One of the most despicable aspects of this year's presidential campaign
was the deliberate, determined effort by the Republican party to keep
people from voting. I don't just mean the notorious efforts in
Florida by First Brother Jeb Bush to purge the voter rolls of thousands
of eligible African Americans, but of tactics all across the country to
suppress the votes of people who tend to vote Democratic. For
example, before the election, U.S. Senator Kit Bond tried to sneak a
provision into national law that would ban voter registration drives in
public housing projects. Another sneak attack came on election day
itself, when GOP election officials in key states like Ohio simply
shorted many Democratic precincts on the number of voting machines made
available. The result was that voters faced interminable waits to get
to cast their ballots--lines snaked around city blocks, forcing people
to wait seven, nine, or more hours in line. Uncounted thousands of
people--who, after all, have jobs and families to deal with --were driven
away from the polls by this artificial logjam. Especially ugly was the
kind of racist intimidation experienced in Milwaukee. Just before the
election, a flyer was distributed throughout two African-American
voting wards, handed out on street corners and in barbershops by a fake
group calling itself the "Black Voters League." [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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