VOTING RIGHTS ACT NAILED TO BURNING CROSS by Greg Palast

[Demeter]

FROM A PERSONAL EMAIL--AND I DON'T KNOW HOW I GOT ON THE LIST, EITHER...


For The Guardian
June 23, 2006

Don’t kid yourself. The Republican Party’s decision yesterday to “delay” the renewal of the Voting Rights Act has not a darn thing to do with objections of the Republican’s White Sheets Caucus.

Complaints by a couple of Good Ol' Boys to legislation has never stopped the GOP leadership from rolling over dissenters.

This is a strategic stall — meant to de-criminalize the Republican Party's new game of challenging voters of color by the hundreds of thousands.

In the 2004 Presidential race, the GOP ran a massive multi-state, multi-million-dollar operation to challenge the legitimacy of Black, Hispanic and Native-American voters. The methods used broke the law -- the Voting Rights Act. And while the Bush Administration's Civil Rights Division grinned and looked the other way, civil rights lawyers are circling, preparing to sue to stop the violations of the Act before the 2008 race.

Therefore, Republicans have promised to no longer break the law -- not by going legit … but by eliminating the law.

The Act was passed in 1965 after the Ku Klux Klan and other upright citizens found they could use procedural tricks -- "literacy tests," poll taxes and more -- to block citizens of color from casting ballots.

De-criminalizing the "caging" lists

Here's what happened in '04 -- and what's in store for '08.

In the 2004 election, over THREE MILLION voters were challenged at the polls. No one had seen anything like it since the era of Jim Crow and burning crosses. In 2004, voters were told their registrations had been purged or that their addresses were "suspect."

Denied the right to the regular voting booths, these challenged voters were given "provisional" ballots. Over a million of these provisional ballots (1,090,729 of them) were tossed in the electoral dumpster uncounted.

Funny thing about those ballots. About 88% were cast by minority voters.

This isn't a number dropped on me from a black helicopter. They come from the raw data of the US Election Assistance Commission in Washington, DC.

At the heart of the GOP's mass challenge of voters were what the party's top brass called, "caging lists" -- secret files of hundreds of thousands of voters, almost every one from a Black-majority voting precinct.

When our investigations team, working for BBC TV, got our hands on these confidential files in October 2004, the Republicans told us the voters listed were their potential "donors." Really? The sheets included pages of men from homeless shelters in Florida.

Donor lists, my ass. Every expert told us, these were "challenge lists," meant to stop these Black voters from casting ballots.

When these "caged" voters arrived at the polls in November 2004, they found their registrations missing, their right to vote blocked or their absentee ballots rejected because their addresses were supposedly "fraudulent."

Why didn't the GOP honchos 'fess up to challenging these allegedly illegal voters? Because targeting voters of color is AGAINST THE LAW. The law in question is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Act says you can't go after groups of voters if you choose your targets based on race. Given that almost all the voters on the GOP hit list are Black, the illegal racial profiling is beyond even Karl Rove's ability to come up with an alibi.

The Republicans target Black folk not because they don't like the color of their skin. They don't like the color of their vote: Democrat. For that reason, the GOP included on its hit list Jewish retirement homes in Florida. Apparently, the GOP was also gunning for the Elderly of Zion.

These so-called "fraudulent" voters, in fact, were not fraudulent at all. Page after page, as we've previously reported, are Black soldiers sent overseas. The Bush campaign used their absence from their US homes to accuse them of voting from false addresses.

Now that the GOP has been caught breaking the Voting Rights law, they have found a way to keep using their expensively obtained "caging" lists: let the law expire next year. If the Voting Rights Act dies in 2007, the 2008 race will be open season on dark-skinned voters. Only the renewal of the Voting Rights Act can prevent the planned racial wrecking of democracy.

"Pre-clearance" and the Great Blackout of 2000

Before the 2000 presidential balloting, then Jeb Bush's Secretary of State purged thousands of Black citizens' registrations on the grounds that they were "felons" not entitled to vote. Our review of the files determined that the crimes of most on the list was nothing more than VWB -- Voting While Black.

That "felon scrub," as the state called it, had to be "pre-cleared" under the Voting Rights Act. That is, "scrubs" and other changes in procedures must first be approved by the US Justice Department.

The Florida felon scrub slipped through this "pre-clearance" provision because Katherine Harris' assistant assured the government the scrub was just a clerical matter. Civil rights lawyers are now on the alert for such mendacity.

The Burning Cross Caucus of the Republican Party is bitching that "pre-clearance" of voting changes applies only to Southern states. I have to agree that singling out the Old Confederacy is a bit unfair. But the solution is not to smother the Voting Rights law but to spread its safeguards to all fifty of these United States.


White Sheets to Spread Sheets

Republicans argue that the racial voting games and the threats of the white-hooded Klansmen that kept African-Americans from the ballot box before the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act no longer threaten Black voters.

That's true. When I look over the "caging lists" and the "scrub sheets," it's clear to me that the GOP has traded in white sheets for spreadsheets.


Greg Palast is the author of Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. Order it here.

[msongs]

1. excellent article - a link to original article would be nice

not because you are erring in anyway, just an original source like palast himself.

I'd like to copy and spread this but the attribution needs to be better documented before spreading it.

regards your comment you don't know how you got it etc.

Msongs

listen to our song demos!
www.msongs.com/msongsdemos.htm

[Joanie Baloney]

5. Here's the link

It's the first article at Greg Palast's site:

http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles

He was here in San Diego a couple of weeks ago and rocked the house.

:)

[wakeme2008]

2. lol that got 5 votes real fast.

:)

[marmar]

3. Greg Palast is the most important journalist in the world today...

:yourock:

[LostInAnomie]

4. Welcome to the New Southern Strategy.

This nor any of the other vote stealing scams will ever hit the MSM.

[Joanne98]

6. I'm seeing a possible Diebold angle here too.........

I saw this Republican from Georgia on Washington Journal last week and he was making this sound like a "states rights issue". What the thugs from Georgia want to do is repeal a section of the VRA that requires FBI oversite for states making changes to their voting laws. I'm sure Greg Palast is right but they could be trying to kill two birds with one stone. Georgia, as everyone remembers, was the first statewide trial run for the Diebold machines in 2002. I say, keep and eye on the machines too.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

7. Dear Demeter,

Please be aware that DU copyright rules require that excerpts of copyrighted material be limited to four paragraphs and must include a link to the original source.

best,
wakemeupwhenitsover
DU Moderator

[Dead_Parrot]

8. I didn't know Palast was a member of the Klan...

Read the title again, but with a twisted mind :evilgrin:

[Notoverit]

9. 3 million purged, 6 million spoiled ballots - close election my ass!

If I hear "close enough to steal" one more time, i'll explode! :nuke:

[chill_wind]

10. Democracy for Sale- LinkTV Today- Greg Palast

I can't possibly recommend enough. I just watched both Democracy for Sale (2 hours) and The ACLU Freedom Files: Dissent (10 part series) Both airing again later today.
Also airing today: Got Democracy?

A report on the evidence for widespread vote fraud, how it has led to an electoral crisis in the United States, and what we can do about it. Why does it matter if the last three U.S. Federal elections were stolen? Because, if they were, we have a democracy in crisis. Despite resounding corporate media silence, massive evidence exists that the elections were indeed stolen.

Ohio was the key state in 2004. The Conyers Congressional Report “Preserving Democracy” cites “massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies” throughout Ohio. Attempted recounts met with serious blocking and tampering. Thousands of similar violations occurred in states across the country, dis-enfranchising primarily Black, Native American and Latino voters. Without electoral integrity the American ship of state is without a legitimate captain and crew. Without clean elections, no clean energy policy, no just domestic or foreign policy are possible.

Tell everyone you know that gets the Dish. What an impact on far more of the masses this would have if all of this could be aired in major movie theaters everywhere right now.



Programming Schedule for Monday, June 26, 2006
Showing today on Link TV
11:00 - 1:00 Special - Democracy for Sale?
1:00 - 1:30 The ACLU Freedom Files: Dissent
1:30 - 2:00 Got Democracy?
2:00 - 4:00 Special - Democracy for Sale?
4:00 - 5:00 International Dateline: Germany's New Power
5:00 - 7:00 Special - Democracy for Sale?
7:00 - 7:30 The ACLU Freedom Files: Dissent
7:30 - 8:00 Got Democracy?
8:00 - 10:00 Special - Democracy for Sale?
10:00 - 11:00 International Dateline: Germany's New Power
11:00 - 12:00 Democracy Now!
12:00 - 1:00 It's My Country Too
1:00 - 1:30 The ACLU Freedom Files: Dissent
1:30 - 2:00 Got Democracy?
2:00 - 4:00 Special - Democracy for Sale?
4:00 - 5:00 International Dateline: Germany's New Power
5:00 - 6:00 Bill Clinton: The Power of Philanthropy
6:00 - 7:00 Democracy Now!
7:00 - 7:30 World Music Videos
7:30 - 8:00 World Music Videos
8:00 - 9:30 Who Is Mordechai Vanunu?
9:30 - 10:00 The ACLU Freedom Files: Religious Freedom
10:00 - 10:30 DW Journal
10:30 - 11:00 Mosaic: World News From The Middle East
11:00 - 12:00 International Dateline: Germany's New Power

http://www.linktv.org/schedule/tschedule.php4

This Week Schedule: http://www.linktv.org/schedule/wschedule.php4

[yurbud]

11. K & R

[Karenina]

12. Kick!

:kick:

[Demeter]

13. I Want to Thank All Who Recommended this Posting

finding out what's going on is difficult in these difficult times; getting it posted at DU is even more difficult; and having so many readers agree with my choice is validation on a scale I've never attained before.