Excerpt: "Donald Trump's demand for 'monitors' at polling places to prevent
a 'rigged election' is an old and ugly story. It's obviously aimed - KKK
style - at stopping black and Hispanic citizens from voting. But in fact
both major parties have used such terror tactics - and updated electronic
ones - since the birth of the nation."
Donald Trump. (photo: Reuters)
Trump's Racist "Rigged Election" Attack Is as Old as America
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
20 October 16
Donald Trump's demand for "monitors" at polling places to prevent a "rigged
election" is an old and ugly story.
It's obviously aimed - KKK style - at stopping black and Hispanic citizens
from voting. But in fact both major parties have used such terror tactics -
and updated electronic ones - since the birth of the nation.
The cure - we call it "the Ohio Plan" - is scorned by both corporate
parties: universal automatic voter registration, transparent registration
rolls that can be easily monitored, a national holiday for voting, and
universal hand-counted paper ballots that stay in one place and are tallied
(and re-tallied) in full public view.
The "rigged election" story dates back to the Constitution. Its Electoral
College gave a three-fifths "bonus" to slave-owners for blacks who could not
actually vote. The race card carried through Jim Crow segregation and the
KKK terror unleashed against post-Emancipation blacks who dared try to vote.
It continues through the Drug War and the tens of millions of
African-American and Hispanic citizens stripped of their freedom and
franchise.
Today it's being done by computer programs that quietly eliminate millions
of black and Hispanic voters from the registration rolls.
In Florida 2000, Gov. Jeb Bush stripped some 90,000 mostly black and
Hispanic citizens off the registration rolls in an election decided for his
brother by 537 votes. In 2004, GOP operatives did it again to some 300,000
Ohioans in a state Bush won by 118,775.
In moves that Trump should love, between the 2004 and 2008 elections, in a
state with about 5.5 million eligible voters, 1.25 million Ohioans were
de-registered. In 2012, the number purged was 1.1 million. So far this year,
Republican secretary of state Jon Husted has de-registered over a million
Ohio voters, more than 600,000 clearly eligible to vote and on the rolls of
their county boards of elections.
Photo ID, limited polling station access, machines that break down,
provisional ballots that don't get counted, absentee ballots that don't get
sent, elimination of days to vote, deliberate official misinformation and
intimidation - all do exactly what Trump wants. They eliminate the "threat"
of non-white voters.
In reporting on Trump's assertions, The New York Times quotes Ohio's GOP
secretary of state Husted as the "voice of reason." But like other
Republican secretaries of state across the U.S., Husted is aggressively
stripping millions of black and Hispanic voters from the registration books.
Nationwide, tens of millions of exactly the kinds of people Trump doesn't
want to vote will have been stripped off the voter rolls come November. Much
of this is explained in Greg Palast's new film, The Best Democracy Money Can
Buy.
As Michelle Alexander has explained in her book The New Jim Crow, tens of
millions of blacks and Hispanics have been stripped of their votes since
Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971. Alongside filling history's
biggest gulag with about 2.2 million prisoners, America's Drug War has
anchored the GOP's Southern Strategy by stripping blacks and Hispanics from
the rolls in southern states where they comprise some 40% of the potential
electorate.
Neither Trump nor his mainstream critics mention mass incarceration's "twin"
means of election rigging: electronic voting machines. Some 80% of this
year's votes may be cast on touchscreen and other computerized devices that
are absurdly easy to flip. The courts say the corporate-owned source code is
proprietary. So there's no meaningful accountability. Allegedly safe
Scantron paper ballots are easily manipulated with corrupted tallying
machines.
Significant computer manipulations helped rig GOP presidential victories in
Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, and critical down-ballot elections elsewhere.
These include the 2014 U.S. Senate races in North Carolina, Colorado, and
Alaska that now loom large in terms of who might or might not be confirming
new Supreme Court appointments.
Corporate-sponsored critics brand this "conspiracy theory." But neither they
nor Trump can answer this most basic question: "How, in fact, do we verify
the legitimate tally of votes cast on electronic machines with no effective
paper trail, i.e. the vast majority of those that will be cast this
November?"
If we're to have meaningful elections in the future, they must be conducted
on paper ballots that are held at their precincts in transparent containers
that do not move. Those ballots must be counted in public, by hand. Voter
registration should be open automatically to all citizens, with registration
rolls open to the public and easily monitored. Voting should be open to all
on the basis of a signature. And we need a national holiday for voting so
working people do not have to pay with their jobs for exercising their
democratic rights.
The "Ohio Plan" would also eliminate corporate money from our elections, end
gerrymandering, and abolish the Electoral College.
This coming election, up and down the ballot, could indeed be "rigged." But
it will happen exactly counter to what Trump says. Rather than eliminating
millions of black and Hispanic voters, as he wants, we need to guarantee
their franchise. We must be able to verify their presence on registration
rolls. We need to make sure they have reasonable time and place to cast
their ballots - free from KKK/Trump-style thugs intimidating us all.
Above all, as they now do in Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, Romania, Japan
and Canada, we need to cast our votes on paper ballots that are safety
stored and counted by hand, preferably by our nation's high school and
college students, and our elders.
Maybe then, Trump or otherwise, we can begin to think of America as a
country where elections really aren't rigged or stolen, stripped or flipped.
________________________________________
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman's STRIP & FLIP SELECTION OF 2016: FIVE JIM
CROWS & ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT has just been chosen as one of America's
most censored stories. It's available at www.freepress.org, along with Bob's
FITRAKIS FILES. Harvey's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at
www.harveywasserman.com, along with AMERICA AT THE BRINK OF REBIRTH,
available in 2017.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Donald Trump. (photo: Reuters)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Trump's Racist "Rigged Election" Attack Is as Old as America
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
20 October 16
onald Trump's demand for "monitors" at polling places to prevent a "rigged
election" is an old and ugly story.
It's obviously aimed - KKK style - at stopping black and Hispanic citizens
from voting. But in fact both major parties have used such terror tactics -
and updated electronic ones - since the birth of the nation.
The cure - we call it "the Ohio Plan" - is scorned by both corporate
parties: universal automatic voter registration, transparent registration
rolls that can be easily monitored, a national holiday for voting, and
universal hand-counted paper ballots that stay in one place and are tallied
(and re-tallied) in full public view.
The "rigged election" story dates back to the Constitution. Its Electoral
College gave a three-fifths "bonus" to slave-owners for blacks who could not
actually vote. The race card carried through Jim Crow segregation and the
KKK terror unleashed against post-Emancipation blacks who dared try to vote.
It continues through the Drug War and the tens of millions of
African-American and Hispanic citizens stripped of their freedom and
franchise.
Today it's being done by computer programs that quietly eliminate millions
of black and Hispanic voters from the registration rolls.
In Florida 2000, Gov. Jeb Bush stripped some 90,000 mostly black and
Hispanic citizens off the registration rolls in an election decided for his
brother by 537 votes. In 2004, GOP operatives did it again to some 300,000
Ohioans in a state Bush won by 118,775.
In moves that Trump should love, between the 2004 and 2008 elections, in a
state with about 5.5 million eligible voters, 1.25 million Ohioans were
de-registered. In 2012, the number purged was 1.1 million. So far this year,
Republican secretary of state Jon Husted has de-registered over a million
Ohio voters, more than 600,000 clearly eligible to vote and on the rolls of
their county boards of elections.
Photo ID, limited polling station access, machines that break down,
provisional ballots that don't get counted, absentee ballots that don't get
sent, elimination of days to vote, deliberate official misinformation and
intimidation - all do exactly what Trump wants. They eliminate the "threat"
of non-white voters.
In reporting on Trump's assertions, The New York Times quotes Ohio's GOP
secretary of state Husted as the "voice of reason." But like other
Republican secretaries of state across the U.S., Husted is aggressively
stripping millions of black and Hispanic voters from the registration books.
Nationwide, tens of millions of exactly the kinds of people Trump doesn't
want to vote will have been stripped off the voter rolls come November. Much
of this is explained in Greg Palast's new film, The Best Democracy Money Can
Buy.
As Michelle Alexander has explained in her book The New Jim Crow, tens of
millions of blacks and Hispanics have been stripped of their votes since
Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971. Alongside filling history's
biggest gulag with about 2.2 million prisoners, America's Drug War has
anchored the GOP's Southern Strategy by stripping blacks and Hispanics from
the rolls in southern states where they comprise some 40% of the potential
electorate.
Neither Trump nor his mainstream critics mention mass incarceration's "twin"
means of election rigging: electronic voting machines. Some 80% of this
year's votes may be cast on touchscreen and other computerized devices that
are absurdly easy to flip. The courts say the corporate-owned source code is
proprietary. So there's no meaningful accountability. Allegedly safe
Scantron paper ballots are easily manipulated with corrupted tallying
machines.
Significant computer manipulations helped rig GOP presidential victories in
Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, and critical down-ballot elections elsewhere.
These include the 2014 U.S. Senate races in North Carolina, Colorado, and
Alaska that now loom large in terms of who might or might not be confirming
new Supreme Court appointments.
Corporate-sponsored critics brand this "conspiracy theory." But neither they
nor Trump can answer this most basic question: "How, in fact, do we verify
the legitimate tally of votes cast on electronic machines with no effective
paper trail, i.e. the vast majority of those that will be cast this
November?"
If we're to have meaningful elections in the future, they must be conducted
on paper ballots that are held at their precincts in transparent containers
that do not move. Those ballots must be counted in public, by hand. Voter
registration should be open automatically to all citizens, with registration
rolls open to the public and easily monitored. Voting should be open to all
on the basis of a signature. And we need a national holiday for voting so
working people do not have to pay with their jobs for exercising their
democratic rights.
The "Ohio Plan" would also eliminate corporate money from our elections, end
gerrymandering, and abolish the Electoral College.
This coming election, up and down the ballot, could indeed be "rigged." But
it will happen exactly counter to what Trump says. Rather than eliminating
millions of black and Hispanic voters, as he wants, we need to guarantee
their franchise. We must be able to verify their presence on registration
rolls. We need to make sure they have reasonable time and place to cast
their ballots - free from KKK/Trump-style thugs intimidating us all.
Above all, as they now do in Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, Romania, Japan
and Canada, we need to cast our votes on paper ballots that are safety
stored and counted by hand, preferably by our nation's high school and
college students, and our elders.
Maybe then, Trump or otherwise, we can begin to think of America as a
country where elections really aren't rigged or stolen, stripped or flipped.
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman's STRIP & FLIP SELECTION OF 2016: FIVE JIM
CROWS & ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT has just been chosen as one of America's
most censored stories. It's available at www.freepress.org, along with Bob's
FITRAKIS FILES. Harvey's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at
www.harveywasserman.com, along with AMERICA AT THE BRINK OF REBIRTH,
available in 2017.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
