try to get people that might vote democratic beaten off the voter rolls. Democrats place all sorts of fraudulent voters onto the rolls, and both parties actively go after 3rd party candidates in an effort to prevent their placement on the ballot.

I know you have argued that these people never get to vote anyways (the fraudulent submissions) but that argument tends to defy basic logic. If it did not effect the outcome of elections then it would not have been engaged in throughout the years, and strict laws forbidding it would not have been codified. Certainly fraudulent votes will not swing a State such a NY (solidly one party) but in some of these battleground states it could make a difference.

PS- The NYTIMES article I refer to can be found here http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/us/politics/24acorn.html

PPS- I will look up some more stuff when I get back home from class. Especially about my assertions dealing with various Secretaries of State.

[Cuchulain]

They are also quick to challenge the signatures that 3rd party candidates

Dems did challenge sigs for Ralph Nader. That's not voter suppression. It doesn't prevent anyone from voting.

Re ACORN, you're talking about the 30% of their registrations 'rejected by election officials for a variety of reasons, including duplicate registrations, incomplete forms and fraudulent submissions from low-paid field workers trying to please their supervisors'. It's much ado about nothing. Lazy $8/hr temps filling out phony forms or trying to register (knowingly or not) voters already registered is not vote suppression (btw, Repub voter registration organizations have the same problems - some have even been accused of throwing out Dem forms, by their own workers). Same for registrations rejected by election officials because they were incomplete. Many forms are rejected because of typos, misspelling or even an apostrophe that doesn't match data in state records. The Help America Vote Act was crafted by the (then) Republican Congressional majority to disenfranchise new voters. It's Jim Crowe all over again.


I know you have argued that these people never get to vote anyways (the fraudulent submissions) but that argument tends to defy basic logic.

No. Mickey Mouse will not be voting and nobody else will be voting more than once.
'Fraud by individual voters is both irrational and extremely rare. Most citizens who take the time to vote offer their legitimate signatures and sworn oaths with the gravitas that this hard-won civic right deserves. Even for the few who view voting merely as a means to an end, however, voter fraud is a singularly foolish way to attempt to win an election. Each act of voter fraud risks five years in prison and a $10,000 fine - but yields at most one incremental vote. The single vote is simply not worth the price.

Because voter fraud is essentially irrational, it is not surprising that no credible evidence suggests a voter fraud epidemic. There is no documented wave or trend of individuals voting multiple times, voting as someone else, or voting despite knowing that they are ineligible. Indeed, evidence from the microscopically scrutinized 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington State actually reveals just the opposite: though voter fraud does happen, it happens approximately 0.0009% of the time. The similarly closely-analyzed 2004 election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of 0.00004%. National Weather Service data shows that Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often.' http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/

There's a lot more on the Brennan Center site. It debunks the whole vote fraud argument. The Repubs are, and have been, engaging in massive voter suppression, which is a much bigger issue. The Dems have not - not because they are angels, but because higher turnout benefits Dems.

I'll wait to see if you can find any Dem SoS who are as crooked as Katherine Harris or Ken Black.

[NYBURBS]

Dems did challenge sigs for Ralph Nader. That's not voter suppression. It doesn't prevent anyone from voting.


That is voter choice suppression and is just as evil as voter suppression. The republicans are moving toward suppressing groups of people that lean democrat. Both parties are engaged in activity meant to "disenfranchise" whole swaths of people that are interested in 3rd party candidates. It is no different and no less evil than what you complain about.

Your writing off the part about election officials rejecting 1/3 of the applications does a disservice to the rest of your argument. Failing to acknowledge this abuse only energizes others that might seek to condone the actions of the republican party.

Btw I have been to the Brennan Center site and read some of their materials. They make some convincing assertions, yet they are also named after one of the most liberal justices in the history of the US Supreme Court, so I do wonder about a possible agenda. Your assertion about something being irrational doesn't quite cut it for me. It is irrational to rob a bank, get a couple of thousand dollars, and then face almost certain capture and conviction in federal court. Yet many people do it all the time. Some people simply do not properly weigh what is appropriate/rational and what is not. They are examples of the weak creatures that Darwin referred to in his theory on natural selection :wink:

As I stated earlier, I will do some further research and look for examples to back up my assertions. I'm just getting home, so by tomorrow I should have some additional articles.

[Cuchulain]

Comrade BURBS, here's my original question to you: Please show me some links to Dems engaging in the same massive voter suppression we're seeing from the GOP - vote caging, roll purging, disinfo fliers and calls, etc.

The reason I asked about vote suppression and not vote fraud or registration fraud is because suppression is a much bigger issue. Vote fraud is just that - one vote at a time. Registration fraud is the deliberate attempt to register someone who isn't legally qualified to vote or to register someone under a fake identity. If the system works, that reg is never accepted by election officials. I'll get back to this in a bit.

Regardless of how you or I feel about it (and I've stated in other posts that I am a big Nader fan), challenging his sigs is NOT voter suppression. I see your point of view, but I disagree with it. I remind you that ppl can always write him in - or has it gotten so bad in some parts of the country that write-ins are no longer allowed there? Aren't you going to write in Ron Paul?


Your writing off the part about election officials rejecting 1/3 of the applications does a disservice to the rest of your argument. Failing to acknowledge this abuse only energizes others that might seek to condone the actions of the republican party

Think it through. There will always be some registrations that get rejected, regardless of the politics of the group doing the registration drive; some for good reasons, some not. Donald Duck is not supposed to make it through the system. ACORN flags these phonies, fires the person who turned them in and reports the person to the authorities. What more can be expected from them? Voter reg groups MUST pass along ALL completed forms they receive to election officials. However, if a realistic name is attached to a phony address, ACORN has no way of knowing. The state must decide if the reg is valid. ACORN is being attacked for purely political reasons. On the other hand, if someone is rejected simply because of a typo or an apostrophe, when all the other info matches, that's either careless legislation or deliberate voter suppression.

Your comment about "one of the most liberal justices in the history of the US Supreme Court" does YOU a disservice. Supporting the right to vote should not be a partisan matter.

You saw the figures on voter fraud. Go and find how many cases have been brought in the US. It's virtually nonexistent and would be impossible on a scale that would affect an election. Karl Rove had 9 DOJ attorneys fired because they couldn't find any voter fraud to prosecute. Check out previous statements/links to David Eglasias. The cries of vote fraud are just a cover for vote suppression.