Sunday, November 2, 2008

How the GOP steals votes from the left


How the GOP gets votes for the Dems tossed:
Paul Weyrich, a principal architect of the right and co-founder of the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell, tells it like this:
"Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome-good government. They want everyone to vote. I don't want everyone to vote... As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
In 2002, after the Florida situation, the Bush admin and his rubber stamp legislature passed the Help America Vote Act,
http://www.fec.gov/hava/hava.htm
which basically makes it easy for GOP types to get left wing voters from voting. They use many strategies. To give you and idea as to what they have in mind, both Republican super lobbyist Jack Abramoff and primary author of HAVA Rep Bob Ney of Ohio, were imprisoned for their role in corrupting HAVA. (Pic of Ney under Bush on right.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR2007011900162.html
The gifts Ney accepted from Abramoff included a golfing trip to Scotland and other travel that prosecutors valued at more than $170,000. In return, Ney sought to insert four amendments to benefit Abramoff's clients into a 2002 election reform bill. (from link above.)
HAVA is set up in a way to give Republicans on state and local levels help in eliminating some Democratic votes on election day. There are a variety of strategies. To justify this, the right claims an increase in voter fraud. This relates to the US Attorney General scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales started when the White House (aka Bush admin people) fired federal prosecutors who resisted pressure to cough up nonexistent cases of voter fraud. US Attorney for New Mexico says, "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away. We took over 100 complaints and investigated them for almost 2 years- and I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the whole state of New Mexico. "
http://pr.thinkprogress.org/2008/10/pr20081015/index.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote

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