Fwd: Theft of the Presidency (February 15, 2001)

[Guest guest]

And it has been going downhill and only gotten worse since then.

 

 

> undisclosed-recipients:;

>

> " Theft of the Presidency "

> BBC-TV Newsnight

> Thursday, February 15, 2001

 

>

> by Greg Palast

>

> View the full video here.

>

> GREG PALAST: Washington, the marine band plays 'Hail

> to the Chief' for George

> W Bush, 43rd President of the United States. But in

> Florida, some are singing

> 'Hail to the Thief'.

>

> COUNTRY SONG: After hundreds of lies

> Fake alibis

>

> PALAST: We are coming into Tallahassee. We want to

> know whether George W Bush

> won the election or did brother Jeb steal it for

> him? Our investigation

> suggest the answer lies in this shuttered building

> and in a very expensive contract

> between Governor Jeb's division of elections and a

> private company named DBT,

> which accidentally wiped off the voter rolls

> thousands of Democratic voters.

> 18th floor division of elections, we have come to

> ask Mr Clayton Roberts, the

> director, a few questions. Roberts agreed to talk,

> but became a bit

> uncomfortable when he learned that we had obtained

> the secret DBT contract, and asked

> him if he knew what DBT were up to.

>

> CLAYTON ROBERTS: Florida Director of Elections No, I

> didn't ask DBT. They do

> what we contract them to do. We have a statute that

> says we have to have a

> private company to do this. We put it out for bid,

> we put it out for bid, and I

> think I'm done with this interview.

>

> PALAST: Let me just show you the contract if I could

> Mr Roberts. It says here

> in the contract that the verification is supposed to

> be done by DBT. That you

> paid them $4 million. It could look to others don't

> you think that you paid

> $4 million to purchase this election for the

> Republican party. 95% wrong on the

> felon list. Mr. Roberts, could you answer the

> question regarding the

> contract... Instead, Mr Roberts called out State

> troopers. It's interesting here?

>

> STATE TROOPER: Oh, man! Never a dull moment.

>

> PALAST: I don't know why he had to call the police.

> We hadn't gotten to our

> difficult questions yet! The difficult questions

> are: Did Governor Jeb Bush,

> his Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and her

> Director of Elections, Clayton

> Roberts, know they had wrongly barred 22,000 black,

> Democrat voters before the

> elections? After the elections did they use their

> powers to prevent the count

> of 20,000 votes for the Democrats? The Democrats say

> the answers to both

> questions are yes.

>

> COMMISSIONER: In any other country in the world, if

> this had occurred, there

> probably would have been riots or military troops

> throughout the streets.

>

> PARTY CHAIRMAN: Al Gore won the election. He won the

> popular vote and he won

> the vote in Florida. I think that that's pretty

> clear.

>

> VOTER: It wasn't done fairly. They shouldn't allow

> you to contest an election

> then give you no way to contest it.

>

> LEGISLATOR: Jeb Bush promised his brother he was

> going to deliver Florida. I

> believe the Republicans strategy was at all costs we

> deliver Florida.

>

> CAMPAIGNER: Were people taken out of polls and

> stopped from voting? Yes, I

> think that was not right. I smell a rat!

>

> PALAST: This is Database Technologies. This is the

> company that the state of

> Florida hired to remove the names of people who

> committed serious crimes from

> the voter lists. I have obtained a document marked

> " confidential and trade

> secret " . It says the company was paid millions of

> dollars to make telephone calls

> to verify they got the right names - but they

> didn't. There is nothing in the

> state of Florida files that says they made these

> telephone calls. So the

> question remains, why did the Republican leaders of

> this state pay millions for a

> list that stopped thousands of innocent Democrats

> from voting? The first list

> from DBT included 8,000 names from Texas supplied by

> George Bush's state

> officials. They said they were all felons, serious

> criminals barred from voting. As

> it turns out, almost none were. Local officials

> raised a ruckus and DBT

> issued a new list naming 58,000 felons. But the one

> county which went through the

> whole expensive process of checking the new list

> name by name found it was

> still 95% wrong. Reverend Willie Whiting was one of

> those removed from voter roles

> after DBT wrongly labelled him a serious criminal.

>

> REVEREND WILLIE WHITING: I have never spent a night

> in jail.

>

> PALAST: Were you ever busted?

>

> WHITING: No. I had a speeding ticket probably 25-30

> years ago, I guess, but

> that's about it.

>

> PALAST: Do you think you should be allowed to vote

> if you had a speeding

> ticket?

>

> WHITING: Absolutely.

>

> PALAST: The Florida legislature likes to see young

> prisoners paraded in front

> of the capital in old cavalry uniforms.

>

> PRISON GUARD: Me and superman had a fight

>

> PRISONERS: Me and superman had a fight

>

> PRISON GUARD: I hit him in the head with some

> Kryptonite

>

> PRISONERS: I hit him in the head with some

> Kryptonite

>

> PALAST: More often than not in America, the

> prisoner's colour is black.

> Because of the way DBT generated the list, every

> genuine black felon in the United

> States could knock out every black voter in Florida

> with the same surname and

> similar date of birth. That's why the NAACP is suing

> Florida for violating

> voters' civil rights.

>

> LARRY OTTINGER: Lawyer for NAACP Governor Bush, the

> Secretary of State

> Katherine Harris, Clayton Roberts, the head of

> elections, all knew or should have

> known in advance that certain election policies and

> practices would

> disproportionately impact low-income areas, and in

> particular black citizens and other

> minority citizens, and that this would

> disproportionately impact Democratic

> voters, based on historical voting trends.

>

> AL GORE: Thank you, Florida!

>

> PALAST: Altogether, it looks like this cost the

> Democrats about 22,000 votes

> in Florida, which George Bush won by only 537 votes.

> The US civil rights

> commission is also on the trail. They called in

> Bush, Harris and Roberts. Bush did

> not convince his critics.

>

> UNNAMED MAN: You screwed up this state. You sealed

> the ballot.

>

> PALAST: Commissioner Edley and his colleagues will

> be in Miami tomorrow to

> hear from voters wrongly disqualified.

>

> DR CHRISTOPHER EDLEY: US Civil Rights Commissioner

> If you are going to do it,

> by all means as a matter of due process and

> fairness, it's got to be done

> with excruciating care. It's a democracy, the vote

> counts. There is a lot of

> public concern that the contractor selected is a

> firm that seems to have ties to

> the Republican party.

>

> PALAST: They will be putting our evidence to

> Database Technologies. Their

> vice-president told us that " manual verification by

> telephone calls " does not

> mean ringing people up to check they have got the

> right person. So were they paid

> to produce a list which they knew would name

> thousands of innocent black

> people? In fact DBT told Newsnight that Clayton

> Roberts and the State of Florida:

> " ... wanted there to be more names than were

> actually verified as being a

> convicted felon. " So did they use their powers to

> prevent the count of 20,000

> votes for the Democrats? You don't have to be black.

> In Palm Beach, America's

> privileged nurse their tans and their anger.

>

> UNNAMED WOMAN: I thought I voted for Al Gore but

> unfortunately I voted for

> Pat Buchanan, and I wasn't happy about that, because

> I am a Jewish voter and he

> would have been the last person in the world I would

> have voted for.

>

> PALAST: Whacky butterfly ballots caused thousands in

> this Democrat town to

> accidentally mess up and they were refused

> replacement ballots promised them by

> state law.

>

> JOANNE CARBONE: From the time the elections started

> until that awful decision

> that the Supreme Court made, I came across hundreds

> of people who made a

> mistake and I saw over 13,000 complaints filed by

> people who live in Palm Beach

> county.

>

> PALAST: In all, Palm Beach voting machines misread

> 27,000 ballots. Jeb Bush's

> Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, stopped them

> counting these votes by

> hand. She did the same to Gadstone, one of Florida's

> blackest, poorest and most

> Democrat counties, where machines failed to count

> one in eight ballots. Again

> Harris stopped the hand count. This alone cost Gore

> another 700 votes, in an

> election in which Harris declared George Bush winner

> by only 537 votes.

>

> KATHARINE HARRIS: In accordance with the laws of the

> State of Florida, I

> hereby declare Governor George W Bush the winner of

> Florida's 25 electoral votes

> for the President of the United States.

>

> PALAST: Harris was a busy woman. In charge of

> Florida's vote count and

> co-chair of Bush's presidential campaign.

>

> LOIS FRANKEL: Had she really been unbiased? Wouldn't

> the appropriate actions

> for her to be to say - let's really get to the

> bottom of this election and

> let's make sure every vote is counted.

>

> PALAST: Lois Frankel represents Palm Beach, in the

> State legislature where

> she leads the Democratic opposition.

>

> FRANKEL: She wanted George Bush to win. She

> interpreted every rule, every law

> in a way to help George Bush.

>

> PALAST: We are driving down to Miami to witness an

> American ritual. In

> Britain, you count the votes, then announce the

> winner. In Florida they declare the

> winner first and here we are, still counting the

> votes.

>

> WOMAN'S VOICE: She is showing the ballot in front of

> the light. They can see

> the light through where the chads have been punched

> through. Then she holds it

> in front because sometimes you can see things in

> different light. They have a

> whole column.

>

> PALAST: Normally these are machine-read, right?

>

> UNNAMED WOMAN: Right.

>

> PALAST: They are carefully going through the 179,855

> uncounted ballots that

> Harris did not want tallied. They'll know the winner

> next month. Sources tell

> Newsnight that Gore's ahead by 20,000 votes. The

> Biltmore, grandest hotel in

> Miami. Democrats are upstairs eating with their

> richest friends charging $5,000

> a plate. Let's see if we can get in. Not far away

> from the millionaires on the

> balcony a voter had taken hostages at gun point

> protesting against the

> election fraud. But here it is back to champagne

> politics as usual. One Democrat

> whispered they would have done the same as Katharine

> Harris if they had the

> chance. But another, party chairman, Bob Poe remains

> bitter about this.

>

> BOB POE: Chairman, Florida Democrats Jeb Bush,

> Katharine Harris, Clay Roberts

> did everything they could to stop every legitimate

> count of the vote. And

> that's what did us in.

>

> PALAST: All fingers point to the Jeb Bush crew in

> Tallahassee. Investigators

> want to breakthrough the iron shutters.

>

> EDLEY: I have to say that thus far we have been

> disappointed by the

> explanations, or perhaps I should say the lack of

> explanation provided by the state

> officials. When we spoke with the Governor and the

> Secretary of State and even

> with the Director of the Bureau of Elections

> underneath the Secretary of State,

> they were pointing fingers at everybody else, saying

> " look it wasn't our

> responsibility " , they were in charge, which is a

> disheartening disquieting thing

> for us to hear - who should be held accountable for

> what clearly was a system

> that broke down.

>

> PALAST: State officials point the finger at the

> counties and say it is their

> responsibility to check if the names on the list are

> real felons before

> disqualifying them. Clayton Roberts says his job is

> just to pass on the list.

> Roberts now admits he didn't bother to check with

> DBT, if innocent people were on

> it.

>

> ROBERTS: Please turn off that camera.

>

> PALAST: Off camera he said: We did not call and say

> did you check the list

> again... the whole tenor of this is like OK you

> screwed up you didn't check with

> DBT and if you want to hang this on me that's fine.

> It is certainly fine for

> George W Bush. Even if investigators conclude that

> Jeb Bush and the

> Republicans conspired to steal this election, the

> man in that house for the next four

> years will be George W Bush.

> Click here to download this transcript.

>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1174000/1174115.stm