|
We have 100 lawyers alone who will be at all of the polling places, focusing on the areas where minorities were screwed out of 27,000 democratic votes in 2000. On top of this there is a swat team of several hundred more attorneys waiting to be activated and brought to any polling locations where the attorneys in place call for them to come in and assist them, On top of that there are hundreds, maybe even a few thousand democrats who will be stationed 50 feet outside of the polls with information about how to vote and ready to direct people to lawyers if the feel they have been denied the right to vote. All of the people waiting outside of the polling places will be ready to take names of people who have been denied, and call 4 local telephone numbers as well as the national number for the democratic party teams handing attemts at voter fraud and voter intimidation. There will be people present to direct people to the correct polling place as if they have shown up at the wrong ones before they fill in "provisional ballots" so they will greatly minimize the chances of people placing a provisional vote at the wrong polling place if they are placing a provisional vote. Since you can check your correct polling place online at the Local Supervisor of elections web site, I think there are suposed to be people there with wireless access to the web site to look up everyon who is told that they are at the wrong polling place what their actual polling place is, plus they have drivers to take people to their polling places, both from home and from polling places they are told they are not registered at, to the correct ones.
Every hour, we will be sending updated lists of people with people who have already voted eliminated, and then these updates lists will be given to people who will be calling people who have not voted to determine if they really have and have been removed, or if they havnt, to remind them to vote, and offer any assistance necessary to get them to their polling places.
There is another bank of attorneys, being led by a very competant attorney from Wayne Hogan's law firm to fight for every provisional vote that may be questioned or attempted to be thrown out for whatever reason the day after the election, so do not expect finalk results on election day. Not one valid vote will be allowed to slip by. Many of our attorneys are from the largest law firm in the nation, a firm that I can proudly say that I worked for as a law librarian a long time ago, that has a very long record of supporting democratic candidates (their officces all over the country have contributed a great deal to Kerry's campaign, far more than the Republican attorneys who work for the firm. THe head of this firm when I worked for it was the first person in the U.S. to call for the impeachement of Richard Nixon. His bio is in Tom Brokaw's,the Greatest Generation).
THey already caught the supervisor of elections in this county attempting a trial run to disqualify over 750 minority voters registered as Democrats, along with 250 Republicans registering(I do not doubt for one minute that the supervisor was able to determine that these Republicans had a record for voting for Gore in the last election, and so they were knocked off as well) All I know was that the efforts to catch them before the election were effective enough to detect this trial run at disenfranchising minority voters because they left some rather unimportant and in fact redundant portions of the forms unfilled, such as being asked if you are a U.S. citizen in two places on the form, confusing some people. They got these forms before a judge immediately, and got the ruling that these forms had to be processed. THe consequence was that the Supoervisor of Elections, who was behind the disenfranchisements in 2000, retired immediately and was replaced by Jeb Bush. Even though this is a Bush appointee, it takes a certain amount of planning while in place in a county to try to work out an efffective plan for voter disenfranchisement. The ex-supervisor was doing it for years and was a master, I do not doubt that there was some evidence about 2000 that the Democrats now have and indicated a willingness to reveal in the few weeks orior to the election that led to the supervisor retiring. He was refusing to step down less than a month ago when Corrine Brown demanded it. SOmething new must have been available. Or this is the feeling I have gotten from the attorneys who are working for us when I spoke to them. One thing they made very, very clear. We should not distrust voting in Florida this time. In 2000 there was no active campaigning for Gore here, adn no really in depth watching of the procedures for registering voters and getting them to vote. There has been a 180 degree turnaround since the events of 2000, and everything is being watched. THe attorneys we have hear in this county adn throughout FLorida are among the best civil rights and voting rights experts in the country. THey outclass the Republicans a hundred fold. as the Republican attorneys have far less experience in guarding either civil rights or voting rights. The main thing in voter fraud and cheating that enables it to occur is usually simply that no one is watching in an official capacity. and in many cases, the only person who complained was the citizen being denied their voting rights and until this election, they never had anyone to look out for their interests until after the fact. This time there are thousands of people looking out to protect that right before the fact, and during it, not afterwards when it is too late.
Given the fact that it looks like democrats may outnumber republicans by as much as a half a million, maybe more in Florida, and my telephone calls to registered Democrats over the past few weeks indicates very high voter feeling for Kerry, as well as reports of very strong intention to vote, and my sign waving today got enormous positive response from virtually every black voter who passed by, including a bus driver who started honking their horn and yelling go Kerry out of the bus window, gives me a feeling that the disenfranchised Black voters of 2000 are highly motivated this election. They will not be denied their vote. When Jesse Jacksoin was here a few days ago, a few young hecklers were driving by and yelling 4 more years, but they were drowned out by black Kerry supporters. I am greatly encouraged by wjat I have seen of democratic voters here, particualrly among the minority who have been used to being abused at the polling places here for decades. They strongly are showing that they will not be denied this time. The co-ordination and planning of the local democrats, andin particular, democrats who have run for office and lost in this conservative bastion, and the many democratic attorneys giving hours of their time to this cause has given me a great deal of assuarance that we will not be had this time.
This goes to show exactly how corrupt the Bush administration is. These are carreer politicians,who are used to politics being dirty, who were stunned by exactly how dirty Bush played in 2000, They did not expect that they would simply throw out votes in 2000, and that the judges would become so partisan as to support these actions, even when evidence existed that they had broken the law. This time, they have been bitten hard and have not forgetten, They will leave nothing to chance, and will not simply expect that judges and official will do their jobs rather than not do them. There are simply a limited number of ways to cheat at an election of this kind, and they have looked for everything that can be though of as well as everything that no one ever thought of.
I think they have covered everything that can be covered and if the very Republican Supervisor of elections was caught very early on attempting another method of disenfranchising voters, to the point that they obtained something that forced a retirement of a person who was absolutely resolute that they would not be forced into resigning, that I feel very comfortable that even if they attempt to cheat, they will be caught before they can, and if they are not caught, what they get away with will be too small to effect the outcome.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
