ILLEGAL VOTING ACTIONS BY THE GOP IS ALL THEY HAVE LEFT

Gary Ater

November 03, 2008

> During the current early election results, Democratic voters were warned by the party to turn in any examples where an electronic machine vote for Obama was appearing to automatically switch over to McCain. This has occurred in four states so far, and it is always a vote switch from a Democratic candidate to a Republican candidate, never the opposite.

When these "switches" are found, the machines then have had to be "re-calibrated" and "re-booted", but in some cases that also drops all of the machines electronic memory of the previous votes for that day. (There was a report in Tennessee that a vote had been switched from a Republican to a Democrat. However, upon close examination, that "switch" did not occur and no one was able to find out who had made that report to the media. They have since determined that it was probably reported by the GOP to attempt to indicate that the "vote switching" is happening with both parties. However, it still appears that so far, it is only "actually" happening for switching Democratic votes to Republican candidates.)

>>> Voter ID laws have been passed by GOP-majority legislatures in Georgia, Indiana and elsewhere that serves as thinly veiled mechanisms for suppressing opposition voters. This is because historically, those without driver愀 licenses or other forms of government-issued identity cards are more than likely, Democrats.

>>> In several states, the Republican Party made plans to challenge the legitimacy of thousands of voters. In some cases, they use a notorious, legally dubious technique known as "caging", whereby the party sends out non-forwarding mail to low-income or minority households. (These are the people most likely to move frequently or to be victims of subprime mortgage foreclosures.) The GOP then uses the non-forwarded, returned envelopes to question the eligibility of those voters.

>>> Some Republican-run states, most notably Florida, have introduced "absurdly strict standards for the admission of new voters to the voting rolls". This control is making it likely that thousands to tens-of-thousands of legally eligible voters will have to go to extraordinary lengths to prove that they have the right to vote. This is the classic "Weyrich" strategy.

>>> What is most disturbing is that that the GOP is trying to use the US Department of Justice to legitimize their efforts, and in some cases to extend them. The Republicans are bringing up hundreds of individual cases of possible ballot fraud, while diverting any of the DOJ愀 interest in protecting the rights of minority voters, as the Voting Rights Act mandates that the DOJ is required to do.

(In 2004, an e-mail trail, setting out the plans for the GOP to challenge the eligibility of tens of thousands of voters in swing-states was turned up by a PBS News Program. Those states included Nevada, New Mexico, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The plan was to challenge voters in the event that John Kerry came out ahead of George W. Bush.)

>>> The plan for challenging voters has become very sophisticated. First, they have continued to demonize ACORN, the low-income advocacy group that works to register new minority voters.

Yes, it is true that this organization turns in registration forms with bogus individuals. But most people don愒 understand that the law says that ACORN workers "must turn in ALL numbered registration forms regardless of how they are filled out".

For this reason, ACORN turns in all their forms in three groups: Good, Questionable and Probably Bogus. The local and state registration departments must then decipher which registrations are good and which are bad. (Registration collection workers that work for ACORN are immediately dismissed, and some have been charged with misdemeanors, if they are found to be forging registration forms in order to meet their quotas.)

>>> In this election, the Republicans had tried to do the "illegal foreclosed homes mailing exercise" in a Michigan county. However, when the Democratic offices and Obama愀 election campaign teams made that plan public, the GOP in that area was forced to stop and deny any such attempt.

>>> As was stated in the NATION Magazine, "In Montana, an attempt to disenfranchise 6,000 Americans in Democratic-leaning districts has sparked real outrage. Dirty electioneering, in other words, may boost a party headed toward a narrow victory, as it did for Republicans in 2004, but it can also sink a floundering political party [such as the current GOP] like a stone."

>>> The Republicans are also overreaching and alienating their own supporters. The firing of the US attorney愀 scandal is the best example.

After firing eight US attorneys for failing to pursue individual voter fraud in their districts, the new Democratic majority in Congress was finally alarmed enough to start an investigation that exposed Bush愀 gross political manipulations. (What愀 so bizarre about the firings is that the fired US attorneys were mostly staunch Republicans that did not pursue the voter fraud issue because the cases were so weak, they knew that any half-serious judge would have immediately just thrown the cases out.)

>>> It has gotten so bad that in the heat of the McCain-Obama campaign, the GOP Lieutenant Governor of Montana, John Bohlinger declared publicly, "I was appalled at the leadership of my political party for vote suppression activities that have no place in a democracy."

>>> Republicans in three states: Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin, have sued the electoral authorities to try to expand their power to challenge voters. The Supreme Court thwarted those efforts in Ohio, the other cases are still open.

>>> Jonah Goldman of the Lawyer愀 Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, has stated that; "Voter suppression is typically a Republican tactic, going back decades. The few instances where the Democrats have cheated, they tended to pad the rolls with supporters, rather than trying to purge them of their adversaries."

>>> To support the Voting Rights Act, the Bush Department of Justice has had a chance to clean up its act by sending teams of observation lawyers to the troubled voting areas of the South. However, the department typically doesn愒 announce that decision until just before the election. (Well, the election is tomorrow and nothing so far has come from the DOJ.) So, I wouldn愒 hold my breath.

Keeping a close eye on this election and exposing to the public as many of the "Weyrich" inspired dirty strategies is seriously needed. Especially, if the Democrats ever plan on squelching this ingrained GOP attitude toward winning their elections. One must remember that the GOP takes this illegal approach as a way for developing their long-term strategies, not just for individual campaigns.

The Democrats need to be in an "election oversight position" for the long term, which basically means every future US election.

Copyright G.Ater 2008