If you don't read BradBlog every day, then you should at least skim today's story. Brad covers a story passed onto him by Jeff Gannon -- yes, that Jeff Gannon -- concerning a race for state senate in Tennessee.
The race was a close one, decided in favor of the Democrat by a mere 13 votes. Three poll workers were indicted for adding ballots into the Democrat's hopper.
Why are three corrupt Tennesseans of national importance? Because their example impacts the debate over the congressional race in CA-50 -- the Busby/Billbray race. Those results have been challenged because poll workers were allowed (in contravention of the law) to keep the easily-hackable Diebold voting machines in their homes ovewrnight. Diebold spokesman David Bear told the public not to worry about this flagrant violation of both law and common sense, because "evil poll workers" simply do not exist.
Except in Tennessee.
Except when the poll workers help a Democrat. Only Democrats are capable of evil, it seems.
Why did Gannon flog this story? Because in the parallel world of the Republican propagandists, the real problem is voter registration fraud; the Rovians hope that ultra-tight voting restrictions will make it harder for poor people to cast a ballot. The poll workers in Tennessee supposedly filled out ballots in the name of the dead. As a moment's thought will tell you, this imbroglio has little to do with fake registrations -- for the most part, an unimportant issue -- and everything to do with maintaining a healthy mistrust of the people (both grunts and generals) who actually run the elections.
Never let it be said that our interest in clean elections is purely partisan. Note, though, that Jeff Gannon never has (and no doubt never will) attempt to draw national attention to the much worse irregularities in CA-50. His interest is partisan.
Let me reiterate: I am persuaded that Francine Busby probably would have lost a fair vote. But under present circumstances, how can we be certain?
There will be a "teach in" on the CA-50 race in Venice, California next Tuesday. I'll have more details soon.
On another subject: Lots of folks are going bankrupt. Lots of folks will soon face bills they cannot pay. These economic facts of life impact the vote.
People dodging creditors -- millions of 'em -- must place their new addresses on file in order to register to vote. In the days before computers, this was not a problem. But now, data-mining operations such as ChoicePoint make it their business to store information about everyone, and creditors can use registration info to track people down.
Those most harmed by Bush's mishandling of the economy will thus be the ones least likely to vote.
Cleaning up our elections means that we must give renewed attention to privacy rights. Surely we can devise a methodology to make registration information available to those who need to know it without making it available to private data-miners. People who have made financial mistakes should not be disenfranchised.
3 comments:
Here are a few interesting things that tie together Tennessee and people going broke:
Between 1998-2000 the government apparently lost between 2.3 and 3.3 Trillion dollars. That's almost $12,000 for each person in your household!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml http://www.moneyfiles.org/hud.html
Don't know the full facts behind it, but it is definately an eyeopener as to how much these shennanigins are hitting us in the pocket book.
Perhaps the only way to get Republicans to care about voter fraud is for it to be committed by Dems.
Whatever works! Throw all the bums out.
What amazes me is the extent to which the Republican party went in order to disenfranchise voters in Florida, Ohio, Nevada, New Mexico, Georgia, Mississippi and elsewhere in the 2004 election. Their machinery is up, oiled, and running again in preparation for the 2006 election. All at the same time saying how important it is in a Democracy for everyone to vote. But alas there are certain segments of this country who they don't want to vote.
One experience I had in Northern Wisconsin prior to the 2004 election was a conversation with the Republican party leader in my county who told me how they had launched a campaign to "help" the folks in all the nursing homes to cast their vote. "We didn't actually vote for them, well actually we did because they didn't know what they were doing and we knew the candidates and the issues much better than they did." When I reported this conversation to the local D.A. and Sheriff, both Republicans, they did a very quick and dirty investigation and without talking with me concluded that I certainly had misunderstood what the Republican Party leader had told me. Case closed.
Now I find, by recently trying to travel to Mexico, that I am somhow on the government's "Watch List" and all future travel out of or within the country will add hours to my plane boarding experiences. Are these Watch Lists just another way for our government to identify people who they don't want to fly or vote?
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