http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004A.shtml
Desperate Measures
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 20 October 2004
"Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide
to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will
just have to sit on their blisters."
- Abraham Lincoln
In the last Presidential election, it was Florida that made the mess.
This time, it could very well be Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia and
Nevada, and that's just for starters.
The problems with electronic voting machines put in place after the
passage of the Help America Vote Act have been well-documented.
In Ohio, where thousands of Diebold electronic voting machines have
been deployed, a consultant discovered that anyone with a security
card and access to the voting terminals could take control of the
machines by inputting a frighteningly simple password. Security
consultants in Maryland found they could hack into the election
system, delete vote counts and make wholesale changes to election
results. Horror stories like this abound.
As if this wasn't frightening enough, there are the other stories.
Last week in Nevada, Eric Russell, a former employee of a firm called
Voters Outreach of America, which also goes by the names America Votes
and Project America Votes, accused the firm of deliberately destroying
voter registration forms filled out by people who registered
themselves as Democrats.
"I personally witnessed my supervisor at VOA, together with her
personal assistant, destroy completed registration forms that VOA
employees had collected," said Russell.
"All of the destroyed registration forms were for registrants who
indicated their party preference as 'Democrat.'"
Thousands of people who believe they are registered to vote in Nevada
will go to the polls on November 2nd and get a nasty shock.
Voters Outreach of America is, basically, a Republican-funded outfit.
It is run by a man named Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona
Republican Party.
Sproul and his company, Sproul & Associates, received nearly $500,000
from the Republican National Committee to collect voter registrations.
Sproul engineered in Arizona the push to get Ralph Nader on the
ballot, and has been accused of collecting some 14,000 invalid
signatures in that process.
Sproul and his outfit have also been accused of similar registration
tampering in Oregon and West Virginia.
Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and Attorney General Hardy
Myers have begun an investigation into allegations of registration
form tampering that are eerily similar to what has been happening in
Nevada.
The firm at the center of the Oregon scandal, again, is Sproul &
Associates.
Mike Johnson, a 20-year-old canvasser working for Sproul's firm in
downtown Portland, said he was instructed to only accept Republican
registration forms.
"I have never in my five years as secretary of state ever seen an
allegation like the one that came up tonight - ever," said Oregon
Secretary of State Bradbury.
"I mean, frankly, it just totally offends me that someone would take
someone else's registration and throw it out."
In Ohio, the name 'John Kerry' has been left off absentee ballots sent
out to voters.
A man named Chad Stanton (yes, for the love of crumbcake, his name is
'Chad') was paid in crack cocaine to submit phony registration forms,
and was arrested for his troubles.
There are reports that Ohio college students are being paid $100 to
vote Republican on absentee ballots.
The Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, attempted to
block newly registered voters from getting on the rolls by claiming
their registration forms were invalid because they were not on
postcard-weight paper.
Blackwell has also made efforts to block newly registered voters from
receiving provisional ballots, which allow new voters to cast a ballot
if they have moved.
Such an action not only affects newly registered voters, but also the
working poor, who are constantly required to move from residence to
residence as their financial status rises and falls.
What is most infuriating about these Ohio stories is the fact that
they are taking place amid an unprecedented surge in voter
participation.
Hundreds of thousands of people have registered to vote in that state;
four years ago, newly registered voters could only be measured in the
tens of thousands.
Ohioans are racing to participate in the democratic process, and are
being foiled not just by criminals and fools, but by their own elected
representatives.
Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia and Nevada amount to a combined total of
37 Electoral College votes.
Each is considered a swing state in the coming election. In a race as
tight as the professional pundits tell us this one is, those 37 EC
swing-state votes are huge.
It is probably safe to say that the American people do not want a
re-enactment of the carnival of folly that was Florida in 2000.
It is bad enough that millions will vote on outdated equipment, and
perhaps worse that millions more will vote on new and highly suspect
equipment, raising the specter of yet another contested vote count.
That some people are also deliberately tearing up the system in swing
states is beyond the pale.
One the most egregious attempts at affecting the outcome of the
election has been unfolding away from the voting booth.
A broadcasting company called The Sinclair Broadcast Group ordered its
62 affiliate stations all across the country to air a highly dubious
anti-Kerry 'documentary' which claims he betrayed Vietnam prisoners of
war.
The Los Angeles Times has reported that at least two of the former
POWs featured in the film have links to the Bush administration and
have also appeared in anti-Kerry attack ads.
Sinclair refused for weeks to offer equal time for a documentary, such
as the recently released film titled 'Going Upriver: The Long War of
John Kerry,' that offered an opposing view.
'Going Upriver' could easily have been included in the Sinclair
broadcast, if fairness was on the menu; it has been made available for
download in its entirety on the internet.
The Democratic Party filed complaints with both the FCC and the FEC,
charging that Sinclair was essentially offering a gratis political
contribution to the Bush campaign.
Despite these charges, despite the fact that the scandal surrounding
this broadcast has caused Sinclair's stock to crater in recent days,
and despite the fact that some 80 companies who advertise on Sinclair
affiliates said they would pull their business away, the film was
slated to run this week.
The Washington Bureau Chief for Sinclair's Maryland-based news
division, Jon Lieberman, blasted the film and his company in a
Baltimore Sun article on Monday.
"It's biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this
election," said Leiberman.
"For me, it's not about right or left - it's about what's right or
wrong in news coverage this close to an election...the selection of
the material - dumping it on the news department, and giving them four
days, and running it this close to the election - it's indefensible,
in my opinion."
One day later, Lieberman was fired by Sinclair.
Apparently, however, the public and financial pressures upon Sinclair
became too much to bear.
On Tuesday the 19th, the company released a blatantly self-serving
press release claiming they never intended to show the biased
anti-Kerry film in its entirety, and will instead show an hour-long
news program on the use of documentary film to affect elections, of
which the aforementioned Kerry slam piece will only comprise a small
part.
The irony surrounding the Sinclair cave-in is palpable.
For the last two weeks, they absorbed massive abuse for their
unprecedented intention to manipulate the airwaves, and for their
obvious and ham-fisted attempt to influence the election.
In finally succumbing to the onslaught, they are going to run a
supposedly straightforward news program that documents the exact form
of election tampering they were planning to take part in.
Though the Kerry slam will not be shown, this demonstrably biased
broadcast company cannot be trusted to keep its word.
It is entirely probable that their intended 'news' program will be as
much a propaganda screed as the now-defunct documentary.
All in all, this has been a shameful episode, a new low in an already
debased media environment.
The simple and central ideal of our democracy - count every vote, and
make every vote count - is being betrayed by the actions of those who
would deny Americans the ability to vote, and by this powerful media
company that tried to foist a biased and factually questionable
program upon its viewers.
These are desperate measures being taken by obvious political
partisans who do not want to leave the choice of the vote to the
voters, because they do not trust the outcome.
Jon Lieberman, who lost his job for fighting this, said it best.
"At the end of the day," he said, "all you really have is your
credibility."
This must be above issues of Left and Right.
If the United States of America cannot have a free, fair, open and
untrammeled election, if our nation cannot perform its most solemn
duty without criminal interference and blatant propaganda soiling the
process, perhaps we do not deserve the democracy so many have fought
and died for.
We deserve better.
_________________________________________________________________
The mask has been removed from the Republican Party. The world now
sees that they're the scum of the earth. But the Repugs must know it's
all for naught. They're hopeless losers.
Harry
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