African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List

Greg Palast has uncovered a scheme used by the Republicans during the 2004 election in which black servicemen and women were denied the right to vote.

Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as “undeliverable.”

The lists of soldiers of “undeliverable” letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.

One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squadron.

A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be required to vote by “provisional” ballot.

Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.

This is not dissimilar to the disgraceful purging of "felons" that Katherine Harris carried out during the Florida election of 2000, when she removed some 78,000 voters from the register and was the prime reason that Gore did not win the election.

It now appears that the 2004 election was as rigged as the year 2000 election. For a man so keen on exporting democracy, Bush sure doesn't like it much when it's on home soil.

"Go to war and lose your vote." That's how much the Repugs actually value the armed forces. Bush takes every opportunity to be photographed in front of them, and every opportunity to deny black serving soldiers their right to a vote.

Beyond disgusting.

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Tags: US, armed forces, vote. voting, rights, rigged, absentee ballots,