Well, you can lump me into the group of so called leftists who think that the US is really, really close to becoming a flat out fascist entity.
That's just relatively speaking, relative to our history. The move by George Bush, as documented below in an article by Jason Leopold, to strongly influence the outcome of a presidential election, makes me physically ill. It might not work, but man, this is some broad daylight fascist nonsense.
Maybe I am wrong. I probably am overreacting. I am just glad that this election is out of reach for McCain and the Republican theft machine. I am really glad that Obama's landslide cannot be COMPLETELY stolen.
Link to the article is here This link should connect you to buzzflash.com, which is where I came across the article.
Clearly, the Bush administration is flexing some electoral muscle this week. See exerpts below for the full bullshit disclosure.
Home Nation/World Bush Orders DOJ to Probe Ohio Voter Registrations Bush Orders DOJ to Probe Ohio Voter Registrations
By Jason Leopold
The Public Record
Friday, October 24, 2008
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Published in : Nation/World
President George W. Bush late Friday asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate whether hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters in the battleground state of Ohio would have to verify the information on their voter registration forms or be given provisional ballots, an issue the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on last week.
The unprecedented intervention by the White House less than two weeks before the presidential election may result in at least 200,000 voters in Ohio not being able to vote on Election Day if they are forced to provide additional identification when they head to the polls.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Bush Friday asking that he order the Department of Justice to probe the matter.
"I strongly urge you to direct Attorney General Mukasey and the Department of Justice to act." Boehner said in his letter "Unless action is taken by the Department immediately, thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of names whose information has not been verified through the [Help America Vote Act] procedures mandated by Congress will remain on the voter rolls during the November 4 election; and there is a significant risk if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted. Given the Election Day is less than two weeks away, immediate action by the Department is not only warranted, but also crucial."
Independent studies have shown that phony registrations rarely result in illegally cast ballots because there are so many other safeguards built into the system.
For instance, from October 2002 to September 2005, a total of 70 people were convicted for federal election related crimes, according to figures compiled by the New York Times last year. Only 18 of those were for ineligible voting.
In recent years, federal prosecutors reached similar conclusions despite pressure from the Bush administration to lodge "election fraud" charges against voter registration groups seen as bringing more Democratic voters into the democratic process.
Some of the Bush administration prosecutors who refused to seek these indictments were then fired in 2006 as part of a purge of nine U.S. Attorneys deemed not "loyal Bushies."
This "prosecutor-gate" scandal led to the resignations of several senior White House and Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. President Bush then asserted broad executive privilege to block testimony by Karl Rove and other top White House officials.
President Bush contacted Mukasey late Friday and told him to investigate Boehner's complaints. A report released earlier this month by the Justice Department's inspector general said Bush "spoke with Attorney General Gonzales in October 2006 about their concerns over voter fraud."
Federal investigative guidelines strongly discourage election-related probes before ballots are cast because of the likelihood that the inquiries will become politicized and might influence the election outcomes.
"In most cases, voters should not be interviewed, or other voter-related investigation done, until after the election is over," according to the Justice Department’s guidelines for election offenses as revised in May 2007 during Gonzales’s tenure as Attorney General.
Even though those May 2007 guidelines watered down even stricter language in previous editions, the Gonzales-era rules still cautioned:
"Overt investigative steps may chill legitimate voting activities. They are also likely to be perceived by voters and candidates as an intrusion into the election. Indeed, the fact of a federal criminal investigation may itself become an issue in the election."
The Nov. 4 presidential election may very well boil down to Ohio if Mukasey’s DOJ gets involved.
This, Mr. Leopold, is untrue. Obama does not need Ohio to win this thing. Obama is so far ahead in so many places, that the Bush administrations best efforts at fascist intervention will at worst simply make this a "narrow electoral victory" for Obama.
At issue is a federal law that requires states to verify the eligibility of voters.
A federal appeals court recently upheld a lower court ruling and ordered Ohio election officials to help counties set up a computer system to ensure the veracity of voter registrations.
That would have required a total overhaul of the computer system just weeks before election and would have jeopardized as many as 200,000 voters, forcing them to cast provisional ballots that may go uncounted, Brunner said.
She said it was impossible to set up a new system or reprogram the existing one before the Nov. 4 election.
The appeals court ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed last month against Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Bruner, a Democrat, by the Ohio Republican Party. The lawsuit claimed voter registration information for hundreds of thousands of new voters did not match up with official government data, such as social security records and driver’s licenses, and was evidence of voter registration fraud. More than 600,000 people registered to vote in the state in this election cycle.
But in court filings, GOP officials did not provide documentary evidence to back up their claims.
Brunner said the lawsuit was "politically motivated." She said "misstated technical information or glitches in databases" was the explanation for some mismatched information on voter registration forms.
"Many of those discrepancies bear no relationship whatsoever to a voter's eligibility to vote a regular, as opposed to a provisional, ballot,'' Brunner said last week in a court filing. The mismatches "may well be used at the county level unnecessarily to challenge fully qualified voters and severely disrupt the voting process."
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the case and, in a two-page unanimous opinion, dismissed the lower court’s ruling on a technicality. The justices said lawsuits "brought by a private litigant" could not be used to enforce states to abide by federal laws.
"We express no opinion on the question whether HAVA is being properly implemented," the unsigned opinion said.
In a statement, Boehner said he wants Mukasey to intervene and enforce Brunner to comply with HAVA and verify votes.
"The Court ruled that the a private entity did not have the legal standing to enforce federal laws, leading Boehner to ask Attorney General Mukasey to compel Brunner to comply, which would mean providing access to a computerized statewide database, as required under HAVA," Boehner’s statement says.
Rick Davis, Sen. John McCain’s campaign manager, said Brunner is seeking to ``minimize the level of fairness and transparency in this election.''
Various polling data show McCain’s opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, leading in Ohio by five to seven percentage points.
But Republicans, perhaps fearing a Democratic victory, have called into question the integrity of hundreds of thousands new voter registrations.
Boehner also wrote Bush on Wednesday asking him to block federal funding to ACORN.