But with his trademark humor, Palast also points out that in Ohio 2004, exit polls showed that
John Kerry had won Ohio's female voters 53% to 47%. Among male voters, Kerry won Ohio by 51% to 49%. But CNN's exit polls of all voters showed Bush the winner in Ohio, and thereby the re-elected President. OK, class, what third sex put Bush over the top?
But that's not all, in New Mexico, native American votes were ignored. "More ballots are spoiled or disqualified in pueblos and reservations than in any other community" writes Palast.
In 2012, Fox analyst at the time Karl Rove, George W. Bush's "brain" and tenderly referred to by the president as "Turd Blossom," unwilling to accept Fox's calling of the Ohio election for President Obama, and thus being re-elected, made a phone call, in a last-ditch effort to "disqualify" enough votes to reverse the count.
Rove knew, says Palast, that "early voters were not allowed to vote on regular ballots or on voting machines. Instead, they were handed an absentee mail-in ballot [application]," while they were at the polling station (!), and then handed a number and told to wait, like at a deli counter in supermarket, then took the application for an absentee ballot, filled it in, and posted it in a box, right there, at the polling station. Palast was curious:
I asked the County Clerk why voters were going through this mad rigmarole to get "absentee" ballots when they weren't absent.
He said, "Because absentee ballots can be disqualified."
What?
And so it goes, as Linda Ellerbee used to say. Only a Palast-inspired court order averted Rove's subterfuge. Basta!
Well, in 2016, we know what happened: The Russians stole the election for Donald J. Trump. Whoa, Nellie! "Kris Kobach was more responsible than any other person in America for putting Donald Trump into the White House," writes Palast. The Secretary of State for Kansas Kris Kolbach (KKK?) declared that the electoral system was being over-run by doppelgà ¤ngers intent on destroying America from within -- by voting twice! (see opening quote) Employing a system called Interstate Crosscheck, which was adopted by 27 states, including the so-called swing states, which resulted in the purging of scores of registered voters.
Greg Palast is flabbergasted and angry. He writes of Kris Kobach that
By the time I shook his hand in 2016, one of his schemes-Crosscheck (we'll get to that)-had already purged 1.1 million from the rolls, too many of them Black, Hispanic and Asian-American, quite silently, in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and 26 other states, a stealth purge crucial to Trump's victory.
Kobach is still at it with his purge lists and hoping to work with Trump in 2020. Ominously, Palast adds, " In 2020, Kobach may choose our president for us again."
But Kobach isn't the only problem; swing state Wisconsin has had some serious voter issues, too. "In 2016, Trump officially won Wisconsin by a dinky 22,748 votes out of 3 million cast," writes Palast. Had then-Governor Scott Walker not purged 182,000 student votes from the 2016 election, most of them overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning, then Trump would not be president. Walker has been ousted from office, but racist the Wisconsin Legislature has more than picked up the slack. At the end of 2019, they ended "Soul-To-the-Polls Day when most African-Americans vote." No more early voting.
Palast said that he knew there was trouble in Milwaukee when he met with Sequanna Taylor, who told him she'd been purged from the voter registration rolls. This despite the inconvenient fact that she was Milwaukee's County Supervisor. Palast adds, "Her name is on the ballot. Only a tip-off from a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter allowed her to save her right to vote for herself." In all, the Legislature, so far, has managed to purge "232,597 voters from the rolls in 2020, ten times Trump's 2016 margin." Palast contacted Wisconsin's Elections Commissioner Ann Jacobs who explained to him that the reason for the purges was simple:
This massive purge is clearly an attempt to gain an advantage in Wisconsin for the Republicans, particularly for the presidential race that's coming up.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
