Voting and Counting - Krugman on Palast investigation

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Fri, 22 Oct 2004 11:31:38 -0400

Subject:FW: Voting and Counting - Krugman on Palast investigation

 

 

VOTING AND COUNTING

by Paul Krugman

from the New York Times

 

October 22, 2004 - If the election were held today and the votes were

counted fairly, Senator John Kerry would probably win. But the votes won't

be counted fairly, and the disenfranchisement of minority voters may

determine the outcome.

 

.... Last week I described Greg Palast's work on the 2000 election,

reported

recently in Harper's, which conclusively shows that Florida was thrown to

Mr. Bush by a combination of factors that disenfranchised black voters.

These included a defective felon list, which wrongly struck thousands of

people from the voter rolls, and defective voting machines, which

disproportionately failed to record votes in poor, black districts.

 

One might have expected Florida's government to fix these problems during

the intervening four years. But most of those wrongly denied voting rights

in 2000 still haven't had those rights restored - and the replacement of

punch-card machines has created new problems.

 

After the 2000 debacle, a task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush

recommended

that the state adopt a robust voting technology that would greatly reduce

the number of spoiled ballots and provide a paper trail for recounts:

paper

ballots read by optical scanners that alert voters to problems. This

system

is in use in some affluent, mainly white Florida counties.

 

But Governor Bush ignored this recommendation, just as he ignored state

officials who urged him to " pull the plug " on a new felon list - which was

quickly discredited once a judge forced the state to make it public - just

days before he ordered the list put into effect. Instead, much of the

state

will vote using touch-screen machines that are unreliable and subject to

hacking, and leave no paper trail. Mr. Palast estimates that this will

disenfranchise 27,000 voters - disproportionately poor and black.

 

A lot can change in 11 days, and Mr. Bush may yet win convincingly. But we

must not repeat the mistake of 2000 by refusing to acknowledge the

possibility that a narrow Bush win, especially if it depends on Florida,

rests on the systematic disenfranchisement of minority voters. And the

media

must not treat such a suspect win as a validation of skewed reporting that

has consistently overstated Mr. Bush's popular support.

 

 

Excerpted from the New York Times. See Palast's entire report in this

month's Harper's Magazine. Greg Palast, author of the New York Times

bestseller, the Best Democracy Money Can Buy, is investigating the vote in

Florida for BBC Television Newsnight and Harper's. Palast's

documentary of

his BBC investigations, " Bush Family Fortunes, " has just been released in

DVD. For more information on the film or the voting investigation,

go to

www.GregPalast.com.

 

 

 

 

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