ELECTION INTEGRITY ?

"Uncounted" Shines Spotlight on Our Corrupt Voting System

By Marta Steele , OpEdNews.com. Posted June 18, 2008.

A must-see documentary for the large percentage of our population unaware that a large percentage of votes aren't counted.

David Earnhardt's expertise in choosing the right moments in the last eight years to highlight served another purpose in my life: it rekindled my anger and inspired me to keep fighting the fight.

Though it occurs to me that the half of the voting-age population in this country refuse to vote, so disaffected they are with the system or so uninformed of their rights, they may be further scared away from participating in such a corrupted process.

Earnhardt's film reviews the highlights of the last eight years and finds one of the constants, despite the nonpartisanship of the election rights movement: the Republican party is connected with the corruption, by way of large donations to their candidates by the large voting machine manufacturers, by way of the Republicans in power who have aided and abetted the ethical violations that have handed the Bushocracy the White House twice, unfairly. The details?

·        The Supreme Court absconding with the right of the Florida Supreme Court to determine how to handle the conflicts in their state that postponed the election result in 1960; the double role of Katherine Harris as Florida's secretary of state and head of the committee to elect Bush; the complicity of Bush's brother, Governor Jeb, who promised his state's vote to "W."

·        The rush to purchase the disastrous electronic touch-screen and push-button "DRE"'s that were so easy to corrupt and manipulate in countless ways, including "vote hopping" from Democratic to Republican candidates by way of manipulating the proprietary coding [read: no one could check the programming to be sure that it was functioning reliably].

·        The purposeful racism leveled against third-world citizens bound by large percentages to the Democratic party and therefore kept away from the polls by intimidation, misinformation, manipulation of paperwork, denial of rights on flimsy grounds, purposefully undersupplying to precincts where they voted, or supplying dysfunctional machines in stark contrast to the treatment of affluent communities bound to vote for Republicans.

·        The control of the key battleground state of Ohio in 2004 by Kenneth Blackwell, also both secretary of state and leader of the committee to re-elect Bush; the long lines at the polls in pouring rain that forced many with limited amounts of time to leave without voting -- those who persevered were forced to wait as long as 16 hours. The faking of a terrorist scare at another precinct. All that and much more crippled our rights in 2004.

Diebold is the case in point Earnhardt uses to exemplify what has gone wrong in this country since 2004 (activist groups have formed since then to fight the corruption; more on this below). A large and powerful Republican-connected manufacturer of paperless DREs, Diebold is responsible for dispersing dysfunctional machines in huge quantities -- machines that have been proved hackable in less than a minute. The key to the programming so resembles a luggage key that anyone can open a black box in that short a time and infect the machine to produce votes for the candidate of choice.

The mainstream press ignored this fiasco for as long as it could. Grassroots activists and then iconoclastic and brave journalists first began the publicity push. First the establishment corporates dismissed the activists' claims and then finally took up the proliferation, but never soon enough to affect results and never to the degree needed.

The earliest canary in the coal mine, Greg Palast, who exposed the list of illegally purged voters wrongly identified as felons, in Florida, is missing from the pantheon, though other pioneers who stood in front of the Supreme Court in mid-December are briefly photo'ed on that day they awaited the decision of the Supreme Court on who would next occupy the White House.

Just as John Conyers's slow, weary articulation serves as ground base to the film, a theme running throughout is the outrageous and chronic disconnect between exit polls and machine tallies. And there is much more to watch and learn.

What can we do? Contact our representatives who must run for re-election every two years; say no to DREs, an area where we are making progress; volunteer to be a poll observer or worker -- a job where the median age of employees is currently 72; write letters to the periodical editors local and national, lobby, and pass this film around.

Where's the outrage? 'We can', Barack Obama might say were he among us in this fight. Use of optical scanners, low-tech electronic voting machines that produce paper ballots, and revival of paper ballots are spreading. We're succeeding but never has the need been more urgent to never stop. Election 2008 is upon us and it is up to us to keep our democracy functional and not go the way of places where notorious corruption for years has kept the wrong people in office.

One citizen, one ballot must remain to perpetuate this historic experiment we call democracy, an age of enlightenment in history that must endure. Individuals have to take that step, says Bev Harris as the film ends and our part continues, strengthened, our outrage rekindled, our mission defined once again. Democracy: love it or lose it!

 

Top Senator And 10 States Attack VA for Banning Voter Registration Drives By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Officials overseeing the VA and state elections say the VA's policy is unnecessary and insulting to veterans who sacrificed for our country. Read more »

America Is in Major Need of Electoral Reform
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
America is experiencing a surge of hope -- the time is right to invigorate our damaged democracy and capture greater power for the people. Read more »

The Latest Spin From Voting Machine Makers: What Problems?
By Dan Wallach, Freedom to Tinker
At a Texas legislative hearing, manufacturers say scientists who studied their machines were not looking at "real world" issues. Read more »

A Lesson From the '04 Election in Ohio: How Latinos Were Disenfranchised
By Richard Hayes Phillips, AlterNet
An excerpt from a new book describes

A FEW GRIM REMINDER THAT USA's DEMOCRACY IS BUT A TRAGIC LAUGH !

LYNCHING BY LAPTOP

meanwhile...

A democracy is turning into fascism when...
Protests restricted/ignored
Labels dissenters terrorists/traitors
False-flags
Elections suspect
Leaders benefit from wars/disasters
Uses propaganda/lies & partisan mass-media
Claims War is needed for everchanging false reasons
Runs secret/extrajudicial/torture camps
Curtails/suspends civil rights/liberties
Runs wiretap/intercept/surveillance net
Stealthily expands int'nl influence/power
Judiciary/Opposition ineffective/ignored
Legislates to defy Constitution

“It’s enough that people know there has been a vote. Those who vote decide of nothing. Those who count the votes, decides of everything” - Joseph Stalin

Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had. - Chris Hedges

“They call it the 'American Dream' because you have to be asleep to believe it.” - George Carlin

Obama Doesn't Sweat. He should.   by Greg Palast     In swing-state Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State conducted the biggest purge of voters in history, dumping a fifth of all registrations. Guess their color. In swing-state Florida, the state is refusing to accept about 85,000 new registrations from voter drives - overwhelming Black voters.
    In swing state New Mexico, HALF of the Democrats of Mora, a dirt poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, found their registrations disappeared this year, courtesy of a Republican voting contractor.     In swing states Ohio and Nevada, new federal law is knocking out tens of thousands of voters who lost their homes to foreclosure.
    My investigations partner spoke directly to Barack Obama about it. (When your partner is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., candidates take your phone call.) The cool, cool Senator Obama told Kennedy he was "concerned" about the integrity of the vote in the Southwest in particular.
    He's concerned. I'm sweating.
    It's time SOMEBODY raised the alarm about these missing voters; not to save Obama's candidacy – journalists should stay the heck away from partisan endorsements - but raise the alarm to save our sick democracy.
    And that somebody is YOU. Joining with US, the Palast investigative team. Here's how:   We have been offered an astonishing opportunity to place the Kennedy-Palast investigative findings on a national, prime-time, major-network television broadcast. Plus, separately, we have an extraordinary offer to create a series of reports for national network radio.
    But guess what? The networks will NOT PAY for our public service reports. We have to raise the start-up funds in the next two weeks to film it, record it and get it on the airwaves.     WE need YOU to fund the reports, DISSEMINATE the findings as we post the print, audio and video on the web– and ACT on it.  
  So, for only the second time this year, I am asking each one of you to make a tax deductible donation to the non-profit, non-partisan Palast Investigative Fund of $500, $150 or $100.    
Progressives have complained for years of no opportunity to get the hard, cold sweaty truth on the air. Well, put your money where your heart and soul is.  
  Donate at least $500, I'll send you every book I've written and every film, signed. Send $150 and I'll send you as a gift, a copy of John Ennis' film Free For All, Armed Madhouse, The Election Files and a copy of Live from the Armed Madhouse all signed. Donate $100, and I’ll send you 3 copies, one signed to you, of "The Elections Files," (Watch the trailer here) the best of our BBC/Democracy Now films – including special never-broadcast interviews with Kennedy(Watch a clip) and fired prosecutor David Iglesias (Watch a clip).    
I know you’re ponying up for your favorite candidates. But what’s the point of winning folks' votes IF NO ONE COUNTS THEM?  
  Please make your donation – today. No corporation, no big foundation, is going to take on this emergency in our democracy. The election’s about to be stolen – for a third time. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?  
  Donate today (for $1,000 minimum, we’ll list you as a Producer of our next DVD, in gratitude). Why? Because the only way to get the vote-chewing cockroaches out of the voting machinery is to turn on the lights – tell the truth on them. On prime time.     After our team busted the story of Katherine Harris' attack on innocent Black voters as "felons," the NAACP sued and won back their rights. The truth CAN make the difference. Yes, we can. Indeed, we HAVE.  
  Think all votes should be counted in America? Then YOU stand up and be counted. Don’t expect networks or commercial sponsors to pay for your democracy. Feed the truth, donate $100 right now and pass on a copy of the Elections Files to your dippy cousin who thinks Kerry lost fair and square.  
  Donations from our prior and only request already paid for some of our filming in the Southwest. Don't let this story be swept under the border.    
If you want more information, go to GregPalast.com, or write me directly at GregPalast.com – and hit the button, "contact Greg."  
  *********************************************************************************************************** 
Greg Palast is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for Investigative Reporting at the Nation Institute, New York. Read and view his investigations for BBC Television at www.GregPalast.com.  

20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The United States

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the US voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

5. 35% of ES&S is owned by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a long-time friend of the Bush family, was caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice- presidential candidates.

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the US and counts almost 60% of all US votes.

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

12. Diebold employs 5 convicted felons as developers. These are the people who write the voting machine computer code.

13. Diebold's Senior Vice-President, Jeff Dean, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie at

17. 30% of all US votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail. 18. Bush's Help America Vote Act of 2002 has as its goal to replace all machines with the new electronic touch screen systems with no paper trail.

18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.

20. Major statistical voting oddities (odds on the order of 250 million to 1!) -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated by experts.

Such amazing odds, the equivalent of statistical miracles these were. Was it God? Or was it Diebold...?

http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov

Here's just a few sources:

1.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html

3.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/htm...e_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html

4.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentar...03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...4fitrakis.html

6.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/module...article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

7.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/05...w_hagel27.html

8.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html

9.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041...s/pfindex.html

10.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

11.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

13.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

14.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

15.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/200...oc_elexoh.html

16.
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in632436.shtml

18.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/Election...sBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.ph...icle&sid= 950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

19.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/talla...al/7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Oct29.html

20.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Election...sBushIsOut.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/governm...,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/htm...thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/ 

 

 

2008's First Disenfranchised Voters: Injured and Homeless Veterans By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Despite new legislation in Congress, the VA is poised to prevent registration drives at its facilities before the November election. Read more »

The Youth Vote: A Matter of Access, Not Apathy By Michael Connery, The Nation The biggest obstacle to young voters is not apathy, but removing barriers that complicate the process for new voters. Read more » In the land of the free to vote....

VOTE THEFT : CLASS WAR BY OTHER MEANS

http://www.gregpalast.com/the-razorcake-interviewinvestigating-vote-theft/#more-2061

"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." - Ian Williams Goddard

Yes, America does have a Manifest Destiny-to Let Freedom Ring-which the evil and greedy and pernicious would twist into a grab for land and resources and ethnic cleansing. And so the Manifest Destiny of the journalists in our shitty little offices in New York and London is to expose these motherfuckers. – Greg Palast

“They call it the 'American Dream' because you have to be asleep to believe it.” - George Carlin

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UPDATE...

ANOTHER AMERICAN WHISTLE BLOWER HERO GOES PUBLIC & BITES THE DUST IN THE LAND OF THE NOT SO FREE ANYMORE...

Diebold's Plot to Steal '04 Election

http://www.goleft.tv/view.asp?c=7&v=1719

GoLeft TV's Farron Cousins talks with Diebold whistleblower Steve Heller who, while working as a word processor at the law firm representing Diebold, saw documents proving Diebold was violating state election laws by knowingly peddling voting machine software that had not received the state certification required by law.

SILVER LINING...

Karl Rove could fall over this...

listen up...

Stealing the 2008 election the GOP way will not be a small time operation...it wasn't in 2000 & 2004 either !

 

*********   Seven Ways Your Vote Might Not Count This November By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on August 22, 2008, Printed on August 22, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/95974/

The following issues will directly impact how voters are accommodated.

1.     Voter Purges

2.     Unprocessed Voter Registrations

3.     Obstacles to Student Voting

4.     Voting Machine Allocations

5.     Poll Worker Shortages

6.     Partisan Voter Challenges

7.     Early Voting/Absentee Ballot Problems

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of "What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election," with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).

GOP Voter Suppression Comes to Wisconsin 

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/democracy/98702/

Partisan voter suppression efforts have many faces, but they all have one goal: suppressing your political opponent's voters.

In Wisconsin this past week, the Republican Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen, filed a politically timed lawsuit that local election officials say will interfere with turnout for the presidential election on Nov. 4 and create a bureaucratic nightmare for election workers seeking to process a record number of new voter registrations before then. The AG's game plan is simple: create a bureaucratic nightmare to tie up the election machinery before Election Day and then create bottlenecks to confound voters on Election Day.

UC Scientists Release Voting Machine Hacking Video

The hack shows vote counts can be altered no matter what the paper receipts say.The Computer Security Group at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) has released a short, chilling video demonstrating how a single person can hack an election on a touch-screen voting system -- even one with a so-called "Voter Verifiable Paper Trail" (VVPAT) added to it -- in such a way that it is highly unlikely that the manipulation would ever be detected by either the public or election officials.
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/98320/

It's the ugliest attack on voting rights we've seen in recent history--if you live in Michigan and you're in danger of losing your home to foreclosure, Republicans will try to take away your right to vote.1

McCain's response? Silence. Like Bush in 2000 and 2004, he's trying to keep a safe distance from these tactics, while benefiting from them. McCain could end this with a phone call. But he won't.

It's voter-suppression at its worst. They're taking advantage of folks falling on hard times and using it for political gain--kicking people while they're down. It's time to hold McCain publicly accountable for this strategy.

Will you join us in outing McCain for not denouncing these tactics and invite your friends and family to do the same? It just takes a moment:

http://colorofchange.org/michigan08/?id=2241-623661

For years, Republicans have engaged in "caging"--challenging the eligibility of voters on election day to suppress turnout and intimidate voters.2 They'll often try to reject voters by claiming they don't live at the address where they're registered. This year, they've taken it to a new low--the chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan said last week, "We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses."3

In other words, they'll target every voter whose house is on a foreclosure list, and challenge their voting rights on election day. But just because your name is on a list, it doesn't mean that you've lost your home or moved. In fact, many homeowners stay in their homes for months after the foreclosure process has begun, and some people are able to catch up on their payments and reverse the process.4

So why are Republicans illegally targeting homeowners who've had a tough time under Bush's economy? Because they know they're likely to vote for Democrats, and for Obama for President. In Michigan, over 60% of sub-prime loans were made to African-Americans.5 And in general, people who've been hit hard by the economy are less likely to vote for Republicans. This tactic won't just affect struggling homeowners--it will cause longer lines and delays at the polls for everyone that lives in a neighborhood with a high number of foreclosures. And that's the point.

After making the plan public, Michigan Republicans are backtracking and claiming they were misquoted.6 But everything indicates that these are exactly the kinds of tactics they'll use,7 and they're just trying to squash an embarrassing story.8

Similar tactics are being used across the country, but the McCain campaign simply sits in the background, quietly benefiting from voter suppression. The Obama campaign is fighting against this plan in the courts,9 but they need our help to expose these dishonorable tactics and make this a national story.

If enough of us step up and connect the dots, we'll give the press a reason to make the connection between McCain and what's happening in Michigan. And as we've seen in our other campaigns,10 when we stand together behind a clear message, the press covers it and moves our message forward.

Calling on McCain to publicly reject these tactics is just the first step in our campaign to shame the Republican Party for attacking the voting rights of struggling homeowners.

Please join us:

http://colorofchange.org/michigan08/?id=2241-623661

Thanks and Peace,

-- James, Gabriel, Clarissa, Andre, Kai, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
   September 17th, 2008

1. "Lose your house, lose your vote," Michigan Messenger, 9/10/08
http://colorofchange.org/link/?cat=mich&?id=2241-623661&link=1

2. "Caging list," Wikipedia
http://colorofchange.org/link/?cat=mich&?id=2241-623661&link=2

3. See reference 1.

4. "Obama campaign files suit over "voter-foreclosure" plans," Michigan Messenger, 9/16/08
http://colorofchange.org/link/?cat=mich&?id=2241-623661&link=4

5. See reference 1.

6. "Flap over foreclosure challenges in Michigan grows," Chicago Tribune, 9/16/08
http://colorofchange.org/link/?cat=mich&?id=2241-623661&link=6

7. "Former GOP operative explains why Republicans will use foreclosure lists to block voters," Michigan Messenger, 9/15/08
http://colorofchange.org/link/?cat=mich&?id=2241-623661&link=7

8. "Messenger rejects GOP plea for retraction," Michigan Messenger, 9/12/08
http://colorofchange.org/link/?cat=mich&?id=2241-623661&link=8

9. See reference 4.

10. ColorOfChange.org campaign against Congressional Black Caucus debate on Fox News
http://colorofchange.org/link/?cat=mich&?id=2241-623661&link=10

11. "D.N.C. Shuns Fox in Debate Schedule," The Caucus (New York Times blog), 4/5/07
http://colorofchange.org/link/?cat=mich&?id=2241-623661&link=11

Night of the Living Vote-snatchers -
from Steal Back Your Vote!

by Greg Palast

Excerpted from the Greg Palast, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Robert F. Kennedy's comic book voter guide. See www.StealBackYourVote.org for more.

In 2002, George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act.

When a Bush tells you he’s going to “help” you vote - look out!

The result: in the 2004 presidential election, over three million votes - 3,006,080 - were cast and not counted. Like, what the !@#!?

That’s from the official data from an agency created by George Bush called the “Elections Assistance Commission.”  When a Bush tells you he’s going to “assist” our elections... (well, you get it).

Three MILLION ballots disappeared - Pfft!

And not just anyone’s ballots.  U.S. government experts reported, for example, that a black voter’s ballot is 900% more likely than a white voter’s ballot to get “lost” in the machine. Bush fired the experts.

Three million voters went missing in ‘04 - but that ain’t nuthin’!

Law professor and voting law expert Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warns that it’s about to get a whole lot worse.  Nasty new spores of the “Help” America Vote Act went into effect since the last election that have turned the process into a vicious game of “Chutes and Ladders,” with traps and tricks between you and your vote...

Example: the Republican Secretary of State of Colorado “helped” her state vote by eliminating 19.4% of the voters from the voter rolls.  That’s one in five !@#$#@ voters!

Over three million missing ballots – and now the voters themselves are disappearing by the millions.  Where the hell did they go?

WHAT'S THAT UP IN THE SKY?!   It's Bobby Kennedy and Greg Palast releasing the flaming hot full-color investigative comic book, STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE!   Pow! Zap! No more joking with our rights, Mr. Rove!   Click here and get the 24-page investigative comic book by Greg Palast and Bobby Kennedy: STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE.   With the full story of the investigation you'll soon see Rolling Stone magazine - illustrated by razor-sharp pencils of Ted Rall, Lukas Ketner and Lloyd Dangle.   SIX ways they're STEALING your vote - and SEVEN ways to STEAL IT BACK.   (C'mon - 'fess up - do you really know what to do if they hand you a 'provisional' ballot?)   Make a $100 tax deductible donation at StealBackYourVote.org and we'll send you 25 to pass out to troublemakers of your choice.   And, for every $100 donation, we will give away another 400 to voters to vulnerable voters in swing states. We just sent eight cases to Santiago Juarez. Santiago's working with young Hispanic voters of New Mexico.   Can you help us send him more? Or donate $75+ and get a half dozen comix plus the DVD(signed), 'The Election Files' - my BBC reports on the vote snatchers.   Pick up 10 copies of the guide for a donation of $50. We send'm right away by priority mail.   Get five hundred copies for your local school or group for a $1000 donation at http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/print-copies-of-steal-back-your-vote.   Or give us the donation, we'll send'm to a church designated by our co-sponsor Jesse Jackson's Operation Rainbow/PUSH.   Thanks to your prior generosity, we're offering the printing plates FREE of any fee to us to any magazine or weekly that wants to insert comic. (You want to reproduce the guide on a mass scale - you got it. Contact zach (at) gregpalast.com)   Or you can download the comic for a donation of a penny or more (more, PLEASE), at StealBackYourVote.org.   Hey, radio stations: download the Willie Nelson PSA for 'Steal Back Your Vote.'   Spread this link! Pow! Zap! Take that, Katherine!   Steal Back Your Vote is a project of the not-for-profit non-partisan Palast Investigative Fund.   WHAT'S THAT UP IN THE SKY?! It's our Super Sponsors! Voto Latino, Operation Rainbow Push, Air America Radio, Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! and other crusaders for Truth, Justice and the American Way.   Contact us at interviews (at) StealBackYourVote.org.

Will the GOP Steal Another Election in 2008? BuzzFlash Talks with Greg Palast About Republican Voter Suppression.

 A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

"However, the Republican cry of 'Vote Fraud!' has become the cover for purges and challenges to legal voters by the millions. I even tracked down and filmed some of these so-called fraudulent voters handed me from a GOP list. Every one was a legal voter."

Greg Palast, Intrepid Investigative Reporter and Author

 * * *

Greg Palast and BuzzFlash go back to the election of 2000. At that time, large progressive political news sites were hard to come by – and there was only one investigative reporter who was able to unravel the theft of the Florida election: Greg Palast.

Greg didn’t just expose the mugging of democracy. As a University of Chicago trained researcher, he was able to detail how Katherine Harris used an outside vendor to create caging lists that prevented legitimate voters from casting their ballots. In fact, Greg has a laptop presentation that actually shows you the lists that Harris’s office worked from in keeping minorities from voting.

Of course, Greg’s investigation on vote theft – which has branched out widely in the intervening years – is persuasive and thorough enough for the BBC and British newspapers, but not for the corporate press in America! We kid you not.

To this day, Palast is effectively banned from reaching the mainstream American voter because television stations and big papers are owned by companies that don’t want to rock the vote. It might hurt their tax cuts or efforts to deregulate media ownership.

BuzzFlash thought that now would be a good time to revisit with our most interviewed expert on BuzzFlash, Greg Palast. After all, we have an election coming up.

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BUZZFLASH: You have been investigating the coordinated and vigorous GOP effort to suppress and steal votes since the theft of the election in 2000. You and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just did a BBC Documentary on what nefarious voter suppression tactics the Republicans have in store for us in 2008? Can you summarize some of the methods that the GOP are using to disenfranchise non-Republican voters prior to the election, to prevent them from voting during the election, and to keep their votes from being counted after the polls close?

PALAST: It's ugly. Consider:

- In THE swing state, Colorado, we found that the Republican Secretary of State wiped out 19.4% - one in five - voter names in an unnoticed mass purge.

- In swing-state New Mexico, in the February caucus, one in nine Democrats found their names missing from the voter rolls supplied by the State. The elections supervisor of San Miguel County - who's own name was missing from the rolls - has no confidence the state contractors will fix it. Our statistical analysis showed there was a direct relationship between your name and your race and income. The poor and the dark were disappeared.

- In Indiana, you heard about 10 nuns who lost their vote because their ID - drivers' licenses - had expired (they were all over eighty). But what about the others? We've calculated that 143,000 others were turned away - disproportionately Blacks and new voters.

And so on and so on.

BUZZFLASH: BuzzFlash has been covering one public relations effort by the Republican National Committee to create a false context for claiming voter fraud. In short, they have been attacking a national community organizing group called ACORN with news releases, lawsuits, surrogate assaults, etc., falsely claiming (as they did in 2004 and 2006) that ACORN is engaged in the massive illegal registration of primarily minority voters. Can you explain the significance of the ACORN slander by the RNC?

PALAST: As RFK and I report, there are only about SIX voters found guilty of federal voting fraud in a year. SiX! Out of 178 million registered voters.

So the GOP (and Fox and CNN) are running stories about ACORN signing up zlllions of illegal voters. Yep, there are a handful of phony names - but 'Mary Poppins' has never shown up to vote.

However, the Republican cry of 'Vote Fraud!' has become the cover for purges and challenges to legal voters by the millions.

I even tracked down and filmed some of these so-called fraudulent voters handed me from a GOP list. Every one was a legal voter.

BUZZFLASH: Tell us a bit about the site and downloadable comic book that you launched with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on how to prevent the theft of millions of votes by the Republicans, yet again in 2008. The website is called: http://www.stealbackyourvote.com.

PALAST: Our Rolling Stone report out this week is all about how they've stolen so many legitimate votes. The comic book, which includes the Rolling Stone findings also includes the SEVEN WAYS TO STEAL IT BACK.

And the whole thing is illustrated brilliantly by comic crazies Ted Rall, Lukas Ketner and Troubletown's Lloyd Dangle. I loved doing it.

You can download the whole comic book for a penny or more (donate more please) at StealBackYourVote.org. And better yet, you can order bunches of the comic book there as well (and see the short movies).

Cool eh?

BUZZFLASH: Can you briefly explain the role of ProsecutorGate at the DOJ in efforts to suppress the Democratic vote in 2006? How did this fit in with Karl Rove’s grand voter suppression and theft plan?

PALAST: You betcha! Fired prosecutor David Iglesias told us something astonishing: He said that he was fired because he refused to arrest innocent citizens for voter fraud that didn’t happen. That's obstruction of justice. It was all about creating a hysteria over fraudulent voters that didn’t exist.

This is what Iglesias basically said: "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments [Rove and the RNC] that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away." Only the voters were legal.

BUZZFLASH: Isn’t there one bright spot? You cut your teeth on GOP voter disenfranchisement with brilliant reporting on how the Bush campaign team, Jeb Bush, and Katherine Harris prevented tens of thousands of valid minority voters from voting through a scheme to use an outside vendor, ChoicePoint, to create an inaccurate list of felons who could not vote in 2000 in Florida. Hasn’t the current GOP governor, Charlie Crist, had the right to vote of ex-felons restored?

PALAST: Crist is a duplicitous phony. On the one hand, he pretends they'll let ex-cons vote as in almost every state. On the other hand less than a handful of the half million ex-cons in the state have been able to get through the insane rigmarole required to actually register. In most states ex-cons can vote like anyone else.

BUZZFLASH: As a follow up, from a practical matter, don’t the Republicans have to be within a certain striking distance to steal the election. If Obama keeps trending up, or ends up with a double-digit popular vote victory, how could the GOP steal the election? After all, if Nader weren’t on the ballot in Florida – despite all the nefarious Republican voter suppression and theft – Al Gore would be president, right?

PALAST: That's what RFK and I say: you can't steal ALL the votes ALL the time.

BUZZFLASH: Okay, it’s less than a month before the election, what can anyone do to halt another theft of the White House?

PALAST: Go to STEALBACKYOURVOTE.ORG. Get the comic book. Now was that so difficult?

BUZZFLASH: For 8 years, you’ve been covering this issue. Some others have joined you over time and it’s a bit of a movement, albeit still relatively small. But, as in 2000, not much has changed with the corporate media. They are still pretty much ignoring the clear evidence of a coordinated GOP effort to keep non-Republicans from voting and to steal votes wherever they can. Is there any reason to think that they might awaken to their journalistic responsibility to report on the mugging of democracy?

PALAST: Zero. That's why we have Buzzflash. Bless you.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

Additional Resources for BuzzFlash Readers:

Greg Palast website: http://www.gregpalast.com

To Download "Steal It Back" comic book: http://www.stealbackyourvote.org/