BartBlog

from www.breadwithcircus.com#votefraud/

There are only a couple of days until the US Election, and I’ve become convinced of one thing: if the vote is fair, Barack Obama can not lose. Obama is way ahead both in polling and general public sentiment. Poll after poll in state after state shows him carrying enough of the electoral college to easily win Tuesday’s election. There’s just one thing. The election is not going to be fair. Republicans have stolen the last two elections and are actively working to steal this one too.

There have already been reports of voters (mostly in low-income or ethnic neighbourhoods) being “purged” from the voting list for no apparent reason. If you are one of these people, it means that you’ll show up at the polls, and the official will tell you that you’ve been removed from the voting list, and that in order to correct this, you should have sent paperwork away last week. This happened in Florida in 2000. If someone called John Smith committed a crime, and you are a John Smith in a predominantly black neighbourhood, you’ve been purged. Names with a certain ring about them were also taken off the list. If your name is Shaniqua, Jamal, or DeShawn, chances are good that there’s going to be an issue when you finally get to the front of that long line on Tuesday. I recommend going early if you can.

There have been reports of voting machines (why in the hell do you Americans still use those things?) “flipping votes.” It works sort of like this. I encourage people to watch Hacking Democracy to see how easy it is to tamper with the machines.

There are also many cases (again in low income and ethnic neighbourhoods) where there are not enough voting booths. This leads to very long lines that discourage people from voting. If a vote costs many hours waiting in line, many people will walk away from the poll. Votes are also suppressed through demanding perfect matches in identification. If your name is Herschel Johnson and the bureaucrat who filled out your voter registration form misspelled it as Hershel Johnson, you don’t get to vote. This is disenfranchisement by clerical error. Also if you’ve moved in the last little while, even within the same neighbourhood, and your new address doesn’t match up with the one on the voter form, (even if you can prove who you are through your driver’s license, social security number, birth certificate etc) you don’t get to vote. Consider all of those whose houses have been foreclosed in the last months. They all have new addresses. Do you think they were going to vote Republican?

Keep in mind that these measures seem to be introduced only in neighbourhoods that tend to vote Democratic. Add them all together, and then consider the fact that the McCain campaign, along with the mainstream media, has been questioning the accuracy of polls in the last few days. “Never mind that Obama has a 15 point lead,” they say “maybe some people are secretly racist so they lied to the pollsters about their intention to vote for Obama.”

Perhaps the most disturbing talking point has been along the lines of “you can’t trust polls because in the last election, John Kerry was leading but then on election day he lost.” Given what we now know about the ’04 election theft, they might as well quote Joseph Stalin. “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” The campaign is trying to plant the idea that the vote will be much closer than polls indicate. If people start to believe this, then they won’t be surprised if they are told that the vote was actually about 50/50, and McCain won a narrow victory.

A close election is more easily stolen. In previous elections, the margin of victory has been small enough that the purging/flipping/suppression of maybe one hundred thousand votes in key states was enough to have Bush carry the day. However, an Obama land-slide can not be overturned. If enough of the voters who say they were going to vote for Obama
actually show up at the polls, he will win, simple as that. My message is, don’t be complacent. Drag friends and family to the polling station. Even though you may think that Obama has this one locked up, make sure that you and everyone you know gets out and votes. Obama must win big to overcome the fraud that will take place.

Now, the what if. If somehow the story on Wednesday is McCain’s last minute surge, the low turnout of likely Obama voters, and strange circumstances leading to a McCain win in Pennsylvania, DO NOT SURRENDER. Democrats rolled over twice before and look what it did to their country. They may have to call in the lawyers. You may have to take to the streets and protest. Be prepared to do this! There is no way that McCain can win legitimately. You may have to fight this time, and no matter how ugly it may look, this is what democracy demands. The whole world is counting on you not to screw this one up. Only you can prevent election fraud. Yes you can.