Friday, June 16, 2006

BBC Blows The Whistle:  African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List

Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati

The BBC got its hands on secret memos from the Republican National Committee on the exclusion of black voters.  We saw this going on here in Ohio in 2004, but had no evidence that it was the result of a DELIBERATE, NATIONAL STRATEGY.

We do now.

Where, you might ask, was the vaunted “liberal” media that has rescued the Bush presidency repeatedly with a non-coverage worthy of the old Soviet media?  Where, you might also ask, was the so-called opposition, the Democratic Party?

Good questions.

For the present, let’s again be grateful to “our cousins” for not being
asleep at the switch....

Mark Lause

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June 16, 2004

African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List

by Greg Palast
As reported for Democracy Now!

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Palast, who first reported this story for BBC Television Newsnight (UK) and Democracy Now! (USA), is author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse.
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The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.

A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.

Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.

One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses:  servicemen and women sent overseas.

******************************************************
For Greg Palast’s discussion with broadcaster Amy Goodman on the Black soldier purge of 2004, go to

* http://gregpalast.com/armedmadhouse/palastDN6-14-06.mp3
******************************************************

Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, ‘Do not forward’, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as “undeliverable.”

The lists of soldiers of “undeliverable” letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot being counted.

One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.

[ See this scrub sheet at
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=160156893 ]

Our team contacted the homes of several on the caging list, such as Randall Prausa, a serviceman, whose wife said he had been ordered overseas.

A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be required to vote by “provisional” ballot.

Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.

The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican’s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders.  Attached were spreadsheets marked, “Caging.xls.” Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses.

A check of the demographics of the addresses on the “caging lists,” as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.

Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County (Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: ‘The only thing I can think of - African American voters listed like this—these might be individuals that will be challenged if they attempted to vote on Election Day.’

These GOP caging lists were obtained by the same BBC team that first exposed the wrongful purge of African-American “felon” voters in 2000 by then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Eliminating the voting rights of those voters—94,000 were targeted—likely caused Al Gore’s defeat in that race.

The Republican National Committee in Washington refused our several requests to respond to the BBC discovery.  However, in Tallahassee, the Florida Bush campaign’s spokespeople offered several explanations for the list.

Joseph Agostini, speaking for the GOP, suggested the lists were of potential donors to the Bush campaign. Oddly, the supposed donor list included residents of the Sulzbacher Center a shelter for homeless families.

Another spokesperson for the Bush campaign, Mindy Tucker Fletcher, ultimately changed the official response, acknowledging that these were voters, “we mailed to, where the letter came back—bad addresses.’

The party has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having “bad addresses” subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad.

The apparent challenge campaign was not inexpensive. The GOP mailed the letters first class, at a total cost likely exceeding millions of dollars, so that the addresses would be returned to “cage” workers.

“This is not a challenge list,” insisted the Republican spokesmistress. However, she modified that assertion by adding, ‘That’s not what it’s set up to be.’

Setting up such a challenge list would be a crime under federal law. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlaws mass challenges of voters where race is a factor in choosing the targeted group.

While the party insisted the lists were not created for the purpose to challenge Black voters, the GOP ultimately offered no other explanation for the mailings. However, Tucker Fletcher asserted Republicans could still employ the list to deny ballots to those they considered suspect voters. When asked if Republicans would use the list to block voters, Tucker Fletcher replied, ‘Where it’s stated in the law, yeah.’

It is not possible at this time to determine how many on the potential blacklist were ultimately challenged and lost their vote. Soldiers sending in their ballot from abroad would not know their vote was lost because of a challenge.

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says:
17 Jun 2006  at  08:43 pm | #

Sound slike the RNC read the rules, found the loopholes and then took full advantage for its cause. Perhaps not the most ethical thing to do, but it sure appears to be legal. We, as citizens, should not be proud of the DNC or RNC for behavior like this. Some of us still look in the mirror when we shave in the morning.

Daniel says:
18 Jun 2006  at  10:10 am | #

It is NOT legal (it’s a violation of the Voting Rights Act) and I don’t see where the damned DNC comes into this at all. The Republican Party cannot win without cheating. They’re a bunch of un-American criminals.

says:
18 Jun 2006  at  12:02 pm | #

Last National election ONLY Dems were actually charged with cheating!

says:
18 Jun 2006  at  11:24 pm | #

I’m sure it was accidental for the servicepeople to get caught up in this but a knowledge of simple math says that a person who unlawfully votes in an election, in essence, is disenfranchising all those people who voted for the opposite candidate.  Its a difficult balancing act (making sure legal voters have access to vote and non-lawful voters do not) but it has to be done.  And probably the most effective means of balancing is the same one used in the courts: the adversarial system.

Blue Genius says:
19 Jun 2006  at  10:15 am | #

Blew Gill, just because Ken Blackwell hasn’t been charged yet doesn’t make him innocent. As you know there are all kinds of crooks running around the streets and board rooms that haven’t been charged yet. Anyone who actually looks at the well documented evidence can see there were massive problems in Ohio which J. Kennteth Blackwell refuses to account for.

Trey, just the fact that private partisan companies are in charge of secretly counnting our votes means we don’t qualify as a real democracy. We need international election observers and to prosecute Blackwell for treason.

Tommy Lee says:
19 Jun 2006  at  10:28 am | #

Blue Gill condones these criminals. Tom Brinkman is a traitor.

says:
19 Jun 2006  at  08:23 pm | #

Blue Genius, what progressive, liberal ideas you have: guilty until proven innocent.

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