<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->a 'democratic' US.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Suppose I ought to qualify why I've put democratic in quotes at the end of post 111. Everyone here would know, but this is for the record.
The last two US elections were rigged to make Dubya 'Look, I Can Read Dr Seuss' Bush the president and bring in the Republican party and put their policies into effect.
In the 2000 elections Gore and the Democrats should have pressed for a recount.
Kerry should have done the same in 2004. Wonder why neither did.
<b>2000 elections</b>
(1) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...le3187.htm
<b>"Greg Palast: BBC Investigation Into How Voter Data Was Used To Prevent Democrats From Voting In The Last Presidential Elections."</b>
Contains a Real player video summarising the 2000 US election scams
At the end of the video, it mentions that one Democrat admitted that if they could have, the Democrats would have acted (cheated) the same way as the Republicans had in actuality done.
Greg Palast, who's mentioned above, is a journalist (investigative reporter for BBC Television, also a contributing editor for Harper's magazine. He also used to have a column in UK's Guardian paper)
(2) http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0621-11.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Published on Monday, June 21, 2004 by GregPalast.com
<b>One Million Black Votes Didn't Count in the 2000 Presidential Election
It's not too hard to get your vote lost -- if some politicians want it to be lost</b>
by Greg Palast
In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
This year, it could get worse.
These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.
How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.
While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(3) http://www.workingforchange.com/printite...emid=16995
BuzzFlash Interviews Greg Palast
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(<b>Greg Palast:</b>) I've been working with the statisticians from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and Harvard Law School. In the year 2000, 1.9 million votes were cast and not counted across this country â- 1.9 million votes. And of those 1.9 million votes, about a million were cast by African-Americans. This investigation was conducted by Harvard and the Civil Rights Commission, and I grabbed the material. There's a 1965 Voting Rights Act that gave black people the right to vote, but not the right to have their votes counted.
All this came out of my first investigation in Florida. I brought it to the attention of the Civil Rights Commission that the so-called "spoilage rate" seemed to be different among black people than with white people. What that means is that, if you make a mistake on a ballot, or if there's some problem with reading your ballot, your vote doesn't count.
In Florida, the researchers went precinct by precinct and determined that if you are a black person, you are 10 times more likely to have your vote marked spoiled and voided than if you're a white voter â- 10 times! And what's disgusting is that that is the national average. So we basically have a big black thumbprint on the electoral scale in our election, and it's going to be worse in 2004.
<b>BuzzFlash:</b> You're saying that the Florida 2000 election was just the tip of the iceberg and that there is essentially a national epidemic of erasing or not counting African-American votes?
<b>Greg Palast:</b> There are several things. First, there is the big story I broke last time. As it turns out in Florida, 90,000 mostly African-American voters -- which is the latest official number from the courts -- were illegally targeted for removal from the voter rolls. Those people were not allowed to even register to vote and therefore didn't cast a ballot in the election.
But for those African-Americans who did get to vote, their votes were far more likely not to be counted than other votes. I saw this in Florida, and it is deliberate. When it's 10 to 1, as any statistician told me, unless lightning strikes seven times in one spot, how can it not be deliberate? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(4) There's even a <b>DVD documentary</b> on this, it seems:
'Unprecedented - The 2000 Presidential Election'
The last two US elections were rigged to make Dubya 'Look, I Can Read Dr Seuss' Bush the president and bring in the Republican party and put their policies into effect.
In the 2000 elections Gore and the Democrats should have pressed for a recount.
Kerry should have done the same in 2004. Wonder why neither did.
<b>2000 elections</b>
(1) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...le3187.htm
<b>"Greg Palast: BBC Investigation Into How Voter Data Was Used To Prevent Democrats From Voting In The Last Presidential Elections."</b>
Contains a Real player video summarising the 2000 US election scams
At the end of the video, it mentions that one Democrat admitted that if they could have, the Democrats would have acted (cheated) the same way as the Republicans had in actuality done.
Greg Palast, who's mentioned above, is a journalist (investigative reporter for BBC Television, also a contributing editor for Harper's magazine. He also used to have a column in UK's Guardian paper)
(2) http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0621-11.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Published on Monday, June 21, 2004 by GregPalast.com
<b>One Million Black Votes Didn't Count in the 2000 Presidential Election
It's not too hard to get your vote lost -- if some politicians want it to be lost</b>
by Greg Palast
In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
This year, it could get worse.
These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.
How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.
While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(3) http://www.workingforchange.com/printite...emid=16995
BuzzFlash Interviews Greg Palast
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(<b>Greg Palast:</b>) I've been working with the statisticians from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and Harvard Law School. In the year 2000, 1.9 million votes were cast and not counted across this country â- 1.9 million votes. And of those 1.9 million votes, about a million were cast by African-Americans. This investigation was conducted by Harvard and the Civil Rights Commission, and I grabbed the material. There's a 1965 Voting Rights Act that gave black people the right to vote, but not the right to have their votes counted.
All this came out of my first investigation in Florida. I brought it to the attention of the Civil Rights Commission that the so-called "spoilage rate" seemed to be different among black people than with white people. What that means is that, if you make a mistake on a ballot, or if there's some problem with reading your ballot, your vote doesn't count.
In Florida, the researchers went precinct by precinct and determined that if you are a black person, you are 10 times more likely to have your vote marked spoiled and voided than if you're a white voter â- 10 times! And what's disgusting is that that is the national average. So we basically have a big black thumbprint on the electoral scale in our election, and it's going to be worse in 2004.
<b>BuzzFlash:</b> You're saying that the Florida 2000 election was just the tip of the iceberg and that there is essentially a national epidemic of erasing or not counting African-American votes?
<b>Greg Palast:</b> There are several things. First, there is the big story I broke last time. As it turns out in Florida, 90,000 mostly African-American voters -- which is the latest official number from the courts -- were illegally targeted for removal from the voter rolls. Those people were not allowed to even register to vote and therefore didn't cast a ballot in the election.
But for those African-Americans who did get to vote, their votes were far more likely not to be counted than other votes. I saw this in Florida, and it is deliberate. When it's 10 to 1, as any statistician told me, unless lightning strikes seven times in one spot, how can it not be deliberate? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(4) There's even a <b>DVD documentary</b> on this, it seems:
'Unprecedented - The 2000 Presidential Election'