GOP Attacks on American Voters Turn Desperate, Ugly and Dangerous

The GOP assault on American voters has hit full stride as the economy and John McCain tank in synch.

With just over three weeks until election day, the Republicans have mounted an all-out attack against newly registered voters and the organizations working to sign them up. As many as 75% of these new voters are expected to vote Democratic, but the attacks have also spread to long-established voters as well. Recent calculations show more than a million more newly registered Democrats in Ohio than Republicans

The usual drumbeat claiming massive voter fraud has become ceaseless at Fox "News" and other right wing media mouthpieces.

As expected, the assault centers in Ohio, which once again could decide the presidency, but has manifested throughout the nation:

1) A Republican sheriff in Greene County, Ohio, has demanded social security and other records from 302 local voters whose ballots he apparently wants to negate. Sheriff Gene Fischer has requested registration cards and address forms for all Greene County residents who voted in a special session established in Ohio allowing new voters to register and vote on the same day. The process was challenged in court by the GOP. The Ohio Supreme Court turned down that challenge, and allowed the same-day voting to proceed. But now Fischer claims telephone calls complaining about the potential for voter fraud have prompted him to go after the information.

In Franklin County, home of Ohio State University, Columbus State Community College, Capital University, Ohio Dominican University, and Otterbein College, election protection observers are reporting continuing surveillance by Republicans at Veterans Memorial, the site for early voting. The observers have documented Republican operatives taking photographs and writing down license plate numbers of voters. Election activists expect similar criminal charges as in Greene County to be filed in the state's capital.

Greene County is home to Wright State, Central State, Wilberforce and Cedarville Universities, along with Antioch College, which was recently put out of business by a right-wing putsch on its board of directors.

Llyn McCoy, Greene County's deputy elections director, says names, telephone and Social Security numbers will be blacked out of any records handed over to the Sheriff. According to McCoy, the Sheriff says he has no evidence of voter fraud other than phone calls stating fraud was a possibility. It is widely assumed that the same-day registration/voting option was exercised primarily by students who lean heavily Democratic. In 2004, African-American students from Wright State, Central State and Wilberforce were regularly challenged on their registration credentials and forced to endure waiting in lines to vote for hours. Students at Cedarville, a Christian school, made no such reports. Sheriff Fischer's targeting of historically black college students, the core of Obama-mania, is intended to send a chilling effect through the ranks of these Democratic voters.

2) U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith, a Reagan appointee, has approved a GOP lawsuit demanding that the state give county boards of elections great leeway in attacking new voter registration forms. The decision, framed under the Help America Vote Act, would allow Republican challengers access to data from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security agency to challenge new voters. The Judge noted that Ohio law permits challenges to absentee ballots, thousands of which have been pouring in to elections boards. If allowed to stand, it could give the GOP the right to shred ballots already cast in the Buckeye State, with the precedent possibly being used to further enable a GOP nationwide disenfranchisement campaign. Smith gave Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner a week to respond. Brunner has stated she will appeal.

3) Before the ruling, Brunner announced at the close of registration that the number of registered voters in Ohio had jumped by 665,949, from 7,518,189 active voters on January 1, 2008, to 8,184,138 active voters now. About 5.4 million votes were officially counted in Ohio's 2004 presidential election. Then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell certified a Bush victory of less than 119,000 votes. A massive GOP disenfranchisement campaign could easily exceed that margin.

4) The New York Times has reported that boards of elections in at least nine crucial states, including Ohio, have violated federal law in conducting purges and have been illegally using Social Security data bases as part of those purges. The Times' Ian Urbina quotes Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman as asking the Colorado Attorney-General to review how some 2,500 citizens were removed from the registration lists there. The Times has cited purges in Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan that have apparently been conducted within 90 days of the upcoming November 4 election, violating federal law that allows states to expunge only those who have been convicted of a felony, moved out of state or died.

5) The Times has also reported that boards of elections in Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio have illegally used federal Social Security databases to flag and possibly eliminate voters whose registration applications were suspected of irregularities. The Times reported some 37,000 Colorado voters removed in the three weeks after July 21; Secretary Coffman said the number was 14,000.

6) Michigan elections director Christopher Thomas said his state had removed about 11,000 voters in August, while the Times estimated the real number to be closer to 33,000. Thomas refused to make the purged files public. Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land is a long-standing Republican partisan whose political activism traces back to the mid-70s when she worked for Gerald Ford's campaign in high school. Critics charge that she functions in the traditional of Florida's Katherine Harris and Ohio's J. Kenneth Blackwell.

7) North Carolina's BOE director Gary Bartlett dismissed concerns raised by the Social Security Administration about possible mis-used of SS files to purge registrations there in conjunction with drivers licenses. The SSI contends Social Security numbers can only be accessed when there is no drivers license or other form of state ID available.

8) A CBS News report has revealed organized caging attempts by the GOP to eliminate registered voters from the rolls in 19 states. The report marks one of the first initiated by a corporate news organization isolating Republican anti-vote campaigning.

9) An electronic voting machine in New Mexico was found to be operating on faulty software which could have eliminated hundreds of votes. The glitch was apparently corrected, but was of a type that could result in thousands of votes being lost on Election Day 2008, as they were in 2000 and 2004.

10) The grassroots organizing group ACORN has come under serious attack in Nevada, Missouri, Ohio and elsewhere from Republicans attempting to negate the thousands of generally low-income citizens ACORN has registered to vote. As a matter of law, ACORN is required to report irregular registrations that come through its process. But GOP operatives have equated these with "fraudulent" filings, and a have ramped up a smear and fear campaign aimed at negating thousands of legitimate ACORN registrants throughout the US.

11) The GOP continues to resist attempts to subpoena Michael Connell, a shady Republican computer operative who programmed the 2000 Bush-Cheney web site. Connell was also hired by former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in 2004 to tabulate the Ohio vote count. Under Connell, Ohio's vote totals were shunted to a computer bank in the same basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that housed the servers of the Republican National Committee. In the early hours of the morning after election day, vote totals mysteriously began shifting from Kerry to Bush, swinging the 2004 election. Connell's cyber-security industry colleague Stephen Spoonamore, a Republican and former McCain supporter, has said that Connell may be able to shed light on vote count rigging in the 2008 vote count as well. Attorneys in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville civil rights lawsuit have thus far been unable to secure Connell's sworn testimony.

12) CNN has reported that Obama's surging poll numbers may leave him "in position to steal Virginia from the GOP." Virginia hasn't backed a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but CNN's use of the word "steal" has raised hackles among election protection activists who argue the flow of theft is in the other direction.

As the moment of truth arrives, McCain-Palin attacks based on race, alleged "terrorist" ties and more are sure to increasingly dominate the GOP campaign. But far more insidious will be an all-out assault on voter registration in the name of "voter fraud," and on finding new ways to undermine the national vote, most importantly on electronic voting machines of the kind programmed by Michael Connell.

If those supporting the democratic process are not exceedingly vigilant, the GOP could use these tactics to once again take the White House.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of four books on election protection including HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, and AS GOES OHIO, just published by www.freepress.org, where this article originally appeared. They are attorney and plaintiff in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville lawsuit.

Comments

[JWakkaJane]

I don't get this. Where is the law that says IN ORDER TO VOTE AND HAVE YOUR VOTE COUNTED you have to make sure your title, name & address on any and all paperwork that might be floating around in any and all fed/state government offices & agencies has to have the same exact spelling and wording and the same exact spelling and wording as your registration to vote?

[ouroborous]

The only responses we have to this:

1) VOTE. For the love of GOD, no matter HOW blue you think your state or county is, VOTE. The best way to render moot the GOP's illegal challenges of a few thousand voters is to outvote them by a few MILLION.

2) DONATE. I hate to say it, but now is the time to open your wallets to Obama and the DNC. I am not a huge fan of big political organizations, but the fact is that these guys are going to need money -- a LOT of money -- to mount all the inevitable legal challenges.

3) STAY ACTIVE. Make sure you keep up-to-date on these illegal and unethical attempts by the GOP to suppress voter turnout and discard thousands of valid ballots. Make sure you call or write your congresscritter, and call or write your local MSM news outlet to keep them informed of all the vote suppression that the GOP is doing.

Ultimately, if we can keep up this pressure and keep watching this, we will win -- and win big -- in November. But we cannot be lazy or assume "someone else" is taking care of this.

[Venise Alstergren]

Is there anyone out there, who is not a rusted-on Republican, seriously considering voting for the GOP: the party under whose watch, the world's financial crash has just imploded with the strength of a million, million tonne thermo-nuclear bombs? A vote for the McCain/Palin ticket is a vote for the further collapse of the whole financial structure of America.
A vote for Obama, is a vote for the hope of the future.

[egal]

I realize I'm just stupidly naive, but I really don't understand how they can do this.

How can any person, group, or organization put their own partisan interests above the democratic processes and liberties that define our nation, that make it worth being a part of and a dream so many want to attain?

Do they not understand that undermining our nation's foundations also negatively impacts their money, influence, party, etc, or do they not care? Is it like the environment and oil, where they know both are being detroyed but don't mind because they'll be rich and comfortable and the worst won't come until after they're dead and they don't care about the future?

Is it just that they honestly have no souls, no hearts, and no morals, so that it means nothing to them if they sabotage our nation and what it stands for as long as they live the high life? And how can they not see how badly they've screwed themselves with these actions, how much the current economic collapse is due to them disenfranchising the nation's workers and suppressing its backbone, how badly they, too, will suffer if they put personal desires over national character?

[stayinsouth1981]

How is Social Security information being used for a purpose other than SOCIAL SECURITY? How does having another name on documents negate my right to vote? I know that in Mississippi, you can use ANY name you want as long as you are not committing fraud. After my divorce, I used my maiden name only, although my complete name included that of my ex husband. The home I purchased is not in my current husband's name AT ALL. In fact, it is in my maiden name. I am registered to vote under my former married name yet my drivers license is in my current husband's last name. Soooooo What name could "They" decide was inappropriate? BTW, there is only one me voting and I have every right to vote... don't I?

[ncvoter]

The New York Times reporter admitted in an email that North Carolina is NOT purging voters.

Further, Gary Bartlett, Exec Director of NC State Board of Elections is a democratic appointee. He didn't purge any voters. Our State does NOT require matching of the voter data, so first time voters who don't match can clear up the problem by showing id. Voters who register by mail already have to do so. We also have same day registration, so anyone with registration problems can clear it up there too.

Regarding the New York Times article, "States' Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=politics&pagewanted=print

The article is grossly inaccurate, and I emailed the reporter to ask him what he thought was going on in North Carolina.

Here's his reply:

From: Ian Urbina
To: joyce mccloy

Subject: RE: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin


Date: Oct 9, 2008 9:03 AM

From what we can see in the data, NC does not seem to have any major red
flags. Best we can tell, it looks like the number of people coming off the
rolls would roughly correspond with the number of people leaving the state
or dying during that period (both of which are legitimate reasons to remove
people within 90 days before an election).

Ian


-----Original Message-----

From: joycemccloy
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 8:54 AM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: FW:

[Dynamohum]

Well, McCain and Palin are whipping their crowds into angry frenzies. They are also screaming about voter fraud. I have a bad feeling about this. I don't think it would bode well for the country, if they push it too far. The democrats might have to have a revolution. No more stolen elections!

[enoughalready]

Americans unite! Let's get a petition going to the ACLU and sue the GOP for attemping to subvert the vote once again. Unless the average JOE Sixpack stands up and does something ,we will watch every election be taken from us. Write your Senators and Congress persons and demand accountability. Get up and fight people! Letters to these judges and picketing the judges offices will be a good start.

[macohmz]

The GOP has never been about the country. They've always been about greed and power, going so far as to claim ownership of God and Jesus Christ as they have through the "religious" right. Now that they're threatened with extinction the claws and frothing at the mouth have come out.

[condieshoes]

These lawsuits are ridiculous. By the time they hit in front of a judge 2008 election will be stolen and given over to McCain and the Nazi running the show.

[That Guy]

Those who vote control nothing.
Those who count the votes control everything.
The neocons have learned their history well.

[ShawnMichel]

My question--and I'm sure I speak for all Democrats everywhere--is this:

WHY THE HELL ISN'T OBAMA DOING SOMETHING ABOUT ALL THIS????

C'mon, Obama camp, wake the HELL up! This is our country we're talking about here, for God's sake!

[propitiousmoment]

Obama campaign does have an organized effort - part of a phenomenally organized overall operation - to address these issues. Volunteer!

[ccsky]

I went to a meeting on Tuesday. Go to your local office and volunteer. I'm planning to be a challenger/poll watcher. They need ppl w/legal background @ polls too, so encourage anyone those in the field to help (ls students too). But there's room and work for everyone who is willing.

This is our country and our election. WE are taking it BACK. Get involved.