Anyone else seen today's Blackcommentator?

[JoMama49]

It's too long to post here, but the first part is about Conyers and Ohio's stolen election:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/119/119_cover_vote_thieves_pf.html

[quiet.american]

1. Excellent! Thanks for the link n/t

[glitch]

2. Excellent as usual - thanks for posting!

A couple of paragraphs for lure:

The Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus is confident that at least a few U.S. Senators will join House members on January 6 to question the fairness of the November 2 election. John Conyers, Jr., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Salon.com he doesn’t believe the Senate will repeat its performance of four years ago, when Black lawmakers sought in vain for one senatorial objection to “official misconduct, deliberate fraud, and an attempt to suppress voter turnout by unlawful means” in Florida, as Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) put it at the time.

“No, I think the Senate is going to go along with an inquiry this time,” said Conyers. “I don't think they would embarrass themselves to let this happen two times in a row… I just don't think the Senate would get caught in that position.” Conyers is careful not to name names, claiming he hasn’t spoken directly to a single Senator, but adding, “there are Republicans who support what I'm doing who haven't been willing to come forward.”

Conyers is the indispensable person among the righteous Grinches who are casting a shadow over the Republicans’ holiday. Through his hearings in the Capitol and Ohio – unsanctioned and unattended by Republicans – and his engagement of the Government Accountability Office to study election “irregularities,” the 75-year-old Detroit lawmaker has thrown an institutional spotlight on GOP crimes and misdemeanors. How “high” these crimes can be connected is another story, but there is no doubt that massive violations of a variety of laws occurred on the ground. Conyers prefers to call them “things that went wrong” in swing states like Ohio:

“It depends on what part of the state we're going to examine. In Hocking County, a private company accessed an election machine and altered and tampered with it in the absence of election observers. It disturbed a deputy chair of the election in the county so much that she has given a sworn affidavit that has been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and we're in the process of running that down. But what about in Cleveland, Ohio? There, thousands of people claimed that their vote for Kerry was turned into a vote for Bush. Poll workers made mistakes that might have cost thousands of votes in Cleveland. And in Youngstown, machines turned an undetermined number of Kerry votes into Bush votes as well. Provisional ballots were thrown out. There were several conflicting rules. There was mass confusion. In Warren County, they talked about terrorism might close down the election. I mean, please.”

[Carolab]

3. Amidst all of the reporting on "glitches" etc. we often lose track of this

the biggest crime of all was outright Jim Crow-style suppression of minority voters. Thank you and the Black Commentator for this beautifully written article documenting that crime.

[You do not need that]

12. Statistical proof?

Wouldn't it be possible to conduct a survey to estimate statistically, how many people who had went to vote hadn't voted because of voter suppression?

[Carolab]

13. Someone else suggested this

I thought it a good idea but it was shot down and I don't know why. One could recruit GOTV volunteers such as through MoveOn or ACT to canvass a representative sample and ask people to sign affidavits regarding their preference and why they were unable to vote.

[GettysbergII]

4. I love this quote from the article!

Those who act in concert with others to violate the Voting Rights Act or related laws (such as the National Voter Registration Act, in the box below) should be confronted with the prospect of conspiracy charges in addition to criminal penalties (prison time) for individual offenses. That’s the way gangsters are brought down, every day.

I love the Black Commentator. It's one of the few 'zines that goes right to the heart of the matter. The republicans (and probably Democrats as well to a lesser extent) have been allowed to try and usually get away with major vote fraud against minorities since the 1980s. When they get caught they barely get there hands slapped. Fuck that. Stealing a persons vote, in my mind, is a much more serious offense than stealing his/her/corporate property. All cases of vote fraud should be treted like bank robbery. Lock the MFs up and throw away the key and our constitutional crisis will be over and done with.

[IStriker]

15. I agree with you, but...

if you look at cases involving election fraud, even when the person committing the offense is a felon, they seldom get more than a suspended sentence or time served if they've been sitting in the can unable to make bail before their trial.

[dzika]

5. Great Article! Thanks!

[joevoter]

6. Very very well written - Thanks

[MarkusQ]

7. ...and the rest is worth reading. (n/t)

[liberalla]

8. Thanks for posting this!

They've had consistently GREAT articles on this subject! (IMO)
I hadn't seen this one yet. Thanks! I like the graphic too!

[kk897]

9. WOW! This is an absolute must read! Thank you so much!

I blogged it, saying it's probably the best article I've seen on the subject, covering major evidence, analysis, and call to action. The lines that CHILL ME TO THE BONE (not hard to do, since it's like -2 degrees out there) are these:

Television news personalities smirk while presenting election protest items, conveying the message: “You lost. Why don’t you people quit?” As if the harm done to untold numbers of Black citizens is of no consequence. It’s like telling a rape victim to “get over it” and be grateful she wasn’t killed.

The thing is, it's not just TV news -- or just media -- who think this way. So many do, even right here at DU. Even Democrats. Even "progressive" Democrats. Even Michael Moore who so poignantly documented 2000's struggle in F9/11. Greg Palast gets it; why can't he?

Good GOD! The magnitude of this simple statement is only now starting to hit me. "Only human error" -- "fraud only on a local level" -- "not enough to make a difference in the outcome"... NO! This MUST not happen again! I mean, people, it's the 21st Century!

WAKE UP!

Spike Lee is almost always sure to include somebody yelling that in his films and it has become somethiing of a mantra with me; that and, "if not now, when? if not me, who?"

[Vidar]

10. Great article. Thanks for posting.

[GetTheRightVote]

11. The sounds very good, and things are getting better, hmmm.

:bounce:

I saw alot of the harassment towards African Americans in this years polling lines in Florida. It is outragous what is done towards these people to keep them from voting. I am glad to see so many individuals as well as groups putting their heads together to defend these monsters.

[Straight Shooter]

14. I have the utmost respect for BC. Sure wish more people knew about them.

Conspiracy? Conyers understandably avoids using a word that corporate media so eagerly associate with nut cases. Instead, Conyers employs a less loaded term:

“Well, you know, orchestrated attempts don't always require a conspiracy. People get the drift from other elections and the way talk about how they're going to win the election. When you have the exit-polling information discrepancies that occurred in 2004, where the odds of all the swing states coming in so much stronger for Bush than the exit polls indicated – they say that that is, statistically, almost an improbability.”

But conspiracies do exist; they occur every time a group of persons plans to commit criminal acts. Conyers knows this. He’s not only a lawyer, he’s a Watergate lawyer, having sat on the same Judiciary Committee that saw Richard Nixon’s presidency unravel in 1973-74. District attorneys in big cities across the nation love conspiracy law, designed to connect the seemingly random depredations of criminal gangs. Conspirators can be convicted even if they don’t know all the other players or the whole scope of the criminal enterprise. They need only be shown to have acted in the furtherance of the larger scheme.

Sounds very much like Rep. Conyers’ “orchestrated attempts,” doesn’t it?