That tragic typo. Obviously, the headline should read: "How the GOP will steal the 2008 election." DOH!
This is from a Crooks and Liars review of Greg Palast's book Armed Madhouse
. I have this book but haven't read it yet, but it looks like it will be on the menu for this weekend.
Quote:
| With the Democrats regaining a mini-swagger in their political strut, Palast lays out the scenario for the Republicans stealing the upcoming presidential election. In fact the longtime swagger of Bush and the smirk of Rove may be grounded in their total confidence in knowing how to steal presidential elections in perpetuity. Palast lays out in detail just how they did it and more importantly, how they plan on doing it again. Can the Democrats stop them is the only question at this point. It’s kind of like facing a football team with a massive offense and your team has a pretty good defense. Can your team stop their offense - in both meanings of the word? In 2000 it was caging lists. In 2004, it was provisional ballots. In 2008 it will be voter IDs. Palast lays out the case about Florida scrubbing its rolls for ex-felons or anyone who had the same name as a felon or might have known a felon. But there were other scrubbing going on. The overall genius of the National Republican Party is to work with local state officials to eliminate as many ethnic voters, aka Democrats, as possible through a myriad of methods. For instance, Florida absentee ballots were discarded in record numbers. The ones that came from Republicans actually said so on the outside of the envelope. Nice. Election officials also used methods; such as zip code, race reporting and name recognition to achieve the same goal. Concerning provisional ballots in 2004, Palast explains how the Republican-controlled Congress, confronted by Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus, signed deceptive bipartisan legislation for access to so-called provisional ballots. The one thing carefully omitted was that it wasn’t required by law to actually count those ballots. No accident. Other methods included leaving the oldest machines in poor neighborhoods and reducing their numbers over all to create 7-hour wait times and thereby crippling the election process. Secretary of State Blackwell did everything he could to reduce the number of ethnic/student/urban voters including challenging the weight of paper used for voter registration forms. All intentional. All incrementally effective. Anti-conspiracy theorists in the media kept demanding a ‘smoking gun’. There is no smoking gun – just thousands of spent rounds of ammunition. It is not two sided by the way. Republican operatives covered the landscape with various illicit techniques from phone slamming, to hidden party switching petitions that in some cases said they were for marijuana reform on the “cover” sheet. Regarding black box voting. Palast insists that while touch screen voting is a real threat, it is really a McGuffin that will not do as much damage as feared. It is the total overall ballot and registration dumping that caused Democrats to lose two elections they actually won with ease. Now the new boogieman is the voter ID card needed to vote in battleground states. For Democrats, a nightmare in the making. Only 20% of Americans have passports. Not everyone has a driver’s license. And many do not have birth certificates. In many states, the phony threat of voter fraud has permitted legislation for this new method of voter elimination to be ratified. The drama will be played out on Election Day 2008, a little over a year away. Brilliant. And that is why they are still smirking. Check the government’s official numbers in Ohio for the 2004 presidential election: Spoiled ballots 103,660 Provisional uncounted 33,998 Absentee uncounted 15,519 Ghost & blocked votes 85,950 Total Uncounted 239,127 Bush ‘victory’ margin 118,599 Through careful statistical analysis, Palast demonstrates how inner city Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Jews and students were successfully targeted and eliminated by Republican election operatives. All of the above were overwhelmingly Democratic voters. |
. I have this book but haven't read it yet, but it looks like it will be on the menu for this weekend.
