Disenfranchisement and Republican strategy go together like peas and carrots. Illinois Senate Candidate Mark Kirk is the newest participant in the tried and true strategy of White candidates instead of campaigning for the votes of non-White people instead electing to bar them from the ballot box.
He said the other side would be tempted to “jigger” the numbers. The word jigger is just another way to call a cat a kitty here. He wants to suppress the votes of the people of those districts and the reason he is so willing to fund the largest voter suppression effort possible and do it openly is the voters aren’t White.
In a private phone conversation that was secretly recorded, Mark Kirk, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Illinois, told state Republican leaders last week about his plan to send "voter integrity" squads to four predominately African American neighborhoods of Chicago "where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/mark_kirk_sends_poll_watchers_to_vulnerable_largel.php?ref=fpa
George Bush spent his entire Presidency turning the civil rights/voting rights division of the Department of Justice into one that has decided the greatest threat to American democracy was that non-white people would exercise their ability to vote. That’s why rather than go after the people who actually do things like voter caging, or real voter intimidation they are more concerned with a skinny little Black dude with a stick.
It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Mark Kirk intends to send his legions of White people into the Black community to challenge their right to vote. Voting shouldn’t be a hassle. These people secured their right to vote with their citizenship and their birthright. The blood of Black people is stained on every American battlefield, and it was not left there so the children of the people who shed it would have their privileges challenged at every turn.
Remember the dire warnings and shrill allegations of voter fraud surrounding the 2008 election? That ACORN would steal it, that the New Black Panthers were intimidating voters, that fraud across the county would be "rampant?"
They never panned out. ACORN no longer exists. (Although that hasn't stopped 20 percent of the American public from believing they'll try to steal the election.) The DOJ found that the New Black Panthers incident was isolated -- although that case found new life in allegations against the Justice Department itself (more on that below). A five-year effort by the Bush DOJ to weed out fraud, an effort the Obama team said was designed to suppress minority voter turnout, turned up "virtually no evidence."
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/despite_dearth_of_evidence_right_wing_voter_fraud.php
I used to run around posting this video when there was still a chance that ACORN might survive. When the media both right and left (talking to you Jon Stewart) took an entire lie and made it national news and used it to destroy one of the strongest progressive organizations designed to assist poor and non-white citizens they produced this in defense. I post it because during the first half of the presentation they say in no uncertain terms what the goal and strategy of the Republican Party is.
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