GOP Attacks on American Voters Turn Desperate, Ugly and Dangerous
http://www.truthout.org/101108B
The GOP assault on American voters has hit full stride as the economy
and John McCain tank in synch.
With just over three weeks until election day, the Republicans
have mounted an all-out attack against newly registered voters and the
organizations working to sign them up. As many as 75% of these new
voters are expected to vote Democratic, but the attacks have also
spread to long-established voters as well. Recent calculations show
more than a million more newly registered Democrats in Ohio than
Republicans.
The usual drumbeat claiming massive voter fraud has become
ceaseless at Fox "News" and other right wing media mouthpieces.
As expected, the assault centers in Ohio, which once again could
decide the presidency, but has manifested throughout the nation:
1) A Republican sheriff in Greene County, Ohio, has demanded
social security and other records from 302 local voters whose ballots
he apparently wants to negate. Sheriff Gene Fischer has requested
registration cards and address forms for all Greene County residents
who voted in a special session established in Ohio allowing new voters
to register and vote on the same day. The process was challenged in
court by the GOP. The Ohio Supreme Court turned down that challenge,
and allowed the same-day voting to proceed. But now Fischer claims
telephone calls complaining about the potential for voter fraud have
prompted him to go after the information.
In Franklin County, home of Ohio State University, Columbus State
Community College, Capital University, Ohio Dominican University, and
Otterbein College, election protection observers are reporting
continuing surveillance by Republicans at Veterans Memorial, the site
for early voting. The observers have documented Republican operatives
taking photographs and writing down license plate numbers of voters.
Election activists expect similar criminal charges as in Greene County
to be filed in the state's capital.
Greene County is home to Wright State, Central State, Wilberforce
and Cedarville Universities, along with Antioch College, which was
recently put out of business by a right-wing putsch on its board of
directors.
Llyn McCoy, Greene County's deputy elections director, says names,
telephone and Social Security numbers will be blacked out of any
records handed over to the Sheriff. According to McCoy, the Sheriff
says he has no evidence of voter fraud other than phone calls stating
fraud was a possibility. It is widely assumed that the same-day
registration/voting option was exercised primarily by students who
lean heavily Democratic. In 2004, African-American students from
Wright State, Central State and Wilberforce were regularly challenged
on their registration credentials and forced to endure waiting in
lines to vote for hours. Students at Cedarville, a Christian school,
made no such reports. Sheriff Fischer's targeting of historically
black college students, the core of Obama-mania, is intended to send a
chilling effect through the ranks of these Democratic voters.
2) U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith, a Reagan appointee,
has approved a GOP lawsuit demanding that the state give county boards
of elections great leeway in attacking new voter registration forms.
The decision, framed under the Help America Vote Act, would allow
Republican challengers access to data from the Bureau of Motor
Vehicles and the Social Security agency to challenge new voters. The
Judge noted that Ohio law permits challenges to absentee ballots,
thousands of which have been pouring in to elections boards. If
allowed to stand, it could give the GOP the right to shred ballots
already cast in the Buckeye State, with the precedent possibly being
used to further enable a GOP nationwide disenfranchisement campaign.
Smith gave Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner a week to respond.
Brunner has stated she will appeal.
3) Before the ruling, Brunner announced at the close of
registration that the number of registered voters in Ohio had jumped
by 665,949, from 7,518,189 active voters on January 1, 2008, to
8,184,138 active voters now. About 5.4 million votes were officially
counted in Ohio's 2004 presidential election. Then-Secretary of State
J. Kenneth Blackwell certified a Bush victory of less than 119,000
votes. A massive GOP disenfranchisement campaign could easily exceed
that margin.
4) The New York Times has reported that boards of elections in at
least nine crucial states, including Ohio, have violated federal law
in conducting purges and have been illegally using Social Security
data bases as part of those purges. The Times' Ian Urbina quotes
Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman as asking the Colorado
Attorney-General to review how some 2,500 citizens were removed from
the registration lists there. The Times has cited purges in Colorado,
Louisiana and Michigan that have apparently been conducted within 90
days of the upcoming November 4 election, violating federal law that
allows states to expunge only those who have been convicted of a
felony, moved out of state or died.
5) The Times has also reported that boards of elections in Nevada,
North Carolina, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio have illegally used federal
Social Security databases to flag and possibly eliminate voters whose
registration applications were suspected of irregularities. The Times
reported some 37,000 Colorado voters removed in the three weeks after
July 21; Secretary Coffman said the number was 14,000.
6) Michigan elections director Christopher Thomas said his state
had removed about 11,000 voters in August, while the Times estimated
the real number to be closer to 33,000. Thomas refused to make the
purged files public. Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land is a
long-standing Republican partisan whose political activism traces back
to the mid-70s when she worked for Gerald Ford's campaign in high
school. Critics charge that she functions in the traditional of
Florida's Katherine Harris and Ohio's J. Kenneth Blackwell.
7) North Carolina's BOE director Gary Bartlett dismissed concerns
raised by the Social Security Administration about possible mis-used
of SS files to purge registrations there in conjunction with drivers
licenses. The SSI contends Social Security numbers can only be
accessed when there is no drivers license or other form of state ID
available.
8) A CBS News report has revealed organized caging attempts by the
GOP to eliminate registered voters from the rolls in 19 states. The
report marks one of the first initiated by a corporate news
organization isolating Republican anti-vote campaigning.
9) An electronic voting machine in New Mexico was found to be
operating on faulty software which could have eliminated hundreds of
votes. The glitch was apparently corrected, but was of a type that
could result in thousands of votes being lost on Election Day 2008, as
they were in 2000 and 2004.
10) The grassroots organizing group ACORN has come under serious
attack in Nevada, Missouri, Ohio and elsewhere from Republicans
attempting to negate the thousands of generally low-income citizens
ACORN has registered to vote. As a matter of law, ACORN is required to
report irregular registrations that come through its process. But GOP
operatives have equated these with "fraudulent" filings, and a have
ramped up a smear and fear campaign aimed at negating thousands of
legitimate ACORN registrants throughout the US.
11) The GOP continues to resist attempts to subpoena Michael
Connell, a shady Republican computer operative who programmed the 2000
Bush-Cheney web site. Connell was also hired by former Ohio Secretary
of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in 2004 to tabulate the Ohio vote count.
Under Connell, Ohio's vote totals were shunted to a computer bank in
the same basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that housed the servers
of the Republican National Committee. In the early hours of the
morning after election day, vote totals mysteriously began shifting
from Kerry to Bush, swinging the 2004 election. Connell's cyber-
security industry colleague Stephen Spoonamore, a Republican and
former McCain supporter, has said that Connell may be able to shed
light on vote count rigging in the 2008 vote count as well. Attorneys
in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville civil rights lawsuit have thus far
been unable to secure Connell's sworn testimony.
12) CNN has reported that Obama's surging poll numbers may leave
him "in position to steal Virginia from the GOP." Virginia hasn't
backed a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in
1964, but CNN's use of the word "steal" has raised hackles among
election protection activists who argue the flow of theft is in the
other direction.
As the moment of truth arrives, McCain-Palin attacks based on
race, alleged "terrorist" ties and more are sure to increasingly
dominate the GOP campaign. But far more insidious will be an all-out
assault on voter registration in the name of "voter fraud," and on
finding new ways to undermine the national vote, most importantly on
electronic voting machines of the kind programmed by Michael Connell.
If those supporting the democratic process are not exceedingly
vigilant, the GOP could use these tactics to once again take the White
House.
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