by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
With less than three weeks before election day, the fix is definitely in.
The cynically misnamed “Help America Vote Act” mandated the widespread adoption electronic voting machines full of exploitable software holes and lacking any verifiable paper audit trail. Commonly, for example most vote counting software is capable of subtracting votes as well as adding them, and offer no way of telling this has been done after the fact. Network security experts such as Stephen Spoonamore have explained that electronic voting systems are far less secure than electronic banking and credit card transactions, which routinely tolerate level of fraud around 2%.
Ohio in 2004 showed us the pattern of sending Republican-leaning areas more than ample quantities of voting machines and supplies, while routing fewer and faultier machines and inadequate supplies to Democratic-leaning precincts, resulting in long lines, delays and significant falloff in voter participation Voter registration drives of the kind that Obama and this reporter helped organize in back in 1992 have been restricted by law, demonized in the corporate press, and have even become the targets of legal harassment and malicious prosecution .
Perhaps the biggest threats to the voting rights of millions of people this election season are selective and malicious purges of the voter registration rolls, usually undertaken by Republican officials. States and localities have adopted the practice of checking existing voter rolls or sometimes just new registrations against federal and state databases such as the social security and drivers license lists, and eliminating hundreds of thousands of voters whose middle names are on their voter lists but who only have a middle initial on their drivers license or social security record, or vice versa. When this rule was implemented in California, a full 43% of new voter registrations and address changes were denied in Los Angeles county, along with 26% statewide, according to the Los Angeles Times. Rather than discrediting no-match-no-vote rules, results like this have made it a favorite vote-purging tactic on the state and county level nationwide.
Other purging methods have included matching names and birth dates on the voting lists to each other and eliminating both voters with the same or similar names in a city or county without checking, on the basis that it's a duplicate registration, or checking voter rolls against lists of “convicted felons”, sometimes removing multiple voters whose names are the same or similar to that of a single “felon”.
Best of all, election authorities on the state and county level have the power to purge voter rolls secretly, with no public notice of their methodologies or of which voters have been eliminated. The voter doesn't find out till they show up at the polls and are turned away.
Where is Obama, where are Democrats on election integrity?
The answer is not much of anywhere. When the 2000 election was being stolen from Al Gore in Florida, the Democratic party emphatically rejected offers to fly in staff and legal help from around the country, and discouraged public gatherings and demonstrations against the heist then in progress. After the Supreme Court intervened and threw the election to Bush and the entire Congressional Black Caucus protested to the US Senate, urging them to not accept Florida's electoral vote, Al Gore, in his last vice presidential act presiding over the senate, rejected them. If a single Democrat in the US Senate had stood up to reject the vote it would have triggered a debate and perhaps and investigation. But no Democrats stood up for the disenfranchised in Florida, because most of the disenfranchised were perceived to be African American. The last thing the Democratic party wants is to be seen as the party of the Blacks.
Only the Green Party, underfunded and ignored in the national media, bothered to file lawsuits challenging the way votes were counted in some states.
In 2004, despite clear evidence of massive tampering with the vote in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico and elsewhere, John Kerry immediately conceded the election, rejecting calls for protests, lawsuits and investigations, and refusing to fight for every voter to be heard and every vote to be counted. For this, Kerry was duly lauded by his Democratic peers in high office as a statesman, gentleman and good sport, doing what those types do. Once again, the most of the disenfranchised were perceived to be African Americans. While utterly dependent on a large and near-unanimous black vote, the last thing Democrats want is to be seen identifying with the problems of black people.
Just as in 2000, the entire Congressional Black Caucus petitioned the US Senate not to accept Ohio's electoral vote, hoping that at least one Democratic senator, perhaps the chamber's only African American senator, would stand up to fight for every vote. It didn't happen.
In what may foretell his stand the day after a 2008 stolen election, Barack Obama sat down and shut up, leaving California senator Barbara Boxer to be the lone Democrat calling for a debate on whether Ohio's electoral votes should be accepted.
For a second time, only the Green Party attempted to file lawsuits which might expose the process by which the elections were stolen in Ohio and elsewhere. But lawsuits take time, and that one is still in the deposition stage today, four years later. Congressman John Conyers of Detroit, in his capacity as chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, has made threatening noises to open real investigative hearings with sworn testimony on the massive vote theft in Ohio, but nothing has come of these. And on the campaign trail, Barack Obama scarcely mentions the massive vote theft of 2000 and 2004, as though he were in denial that it ever happened, or might happen again.
In four years as a US senator, Obama has advanced no legislation that would institute voter-verifiable paper trails, and done little or nothing to advance the notion of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote.
Where is Obama, where are Democrats on voter suppression?
Although the national election was clearly stolen from Democrats in 2000 and 2004, that party has declined to fight for investigations into how massive numbers of Democrat-leaning voters, often black and brown, have been purged from the rolls, how voter registration drives and individual voters have been maliciously prosecuted. Despite the fact that several Republican whistle blowers have come to the fore, most prominently former US District Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico, with evidence that the White House demanded spurious prosecutions to lower black and brown turnout, one of many impeachment-grade offenses, the US Senate and House, both under Democratic control, declined to pursue vigorous investigations.
Republican operatives have assiduously cultivated the myth that hordes of foreigners and felons are itching for a chance to vote in US elections, on bond issues, school and library levies, and yes, presidential elections. While nobody has ever caught these legions of fake voters at the polls, the fair tale of their presence has become an accepted fact in popular American lore.
Barack Obama is a member of the senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department, and his running mate Joe Biden chairs that committee. If Democrats wanted, any time in the last two years, to put a stop to voter suppression or expose the vacuous myth of large numbers of illegal voters,, these two could have called hearings, subpoenaed witnesses and kept it on the front page for weeks. But again, Democrats don't want to be seen as the party of the blacks, who are the most frequent victims of voter suppression.
If the election is stolen from Obama will he go the way of Gore and Kerry, and refuse to fight to count every vote? Nobody knows. Hopes are high, but Gore and Kerry preserved their elite credentials by refusing to fight the vote thieves. In almost 20 years of political life, Barack Obama has shown himself to be notoriously risk-averse. He doesn't fight. In the words of the Bodie character in HBO's The Wire, “...his heart pumps kool-aid.”
Where are Democrats, where is Barack Obama on the restriction of voter registration drives?
Given that Obama's political career was launched on the success of Project VOTE Illinois, which registered 130,000 voters in the space of a few weeks in 1992, one might expect him to take a special interest in the restrictions states are implementing on voter registration drives. In many parts of the country today, doing the perfectly legal things Project VOTE Illinois did in 1992 might land you a stretch in jail or at least a hefty fine. But now that he's above the fray, the voice of Barack Obama hasn't been heard on the malicious restriction of voter registration drives. In fact, the Boston Globe has reported that he is deliberately distancing himself from ACORN and other voter registration organizations under spurious attack for alleged “vote fraud”.
What you can do-- STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE
Luckily, every heart does not pump kool-aid. Greg Palast and Robert Kennedy Jr. have produced a downloadable comic book outlining seven steps any and everyone ought to take to protect their vote. The first three of these are
Never mail in your ballot. It's like sending your car keys to the thief. You won't be there to see what they do to it.
Vote early --- very early. Since millions of voters will be purged and not notified, it pays to vote early. If you are one of those turned away, you will at least have time to try to remedy the situation. Election day is a bit late, if they have unjustifiably deleted your name from the voter rolls.
Register and register. Register when you move. Register when you change your name. Go online or get on the phone and check your registration before the election.
The book can be downloaded for as little as a penny, and that will get you the other four methods to steal back your vote. Find it at www.stealbackyourvote.com, or at www.gregpalast.com.
Where is Barack, where are Democrats on a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote?
Back in the nineties, Chicago's congressman Jesse L. Jackson Jr. advanced the revolutionary idea of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. Strangely, he has not reintroduced it since Democrats have come into control of the House, but this would be an ultimate solution to the problems of voter suppression and unaccountable voting machines stealing the votes. Making the right to vote on the same par as, say, the right to own a gun, would mandate uniform federal rules for what the voting machines can and cannot do, what the qualifications of voters are and are not, who can be purged and excluded, and much more.
But it would be a fight. And Democrats, most notably Democratic presidential candidates have shown no inclination to fight, especially if it looks like a fight on the side of African Americans. Even with an African American presidential candidate, it doesn't look like this will change any time soon.
If Obama does win by ten or twelve percent of the popular vote, which after all the theft is whittled down to two or three percent, it may be time to reintroduce the idea of a constitutional guarantee of the right to vote. It may be even more timely if he loses.
Obama's constituents in the African American community, a large proportion of those impacted by voter suppression, have to date demanded remarkably little from him. That doesn't mean they don't want anything, though. The Obama Check is one they haven't cashed, one whose amount they dare not peek at, but which they hope will be worth a lot. The time to cash that check is coming, on voting rights and voter suppression. Will he choose to honor it? Can anybody make him do it? These are questions that will be answered, and soon.
Black Agenda Report's managing editor Bruce Dixon is based in Atlanta GA. He can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com
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