Palast: How to make 6 million votes disappear!

[Cassandra]

2004 election 2008 election
actual projected
Registrations rejected 1,614,196 2,400,000

Voters wrongly purged est. 300,000 300,000

Voters turned away - wrong ID 300,000 600,000

Ballots cast and not counted:

Provisional ballots rejected 1,090,729 1,500,000

Ballots "spoiled" 1,389,231 1,000,000

Absentee Ballots rejected 526,420 600,000

Total votes disappeared 5,220,576 6,400,000


2004 figures based on U.S. Elections Assistance Commission Data. See Chapter 4 for 3 million ballots cast but not counted in 2004. Projecting the future "nega-vote" is tricky business, but some reasoned estimate is worth doing. Given the 2006 HAVA change, we can conservatively estimate registration rejections rising by 50%; new state laws should easily double voters rejected for wrong ID - another 300,000 will receive provisional ballots thereby accounting for the projected increase in provisional ballots rejected. Absentee ballots rejected should remain as sizable as in 2004 - though new voting machines should reduce ballot shortage (including under- and over-vote). Don't like my figures? Well, what's yours?
Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast, p. 359. Verbal permission of the author.

Greg's point is that voting machines aren't and were never the only fight. The GOP has been working every angle to make it as difficult as possible to vote while black, brown or Native American. White Democrats have also had more problems than white Republicans.

My apologies if the table above doesn't align properly when I post this and that I don't know how to put in italics where Greg had them.

[Doctor_J]

1. Given the fact that we can't do anything about high crimes and

misdemeanors like treason, torture, perjury, and using the DoJ as a political arm, I don't see where a little voter suppression/fraud is going to garner much attention.

[Kolesar]

2. What are "the 2006 HAVA changes" that Palast is referring to ? ... eom

[MaineYooper]

3. table formatted version

Here you go. Hand-editing of HTML from the early days pays off!

(the <pre></pre> construct is your friend)

                               2004 election     2008 election
                                      actual         projected
Registrations rejected             1,614,196         2,400,000
Voters wrongly purged est.           300,000           300,000
Voters turned away - wrong ID        300,000           600,000

Ballots cast and not counted:
Provisional ballots rejected       1,090,729         1,500,000
Ballots "spoiled"                  1,389,231         1,000,000
Absentee Ballots rejected            526,420           600,000

Total votes disappeared            5,220,576         6,400,000

on edit- oops hit reply to the wrong message; meant to be to the original post

[Cassandra]

4. Thank you

I have no idea how to do that stuff.

[Kolesar]

5. So HAVA says voters are to be "wrongly purged" ?

[Cassandra]

6. There's something new in HAVA...

that makes it easier to do that.
Greg says: "This sneaky little codicil allows each of the fifty Secretaries of State to reject voter registrations............Beginning on January 1, 2006, the HAVA law gave Secretaries of State the right - in fact required them - to reject any registering voter whose exact name and "identity numbers" (driver's license, Social Security, passport numbers) did not match up against a state "verification" list.............Well if they aren't legal voters than we can't complain. However, a case-by-case review in one state, New York, disclosed that 71% of the registration forms rejected were tossed out as the result of data-entry errors by the government's own clerks."

Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast, p. 347-8 Verbal permission of the author.

And that was one of the less nefarious findings.

[Kolesar]

7. Oh, man, double, secret probation!

thanks for the info

[DemBones DemBones]

8. Does Palast think that computerized voting machines

are not a problem or just that the GOP has many other ways of rigging the vote?

I want to go back to hand-counted paper ballots, with both Dems and Repubs doing the counting and plenty of "watchers" to make sure they're all honest.