My guest today is Harvey Wasserman, co-author of "Will the GOP Steal America's 2012 Election?" Welcome back to OpEdNews, Harvey. We spoke about your new book at the beginning of September. But election-related stories seem to be breaking all the time. Can you bring us up to speed? Are we worse off than we were in 2000, 2004 or 2008?
Well, it's the best of times, it's the worst of times.
On the one hand, much of the media and even the Democratic Party has picked up on the nation-wide Jim Crow campaign being waged by the Republicans to disenfranchise as many suspected Democrats as possible. According to the Brennan Center at NYU, this could mean ten million or more Americans will lose their vote.
Back when we first started writing about such things, we were attacked by the Democrats and even much of the left media. Now it's being taken seriously. Even the New York Times has covered some of it. And many of the laws enabling this mass disenfranchisement have been overturned by the courts.
But that doesn't mean they won't still disenfranchise millions of citizens. The dirty tricks and intimidation are still very much out there. We expect many thousands of Tea Party and other right wingers to show up as poll workers and harass voters no matter what the law says. So those who care about election protection are going to have to show up at the polls in droves to protect the vote.
That's what happened in 2008 and that's why Obama won. But he has been such a corporatist president that many of those who enthusiastically worked for him in 2008 will not do so this year.
We are also finally getting some traction on the electronic voting machines. It has become ridiculously obvious that the GOP can steal this election electronically. Our story has gone viral on the fact that nine key swing states (Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico and Arizona) have Republican governors and secretaries of state that could flip the electronic vote count in a matter of nano-seconds, with no public recourse.
Our latest story showing the Romney family with investment ties to Hart Intercivic has turned up at Forbes.org . Since Hart Intercivic supplies the voting machines to Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Ohio, where the election could be decided, this has raised a few eyebrows....finally!!!
There are now at least two excellent cartoons circulating about the dubious nature of electronic machines.
So we have definitely made some progress in terms of awareness since we broke those stories about the theft of the 2004 election.
But will that stop Romney, Rove and the GOP money machine? Not likely. When you have a few hundred million to drop into a political candidacy that could make you billions, spending the pittance more it would take to rig and flip the voting machines is a no-brainer.
So in terms of awareness, things are better, we've definitely pushed this story into the mainstream.
But in terms of actually stopping the theft of yet another presidential election....that remains to be seen.
Yikes! Please explain how the exit polls and their demise in 19 states fits into the electoral picture, Harvey.
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