Greg Palast on How the GOP Is Planning to Steal the 2012 Election

[babylonsister]

Greg Palast on How the GOP Is Planning to Steal the 2012 Election
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
14:32 By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview




Greg Palast is back with a timely new book, "Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps." In the book, which is illustrated by Ted Rall and with an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Palast warns of more than a decade of Republican elections theft - and explains how they do it. Make a minimum donation to support Truthout and receive a copy of the book - and you'll also get Palast's "Why We Occupy" DVD free, which includes a Palast talk, a rant by Lee Camp, and a variety of other video segments.


Mark Karlin: The Republicans don't just aim to steal elections in one way. They have a variety of methods to mug democracy. Can you explain a few of them?

Greg Palast: Karl Rove - "Turdblossom" as Bush called him - has a computer-data-mining system called DataTrust, which he's joining up with a data-mining computer system set up the Koch brothers called Themis. These are voter-eating machines, designed to juice the attack on voter rolls by GOP secretaries of state. Ready for this? Over 22 million names were purged from voter rolls in the last two years. Those figures are from the US Election Assistance Commission - hidden in plain sight. And who gets purged?

Black voters, Latinos, Native Americans. In Colorado, the Republican secretary of state purged 19.4 percent of voters - that's one in five! In the book, she's the Purge'n General. Obama took Colorado in '08. He can kiss it goodbye.

My co-investigator and I, Bobby Kennedy, called the secretary of state of California, a Dem, who told us her GOP predecessor blocked 42 percent of new voter registrations because they had "suspicious" names - like Mohammed. For this reason, despite massive voter drives and the increase in Latino citizenship, Hispanic registration has dropped by 1 million since 2008. Caramba!

In all, 5,901,814 legitimate votes and voters were tossed out of the count in 2008. In '12 it will be worse. Way worse.

more...

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11500-greg-palast-on-how-the-gop-is-planning-to-steal-the-2012-election

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. We live in a frickin' banana republic!

[Mnemosyne]

6. And it's a nasty rotted banana. nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. Yes, indeed!

[annabanana]

2. They have nothing. They HAVE to cheat.

It is their only path to power.

[StrictlyRockers]

3. THIS is a functioning democracy?

Give me a break.

Give me ballots that are hand coutned in well lit rooms with the public watching. Give me a legal requirement to count them all live on public television the same day as the vote.

[red dog 1]

4. Greg Palast & RFK jr are two of my heroes

[Blanks]

5. It would seem to me if you know in advance that someone is going to break the law and how...

...they are going to break the law; catching them should be a piece of cake.

I'm not sure why this should be different. I understand that some of these things are difficult to prove and some aren't technically illegal, but if they are incorporating a whole slew of different techniques; catching them and prosecuting them on one or two of them should be a realistic goal.

[lumpy]

7. Looks like the only way the GOP can win the race is to jimmy the vote.

They already have come a long way in those states that have made voter registration and the act of voting very difficult for so many people. There has to be a plan with a helluva lot of teeth to overturn those attempts to try and keep people from voting right now. Talk about unAmericanism ! For many of us the GOP will never be trusted ever to do the right thing for the American people ever again.

[Cane4Dems]

8. This makes it seem like we can't win election

I mean if republicans are that hell bent on cheating how are dems gonna make sure that Pres. Obama gets his votes counted?....this really scares me- all our efforts will be futile if the votes aren't counted

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Welcome to DU. Please, no suppression by doom & gloom. Democratic efforts NOT futile. nt

[Cane4Dems]

12. haha of course I'm still going to make the effort to help pres. obama win

I'm just saying that this article just makes me worried

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. Get every voter, esp. D voter, to check that they are on the voter roll well before the election.

[blkmusclmachine]

13. Our so-called "Democratic Party" has never been too worried about these secret black boxes:

Guess there's nuttin' to wurry 'bout, rite !!


Operation Northwoods

[Bill USA]

14. missed this one. Thanks for this post. Greg Palast is great!

recommended.