- 21 Mar 2003 04:38
#197771
Proctor showed me this...
The Theft of Democracy
Source: http://www.daddymonkey.com/commentary/zebangry.html
Imagine you turned on the nightly news and saw a report about elections held over a year ago in Nicaragua. Imagine that it recently came to light that prior to this election, an official in local government within Nicaragua, who happened to be the brother of the candidate for president, took actions to make sure that certain people wouldn’t be allowed to vote. The legitimacy of this election would certainly be tainted, no? There would be calls for international monitors for the next elections, right? Jimmy Carter would probably be contacted at some point, correct? Nicaraguans, frustrated with the perversion of their democracy – no, the deprivation of democracy – would take to the streets in massive protests, right?
Probably.
Replace ‘Nicaragua’ with ‘The United States of America’ and take out the part about massive protests, and you have a portrait of what happened in the 2000 presidential election here in the good old U-S-of-A.
You see, the state of Florida has a law that says former felons cannot vote – a law which I find reprehensible to begin with. If someone has served their debt to society, what right do we have to deprive them of their right to vote? Thirty-five states allow former felons to vote. That issue aside, here’s what happened in Florida, according to a March 1, 2002 report in Harper’s Magazine by Greg Palast: the state hired an independent company to come up with lists of felons registered to vote in the state of Florida, a so-called “scrub sheets” which would be used to remove felons from the voter rolls. The company – DBT Online – compiled initial lists of names, which it submitted to the state, and the state subsequently circulated to the counties for removal from the rolls. DBT Online had originally proposed a verification system for its lists, whereby names would be checked with addresses, personal backgrounds, financial records, etc. to ensure that the correct people were on the lists. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris – appointed by Jeb Bush, who happens to share the same parents as then candidate George W. Bush - declined such verification measures. This resulted in a tremendously high error rate. People who have never been convicted of a felony, but share the same name with one who has, were denied their right to vote. People who committed misdemeanors as far back as 1959 were denied their right to vote. One man, Thomas Alvin Cooper, was denied the right to vote because of a felony that Florida records show he committed (or will commit, rather) in the year 2007. In fact, there were nearly 5,000 cases of voters being denied the right to vote because they supposedly committed crimes in the future. One county took it upon itself to actually check the 694 names on its local list of future felons and found that only 34 of these folks had actually committed felonies. Most counties did not have the time or money to do this type of research, so such errors went unchecked. Madison County refused to use the state scrub list after the local elections supervisor found her own name on the list.
What we have here, my fellow Daddymonkeys, is a situation where Governor Jeb Bush and his lackey Katherine Harris went about getting ex-felons purged from voter rolls in such a haphazard fashion that most of the people who ended up on the list were not felons at all. Perhaps this was an accident, just a case of shoddy work on the part of Bush and Harris? Perhaps, and perhaps then twelve year-old Jeffrey Mayer’s glove wasn’t over the fence and in play when he caught Derek Jeter’s “homerun” in the playoffs a few years ago, as Richie Garcia would have us believe. And maybe Oswald acted alone, too. As it happens, about 54% of the people scrubbed from the voter rolls were blacks, who again, I’m sure entirely coincidentally, just happen to vote Democrat around 90% of the time. Most of the rest of those scrubbed just happened to be white and Hispanic Democrats.
Let me make this abundantly clear: I did not vote for Al Gore. I do not think the country would be that much better off with him in office today as opposed to Shrub…I mean Bush. But damn it, a majority of people in this country voted for Gore, according to state-wide recounts conducted by newspapers a majority of people in Florida voted for Gore, and if Florida residents hadn’t been deprived of their fundamental right to vote, EVEN MORE people would have voted for Gore based on their party affiliations. For better or worse, Gore should be sitting in the Oval Office right now.
We had eight years of blatant corruption under Clinton, during which time the Republicans bitched and moaned every chance they got about how the President was as scumbag. (This was laughable to begin with coming from the party of Reagan, who illegally sold arms to Iran and illegally diverted the funds from those sales to the Contras in Nicaragua, who routinely raped, tortured, and murdered civilians simply because they happened to like the Sandinistas better– terrorism, in my opinion.) Now we have a President who gained office because his brother essentially rigged the election. This is what I call theft of democracy. It was blatant. Remember how I wrote a column before the 2000 elections urging everyone to vote, to let your voice be heard? How I argued that every vote counts? Well, I’ll be damned if the bastards didn’t prove me wrong. So **** all that. Your vote didn’t count because we live in a corrupt country. Now, you can just accept that and sit at home and not do a damned thing, which is what most of us will do, or you can get pissed off about it. You can tell your friends about it. You can help make everyone aware that we got screwed last time. Let’s raise awareness. Let’s open our eyes and the eyes of others to the corruption and debauchery that is rampant at every level of our political system. Let’s let people know that despite all of the jingoistic sound-bytes, America isn’t the most democratic country on the planet. We might be the richest and most powerful, but we’re clearly not the most democratic...but we could be.
It’s time to start anew. It’s time we got new blood into the system. It’s time we, as citizens, started to give a damn again, and not let the bastards control us anymore. So take an interest. Read up on some issues. Next time you’re watching the news and you hear about something your local county board is considering that pisses you off, instead of flipping the station to a repeat of Judge Judy, call them and tell them about it. Next time you hear about a bill being considered in Congress that you like or dislike, call your representative and tell him or her about it. And if they don’t listen, tell others about it and support new candidates next time. If we stop electing these crooks at the local, state, and Congressional level, they won’t be able to control us. They can rig the presidential election, but they’ll be hard-pressed to rig every Congressional election.
So let’s shock the powers that be. Let’s break free of our shackles, turn around, and see the puppet-masters in front of the fire who have been manipulating us for years. Then let’s push the bastards into the flames.
The Theft of Democracy
Source: http://www.daddymonkey.com/commentary/zebangry.html
Imagine you turned on the nightly news and saw a report about elections held over a year ago in Nicaragua. Imagine that it recently came to light that prior to this election, an official in local government within Nicaragua, who happened to be the brother of the candidate for president, took actions to make sure that certain people wouldn’t be allowed to vote. The legitimacy of this election would certainly be tainted, no? There would be calls for international monitors for the next elections, right? Jimmy Carter would probably be contacted at some point, correct? Nicaraguans, frustrated with the perversion of their democracy – no, the deprivation of democracy – would take to the streets in massive protests, right?
Probably.
Replace ‘Nicaragua’ with ‘The United States of America’ and take out the part about massive protests, and you have a portrait of what happened in the 2000 presidential election here in the good old U-S-of-A.
You see, the state of Florida has a law that says former felons cannot vote – a law which I find reprehensible to begin with. If someone has served their debt to society, what right do we have to deprive them of their right to vote? Thirty-five states allow former felons to vote. That issue aside, here’s what happened in Florida, according to a March 1, 2002 report in Harper’s Magazine by Greg Palast: the state hired an independent company to come up with lists of felons registered to vote in the state of Florida, a so-called “scrub sheets” which would be used to remove felons from the voter rolls. The company – DBT Online – compiled initial lists of names, which it submitted to the state, and the state subsequently circulated to the counties for removal from the rolls. DBT Online had originally proposed a verification system for its lists, whereby names would be checked with addresses, personal backgrounds, financial records, etc. to ensure that the correct people were on the lists. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris – appointed by Jeb Bush, who happens to share the same parents as then candidate George W. Bush - declined such verification measures. This resulted in a tremendously high error rate. People who have never been convicted of a felony, but share the same name with one who has, were denied their right to vote. People who committed misdemeanors as far back as 1959 were denied their right to vote. One man, Thomas Alvin Cooper, was denied the right to vote because of a felony that Florida records show he committed (or will commit, rather) in the year 2007. In fact, there were nearly 5,000 cases of voters being denied the right to vote because they supposedly committed crimes in the future. One county took it upon itself to actually check the 694 names on its local list of future felons and found that only 34 of these folks had actually committed felonies. Most counties did not have the time or money to do this type of research, so such errors went unchecked. Madison County refused to use the state scrub list after the local elections supervisor found her own name on the list.
What we have here, my fellow Daddymonkeys, is a situation where Governor Jeb Bush and his lackey Katherine Harris went about getting ex-felons purged from voter rolls in such a haphazard fashion that most of the people who ended up on the list were not felons at all. Perhaps this was an accident, just a case of shoddy work on the part of Bush and Harris? Perhaps, and perhaps then twelve year-old Jeffrey Mayer’s glove wasn’t over the fence and in play when he caught Derek Jeter’s “homerun” in the playoffs a few years ago, as Richie Garcia would have us believe. And maybe Oswald acted alone, too. As it happens, about 54% of the people scrubbed from the voter rolls were blacks, who again, I’m sure entirely coincidentally, just happen to vote Democrat around 90% of the time. Most of the rest of those scrubbed just happened to be white and Hispanic Democrats.
Let me make this abundantly clear: I did not vote for Al Gore. I do not think the country would be that much better off with him in office today as opposed to Shrub…I mean Bush. But damn it, a majority of people in this country voted for Gore, according to state-wide recounts conducted by newspapers a majority of people in Florida voted for Gore, and if Florida residents hadn’t been deprived of their fundamental right to vote, EVEN MORE people would have voted for Gore based on their party affiliations. For better or worse, Gore should be sitting in the Oval Office right now.
We had eight years of blatant corruption under Clinton, during which time the Republicans bitched and moaned every chance they got about how the President was as scumbag. (This was laughable to begin with coming from the party of Reagan, who illegally sold arms to Iran and illegally diverted the funds from those sales to the Contras in Nicaragua, who routinely raped, tortured, and murdered civilians simply because they happened to like the Sandinistas better– terrorism, in my opinion.) Now we have a President who gained office because his brother essentially rigged the election. This is what I call theft of democracy. It was blatant. Remember how I wrote a column before the 2000 elections urging everyone to vote, to let your voice be heard? How I argued that every vote counts? Well, I’ll be damned if the bastards didn’t prove me wrong. So **** all that. Your vote didn’t count because we live in a corrupt country. Now, you can just accept that and sit at home and not do a damned thing, which is what most of us will do, or you can get pissed off about it. You can tell your friends about it. You can help make everyone aware that we got screwed last time. Let’s raise awareness. Let’s open our eyes and the eyes of others to the corruption and debauchery that is rampant at every level of our political system. Let’s let people know that despite all of the jingoistic sound-bytes, America isn’t the most democratic country on the planet. We might be the richest and most powerful, but we’re clearly not the most democratic...but we could be.
It’s time to start anew. It’s time we got new blood into the system. It’s time we, as citizens, started to give a damn again, and not let the bastards control us anymore. So take an interest. Read up on some issues. Next time you’re watching the news and you hear about something your local county board is considering that pisses you off, instead of flipping the station to a repeat of Judge Judy, call them and tell them about it. Next time you hear about a bill being considered in Congress that you like or dislike, call your representative and tell him or her about it. And if they don’t listen, tell others about it and support new candidates next time. If we stop electing these crooks at the local, state, and Congressional level, they won’t be able to control us. They can rig the presidential election, but they’ll be hard-pressed to rig every Congressional election.
So let’s shock the powers that be. Let’s break free of our shackles, turn around, and see the puppet-masters in front of the fire who have been manipulating us for years. Then let’s push the bastards into the flames.
- By Skynet
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