Burnt Orange Report
News, Politics, and Fun From Deep in the Heart of Texas
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Burnt Orange ReportNews, Politics, and Fun From Deep in the Heart of Texas |
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October 26, 2004Bush-Cheney Suppressing Vote in FLBy Andrew DobbsI don't know if you've seen georgewbush.org, but it is an anti-Bush site with almost the same domain and the same layout as the real Bush site and is really quite funny. Something even funnier is that a lot of Bush-Cheney employees and other GOP types accidently sent things to their friends with "@georgewbush.com" email domains to "@georgewbush.org" thus sending them to the "catch-all" account for this website. The site's creator then felt compelled to post all of these emails online at their Dead Letter Office. Really funny, right? Excpet when it is scary. A BBC reporter found two emails referencing a "caging list." The list can be found here and here. I saw these and didn't think anything of it before I read a story on Kos that explained what "caging" is: keeping Black folks from voting. From the BBC: A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals. Election supervisor Ion Sancho believes some voters are being intimidated Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list". It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida. An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day." [...] In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows. The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services. On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats. Around these parts I'm starting to drift closer and closer to the tin foil hat crowd. I covered the phones here at the TDP Headquarters for about an hour today while our receptionist was out to lunch. In that time I answered 3 calls with serious voting irregularities/campaign suppression. At other times I have answered to hear tales of election judges wearing GOP buttons and GOP candidates standing behind the clerks' table shaking hands, computers marking Republican boxes when the voter attempted to vote Democratic, ballots being put into cardboard boxes and on and on. Something shady is going on. I am starting to worry that traditional voter suppression is giving way to outright election fraud. I think I am probably just a little worried about things in general but we definitely need to make sure the light is shed on everything we read/hear about. If the light is on their activities it will infinitely harder for them to get away with it, so let's keep up the heat. Posted by Andrew Dobbs at October 26, 2004 04:45 PM | TrackBackComments
Somehow none of this surprises me. I've also written about this particular story and one that was in today's Waco Tribune-Herald with n 82-year-old woman who has not gotten her ballot yet. She thinks it may be because she identified herself as a Democrat in McLennan County, which is supposed to be a big no no. Short story shorter, something is up. Posted by: Nate at October 26, 2004 07:12 PMCheck out http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/10/26/palast_florida/index.html It has a different explanation of what caging is. Caging - a common term in the jargon of direct marketing, meaning, according to one online source, "the process of receiving, processing, and reporting the mailing results." Those Excel spreadsheets may just be part of a direct marketing campaign. I know some shady stuff happens on election day all over the place, on both sides of the aisle. Still, voter irregularities are mostly hot air. In every case that someone charged voter fraud or intimidation, nothing illegal had happened, and the person in question voted legally. On top of that, it's impossible to "see" a computer record a Democratic vote for a Republican. That's the point of secret ballots. I'm not saying funny things don't happen, but most of it is hysteria promoted by Democrats who don't like it when GOP wins. Damn Lawyers. Posted by: Adam at October 27, 2004 08:51 AMWhat?! GOP suppressing the black vote?! Surely you jest!! BTW, Adam--Dems don't like it when Repubs *steal elections*, thus appearing to win. There is a difference. Posted by: Andrea M. at October 27, 2004 09:48 AMemphasis on the quotation marks in "steal elections." Translation...Dems hate losing fair and square. If they lose, they cry foul. Victim mentality permeates that party from the ground up. If Bush wins, I predict plenty of Dems crying foul...some legitimately, most of it illegitimately. Still, no one stole any election. That damn Constitution got in the way of Democrats plans. Boo hoo. Posted by: Adam at October 27, 2004 02:09 PMI've run into several progressives that ask, ?Why should we bother when it is obvious that the Source: For more info on this post visit : www.holdbushaccountable.blogspot.com Post a comment
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