Interview: Greg
Palast
Billionaires And Ballot Bandits
by Steven
Whitney
http://suicidegirlsblog.com/blog/new-interview-greg-palast-billionaires-and-ballot-bandits/
From 2000 onward, intentional (and criminal) voter suppression has
altered the political landscape on every level – local, state, and
national. But from the 2000 Butterfly ballots in Florida that handed
Bush the election, the Ohio locked-door counting of votes in 2004
that defeated Kerry, to the approximately 5.9 million votes lost (or
stolen) in 2008, the problem has been more insidious and widespread
than most of us realize. Most tragically, this happened in America –
the country that invented modern democracy,
but a nation in danger of becoming a
plutocracy in which only money rules.
Just in time for our 2012 elections, award-winning investigative
journalist Greg Palast – arguably the foremost expert on voter
suppression – has released a new book that offers prescriptive
solutions to the gravest threat our democracy faces: the suppression
and outright theft of votes across the United States.
As the title implies, Billionaires
and Ballot Bandits exposes the
billionaires (including the infamous Koch brothers) and bandit
operatives (like Karl Rove) behind the various plots to reduce
minority participation in all elections, from local dogcatcher races
to national Presidential choices. These crooks are – as Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. writes in his brilliant introduction,
A Hostile Takeover of Our Country
– committing treasonous actions that are subverting both the intent
and reality of our democracy. So in the book Palast tells you who
does it, why they do it, where they do it, who they do it to, the 9
different ways they do it, why they get away with it, and,
importantly, what you must do to make sure your vote counts to stop
the wholesale theft of up to ten million votes in the coming
election.
These scandalous shenanigans are much worse than Watergate – they
are the worst political crimes of our era precisely because they aim
to steal the most precious commodity Americans possess – their
votes.
Read the interview, then get Palast's ground-breaking expose on the
real voter fraud taking place all across our country. You'll not
only be buying an important book, you'll be making a vital
investment in our democracy.
Steven Whitney: Let's start with the most famous example in our
history: Florida, 2000, Katherine Harris and the Butterfly Ballot.
Everybody knows about that, but didn't the Florida election
officials do lot of other shady stuff even before the election?
Greg Palast: You hear about Butterfly Ballots because it's rich,
white folks in Palm Beach with their summer homes that lost their
ballots to the butterflies. That's unusual – they aren't used to
having their votes flushed down the toilet. They aren't used to
getting their chads hung. It's usually the poorest, blackest folk in
Florida. Before the 2000 election, before the butterflies, 94,000
mostly black folk – were targeted as felons, wiped off the voter
rolls by a computer drone system. They were accused of being illegal
voters. In fact, every one of them was guilty of Voting While Black.
The number of actual illegal voters on the list of 94,000 turned out
to be exactly zero. None. That's what elected your President – a
program of lynching by laptop, an electronic program against black
voters.
Now, of course, things have changed since those dark days. They've
gotten darker. This year, the felon purge is back, it's black, it's
nasty. The Republicans have gone back in with the same game. How do
they do it? For example, this time around, you'll see in
Billionaires and Ballot Bandits that a Robert Moore commits a crime.
Common name, but sneaky Robert Moore changes his name to Bobbi. So
Bobbi Moore, a registered voter in Florida, loses her vote. You'll
notice I said Robert Moore/Bobbi Moore loses her vote – so,
obviously he had a sex change. Not only that, since he committed the
crime in the future, according to the records, it's a very
sophisticated computer program, which seems to knock out black and
blue-ish voters, you know, Democrats.
SW: Was it possible back then in 2000 that the Butterfly Ballot
became a ruse to distract from all the other purging that Harris and
Jeb Bush did?
GP: Not at all. No one gives a flying fuck about black people,
especially in the white press. As far as they were concerned, the
only thing that ever mattered in that whole race was the Butterfly
Ballots…See trophy wives losing their votes is an issue. Black
people in Gadsden County, who lost their votes through machine
manipulation …Here are the numbers by the way: 178,000 votes were
spoiled, that is cast and not counted in Florida. According to the
Civil Rights Commission, if you were black, the chance your vote
will be lost is 900% higher than if you're white, and it ain't just
whistling dixie, that's all over the United States. Officially we
had 1.5 million votes cast and not counted in the last election,
spoiled as they say. And overwhelmingly, it was a majority black,
Latino and hugely, this is an interesting one, Native American.
Overwhelmingly Democratic group, concentrated in swing states,
there's nothing new under the sun. America has progressed—our
manifest destiny is to fuck the hell out of the Indians.
SW: Well, I think they were born in Kenya, weren't they?
GP: Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't mind a Muslim President from Africa
because we've had these white Christian pricks for so long fucking
it up, let's give someone else a try.
SW: Didn't John Kerry lose the election in 2004 because of an
imminent terrorist attack on an Ohio courthouse?
GP: That was one of the games that was played. And, by the way,
remember the kid who was zapped with the taser in Florida — you
know, "Don't tase me, bro!" He was holding up my book. He said, by
the way, that he never let it hit the ground even though he was
being tased — it was like the flag. And he was yelling at Kerry,
"Why did you give up when this author, Greg Palast, said you won?"
And by the way, Kerry said, "Yeah, I read the book, Palast is
right." No one got that answer. And, yes, one of the biggest ways
that Kerry lost is a rotten piece of shit trick, in other words,
something from Karl Rove, called caging. It's one of the nine ways
they steal votes that we have in the book.
Here's the quick game on CAGING, and what happened to Kerry, and
what happened again in Wisconsin with the Scott Walker recall, is
that Karl Rove's operation – and I'm not guessing here – sent out
letters to soldiers, to students at black colleges in August, and to
Jewish voters in Miami who are snowbirds and go north in August. The
letters said on the outside "Do Not Forward." So the letters came
back, that is they're caged, and then the Rovebots challenge the
voters as voting from fraudulent addresses.
If you look in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, you will see these
caging lists. One is nothing but soldiers from the Naval Air Station
in Jacksonville. Now Mr. Rove, or "Turd Blossom" as George Bush
called him, it was his nickname, Mr. Blossom, why wouldn't a soldier
be at their home base where they're registered? Well, Afghanistan is
one answer.
By the way, if you're a soldier you're allowed to vote from under
your Humvee. But when those soldiers and those students and the
elderly of Zion sent in their absentee ballots, they didn't know
that those ballots were under challenge and that they were thrown in
the garbage. Go to Afghanistan, lose your vote, mission
accomplished. You like that? That's what the Rove Operation was
doing. I'm not guessing because I have the actual caging lists…It's
not that Rove sends me his confidential evidence of felonious
criminality, it's that we had a friend of mine who owned a website –
RepublicanNationalCommittee.org – and because they misaddressed the
stuff, the stuff came right into him and he passed it to me. And as
Bobby Kennedy, a Professor of Law who wrote the introduction and
looked over the evidence, says, this is a "go to jail" crime. These
people should be in prison.
SW: Why aren't they?
GP: Because, it's a lot easier to break into the vault when you're
the cops. For example, the guy that actually sent out the caging
list is a creepy little shit named Tim Griffin who is Turd Blossom's
right claw. Griffin sent out the emails, which is a federal crime —
several federal crimes as a matter of fact – and then when a US
prosecutor began to grumble and complain, Rove had him fired and
Griffin, the prime suspect, the guy who did it, he was named the new
Federal Prosecutor. So you literally took the criminal and made him
the lawman, gave him the badge. Fired the good guys. And, by the
way, I got that information from a Republican Prosecutor, David
Iglesias. The reason there's a picture of Tom Cruise in the book is
that in A Few Good Men the Tom Cruise character is based on David
Iglesias. So they just got the wrong guy. They got a good man who
wouldn't go along with their racist scam.
SW: In Colorado, when Donetta Davidson removed almost 20% of the
voters, how did she do it? And if we can't put these people in jail,
why can't we make examples of them? Air an ad every day in Colorado
informing people that Donetta stole their vote.
GP: [laughs] Why don't the SuperPACs bust the Ballot Bandits?
Because they are the Ballot Bandits. That's why we called it
Billionaires and Ballot Bandits. It didn't say Billionaires versus
Ballot Bandits, it's Billionaires AND, or I should've really said
Billionaires ARE Ballot Bandits. The guys who run the super duper
PACs like Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Brother's SuperPAC, and
American Crossroads, that's Turd Blossom's operation, the two
organizations together have over half a billion dollars. No one can
put in full-page ads every day except for them. They're not going to
bust themselves. They're not going to say, here's the crimes we've
committed, we just thought that you should be an informed voter and
know all about it.
Now, Donetta Davidson, I call her the Purge'n General. Yeah, she got
rid of 20% of the voters of Colorado, which just made Katherine
Harris green with envy. Well, she was already kind of greenish, but
green with envy instead of rot. And, Donetta Davidson, instead of
being read her rights and marched off to the federal penitentiary
for this crime, Bush appointed her as Chairwoman of the US Elections
Assistance Commission. They made her basically the Purge'n General
in charge of elections nationwide. So that was the example, you
steal enough and you get the reward. It's a sick, sick system.
SW: What happened with the Scott Walker recall in Wisconsin this
summer?
GP: I was just up in Baraboo, Wisconsin this week, and in Baraboo
Obama won by 28%. That's a crush, right? And yet, in the recall
vote, Scott Walker won it big time. Now, come on, how does that
happen? Well, let me let you in on a little secret. The secret is
called Themis. Themis is the Koch Brother's magical vote munching
machine. It's a data mining operation. It does two things. It's
capable first of something that's creepy but legal. They fill out
ballots for their own voters, mail them and tell them to sign it.
It's all perfect so they're beyond challenge. So their voters are
all taken care of basically, they've already been voted for if they
sign.
Then, the Themis machine is capable of doing all the caging, all the
challenging, the purging, and the blocking at the polls to keep away
the voters. For example, if I went by the Brennan Center numbers,
and these are experts and therefore no one listens to them, but if
you do listen to the screaming, screeching, buried experts, 97,000
Wisconsinites, almost all of them students, were barred from voting
because they lacked state ID. Even though they had state student ID,
that's not state ID.
But that wasn't enough for the Themis machine. The Koch Operation,
Americans for Prosperity, had its Chief set up a front called United
Sportsmen of Wisconsin. United Sportsmen of Wisconsin, which
appeared and then instantly vanished after the recall vote, using
the Themis machine, were able to identify likely Democratic absentee
voters in key recall areas. Because there were also votes, by the
way, on legislatures. The Themis machine was able to get the United
Sportsmen of Wisconsin to identify Democratic voters, send them
letters saying here's where you mail in your ballot, and here's the
deadline. The address was a phony, it was their own, and the date
was after the legal date for submitting an absentee ballot. So,
either way, you were fucked like a duck. The Sportsmen basically
were hunting Democrats. That's how it worked. And again, as Bobby
Kennedy says – he's Dean of Law School at Pace University – this is
a crime. And it's a double crime when you add in the fact that most
of this is racially targeted.
SW: How many people do you think are going to lose their right to
vote this November nationwide?
GP: I can give you the exact number for 2008 which was 5,901,814 —
in fact, if you look in the book you can get the real serious
point-by-point break down.
SW: Yeah, I've got the same numbers for 2008 and 2010.
GP: Here's the deal, for 2012 we're looking at double to triple the
loss. And it will be highly targeted. We're going to go from 488,000
absentee ballots, which were cast and not counted in 2008, to having
2 million absentee votes thrown in the garbage…and it will occur, of
course, in very targeted areas. The magnitude of the steal in
America is very large because we have an electoral system and of
course, don't' forget, we have something called the United States
Senate. Heaven help us. And not my numbers, but the University of
Minnesota says that seven Republicans are sitting in the Senate not
because they were elected, but because they didn't count all the
votes. So I see that magnified. I can see a complete shoplifting of
the US Senate. So how many more than 6 million votes lost this time?
I can only guess. My numbers are more conservative than the experts
at the Brennan Center, so I'd say 10 million. They would have the
number much, much higher.
SW: Will most of those be in the swing states?
GP: Most of those will be in the swing states, but the key thing is
that most of those will be in the non-billionaire community. [It'll
be in areas where] the 47% of the lazy ass, dependent skivers that
are sucking off the government's tit – Democrats – live. Remember
vote theft is class war by other means. I mean, there's this whole
ugly Ku Klux Klan counting system we have, but it's really about
class.
In fact, my studies were showing that the worst vote theft in some
states is actually of the poor white voter. And while it will be in
swing states substantially, it's also because that's where the
congressional and senate races are hot. Like Missouri, like Ohio,
that's where you're going to see it. Not even so much to swing the
presidential election but to swing those congressional and senate
seats.
SW: Could you explain what overvotes and undervotes are?
GP: That's a fancy ass term for getting jacked on your ballot. For
example, an overvote is where you vote twice, by accident
supposedly, or often by deceptive ballot design, or someone has a
reason to cut out your vote. I give an example, a true example, in
which I saw ballots when I went down to Florida where in the Black
community of Gadsden the ballot said: "write in candidates name." So
people wrote: "Al Gore." But they also voted for Al Gore by punching
the ballot.
Now, according to Katherine Harris, that someone voted twice. The
old rule was that the voter's intent counted. So like, excuse me,
can you figure out the voter's intent if they punch Al Gore and
write Al Gore? Is that difficult to figure out their intent? But no,
it was thrown out saying they can't figure out the intent, overvote,
it's out.
Undervote works the other way. You didn't vote enough. For example,
and literally, two old people I know, two elderly people, my
parents, okay — they wrote in a candidate's name, a Democrat, Donna
Frye, the surfer chick of San Diego.
SW: I remember her.
GP: And Frye won by a couple thousand votes for Mayor of San Diego
in a write-in campaign. But then, after the fact, they disqualified
4,000 ballots, including my parents', because while they wrote in
Donna Frye, they didn't blacken the bubble next to her name that
said that they were writing in her name. Now, one way to figure out
whether they wrote in her name was that they wrote in her name, but
again, the new trickery that's being done, now computer aided, they
called that an undervote and it was thrown out. This was the
problem. So Jesus Christ, don't fucking go postal on me. Do not mail
in your ballot. Shove it down their throats. Walk in with your
ballot, even if you have an absentee ballot, take it to your Board
of Elections and make sure there's no problem.
SW: How do these officials get away with it? As I recall, the Voting
Act of 1965 is all about the intent of the voter?
GP: Yes.
SW: How do they get around that when the intent is so clear?
GP: How do these guys get away with it? One, they fire the cops and
they give themselves the badges, as we saw with creeps like Rove's
right hand man, Tim Griffin.
SW: Right.
GP: Two, one thing about stealing an election is that you basically
steal a police department. You're the cops. There's no enforcement
because you steal the badges. You're now the Justice Department
okay? There's a couple of other elements too. The Democrats have
their hands dirty in this shit too. They're not nearly as good, but
they're dirty enough, that they've got shit stains in their party
underwear.
SW: Especially in New Mexico, right?
GP: Especially creepy things like in New Mexico, where you have this
massive wipeout of the poor Hispanic voter. A wipeout. Purges,
blocking, registrations thrown out, Native American registrations
dumped in the garbage, provisional and absentee ballots thrown out.
An entire precinct of Native American and Hispanic soldiers, where
they claim that there was not a single vote for President of the
United States. All these games, pulled off, all that vote blocking
done against Hispanic Democrats, by Hispanic Democrats, by the
elite. Again, this is a class war issue. People like Bill Richardson
— do you know a lot of William Richardson's who are Hispanic? So you
figure that one out. And the Secretary of State, who I'm glad to say
is on trial and hopefully on her way to prison for these games,
that's rare, but she couldn't just steal the vote, she had to steal
the money from the voting machine companies as well.
The thing is, the Democrats have their hands dirty, but the victims
are always the same. You'll notice that the Democrats go after
Democrats and the Republicans go after Democrats, so it's always
poor defenseless voters who get it in the rectum.
SW: In the book, you detail the nine ways that are most commonly
used to purge votes. We talked about caging, you defined that.
Didn't caging begin as a direct mail tool?
GP: What's interesting is Rove & Company is a direct mail operation,
which is why they used the term caging, because that's used in
direct mail. Usually, when people send back checks in the mail the
letters usually have to be opened inside a metal cage, literally.
That was one of the hints to me that Rove was in the middle of this.
SW: Rove made his fortune in direct mailing.
GP: Yes, and not only that, but the guy who sent the emails, believe
it or not, the little criminal Tim Griffin – who by the way is not
in jail, he's in the U.S. Congress right now – I'm the only guy who
actually believed [Griffin] when he said he didn't know what he was
sending out. Because Rove doesn't have his own computer — Rove is a
whiz kid with computers. He was the first guy to use computers in
elections, which he did for Richard Nixon. While the rest of us were
protesting the war, he was wearing a clip-on tie, a white shirt, and
with his small, soft hands had all these computer tapes rolling to
figure out who to electronically zap.
SW: He was mining databases back then?
GP: Yeah, the first guy to do it…and then working as a protégé to
Richard Viguerie, a right-wing freak show [and the pioneer of
political direct mailing]. Rove hasn't denied it and Rove reads all
my stuff carefully. I know because the Justice Department got his
files and made them public. I said clearly Griffin has said that he
didn't know what caging is and his boss [Rove] doesn't have a
computer, so who sent out those caging lists? Well, golly gee, you
figure it out. Now, it could've been Griffin's assistant, a guy
named Matt Rhodes. He's not in jail either, he's now the Campaign
Chairman for Willard Mitt Romney.
SW: What a coincidence. Okay, tell me what TOSSING is.
GP: That's tossing of absentee ballots. We mentioned that. If you
mail in your ballot like my parents did, they throw it out because
they didn't like the size of your ballot, your postage is due, or
you didn't lick it correctly – I kid you not – you wrote the
different name on the outside of the envelope than you did when you
signed it on the inside, suspect signature. Now who's suspect in
America? And who suspects us? This is the game that's played. Like I
said, officially 488,000 absentee ballots were tossed out on the
most cockamamie reasons and 2 million are going that way this
November.
SW: Okay. How about computer hacking?
GP: What I call PRESTIDIGITIZING, because while hacking is an issue,
I'm not an expert at that. I wanted people to focus on the other
problems of computer voting, which is if you want to steal a vote by
computer, the easiest thing to do is unplug it…And a favorite in
places like Florida is to not give black poll workers the passwords
to open the machines. So votes lost in computers, that's a lot
easier than when they play the game of supposedly switching your
vote, which is complex and difficult. What's real easy is for the
machine just to go bluey and not record.18,000 votes went bluey in
Democratic precincts in a congressional race in which a Republican
won by only 500 votes. Katherine Harris' old Sarasota District. All
those votes just disappeared. "Gee, there was a glitch, what can we
tell you? They just didn't show up." And, go ahead, try to find the
fingerprints on that fucker.
SW: Is Diebold still in the middle of this or are there other
manufacturers of electronic voting machines that are in on it?
GP: There's plenty of operators in on the game. Like I say, they
were bribing Secretaries of State like the Becky Vigil-Giron of New
Mexico. The bribery is rampant and the games are rampant, but like I
said, the big thing is the machines not working. Hugo Chavez'
buddies bought one voting company hoping to correct our elections,
figuring [Chavez] had a better chance if Americans actually had
their votes counted. But again, once they get the machines, they go
zap. All they have to do is screw them up so that the votes do not
appear. That's the biggest thing. Precinct after precinct where you
see zero votes on hot key offices. Zero votes. And, they go well,
"What can we say?" There is simply no way to trace it back.
SW: What about SPOILING?
GP: In Gadsden, Florida, for example, where I saw these wonderful
optical reading machines, that's the best thing you could have,
paper ballots that are optically read. In white rich areas, every
precinct had its own little reader. If you make a mistake, and you
accidentally add an extra mark or forget to vote for an office, you
will get a message and you get to revote, correct your ballot,
whatever. But in poor black areas, Hispanic areas, Native American
areas, where they put in optically read balloting, these areas don't
have the money, just like they don't have money for good schools,
they don't have money for good hospitals, they don't have money for
good voting systems, and everyone knows it. The ballots go to a
central reader and if there's an error, the ballot simply gets
tossed out.
Now spoiling is no joke, we have nearly a million and a half votes
spoiled every presidential election. A million and a half, and the
chance of your ballot spoiling is 900% higher if you're black than
if you're white. 500% higher if you're Hispanic than if you're
white. And it's statistically insane for Native Americans, how high
the spoilage rate is. I have a chapter called "Indians Spoiled
Rotten" because their ballots spoil all over the place. Again,
because of the crap machines that they're given, not because they
don't know how to vote.
SW: How about REJECTING?
GP: Oh excuse me, I'm sorry, I reversed these. Rejecting is
disallowing absentee ballots. Tossing is throwing out provisional
ballots. So just to get the terminology right here. Now what is a
provisional ballot? As Lee Camp said in his SuicideGirls rant based
on the book, when your name is purged or some bullshit, or you don't
have the right ID, they'll say, "Oh, take this provisional ballot
and we'll count it later." No they won't. Lee said, filling out a
provisional ballot is like voting on a fart, okay. It's gone.
Because whatever knocked you out in the first place stays knocked
out. If they say you're a felon, you have a felony record. And in
Colorado, they removed all these people with felony records, despite
the fact that in most states, including Colorado, you can vote with
a felony record. But, forget all that, if they have it dead wrong
and they give you a provisional ballot, they're not going to count
that vote, they'll just say that they can re-register you next time.
It's a placebo ballot. They throw them out. I think it's going to be
big this time because when people go in with the wrong ID they're
going to be handed these provisional ballots so they don't bitch.
So, 767,023 provisional ballots were knocked out last time. Three
quarters of a million — watch that double.
SW: Okay. How about ERRORS? Now, you talk about government clerks
making mistakes. Is some of this intentional and some of it just
human error?
GP: The answer is yes. It's what I call vulture opportunism. I think
1 in 12 names are input wrong. You know, you fill out those forms
and some knucklehead has to read it, you have sloppy ass
handwriting, so they get your name wrong when they input it. And, it
turns out that it's especially unusual names like Mohammad or, in
California, a lot of Filipino names and hyphenated names and
Hispanic names with the funny accents on them and stuff. So they get
it wrong. But they know who's getting fucked on these errors and
they don't notify anyone. You don't know until you show up that you
lost your vote or that your ID doesn't match the name they inputted.
I mean, in Arizona we had Juarez spelled with a `W' so people lost
their votes because you know, their ID didn't say Juarez with a
`W'…I mean Paul Maez, his name was knocked off and he's the
Elections Supervisor in Santa Miguel County, which is a very poor
Hispanic area. I asked why that happened and he said, "The answers
on the down low." That's all he would say.
SW: What is EJECTING?
GP: We have a chapter called "Nuns on the Run" where I go through
the case of the 10 nuns who didn't have their driver's licenses in
Indiana, which has the worst ID law. It's a good thing they didn't
because one of them was 98 years old. They'd been voting in the same
place for decades. I understand this ID law is to prevent voter
fraud, however, there has not been a single case, not one, of a nun
or anyone else voting fraudulently, stealing someone else's ID. See,
the whole point of ID is to say, "I'm the person whose name is
listed there." No one does that crime because you absolutely get
caught, you absolutely go to jail. You're insane to do that to vote
for a school bond or even to vote for Hillary Clinton or Ron Paul.
No one does it. That's why we don't have those cases.
SW: On August 12th, the Carnegie and Knight Foundation report was
released. After examining thousands of documents from 2000 to 2010,
and looking at 600 million votes, they found only 10 cases of
alleged in-person voter fraud. Those were just alleged and no there
were no convictions. So, these two very bi-partisan foundations
together said that voter fraud is virtually non-existent.
GP: As I point out in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, Tova Wang,
who's from the Century Foundation, was asked by the Elections
Assistance Commission to analyze voter fraud and she found only 6
cases a year. 6 million voters are knocked out a year to stop 6
cases of voter fraud a year! So she says you're more likely to get
hit by lightning. I actually calculated that you're 60 times more
likely to get hit by lightning then commit voter fraud.
SW: Okay, how about STUFFING?
GP: I left stuffing to Bobby Kennedy. That chapter is written by the
Professor. He goes through the good old-fashioned stuff of cranking
in the votes after the election is over to change the outcome. He
just took a simple case, Don Siegelman of Alabama. By the way, most
times it's paper but sometimes, like in this case, it's by computer.
That's very helpful because then there's no trail. Don Siegelman was
reelected Governor of Alabama by several thousand votes. Then, in a
Republican area, the courthouse was sealed. They said a mistake was
made, they had a recount of votes and they got something like 8,000
votes that they suddenly found overnight that had switched and
Siegelman lost. There was no record of how this happened. No one was
allowed to observe this so-called computer recount, or question why
it took all night. Just a bunch of Republican officials locked in a
room. And when Siegelman bitched, which you're not supposed to do…
Siegelman decided to scream bloody murder, and so he was arrested
and today he's in a federal penitentiary. Because they always have
files on these guys. Everyone has a file, and they pulled it out on
him. He still refuses to concede. He says, "I'm Governor. I was
elected. I'm not giving up." ….So what happened is, they kept him
out of office by good old-fashioned stuffing.
SW: Okay, now. Where does lying come in? I'm talking about trying to
convince ex-cons that they aren't allowed to vote when in fact they
are.
GP: The ex-con con is what I call BLOCKING. It's part of the
stopping of registration of legal voters. You know, one way is to
make it illegal by simply arresting members of the League of Women
Voters for having clipboards in public or something, which,
basically, Florida tried to do. It was very effective. Black and
Hispanic registration has dropped in America by 2 million since the
last election. 2 million fewer black and Hispanic voters. Because we
know fewer Hispanics have come in to the country and fewer are
becoming citizens, is that right? No.
So, what's happened? One way to block voters is to convince them,
and even some minor officials, that they can't vote when they can.
The biggest unrepresented vote in America is not the youth vote,
it's not the Hispanic vote, it is the ex-felon vote. If you served
your time in the United States of America, except for six old Jim
Crow states, in 44 states, if you served your sentence, you can
vote. You don't become a non-citizen. You have to basically be in
jail or under probation to have your vote removed in most states,
and in most states even not on probation. You have 16 million
ex-cons in the United States for committing crimes like doing a
little blow and being poor. Obama did a little blow but he wasn't
poor. Or having a little J but not inhaling. That's Clinton because
he was at Oxford, so he's got the Oxford elite exemption. So,
remember, we're not talking about people who have committed crimes,
we're talking about people who've been caught comitting in crimes in
America, and those are two different categories – 46% are black and
a lot are Hispanic, and that's knocking out 16 million voters.
Here's the interesting thing. Something the Democratic Party never
mentions, and they should, which is that 88% of voters who go to
prison come out Democrats. 88% come out Democrats. It's16 million
voters, you do the math. If the Democrats would stand up for these
voters, they could never lose an election, but they won't. In fact,
it's the opposite. They will take anyone that looks like a felon, in
other words, black, BLA as they say on the Florida Voter Forms, and
the Democrats let them be labeled felons and whistle at their shoes.
It's sick….And Obama, by the way, has nothing to say about that.
SW: We covered the nine ways they suppress the vote, could you go
through for me the seven prescriptive solutions that voters can do?
GP: Yeah. One is don't go postal. I just told you, they throw the
crap in the garbage. I mean, you think these guys even want your
vote, a bunch of partisan sharks and you're going to mail it to
them? Come on, get real. Second, vote early because when they fuck
you around and say that Steven is a criminal, you can go back and
say, well I served my time so I can still vote. Three is register
and re-register. I know you think you're registered. You voted last
time, what's the problem? The answer is, don't be a schmuck. They've
knocked out 22 million people in the last 2 years. Let me repeat
that: 22 million people purged. That means you better get online and
check if you are still registered. County Clerk or a Secretary of
State's office, get your name and get your address and make sure
that your name is not spelled with an `F'. Okay.
SW: Right.
GP: Number four, vote unconditionally, not provisionally. Don't take
one of these placebo ballots. Don't vote on a fart. Five, occupy
Ohio, invade Nevada. What I mean by that is, get your ass in gear,
okay? Show your shit, do your thing. Martin Luther King took a
bullet for the vote. You can take a bus. You can do something
valuable. The revolution will not be digitized. Go to where the
votes count. If you're in a non-swing state, though look at those
congressional districts, it's not just about the presidency. And I
don't care whether you're for Obammy or Mitt Romney, this is not a
partisan issue, this is about protecting ourselves from the Ballot
Bandits. Number six is date a voter. As I say, voting, love and
bowling should never be done alone. There's all kinds of reasons for
that including when they jack you around that you have people with
you. It's always easier to stand up when you've got people watching
your back. Because sometimes people complain and they get busted.
And also convince your friends, your frienemies, whatever, to show
up and vote.
I don't want to hear any crap about it doesn't matter, they're going
to steal my vote. Fuck you, okay? I'd take your name off my list,
don't read my books, you're not getting a ride in my car – I'm not
going to let you date my ex-wife. I don't want to hear from you with
that crap. It's not about the candidates. It's about this thing that
we have fought forever for. As Jesse Jackson said, "Marched too
long, worked too hard, died too young." If you haven't put those
three things on the line, then you definitely don't have no right to
talk about whether we should vote or not.
Seven, make the democracy demand no vote left behind. The election
is November 6th. I want to see your ass at BallotBandits.org on
November 7th, because we're going to review whose vote was stolen
where. Even if they reelect Obama, that's not the issue, you need to
know which votes were stolen and believe me, how many congressional
and senate seats were swiped, whether or Obama wins or not.
When Obama won in 2008, it doesn't matter when 6 million votes are
stolen. That's sick business, and it's got to stop, and we have to
demand that the votes be counted. If Don Seigelmen is ready to go to
jail because he said the votes should be counted, shit let's do it.
We saw this in Serbia, we saw this in Peru, we've seen people in the
Ukraine, people stand up and say, you can't steal the fucking
election, not from me. That's it. So, we have to stay with it.
That's the Seven Demands, that we don't shrug our shoulders and do
an Al Gore.
Visit
www.BallotBandits.org to
buy the Billionaires & Ballots
Bandits book
and/or download the 7 Ways to Beat the Ballot Bandits poster for
free.
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