Can Republicans Steal Another

Four Years?

By James Donahue

While the debate still continues concerning the real winner of the Bush/Gore presidential race in 2000, and if voting machines weren’t rigged to help George W. Bush win a second term in 2004, Americans are gearing up for yet another important presidential election with strong hopes of choosing new leadership that will turn this nation in a more positive direction.

But there is a constant, nagging feeling . . . backed by Internet reports of court rulings supporting various state rule changes designed to control voting practices, and suspicions of secret rigging of more electronic voting machines . . . that something may still be amiss.

Indeed, there appears to be a grass-roots rally that has pushed Democratic Illinois Senator Barack Obama to the forefront among the candidates. Throughout a long and highly contested primary campaign, Obama has displayed a charisma and grace that has excited a nation that has been too long without this kind of quality in its leadership. We must ask how such a man could ever be defeated by the older, more sluggish Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, who appears to clearly reflect a willingness to give us four more years of what we do not want.

How, indeed? Could it be that crooked politics, corrupted big business interests with lots of money to spend, and greedy state election workers are, even as we pen these words, busy setting up yet another massive election fraud? Will it be designed to make it appear as if we will have a close election, but with McCain winning by a slim margin in that complex and much misunderstood political machine called the electoral college?

As we all learned in 2000, even though Al Gore captured the popular vote all across the board, Mr. Bush appeared to have the upper hand when all was said and done. It all hinged on the outcome of the voting in Florida, a state then under the control of George Bush’s brother, Jeb Bush, where many thousands of low-income and underprivileged residents in a predominately strong Democratic area were denied their right to vote. Even then, when the final vote was counted, the outcome was so close a recount was demanded. There was such a mess that in the end the Supreme Court intervened and determined Bush the winner.

Can something like that happen again this year? All of the signs are present to suggest that the Republican controlled leadership, including the stacked courts, are busy setting up something that will be designed to control the outcome of yet another election.

For example, the State of Indiana now requires voters to display a photo-identification like a driver’s license to prove their identity before they can cast a vote. Apparently the old system of registering to vote with the county clerks and getting your name on the voter rolls no longer applies in Indiana. This rule, which appears designed to prohibit folks who do not drive from voting, has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Thus would-be voters in Indiana, who do not have a driver’s license, must obtain a birth certificate or passport, or go to a local Department of Motor Vehicles office and apply for a driver’s license, even if they cannot drive and do not own a car. The latter requires passing a driver’s test, and includes actually driving a car under the supervision of a DMV worker. The passport also requires showing proof of identity including a birth certificate and photo identification, like a driver’s license, and it costs up to $100. According to Brad Blog, an Indiana resident applying for a birth certificate must also show a photo identification, like a driver’s license. The bottom line to all this is that voting is now prohibited for all Indiana residents who do not have a driver’s license.

There have been other troublesome occurrences. For example the Veterans Health Administration has recently prohibited voter registration drives at Veterans Administration facilities “due to Hatch Act requirements and to avoid disruptions to facility operations.” This policy now prohibits veterans’ groups and other non-partisan organizations from assisting wounded former soldiers to participate in the 2008 presidential election. We suspect these former soldiers, returning home from Iraq with missing limbs and other permanent physical injuries, and discovering that the Bush Administration has cut funding for their medical needs, will not be in a mood to vote for another four years of the same. And, oh yes, the Hatch Act only restricts political activities by federal employees. It does not apply to veterans and other non-partisan groups.

A recent report by Art Levine in The American Prospect, notes that the Republicans have been conducting a nationwide campaign “to suppress the low-income minority vote by propagating the myth of voter fraud. Using various tactics – including media smears, bogus lawsuits, restrict new voting laws and policies (like the Indiana voter ID requirement), and flimsy prosecutions – Republican operatives, election officials, and the GOP-controlled Justice Department have limited voting access and gone after voter-registration groups such as ACORN.”

In light of the Supreme Court ruling upholding the Indiana photo identification requirement, Levine warns that “relatively transient voters, drawn to the polls this year by the Obama and Clinton campaigns, could find themselves thwarted in November and thereafter by the GOP-driven regime of voting restrictions.”

For more details concerning this highly complex issue, and just how devious the Bush Administration under the leadership of such schemers as Karl Rove have been operating to secure total control of our nation, we highly recommend reading the full Levine report. Click Here.