HOW THEY STOLE THE MID-TERM ELECTION

[nodehopper]

note the past tense in the title.

I hope this belongs in LBN and not in other articles--it's for The Guardian, and it ran today.


Here’s how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen.

Note the past tense. And I’m not kidding.

And shoot me for saying this, but it won’t be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though they’ll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means.

For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We’ve found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here’s how they’ll do it, in three easy steps:

Theft #1: Registrations gone with the wind

On January 1, 2006, while America slept off New Year’s Eve hangovers, a new federal law crept out of the swamps that has devoured 1.9 million votes, overwhelmingly those of African-Americans and Hispanics. The vote-snatching statute is a cankerous codicil slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act — strategically timed to go into effect in this mid-term year. It requires every state to reject new would-be voters whose identity can’t be verified against a state verification database.

more here
http://www.gregpalast.com/how-they-stole-the-mid-term-election

[dorktv]

1. Can we have the election first?! Honestly...

[jobycom]

5. Nah, Greg's got a car payment due before then. nt

[aquart]

2. Yes. HAVA was a Steal-all-the-elections Act.

It's one of the many things that needs to be repealed in toto.

[tuvor]

3. The most important part of the article:

So, what are you going to do about it? May I suggest you… steal back your vote.

It’s true you can’t win with 51% of the vote anymore. So just get over it. The regime’s sneak attack via vote suppression will only net them 4.5 million votes, about 5% of the total. You should be able to beat that blindfolded. If you can’t get 55%, then you’re just a bunch of crybaby pussycats who don’t deserve to win back America.

[Rick Myers]

4. This has been around since last night!

[pnwmom]

6. What to do? Bring out the vote. The bigger the margin, the better.

It doesn't become clear till the end of the article, but the writer is encouraging progressives to vote in large numbers to offset the stolen votes.

[Alacrat]

7. How secure do you all believe absentee ballots are?

I would think there are to many chances for your vote to get lost, All levels of the postal service, and no telling how many hands it passes through before it's final sitting spot, awaiting election day. I also believe Repug SOSs could easily get rid of ballots received from heavily Democratic districts, that is if they can tell where a vote comes from. Seems chancy at best, just thinking, I have never needed to vote absentee.

[NVMojo]

8. K & R