Apparently, swinging Wisconsin likes the swagger that comes with being the Big Cheese.
Palast puts special emphasis on what happened in Georgia in 2018. As corrupt as the system seems to many, even on the surface, what Brian Kemp did in Georgia breaks new ground. Serving as secretary of state, while running for governor, was entirely unethical and, given what he ended up doing, probably grounds for felony prosecution. As secretary, Kemp got to decide which votes counted, and which didn't. When Stacey Abrams lost the gubernatorial race to Kemp, she refused to go the route of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton and merely accept the outcome. She started a non-partisan group called Fair Fight, who hired Palast's investigative team to dig into "the math" of the purges.
They found that Kemp, employing the tactic of declaring people who had "moved" as scrubbable from the rolls, had led to thousands of suddenly disenfranchised people:
Of the half million voters Kemp purged for supposedly moving their residence, 340,134 had never moved an inch. But now, the Lenser
team found nearly 100,000 more who had moved within their county-and therefore, they too should never have been purged. The total of wrongfully
scrubbed voters was now over 400,000.
Palast is quick, however, to point out that Kemp borrowed this criminal idea (it's literally a violation of the National Voting Registration Act of 1993) from Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted of Ohio. And so successful has it been that this formula has been adopted by a cabal of Republican secretaries of states. In this way, writes Palast, "millions [have been] blocked from voting . . . and they don't know it."
But we needn't delude ourselves into thinking it's all about Republicans and their evil will-to-power shenanigans; Democrats can do the 'ol you-call-that-a-noif routine just as well. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a campaign backer of both Clinton and Joe Biden, went to extraordinary lengths to f*ck the 5.3 million young voters (mostly Latino) who chose to vote as independents (NPP) rather join the Democratic party. Why? They didn't like the "lesser evil" offered up, and, in this instance, writes Palast, they overwhelmingly preferred "Tio Bernie" to Biden this year, "Tio Bernie" to Clinton in 2016.
Using the "disenfranchisement by postcard" method, just before Christmas last year, Padilla sent out cards to NPP voters. The cards were designed to look like "junk mail" and, writes Palast, "91% of voters threw them out." Those who 'got it' had to go to a polling station and literally ask for a "Democratic Crossover" ballot. If they didn't use that specific language. Poll workers were instructed not to help them. Other poll workers, writes Palast, were themselves confused by the process:
Many confused poll workers gave the NPP voters Democratic ballots, not ones marked "CROSSOVER," not realizing that, in most counties, those ballots would be tossed out, disqualified.
Other 'anomalies' led to Sanders' primary campaign being sabotaged by Party insiders determined to make sure Biden received California's huge pot of electoral delegates.
And there are many other players that Palast names and excoriates. There's Ohio secretary of state Jon Husted's reduction of polling stations in Black precincts that led to looooooooooooong lines. There's Hans "The Fox" von Spakovsky Prove- you-are-a-citizen game (BTW, Why is there a space between Lyons and Spikovsky? See film: Fallen). Kim Strach, North Carolina's elections board director, favored "Ballot Harvesting"to cull undesired votes. GOP secretary of state Ruth Johnson blocked a hand count of 75000 votes that hadn't been processed by broken scanning machines -- which would have given Michigan to Clinton. Paul "The Vulture" Singer gutted the Voting Rights Act by lobbying with funds earmarked for cholera relief in Africa.
In a trustworthy political world, efficient, well-oiled machines could take the sinful, human factor out of the process that is, after all, the glue of a functioning democracy. But even here, we find failure. We keep using old voting machines (in minority areas) that we know will break down. But even newer machines are suspect. Palast didn't cover it specifically, but "Voter Village" a September 2018 DefCon voter hacking event (it's annual), ironically supported by Alex Padilla, found four key vulnerabilities: Supply Chain Insecurity (machine parts manufactured overseas could come pre-hacked; through compromised chips whole classes of machines could be hacked across the U.S., remotely, all at once ), Remote Attacks Proven, Hacking Faster Than Voting (in under 2 minutes), Hacks Don't Get Fixed. Startling stuff, well worth reviewing.
In addition to all the wise and witty writing in How Trump Stole 2020, Palast pads the otherwise short book with three insertions: An Emergency Alert section (" Coronavirus Causes Outbreak of Mail-in Madness") which warns readers that, in 2016, "512,696 mail-in ballots-over half a million-were simply rejected, not counted. That's official, from the EAC."; the second extra insert is an extended interview with Stacey Abrams regarding the 2018 Georgia debacle; and, my favorite, a 48-page Ted Rall comic book version of Palast's detailed assertions, which is funny and spot-on -- a great add-on to the book.
Palast is a hip guy, and he's not afraid to let the reader know just how hip he is. He's got a rip-snorting (at times) sense of humor, without allowing it to degrade his argument or observations. He is a former professor of statistics, which lends authority to his reads of numbers. He's a former gumshoe. And he's an award-winning journalist. Palast writes that Republicans have done everything they can since Eisenhower (remember that hilarious MIC warning he gave to the public in his last speech as president) to get in power and stay there -- including stealing elections -- because they see themselves as champions of the MIC and proud defenders of America's manifest destiny. While Palast definitely blames Republicans for the current state of electoral disrepair, he boldly notes where Democrats, too, have let American democracy down.
As Palast sees it, the answer is Power; simple as that. The more power you have, the more you crave it, like greed; and as Nobel peace prize winner Henry Kissinger once said, power is "the ultimate aphrodisiac." So, we don't fix the dysfunctional system, and may even make it worse, because it suits the corruption it takes to keep hold of power. We've all watched enough West Wing and Veep and House of Cards to get a reinforced sense of how it is. Just Is, rather than justice.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
