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Voor de onschuldigen die zich bij 'vuil en vunzig' in de politiek niets
kunnen voorstellen:

http://www.gregpalast.com/massacre-of-the-buffalo-soldiers


African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List
Published by Greg Palast June 16th, 2006 in Articles

Massacre of the Buffalo Soldiers
by Greg Palast
As reported for Democracy Now!

Caging List

Palast, who first reported this story for BBC Television Newsnight (UK)
and Democracy Now! (USA), is author of the New York Times bestseller,
Armed Madhouse.

The Republican National Committee has a special offer for
African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.

A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004
sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the
last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of
Black-majority precincts.
Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC
Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally
sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.

One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering
to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.

*******
For Greg Palast’s discussion with broadcaster Amy Goodman on the Black
soldier purge of 2004, go to
http://gregpalast.com/armedmadhouse/palastDN6-14-06.mp3

*******

Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in
envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These
letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to
their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney
campaign as “undeliverable.”

The lists of soldiers of “undeliverable” letters were transmitted from
state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The
party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent
their absentee ballots being counted.

One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the
Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest
naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels
fighting squandron.

[See this scrub sheet at
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=160156893&context=set-72157594155273706&size=o
]

Our team contacted the homes of several on the caging list, such as
Randall Prausa, a serviceman, whose wife said he had been ordered overseas.

A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be
challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged
would be required to vote by “provisional” ballot.

Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never
counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The
extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of
the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican
Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small
part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two
decades.

The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the
Republican’s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief,
Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other
party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, “Caging.xls.” Each of
these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their
addresses.

A check of the demographics of the addresses on the “caging lists,” as
the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American
majority zip codes.

Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County
(Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: “The only
thing I can think of - African American voters listed like this - these
might be individuals that will be challenged if they attempted to vote
on Election Day.”

These GOP caging lists were obtained by the same BBC team that first
exposed the wrongful purge of African-American “felon” voters in 2000 by
then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Eliminating the voting rights
of those voters — 94,000 were targeted — likely caused Al Gore’s defeat
in that race.

The Republican National Committee in Washington refused our several
requests to respond to the BBC discovery. However, in Tallahassee, the
Florida Bush campaign’s spokespeople offered several explanations for
the list.

Joseph Agostini, speaking for the GOP, suggested the lists were of
potential donors to the Bush campaign. Oddly, the supposed donor list
included residents of the Sulzbacher Center a shelter for homeless families.

Another spokesperson for the Bush campaign, Mindy Tucker Fletcher,
ultimately changed the official response, acknowledging that these were
voters, “we mailed to, where the letter came back - bad addresses.”

The party has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having “bad
addresses” subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad.

The apparent challenge campaign was not inexpensive. The GOP mailed the
letters first class, at a total cost likely exceeding millions of
dollars, so that the addresses would be returned to “cage” workers.

“This is not a challenge list,” insisted the Republican spokesmistress.
However, she modified that assertion by adding, “That’s not what it’s
set up to be.”
Setting up such a challenge list would be a crime under federal law. The
Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlaws mass challenges of voters where race
is a factor in choosing the targeted group.

While the party insisted the lists were not created for the purpose to
challenge Black voters, the GOP ultimately offered no other explanation
for the mailings. However, Tucker Fletcher asserted Republicans could
still employ the list to deny ballots to those they considered suspect
voters. When asked if Republicans would use the list to block voters,
Tucker Fletcher replied, “Where it’s stated in the law, yeah.”

It is not possible at this time to determine how many on the potential
blacklist were ultimately challenged and lost their vote. Soldiers
sending in their ballot from abroad would not know their vote was lost
because of a challenge.

__________________________________

For the full story of caging lists and voter purges of 2004, plus the
documents, read Greg Palast’s New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE:
Who’s Afraid of Osama Wolf?, Armed Madhouse: Who’s Afraid of Osama
Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal ‘08, No Child’s
Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.

**********
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