The 2004 and 2006 elections were characterized by two GOP tactics: voter suppression and vote count manipulation. They are very good at them. Once again, the research for this letter has already been done and published in my #45, posted 1 November, 2006. All I have to do is cut and paste.
“First, however, let me mention the 2002 senatorial election in Georgia, which pitted Senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee from Viet Nam against one Saxby Chambliss . “Not mentioned at the time is the fact that, up to the day of the election, Cleland still was ahead in the polls. Also not mentioned was the fact that, in the case of Georgia, the State did not run the elections. The vote count was run by Diebold, a company which had secured the contract to install new electronic voting machines, trained poll workers, built election databases, and prepared the ballots in the majority of Georgia’s counties. “In those counties Diebold’s employees would henceforth supervise electoral proceedings, program the machines and render technical assistance – all without the oversight of any state officials.” I will mention Diebold later, so just keep them in mind. Cleland, ahead in the regular and exit polls when the election started, lost in an “unexplained” upset. To the extent of my knowledge, states are not supposed to “outsource” running elections, especially to firms whose upper management has made large contributions to one of the parties involved. Guess which party. Here’s a hint. It does NOT start with the letter “D.”
Before moving on to the 2004 election, however, one other GOP stunt should be addressed concerning the 2002 election and another senatorial election. My source for this information is a book by the person who perpetrated the act, Allen Raymond. (Raymond, Allen, with Ian Spiegelman. How To Rig An Election, Confessions of A Republican Operative. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2008. (P), Chapter twelve). The plan was to, basically, spam the Democratic get out the vote phone banks in New Hampshire to shut them down. “The volume of calls was so big that the switch couldn’t handle it and ended up shutting down. When that happened, all the lines in town would go dead until the data in the telephone switch cleared and the phone service in the town came back on.” (Page 172) After being told that the operation was not illegal, Raymond went ahead with it, only to receive a call from the Republican Party headquarters (after the operation had been running for an hour or two, telling him that the plan WAS illegal and that he should shut it down. He did so, but only after the operation had been running for several hours. The Republican candidate won and Raymond did time for that one, as did one other GOP operative. Another conviction was reversed on appeal. My source? “The phone jamming scheme resulted in three criminal prosecutions and a lawsuit that forced Republicans to pay Democrats $135,000. Charles McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, pleaded guilty and served seven months in prison for his role. James Tobin, former regional director for the Republican National Committee, was convicted of helping arrange the phone jam, but he was later acquitted of all charges on appeal. (Fund, John. Stealing Elections, How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy. New York: Encounter Books, 2008. (P) Page 25)
Moving right along, back to 2004 and back to my #45…
“As stated, the 2004 presidential election saw a repeat of Republican tactics from 2000. I will concentrate upon the State of Ohio because that is where the most documentation exists, but the activities described are by no means limited to Ohio.”
Election irregularities were so many in number that I did not provide individual references (except for one case). A bibliography was provided at www.washingtonspectator.com, Our Rigged Elections (part II), bibliography. Other sources are available on the web and through amazon.com.
“The problems and obvious cheating which took place in Florida in 2000 resulted in the passage of the Help America Vote Act. It hasn’t worked. Designed to, among other things, simplify the registration process, it has, by mandating computerized voter rolls, opened up the system to the very manipulation which took place in Florida. It encourages electronic voting, with problems which I shall describe later. Also, it has been largely ignored by the states.
Again, the stated concern on the part of Republicans was to ethnically cleanse voter rolls of illegal voters. By the way, you may not agree with it but, in Ohio, non-incarcerated former felons are allowed to vote. This fact, which happens to be the law in Ohio, did not inhibit Republican officials from sending letters to at least “34,000 ex-felons, and to additional individuals who were indicted on felonies but were never convicted” containing threatening and/or misleading information. Specifically, these persons were informed that they could not vote unless they had written permission from a judge (a blatant lie). As was the case in Florida, many such persons were removed from the rolls of voters. As was the case in Florida, not only felons and persons who had been indicted but found innocent, but persons who had been convicted of only misdemeanors, such as traffic tickets, were either removed from the rolls or threatened. The “scrub” of voter registration rolls did not stop there. “A series of threatening fliers, some of which were printed on what appeared to be official letterhead from county election boards, were circulated through inner city precincts with deliberate misinformation about the voter registration process. In particular, some fliers warned that citizens who had been registered by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), America Coming Together (ACT), or the Kerry Campaign had in fact not been properly registered. Some of the fliers implied that citizens registered by such groups might be involved in an illegality.” Voters were removed from the rolls by Republican operatives if the voter had SUPPOSEDLY not voted in the last two federal elections. Students, living away from home, were challenged if they desired absentee ballots. In inner cities, groups claiming to be working on voter registration signed up potential voters and then simply discarded the forms.
junius, fils
Analyst
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