BANANA REPUBLICANS
Four from BuzzFlash

It appears as though the Republicans are trying, once again, to practice junta-democracy. That is, anti-democracy, and this time it's all over the place, instead of only in Florida.

From the London Guardian:

Milwaukee Extra Ballot Request Rejected

The mayor has requested more ballots for the Nov. 2 election, but the county executive has refused to provide them, citing concerns about voter fraud.

Mayor Tom Barrett complained that the 679,000 ballots the county agreed to print were less than the number prepared for elections in 2000 and 2002. He asked for almost 260,000 additional ballots, expecting a large turnout next month.

And

Barrett and Walker both hold nonpartisan offices, but Walker is a state co-chairman of President Bush's campaign, and Barrett is state co-chairman of Sen. John Kerry's campaign.

Click here for the rest.

Just to connect the dots a bit on this, high voter turnout tends to favor Democrats, but low voter turnout does the opposite. See what's at stake? On the whole, fewer ballots could very easily translate into fewer votes for Democrats.

From the Los Angeles Times:

GOP Consulting Firm Investigated for Voter Fraud Claims

Oregon's attorney general opened a criminal investigation Wednesday into allegations that Democratic voter registration forms were destroyed or discarded by a political consulting firm working for the Republican National Committee.

The allegations involve a voter registration drive conducted by Sproul & Associates, a Phoenix-based consulting organization that was hired by the RNC earlier this year and is headed up by the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Committee, Nathan Sproul.Sproul has become entangled in controversial allegations in at least three states where his company was conducting registration drives paid for by the RNC.

RNC officials acknowledged Wednesday that Sproul was paid to conduct the registrations.

Click here for the rest.

Three states. Voter registration fraud. Republican National Committee. Is this going on everywhere?

Meanwhile the situation in Nevada, where Sproul is already knee-deep in a similar scandal, gets worse. From the Daily Kos:

VOTER SUPPRESSION

On Friday, October 8, Dan Burdish, the former director of the Nevada Republican Party attempted to throw out the voting rights of 17,000 Clark County Citizens.

Dan Burdish admitted in the Las Vegas Review Journal he is "looking to take Democrats off the voter rolls." [Las Vegas Review Journal, 10/10/04]

The 17,000 votes the GOP is trying to throw away belong to people who have been categorized as "inactive voters".

Inactive voters still have the right to vote in Clark County. They have only been moved to that category because the Clark County Election Department's efforts to reach them by mail were unsuccessful. But, again, they still have the legal right to vote.

Click here for more.

And let's not forget Florida, the site of the election theft of 2000. From the Washington Post:

Groups Say That Blacks May Not Be Heard at Polls

Nearly a dozen African American ministers and civil rights leaders walked into the Duval County election office here, television cameras in tow, with a list of questions: How come there were not more early voting sites closer to black neighborhoods? How come so many blacks were not being allowed to redo incomplete voter registrations? Who was deciding all this?

Standing across the office counter under a banner that read "Partners in Democracy" was the man who made those decisions, election chief Dick Carlberg. Visibly angry, the Republican explained why he decided the way he had: "We call it the law."

Black leaders said the scene at the supervisor's office last week was reminiscent of a blocked schoolhouse door at the height of desegregation. They charge that GOP officials are deliberately using the law to keep black people off the rolls and hinder them from voting.

And

A Washington Post analysis found nearly three times the number of flagged Democratic registrations as Republican. Broken down by race, no group had more flagged registrations than blacks.

Click here for more.

Needless to say, African-Americans overwhelmingly vote Democratic. This is awful. On the whole, I'd say that the stage is now set for widespread chaos and rioting on election day. Calling in the UN to monitor elections is really not a bad idea at all; the US is looking more and more like a banana republic. Of course, the GOP would never allow the UN to monitor the election--it'd spoil all their fun.

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