Lose Your House, Lose Your Vote

[gehayi]

In case you needed another reason to hate the Republicans this year, check this out from the Michigan Messenger:

Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters

Excerpts:

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block

Comments

[lee_rowan]

This is not a new tactic. A lot of folks were disenfranchised in 04 and 06.

When I was working the election in 2004, the Republican POLL OBSERVERS were telling people that the Secretary of State was closing the polls and they should go home. I was there--and I called the Dem HQ to check; they said of course not (and the woman running the polling place refused to swallow his BS, so it failed, at that poll.)

There was so much disgraceful sabotage going on that I would not have believed it if I hadn't been there. The Secretary of State--the infamous Ken Blackwell, who was also active in the Bush campaign--had 1/3 of the state's voting machines LOCKED UP during the election -- the ones needed for poor neighborhoods expected to vote Democratic. Wealthier areas had 15 minute wait times; we were doing transport and saw some of our passengers--poor, non-white folks -- waiting for up to 6 HOURS at these backed-up polls. And don't get me started on the Diebold machines, which are still in place. Those damned things literally changed Dem votes to Republican, and polling places refused to give paper ballots to those who did not want to use the machines. Thousands of absentee ballots were simply destroyed without being counted.

College students' registrations were challenged. Thousands of low-income residents' registrations were challenged. ID was demanded for the first time ever--and a lot of poor people don't have driver's licenses or photo ID's with their addresses.
GOP-owned television stations aired flat-out lies from Republican candidates, while refusing to air rebuttals because the ads were deemed 'inappropriate.' Blatant censorship; ABC was the worst, but they all did it.

And very few people heard about it, because it wasn't on the neocon-owned TV station, or in the papers. Worse, many people simply refused to believe it happened.

There were a lot of other disgusting moves, but it's 2 am and I don't need to fume til dawn...

In 2006, there was enough of a groundswell to stop Blackwell's run for Governor (rumor was he'd been promised that job if he gave Bush the election in 04, but he reckoned without Ohio's good ol' boy racism; he didn't get the support of the party old-timers and even Columbus's Republican mouthpiece, the Dispatch, endorsed the Democrat for the first time in memory.)

Ohio's got a terrific Secretary of State now, a Dem woman, but she hasn't been able to ditch the damned machines in the time available.

And no, the Democrats were not challenging votes. The Dems were doing their damndest just to get people to the polls because all the surveys done by non-GOP-owned groups (Zogby, for instance) were predicting a Kerry win in Ohio and in the country, because people were already sick of Bush. The Democrats wanted those people to be able to vote and have the votes counted. I know; I was part of it. But the party wimped out by not demanding a recount in 2004, and that was when we started looking into emigrating.

Beating the bastards this time would require a huge groundswell of people in the US -- and there are still far too many who would rather nurse their bigotry and believe what Daddy says, because it's easier. I hate to see this happening to a country I used to love.