Monday, July 19, 2004

How democracy gets stolen...

OK - some points that people may (or may not) be aware of...
Firstly, some facts concerning the "election" (to abuse the word) of Mr Tony Blair's good friend, George W. Bush, in the year 2000. Decided in Florida, and, of course we all know who's brother the governor of Florida is....
1) The Secretary of State for Florida - the person in charge of the Florida elections - was Katherine Harris;
2) The person in charge of George W. Bush's presidential election campaign was Katherine Harris (yes, don't bother asking, they are one and the same...);
3) George Bush "won" (ha, ha, ha....) the state of Florida by 537 votes. A large number, perhaps;
4) But not as large as 50, 000;
5) So what has 50, 000 got to do with the price of fish? Well, that was the number of people that were illegally excluded from the Florida electoral roll. Most of them poor and black. Meaning that most of them would have voted for Gore;
6) How were they removed? A company called DBT was given the task of removing felons from the electoral register. Unfortunately (if you care about democracy, fortunately, if you're a member of the Bush family, or one of their friends) they removed 50,000 people who shouldn't have been - people who were innocent of any crime, people guilty of misdemeanors, as opposed to felonies, people who had been convicted of felonies in other states (than Florida) but had their right to vote returned - in essence, a purge of people who, for the most part, were likely to be non-Bush voters;
7) What do you mean, deal with it? OK, so 3rd world countries expect their elections to be rigged, but does the self-styled leader of the free world?;
8) Apparently, yes. But that's OK - it won't happen again. Will it?;
9) Don't be too sure. Whilst the secretary of state's department in Florida was barred by the Florida legislature from hiring a private company to once again sort out their electoral rolls (as it was the private company last time which removed all the non-Bush voters);
10) So what did the Florida state department (still run by Katherine Harris) do? Ignore the legislature, once again bring in a private company which is contracted to sort out the electoral register;
11) And what excitement do they have in mind for the future? Electronic votes - a touch screen, which records votes;
12) Given that the current mechanical vote-reading apparatus, which, in largely white districts was programmed to spit back spoilt papers, but, in largely black districts, was programmed to chew them up, does anyone trust the new readers? Particularly given the fact that they have no paper trail that can be followed, being entirely electronic;
13) What's that nice Mr Tony's view on the electoral future? What's that - electronic voting? With touch screens? Hmmm. Anyone else smell a rat?

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