[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] Black voters in the US disproportionally disenfranchised (Jesse Jackson & Greg Palast)

Thu Jan 27 22:22:09 PST 2005

>
>
>Black Voters in United States Disproportionally
>Disenfranchised 
>by Jesse Jackson and Greg Palast
>
>The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 26, 2005
>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/209316_palastjackson26.html
>http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0126-28.htm
>
>
>The inaugural confetti has been swept away and
>with it, the last quarrel over who really won the
>presidential election.
>
>But there is still unfinished business that can't
>be swept away. After taking his oath, the
>president called for a "concerted effort to
>promote democracy." The president should begin
>with the United States.
>
>More than 133,000 votes remain uncounted in Ohio,
>more than George W. Bush's supposed margin of
>victory. In New Mexico, the uncounted vote totals
>at least three times the president's plurality --
>and so on in other states.
>
>The challenge to the vote count is over, but the
>matter of how the United States counts votes, or
>fails to count them, remains.
>
>The ballots left uncounted, and that will never
>be counted, are so-called spoiled or rejected
>ballots -- votes cast by citizens, but never
>tallied. This is the dark little secret of U.S.
>democracy: Nationwide, in our presidential
>elections, about 2 million votes are cast and
>never counted, most spoiled because they cannot
>be read by the tallying machines.
>
>Not everyone's vote spoils equally. Cleveland
>State University Professor Mark Salling analyzed
>ballots thrown into Ohio's electoral garbage can.
>Salling found that, "overwhelmingly," the voided
>votes come from African American precincts.
>
>This racial bend in vote spoilage is not unique
>to Ohio. A U.S. Civil Rights Commission
>investigation concluded that, of nearly 180,000
>votes discarded in Florida in the 2000 election
>as unreadable, a shocking 54 percent were cast by
>black voters, though they make up only a tenth of
>the electorate. In Florida, an African American
>is 900 percent more likely to have his or her
>vote invalidated than a white voter. In New
>Mexico, a Hispanic voter is 500 percent more
>likely than a white voter to have her or his
>ballot lost to spoilage.
>
>Unfortunately, Florida and New Mexico are
>typical. Nationwide data gathered by Harvard Law
>School Civil Rights Project indicate that, of the
>2 million ballots spoiled in a typical
>presidential election, about half are cast by
>minority voters.
>
>The problem is that some officials are quite
>happy with the outcome of elections in which
>minority votes just don't count. They count on
>the "no-count."
>
>Before last November's election, the American
>Civil Liberties Union sued five states for
>continuing to use punch-card machines, those
>notorious generators of "hanging" chads and
>"pregnant" chads that disproportionately
>disenfranchise black voters.
>
>Four of those states settled with the ACLU by
>adopting simple fixes to protect voters. One
>state, notably, refused: Ohio, which forced 75
>percent of its voters to use punch-card machines.
>In minority and low-income areas, these old
>machines on average spoil an unacceptable 8
>percent of the votes cast on them. In high-income
>white districts, spoilage is typically 1 percent.
>
>
>In Ohio, the decision to keep the vote-destroying
>machines in place in African American districts
>was made by the state's Republican attorney
>general, Jim Petro, and its secretary of state,
>Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell, not incidentally,
>co-chaired the Bush-Cheney re-election committee.
>The election in Ohio was fundamentally flawed, a
>fact compounded by the widespread use of
>electronic voting machines susceptible to
>manipulation and hacking.
>
>This election saw an explosion in a new category
>of uncounted, ballots: rejected provisional
>ballots. In Ohio alone, more than 35,000 of these
>votes were never tallied. Once again, the
>provisional ballots were cast overwhelmingly in
>African American precincts.
>
>Why so many? In November, for the first time
>since the era of the Night Riders, one major
>political party launched a program of mass
>challenges of voters on Election Day. Paid
>Republican operatives, working from lists
>prepared by the party, fingered tens of thousands
>of voters in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere,
>questioning their right to a ballot.
>
>One of these secret "caging lists" was obtained
>by BBC Television from inside Republican campaign
>headquarters in Florida. Every one of the voters
>on those sheets resided in African American
>neighborhoods, excepting a few in precincts of
>elderly Jewish voters.
>
>These lists helped Republican poll workers
>challenge voters on the basis of an alleged
>change of address. An analysis of one roster
>showed that several of those facing challenge
>were African American soldiers whose address
>changed because they were shipped overseas.
>
>Challenged voters were shunted to "provisional
>ballots," which, in Ohio and elsewhere, were not
>counted on the flimsiest of technicalities.
>
>Who won the presidential race? Given the millions
>of ballots spoiled and provisional ballots
>rejected, the unfolding mystery of the exit polls
>and widespread use of electronic voting machines,
>we will never know whether John Kerry or George
>W. Bush received the most votes in Ohio and other
>swing states
>
>But we can name the election's big winner: Jim
>Crow.
>
>Last Thursday, the president said, "Our country
>must abandon all the habits of racism."
>
>>From benign neglect of the voting machinery to
>malign intent in challenging minority voters en
>masse, the United States is turning that ill
>habit into an electoral strategy.
>
>In 1965, Congress gave us the Voting Rights Act,
>promising all people the right to cast a vote. It
>is now time to making counting that vote a right,
>not just casting it, before Jim Crow rides again
>in the next election.
>
>
>The Rev. Jesse Jackson is founder of Rainbow
>Coalition/ People United to Save Humanity
>(Operation PUSH). Greg Palast, author of "The
>Best Democracy Money Can Buy," investigated the
>election for BBC Television.
>
>© 2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
>
>###
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand