Jeb Bush and the Florida elections officials shamelessly and slyly have stolen our elections, hense our democracy, since at least the 2000 election. Now they have lots in common with Mexico; more than you'd believe--voter supression, intimidation, and purging black voters from voting lists (by creating false felons lists.)
From Greg Palest who has thoroughly researched how the Republicans screwed the American people:
There's something rotten in Mexico. And it smells like Florida. The ruling party, the Washington-friendly National Action Party (Pan), proclaimed yesterday their victory in the presidential race, albeit tortilla thin, was Mexico's first "clean" election. But that requires we close our eyes to some very dodgy doings in the vote count that are far too reminiscent of the games played in Florida in 2000 by the Bush family. And indeed, evidence suggests that Team Bush had a hand in what may be another presidential election heist. [...]
Jeb's winning scrub list was the creation of a private firm, ChoicePoint of Alpharetta, Georgia. Now, it seems, ChoicePoint is back in the voter list business - in Mexico - at the direction of the Bush government. Months ago, I got my hands on a copy of a memo from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, marked "secret", regarding a contract for "intelligence collection of foreign counter-terrorism investigations". [...]
As we found in Florida in 2000, my investigations team on the ground in Mexico City this week found voters in poor neighbourhoods, the left's turf, complaining that their names were "disappeared" from the voter rolls. ChoicePoint can't know what use the Bush crew makes of its lists. But erased registrations require us to ask, before this vote is certified, was there a purge as there was in Florida?
Clearly the purging of voter rolls in the 2000 and 2004 US elections, and now in the 2006 Mexico election suggests a blatent, systematic, and remorseless pattern at work. In each case, the more conservative, right wing candidate wins a narrow victory. In each case, it is the poorest citizens, those most likely to vote for left leaning candidates, whose names have been "disappeared" from the official voting lists. More from Palast:
There's more that the Mexico vote has in common with Florida besides the heat. The ruling party's hand-picked electoral commission counted a mere 402,000 votes more for their candidate, Felipe Calderón, over challenger Andrés Manuel López Obrador. That's noteworthy in light of the surprise showing of candidate Señor Blank-o (the 827,000 ballots supposedly left "blank").
We've seen Mr Blank-o do well before - in Florida in 2000 when Florida's secretary of state (who was also co-chair of the Bush campaign) announced that 179,000 ballots showed no vote for the president. The machines couldn't read these ballots with "hanging chads" and other technical problems. Humans can read these ballots with ease, but the hand-count was blocked by Bush's conflicted official.
And so it is in Mexico. The Calderón "victory" is based on a gross addition of tabulation sheets. His party, the Pan, and its election officials are refusing López Obrador's call for a hand recount of each ballot which would be sure to fill in those blanks.
Blank ballots are rarely random. In Florida in 2000, 88% of the supposedly blank ballots came from African-American voting districts - that is, they were cast by Democratic voters. In Mexico, the supposed empty or unreadable ballots come from the poorer districts where the challenger's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PDR) is strongest.
There's an echo of the US non-count in the south-of-the-border tally. It's called "negative drop-off". In a surprising number of districts in Mexico, the federal electoral commission logged lots of negative drop-off: more votes for lower offices than for president. Did López Obrador supporters, en masse, forget to punch in their choice?
Keep in mind that only a few weeks ago, the Republican party refused to restate the Voting Rights Act that would protect the weakest in our land--the minorities--and allow them fair access to voting. They have systematically eliminated fair elections and they have stolen democracy.
Review:
Supression of poor voters and blacks by giving less machines and giving broken machines in highly Democratic areas.
Purge voters lists.
Throw away ballots.
Have uncertified, paperless voting machines to 'tabulate' the vote in complete secrecy.
Read the whole article in the Guardian and read the whole article here It's time to take a stand for democracy and demand fair elections by enforcing the VRA and making all elections maintain paper trails. (And do not allow them access to any garbage bags, luggage, or anything in which to sneak out paper ballots.) We need transparency and we need to make our voices heard.
While we have soldiers fighting for democracy overseas, don't we deserve democracy here too?
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