Greg Palast's Blog, page 83

Palast on Larry King’s PoliticKing: ‘We don’t count all the votes.’

Catch Greg Palast on Larry King's PoliticKing with guest host Matthew Cooke on political elites rigging the electoral system. Palast gives Cooke a quick history lesson on vote trickery beginning with 2000–and why you haven't heard the true story in the US main-stream media.

Palast: "There's not much of an electoral process, we get the candidates selected for us. Here's the problem, in America we don't count all the votes."

The post Palast on Larry King’s PoliticKing:
‘We don’t count all the votes.’ appeared first on Greg Palast.

New York voting fiasco just the warm-up for the November game

by Greg Palast

Buckle up, America.  The voting demolition derby that was the New York primary on Tuesday was merely the crash test for the coming voting wreckage in November:  a carefully planned pile up.

First, live from New York….

Francesca Rheannon, whom you may know as the host of Writers’ Voice radio, did the civic thing by volunteering to work the polls in a town east of New York City.

“I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election official.  In my election district, out of 166 Democratic voters, 39 were forced to file affidavit ballots.  The last [election] I worked in, exactly ONE voter needed an affidavit ballot.”

That’s nearly one of four voters. Why?  Their names had gone missing from the voter rolls.

An affidavit ballot (called a “provisional” ballot in most other states) is a kind of placebo ballot.  You get to pretend to vote – but the chance it will actually be counted is …well, good luck.  If your name is wrongly removed, kiss your vote – affidavit or not—goodbye.

Rheannon’s experience was hardly unique.  In Brooklyn alone, over 125,000 names were quietly scrubbed from the voter rolls in the five months leading up to the primary.

To put it in prospective, the number of voters purged equals about half of the number who got to vote.  Scott Stringer, the New York City Comptroller will now audit the Elections Board--now that the election is over.  Hey thanks, Scott.

Neal Rosenstein, the lead voting rights attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group, which plans legal action, notes that part of the problem is that partisan hacks sit on the Elections board in New York—hacks from both parties.

Brooklyn is under the control of the Kings County Democratic Party, one of the last of the big city machines.  Would they attack their opponents’ voter registrations?  I don’t have to guess:  in my wasted younger days, I was in the Brooklyn County elections office with the hacks where we were assigned by the Party to challenge voters’ signatures en masse.  (I wouldn’t and nearly lost my state job.)

Am I saying the machine “fixed” the election for Hillary Clinton?  Without further investigation, it would be irresponsible for me to pronounce judgment.  Some of the purged may have moved, some have died.  But those who waited in line only to fill out affidavit ballots are unlikely to be deceased.

If the Machine had been aware of the mass purge underway, would they have stopped it?  As they say in Brooklyn, Fahgeddabouddit.

But whether party hacks shoplifted New York or not, that’s small potatoes. Scrubbing voter rolls is not a “New York value.” It’s a nationwide epidemic, a disease eating away at the heart of our democracy.

Voting officials learned a lesson from Katherine Harris the Florida Secretary of State who purged Black voters in 2000.  They learned how to repeat the purge, expand it and carefully hide it.

I’ve been traveling the nation, from Ohio to Georgia to Arizona and back—and finding the voter-roll purging machinery running at full speed.

Nationwide, state voting chiefs are, from my long experience, the most violently partisan officials you’ll ever encounter.

From the data provided by the US Elections Assistance Commission, we can calculate that no less than 491,952 voters were wrongly removed from the rolls in 2008, the last reviewed Presidential election in addition 2,383,587 voters filled out registration forms that were simply never added to voter rolls – and 767,023 provisional and affidavit ballots were not counted.

And it’s not just anyone’s ballot. I’ll never forget that, at one of my recent talks on vote suppression, I asked how many in the audience had ever been shunted to a provisional ballot.  There were only two Black people in the audience.  They were the only two to raise their hand.

US Civil Rights Commission statistics tell the story.  The chance of a ballot “spoiled” – not counted for one reason or another – is 900% higher if you’re Black than if you’re White.

As Rosenstein says for NYPIRG, “Instead of purging voters, we should be enfranchising them.”  Yes. Though we thought that was settled by the Civil War.

OK, we didn’t know about the New York purge beforehand.  But I’m telling you this now:  My team is uncovering an unjustified ethnic cleansing of voter rolls from Ohio to Florida to Texas.

This year I was in Selma, Alabama, with Hank Sanders, an African-American who joined Martin Luther King on the march to Montgomery that won the Voting Rights Act.  Today, he’s State Senator Hank Sanders, a title that is a tribute to America’s advance on voting rights.  He’s also Hank Sanders, purged voter, forced to vote “provisionally” this year.

Why?  I’m investigating.  But the state officials (and let’s tell it like it is:  it’s mostly GOP officials) have used so many spurious grounds to cancel registrations—“caging,” “cross-checking” and a host of other sick tricks, it’s not easy to pin-point which one is responsible for the “lynching by laptop.”

It’s worth noting that Brooklyn, like Alabama, was on the “pre-clearance” list in the Voting Rights Act.  I can tell you right now, it’s unlikely that neither Hank Sanders nor the 125,000 Brooklynites would have been purged, had the Supreme Court not gutted the Act in 2013.

As I look upon the wreckage that was the New York primary, I see the prelude, the test run, for the catastrophic failure, the well-planned failure, of the voting system in November. The purges and votes “spoiled”--the votes not counted—not the voters, may well elect our President.

*  *  *  *  *  *   *But there's something you can do about it. Right now, my investigations and production team are finishing the final frames of our film on the upcoming theft of the 2016 election:  The Best Democracy Money Can Buy:  A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits.

Donate $100 to support our investigation and I will list you in the movie credits, send you a signed copy of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits right now and a signed copy of the DVD once the film has wrapped. 

Or support our work by making a No Gift Donation, small or ginormous, all are immensely appreciated!

Most important, your tax-deductible donation will help us finish, broadcast and distribute our film and print reports before the November catastrophe and just maybe, a better democracy.

The post New York voting fiasco just the warm-up
for the November game appeared first on Greg Palast.

BP Could Have the Stopped The Disaster in the Gulf

Only 17 months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.

You've heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it's because BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.

The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP's Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea.

As one memo marked "secret" puts it, "Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition." The Caspian oil platform was a spark away from exploding, but luck was with the 211 rig workers.

It was eerily similar to the Gulf catastrophe as it involved BP's controversial "quick set" drilling cement.

The question we have to ask: If BP had laid out the true and full facts to Congress and regulators about the earlier blowout, would those 11 Gulf workers be alive today - and the Gulf Coast spared oil-spill poisons?

The bigger question is, why is there no clear law to require disclosure? If you bump into another car on the Los Angeles freeway, you have to report it. But there seems no clear requirement on corporations to report a disaster in which knowledge of it could save lives.

Five months prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP's Chief of Exploration in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress against increased safety regulation of its deepwater drilling operation. Despite the company's knowledge of the Caspian blowout a year earlier, the oil company's man told the Senate Energy Committee that BP's methods are, "both safe and protective of the environment."

Really? BP's quick-dry cement saves money, but other drillers find it too risky in deepwater. It was a key factor in the Caspian blowout. Would US regulators or Congress have permitted BP to continue to use this cement had they known? Would they have investigated before issuing permits to drill?

This is not about BP the industry Bad Boy. This is about a system that condones silence, the withholding of life-and-death information.

Even BP's oil company partners, including Chevron and Exxon, were kept in the dark. It is only through WikiLeaks that my own investigations team was able to confirm insider tips I had received about the Caspian blowout. In that same confidential memo mentioned earlier, the US Embassy in Azerbaijan complained, "At least some of BP's [Caspian] partners are similarly upset with BP's performance in this episode, as they claim BP has sought to limit information flow about this event even to its [Caspian] partners."

In defense of its behavior, BP told me it did in fact report the "gas release" to the regulators of Azerbaijan. That's small comfort. This former Soviet republic is a police state dictatorship propped up by the BP group's oil royalties. A public investigation was out of the question.

In December, I traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, to investigate BP and the blowout for British television. I was arrested, though, as a foreign reporter, quickly released. But my eye witnesses got the message and all were too afraid tell their stories on camera.

BP has, in fact, never admitted a blowout occurred, though when confronted by my network, did not deny it. At the time, BP told curious press that the workers had merely been evacuated as a "precaution" due to gas bubbles "in the area of" the drilling platform, implying a benign natural gas leak from a crack in the sea floor, not a life-threatening system failure.

In its 2009 report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), BP inched closer to the full truth. Though not mentioning "blowout" or "cement," the company placed the leak "under" the platform.

This points to a cruel irony: the SEC requires full disclosure of events that might cause harm to the performance of BP's financial securities. But reporting on events that might harm humans? That's not so clear.

However, the solution is clear as could be. International corporations should be required to disclose events that threaten people and the environment, not just the price of their stock.

As radiation wafts across the Pacific from Japan, it is clear that threats to health and safety do not respect national borders. What happens in Fukushima or Baku affects lives and property in the USA.

"Regulation" has become a dirty word in US politics. Corporations have convinced the public to fear little bureaucrats with thick rulebooks. But let us remember why government began to regulate these creatures. As Andrew Jackson said, "Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."

Kicking and damning have no effect, but rules do. And after all, when international regulation protects profits, as in the case of patents and copyrights, corporate America is all for it.

Our regulators of resource industries must impose an affirmative requirement to tell all, especially when people, not just song lyrics or stock offerings, are in mortal danger.

* * * * * *

Greg Palast directed the fraud investigation of BP and Exxon in the grounding of the Exxon Valdez for the Chugach Natives of Alaska. Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight. See them at www.GregPalast.com.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

The post BP Could Have the Stopped
The Disaster in the Gulf appeared first on Greg Palast.

BP Could Have the Stopped the Disaster in the Gulf

Only 17 months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.

You've heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it's because BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.

The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP's Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea.

As one memo marked "secret" puts it, "Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition." The Caspian oil platform was a spark away from exploding, but luck was with the 211 rig workers.

It was eerily similar to the Gulf catastrophe as it involved BP's controversial "quick set" drilling cement.

The question we have to ask: If BP had laid out the true and full facts to Congress and regulators about the earlier blowout, would those 11 Gulf workers be alive today - and the Gulf Coast spared oil-spill poisons?

The bigger question is, why is there no clear law to require disclosure? If you bump into another car on the Los Angeles freeway, you have to report it. But there seems no clear requirement on corporations to report a disaster in which knowledge of it could save lives.

Five months prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP's Chief of Exploration in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress against increased safety regulation of its deepwater drilling operation. Despite the company's knowledge of the Caspian blowout a year earlier, the oil company's man told the Senate Energy Committee that BP's methods are, "both safe and protective of the environment."

Really? BP's quick-dry cement saves money, but other drillers find it too risky in deepwater. It was a key factor in the Caspian blowout. Would US regulators or Congress have permitted BP to continue to use this cement had they known? Would they have investigated before issuing permits to drill?

This is not about BP the industry Bad Boy. This is about a system that condones silence, the withholding of life-and-death information.

Even BP's oil company partners, including Chevron and Exxon, were kept in the dark. It is only through WikiLeaks that my own investigations team was able to confirm insider tips I had received about the Caspian blowout. In that same confidential memo mentioned earlier, the US Embassy in Azerbaijan complained, "At least some of BP's [Caspian] partners are similarly upset with BP's performance in this episode, as they claim BP has sought to limit information flow about this event even to its [Caspian] partners."

In defense of its behavior, BP told me it did in fact report the "gas release" to the regulators of Azerbaijan. That's small comfort. This former Soviet republic is a police state dictatorship propped up by the BP group's oil royalties. A public investigation was out of the question.

In December, I traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, to investigate BP and the blowout for British television. I was arrested, though, as a foreign reporter, quickly released. But my eye witnesses got the message and all were too afraid tell their stories on camera.

BP has, in fact, never admitted a blowout occurred, though when confronted by my network, did not deny it. At the time, BP told curious press that the workers had merely been evacuated as a "precaution" due to gas bubbles "in the area of" the drilling platform, implying a benign natural gas leak from a crack in the sea floor, not a life-threatening system failure.

In its 2009 report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), BP inched closer to the full truth. Though not mentioning "blowout" or "cement," the company placed the leak "under" the platform.

This points to a cruel irony: the SEC requires full disclosure of events that might cause harm to the performance of BP's financial securities. But reporting on events that might harm humans? That's not so clear.

However, the solution is clear as could be. International corporations should be required to disclose events that threaten people and the environment, not just the price of their stock.

As radiation wafts across the Pacific from Japan, it is clear that threats to health and safety do not respect national borders. What happens in Fukushima or Baku affects lives and property in the USA.

"Regulation" has become a dirty word in US politics. Corporations have convinced the public to fear little bureaucrats with thick rulebooks. But let us remember why government began to regulate these creatures. As Andrew Jackson said, "Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."

Kicking and damning have no effect, but rules do. And after all, when international regulation protects profits, as in the case of patents and copyrights, corporate America is all for it.

Our regulators of resource industries must impose an affirmative requirement to tell all, especially when people, not just song lyrics or stock offerings, are in mortal danger.

*********

Greg Palast directed the fraud investigation of BP and Exxon in the grounding of the Exxon Valdez for the Chugach Natives of Alaska. Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight. See them at www.GregPalast.com.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

The post BP Could Have the Stopped the Disaster in the Gulf appeared first on Greg Palast.

6 Years This Week – BP Kills in the Gulf

This clip is from Greg Palast's film Vultures and Vote Rustlers which you can download for FREE this week

Six years ago today, 11 members of the Deepwater Horizon Crew were still alive. The Gulf of Mexico, thanks to decades of dredging by the oil companies was a slowly growing disaster - but it was still a tourist destination and a source of jobs for thousands of fishermen.

New Orleans, still recovering from the man-made disaster that was Hurricane Katrina would again, in just 2 days become the center of America's latest great environmental tragedy.

All this week we'll be sharing the investigations that we did on British Petroleum's disaster and its international fallout - including the one that could have foretold the April 20th blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Today, we're sharing an excerpt from Vultures' Picnic.

A RUBBER DINGHY OFF THE GULF COAST, MISSISSIPPI, OCTOBER 2010

This was my first investigation of fish homicide, so I figured Rick and I needed a boat because Professor Steiner’s submarine had just cleared the Panama Canal and wouldn’t arrive in time for our filming.

However, Badpenny couldn’t hook up a canoe, let alone a skiff, because BP had put every Coon-Ass captain on its payroll for the oil clean-up, which mostly involved floating around looking busy when CNN showed up. BP would have to OK our taking one of their indentured boats, and BP never said OK unless they controlled the fish story.

But it is my experience with the human animal that cold cash can make people forget about their contracts (and their marriage vows, the Ten Commandments, and all sense of self-respect). Still, the boatmen told Badpenny, “Non, cheri.” BP’s string of cash was longer than mine and that wouldn’t change anytime soon.

Dr. Steiner told us to meet him at a particular dock behind a casino hotel in Biloxi. So we flew into New Orleans and drove to the coast town whose only claim to fame is that it’s three hundred miles due south of the birthplace of Elvis Presley.

Just after sun-up, and without enough coffee, Ricky Ricardo Rowley and I headed through the casino past the exhausted, straggling gamblers who refused to leave until the last of their cash was taken from them.Beyond the slots, a door led out to a dock, where the resourceful Professor Steiner and his crew were waiting for us in a Zodiac, a rubber-hull dinghy bolted to two screaming 150-hp outboards, which could shoot us to the crime scene like a rocket.

Beyond the slots, a door led out to a dock, where the resourceful Professor Steiner and his crew were waiting for us in a Zodiac, a rubber-hull dinghy bolted to two screaming 150-hp outboards, which could shoot us to the crime scene like a rocket.

The biologist aimed for a barrier island a mile offshore, then, a hundred yards from the beach, killed the engine and told Rick and me to jump out. Who was I to question the man? I stepped off, fully clothed, sank right up to my sack, and headed through the yuck to the beach, like MacArthur returning to Bataan.

Rick followed, his baby, his precious camera over his head, still filming, followed by Steiner, who reached the beach and began with a religious invocation: “Holy Christ! Smell that!” I really didn’t need to schlep along a PhD to tell me I was on the edge of throwing up my breakfast.

Black ick, crude oil. The professor’s stunned look, though, surprised me. This man had seen it all: dogs drowning in oil slicks in China, the Caspian cesspool off Baku, Alaska’s dead beaches (where he lives and literally breathed the Exxon Valdez spill), and the oil smear in Africa known as the Niger Delta, where Steiner had been only two days before on some UN mission.

He’d seen it all, but not this. He did not expect viscous tar mats the size of sofas and hardened oil slicks like driveways to nowhere half a year after the blow-out and a hundred miles away from the well head.

Steiner picked up what looked like a large bovine bowel movement and dumped it into my hands. It was a glop of BP’s spume with, he explained, “hydrogen sulphide in it, heavy metals but, also, the polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons. . . .”

Those are my favorites! “...And, you know, things like benzopyrene and benzofluoranthene and suchlike...”

Fish hated the stuff because it killed their children and their children’s children.

“...Very highly toxic, they’re carcinogenic...”

But humans just love the stuff, if you look at the news footage. Right after the Deepwater Horizon blew up, fifty thousand grinning volunteers hit the Gulf Coast beaches and—God Bless America!—picked up the stuff bare-handed, or scooped it with beer buckets, garden rakes, picnic coolers, whatever.

“...It doesn’t kill immediately but lasts, you know, things like nerve damage, physiological injury, behavioral changes, reproductive changes...”

I dropped the tar ball.

“...leukemia.”

*  *  *  *  *  *  

For years, Greg Palast has been uncovering the crude truth about pipelines, drilling and oil spills in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, and Harper’s.

Later this year, Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns about the newest schemes of mass vote-suppression.

The filming is 90% complete… but we still need help to get us over the finish line.

Donate and get your name in the film credits!!

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

The post 6 Years This Week – BP Kills in the Gulf appeared first on Greg Palast.

Lee Camp Arrested At Democracy Spring

Lee Camp, host of RT's Redacted Tonight and resident Palast Investigative Fund humorist was arrested Tuesday afternoon at the Democracy Spring protests in Washington DC.

He was one of hundreds who have been arrested in the actions, which are now on day three of ten days of protests. Democracy Sping is a coalition of like-minded groups working together for voting rights, getting money out of politics and protecting the environment.

Listen to Lee's interview with RT’s Eunan O’Neill on his arrest.

“There’s a lot of people that are standing up and willing to get arrested to call attention to how money has corrupted our entire system,” Camp told RT in the interview.

Camp has since been released from police custody.

Check out Lee Camp's videos on how to protect your vote from the DVD "Why We Occupy" below.

The post Lee Camp Arrested At Democracy Spring appeared first on Greg Palast.

Wisconsin GOP Pol Reveals Real Reason for Voter ID

Oops!  Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Grothman (R-Campbellsport) gave away the nasty little weapon that Republicans plan to use in November. In an interview with WTMJ-TV at the Ted Cruz victory rally Tuesday night, he explained how Republicans can win the Blue state even if the voters prefer the Democrat.

"I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate perhaps they've ever put up and now we have photo ID and I think that photo ID is going to make a bit of a difference as well."

This isn't the first time that someone let slip the real reason behind "voter fraud" prevention laws. Back during the 2012 election, Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Mike Turzai spoke to applause celebrating the accomplishments of his party. "Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania... DONE."

Whether it be voter ID, voter caging or Crosscheck - they'll always claim that it's to protect you from "voter fraud." As we well know, voter fraud, is itself a fraud. Find out how you can protect your vote by downloading our comic book - Steal Back Your Vote!  And make sure that you support our film on all the ways that they're trying to steal, buy, or trash your vote - The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

***************

For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.

Later this year, Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.

The filming is 90% complete… but we still need help to get us over the finish line.

Donate and get your name in the film credits!!

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

- See more at: http://www.gregpalast.com/let-give-li...

The post Wisconsin GOP Pol Reveals
Real Reason for Voter ID appeared first on Greg Palast.

Wisconsin Congressman Tells Real Reason for Voter ID

Yesterday Ted Cruz won the Wisconsin Primary to the surprise of no one. While the Cruz campaign is behind in delegates, Cruz endorser and Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Grothman was already looking forward to the November election. In an interview with WTMJ at the Cruz celebration rally, he gave two reasons why the Republicans could be confident... even though Wisconsin has been a blue state for decades.

"Why would it be any different for Ted Cruz or a Donald Trump?"

"I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate perhaps they've ever put up and now we have photo ID and I think that photo ID is going to make a bit of a difference as well."

This isn't the first time that someone let slip the real reason behind "voter fraud" prevention laws. Back during the 2012 election, Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Mike Turzai spoke to applause celebrating the accomplishments of his party. "Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania... DONE."

Whether it be voter ID, voter caging or Crosscheck - they'll always claim that it's to protect you from "voter fraud." As we well know, voter fraud, is itself a fraud. Find out how you can protect your vote by downloading our comic book - Steal Back Your Vote!  And make sure that you support our film on all the ways that they're trying to steal, buy, or trash your vote - The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

***************

For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.

Later this year, Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.

The filming is 90% complete… but we still need help to get us over the finish line.

Donate and get your name in the film credits!!

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

- See more at: http://www.gregpalast.com/let-give-li...

The post Wisconsin Congressman Tells Real Reason for Voter ID appeared first on Greg Palast.

Voter ID Laws Strike Again This Time Wisconsin

Wisconsin's 'How to get a voter ID' Info Sheet

Arizona isn't going to be the only place with voting issues this primary season. Today, voters in Scott Walker's Wisconsin head to the polls. Due to changes in voting laws, there's a very good chance that there's going to be a problem.

Wisconsin has some of the strictest voter ID laws in the country and today will be the first time they are tried out during a primary. It's estimated that hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites will be disenfranchised thanks to these laws. The hardest hit will be the poor, minorities and college students, i.e. black and blue voters.

Many Wisconsin college students will be out of luck and unable to feel the Bern as their college ID is not acceptable for voting. As some are from out of state - but registered at their college - this leaves them out of luck as their ID doesn't have their address on it or a signature. With the ways of getting an acceptable ID limited (one office on a campus, with limited hours) and their requests for a new Scott Walker approved college ID card denied, voting in what is likely their first election seems like a no go.

Unfortunately this isn't the first time we've seen this. In 2008 when voter ID laws came to our attention with Crawford v. Marion County Election Board - Indiana was the test case. You might have read about it in our comic book - Steal Back Your Vote or in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. It was the silly story with the nuns.

Here's the text that inspired the comic.

Angela Hiss and Allyson Miller both students at Notre Dame were denied the right to vote because they didn’t have the right kind of ID – one that listed their dorm rooms as their residence.

Sujatha Jahagirdar said that her group, INPirg (Indiana Public Interest Research Group) had people watching just a handful of polling places and found a dozen students turned away, adding “we can only guess that this was happening all over the place.”

The Young, the old and the minorities – all are hit hard by this law and all statistically Barack Obama voters… so one must ask:

So how did we get here?

On April 28, 2008 the United States Supreme Court in their almighty wisdom blessed Indiana’s voter ID law which Terence Evans, the dissenting Court of Appeals judge called “a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.” Justice Souter equated them to the poll taxes of the old south in the courts dissenting opinion.

Indiana is just one of many states that have been making it tougher to vote. Georgia, Louisiana, Arizona and Missouri have all jumped on the bandwagon introducing, or passing their own laws to prevent “vote fraud.” Voter fraud is something that former US Attorney David Iglesias after years of investigations never found one prosecutorial case. For this he was fired. In the DVD, by Greg Palast, “The Election Files” Iglesias called this the Republican “boogeyman.” It didn’t exist.

If you have voting problems please contact VoteRiders or call 866-OUR-VOTE - and always send us your stories via info@gregpalast.com

* * * * * *

For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.

Later this year, Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.

The filming is 90% complete… but we still need help to get us over the finish line.

Donate and get your name in the film credits!!

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

The post Voter ID Laws Strike Again
This Time Wisconsin appeared first on Greg Palast.

Voter ID Laws Strike Again – This Time Wisconsin

Wisconsin's 'How to get a voter ID' Info Sheet

Arizona isn't going to be the only place with voting issues this primary season. Today, voters in Scott Walker's Wisconsin head to the polls. Due to changes in voting laws, there's a very good chance that there's going to be a problem.

Wisconsin has some of the strictest voter ID laws in the country and today will be the first time they are tried out during a primary. It's estimated that hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites will be disenfranchised thanks to these laws. The hardest hit will be the poor, minorities and college students, i.e. black and blue voters.

Many Wisconsin college students will be out of luck and unable to feel the Bern as their college ID is not acceptable for voting. As some are from out of state - but registered at their college - this leaves them out of luck as their ID doesn't have their address on it or a signature. With the ways of getting an acceptable ID limited (one office on a campus, with limited hours) and their requests for a new Scott Walker approved college ID card denied, voting in what is likely their first election seems like a no go.

Unfortunately this isn't the first time we've seen this. In 2008 when voter ID laws came to our attention with Crawford v. Marion County Election Board - Indiana was the test case. You might have read about it in our comic book - Steal Back Your Vote or in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. It was the silly story with the nuns.

Here's the text that inspired the comic.

Angela Hiss and Allyson Miller both students at Notre Dame were denied the right to vote because they didn’t have the right kind of ID – one that listed their dorm rooms as their residence.

Sujatha Jahagirdar said that her group, INPirg (Indiana Public Interest Research Group) had people watching just a handful of polling places and found a dozen students turned away, adding “we can only guess that this was happening all over the place.”

The Young, the old and the minorities – all are hit hard by this law and all statistically Barack Obama voters… so one must ask:

So how did we get here?

On April 28, 2008 the United States Supreme Court in their almighty wisdom blessed Indiana’s voter ID law which Terence Evans, the dissenting Court of Appeals judge called “a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.” Justice Souter equated them to the poll taxes of the old south in the courts dissenting opinion.

Indiana is just one of many states that have been making it tougher to vote. Georgia, Louisiana, Arizona and Missouri have all jumped on the bandwagon introducing, or passing their own laws to prevent “vote fraud.” Voter fraud is something that former US Attorney David Iglesias after years of investigations never found one prosecutorial case. For this he was fired. In the DVD, by Greg Palast, “The Election Files” Iglesias called this the Republican “boogeyman.” It didn’t exist.

If you have voting problems please contact VoteRiders or call 866-OUR-VOTE - and always send us your stories via info@gregpalast.com

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For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.

Later this year, Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.

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