They might as well have burned a cross on Dr. King’s grave. The Jim Crow majority on the Supreme Court just took away the vote of millions of Hispanic and African-American voters
You like numbers? Here’s how to estimate the effect of spoilage on the election outcome. For fun, let’s take Florida 2000. We know from comparison of census tracts to precincts that 54% of the 179,855 ballots “spoiled” were cast by African-American voters, that is, 97,000 of the total. Every poll put the Black vote in Florida for Al Gore at over 90%. Reasonably assuming “spoiled” ballots matched the typical racial preferences, Gore lost more than 87,000 votes
A nasty little secret of American democracy is that, in every national election, ballots cast are simply thrown in the garbage. Most are called “spoiled,” supposedly unreadable, damaged, invalid. They just don’t get counted. This “spoilage” has occurred for decades, but it reached unprecedented heights in the last two presidential elections. In the 2004 election, for example, more than three million ballots were never counted. Almost as deep a secret is that people are doing something about it. In New Mexico, citizen activists, disgusted by systematic vote disappearance, demanded change ”” and got it. In Ohio, during the 2004 Presidential election, 153,237 ballots were simply thrown away ”” more than the Bush “victory” margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was five times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush’s triumph of 13,498 was
Does America Have An Apartheid Vote-Counting System? by Rev. Jesse Jackson and Greg Palast The inaugural confetti has been swept away and with it, the last quarrel over who really won the presidential election. But there is still unfinished business that can’t be swept away. After taking his oath, the president called for a “concerted effort to promote democracy.” The president should begin with the United States.
Congratulations, Mr. President! Florida’s Computers Have Already Counted Thousands of Votes For George W. Bush Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush.
…It’s Not Too Hard To Get Your Vote Lost — If Some Politicians Want it To Be Lost In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. “Spoiled votes” is the technical term.
On October 29, 2002, George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Hidden behind its apple-pie-and-motherhood name lies a nasty civil rights time bomb.
On 15 February, for BBC TV, I reported that inside information from the Consortium of newspapers conducting a thorough review of Florida’s 180,000 uncounted ballots showed Gore picking up about 20,000 votes. The information came from sources involved with the newspaper group’s contractor, National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago. I’m sure the final was not far off – but understand that NORC did not designate ANY ballot as either a Bush or Gore vote.