According to figures from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, we’re going to go into the 2008 election roughly 5-6 million votes behind the Republicans. As detailed in Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse, 5,220,576 votes were lost in 2004, the vast majority of them from minority voters that voted heavily Democratic.
2004 Election (actual)
Registrations rejected: 1,614,196
Voters wrongly purged: est. 300,000
Voters turned away, wrong ID: 300,000Ballots cast and not counted:
Provisional ballots rejected: 1,090,729
Ballots ‘spolied’: 1,389,231
Absentee ballots rejected: 526,420Total votes disappeared: 5,220,576
It’s safe to say that at least 80% of these lost votes were intended for John Kerry. It’s probably higher than that. And this doesn’t cover it. What about those impossibly long lines of five to seven hours in Democratic areas? Palast’s study estimates that long lines cost the Democrats 85,950 votes in Ohio alone.
Changes in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that took effect on January 1, 2006 require Secretaries of State to clean up their voter rolls. If history is any guide, this will dramatically raise the number of minorities (and active service members) that are wrongly purged from the rolls. Palast estimates that 2008 will see 2,400,000 voter registrations rejected (a rise of 50%).
The Republicans have resorted to every trick imaginable to reduce the minority vote. Voter ID requirements, caging lists, felon purges based on nothing more than a similarity in name, provisional ballots that are rejected, machines with high spoilage rates, machines that don’t register votes for Democrats, deliberately long lines and more. And when that doesn’t work, they just stuff ballots in Republican areas.
Palast estimates that we will begin election day down by 6,400,000 votes.
Maybe his estimate is a little high…maybe it isn’t. The point is that we need to highlight this Republican strategy because it is deeply un-American. Only the most strident and dedicated Republican voters would support these tactics if they were really aware of them. The whole scam relies on a compliant media and a spineless Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party isn’t totally innocent. In New Mexico the Dems were all too happy to let the Indian and Latino vote go undercounted because it meant they had less delegates in the state party. And in Georgia, a Democratic Secretary of State, Cathy Cox, was so afraid of blacks taking over the state party that she undermined her own gubernatorial aspirations by instituting (ultimately ruled unconstitutional) rules against ‘all bundled registration sheets, barring groups from helping voters fill out the complex forms, outlawing photocopying of forms (necessary for groups to track if voters are rejected), and preventing anyone who is not ‘deputized’ by the state from collecting a form.’
In other words, she made all the work I did for ACORN in 2004 illegal in the state of Georgia.
They don’t have to rig the machines. They just to keep us from voting in the first place.
Of course, when they do both – ‘clean’ the rolls AND rig the machines, you get 8 years of Bush and Cheney.
If we don’t get some accountability into our election system, meaning, if we don’t pass Holt’s bill HR 811 and get some genuine auditing of the paper records of our machine-cast votes in place, we’re looking at yet another stolen election. And this time, I’m not thinking of the presidency. It’s always good for the powers that be to maintain the illusion of democracy, and the Republican field this year is pretty weak.
But I’m talking about the Senate.
We all know what happened when the Republicans controlled the whole show.
We didn’t get to find out what the Dems would do with control of the house and senate because almost immediately after the election, Sen Tim Johnson, a Democrat, was hit with a stroke and has been unable to vote in the Senate. So while the House was racking up impressive bills, the Senate was unable to carry them through to completion.
Johnson’s seat is especially vulnerable right now, and with that one seat, the Republicans could take back the Senate. If we lose the Senate in 2008, we lose all hopes for Democratic reform no matter who is president.
I hope the blogosphere focuses hard on the races and issues that matter. In 2008, the presidency is truly the least of our worries.
I totally agree that the Senate and House (and local) is where we should expend our energy. We have little control over the presidential race.
But I disagree about Johnson. His vote is not very relevant in why the Senate can’t pass anything. McCain has missed almost as many votes as Johnson and it’s a 60 or 67 vote threshold anyway, not a mere majority.
He is vulnerable but no one wants to run against him.
And, the question in the Senate elections isn’t whether we will lose the Senate but whether we will win enough seats to surpass 60.
We need BOTH, actually. Just having the lege won’t matter if the executive simply refuses to acknowledge, follow, or enforce the laws.
And the current neoconservative mindset, such as it is, leaves no doubt whatever that, when confronted with laws with which they disagree, they will simply do what they want, ignore the laws, and assume (with considerable reason) that there will be no significant consequences.
They’ve been doing that for the past … since Reagan, really… and all they’ve gotten is D’s promising to speak sternly to them and explain that it’s just not sporting.
About which they could not POSSIBLY care less.
does not require voter validation of paper trails. Without this requirement, I believe it is a Trojan Horse. Add this requirement and I think it becomes an essential contribution to democracy.
Real History Lisa has written some good diaries addressing the misconceptions about Holt’s bill. It is a good bill and we should support it.
I know Lisa is a good researcher. That doesn’t mean she has all the answers. I’ve looked at the bill. I think there is a serious problem with it. I think this is the same problem Brad Friedman has been talking about.
But you’ve already shown from your earlier statement, Epppie, that looking at it, you didn’t understand it. Neither does Brad, on some points. I’m glad that Brad at least had the courage to ask a question when there was something he truly didn’t understand. I wish the others could be as bold.
Thanks for your opinion.
I won’t respond to your sharpness in kind. I’ll just say that I’m sorry for what I said at another site and I would prefer NOT to engage in nasty theatrics here.
I just disagree with you on this issue.
This is why I’m so frustrated with the voting activist community. They’ve put forward half-information and in some cases misinformation and sadly, people don’t know where the truth lies.
It’s simply not true that the Holt bill does not require voter verification of paper trails. It’s just the opposite. Holt’s bill requires that all votes produce not just a paper trail, but a “durable” “individual” record on paper that becomes “the ballot of record” for any recount and audit.
verification, as I understand the language of the bill. What it requires is a paper trail that is voter verifiable. That might seem a slight difference, but I think it’s enough to turn a potentially vital improvement into a Trojan Horse.
But I would add that the fact that the Pubs seem to be attempting to steal elections in a variety of ways doesn’t meant that they aren’t stealing them electronically too.
The classic anti-voter registration techniques can be defeated by Fairfax County style voter registration drives. This is a proven technique for driving up the Democratic vote.
Well that was 2004 and 2008 is different.
We have a Dem for governor in Ohio as well as other statehouses.
I always thought that one untold reason Allen lost to Webb last year is ’cause Virginia had a Dem as governor.