How to foil the Republican vote-suppression machine from stealing the election? Just vote, no matter what

In the last month of the 2004 presidential contest between incumbent George W. Bush and challenger John Kerry, the state of Ohio was still a dead heat in the polls. Yet Bush was so confident of victory in the state that he didn’t feel the need to give it more than a token campaign effort. After all, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc.—a Ohio-based manufacturer of ATMs and hardware and software security systems—promised Bush that he could “deliver” the state to Bush in 2004.  How would he do this? Diebold also happened to manufacture electronic voting machines. These machines were found to be far from “tamper-proof.” For example, it was demonstrated that computer memory cards with different vote counts could be switched with the original cards, and there would be no way of knowing that the switch was made; there were not even passwords or encryption that could prevent another party from changing the votes. The same is suspected of the older Danaher machines used in Franklin County (where the state capitol of Columbus is located); in fact, in the town of Gahanna—with a population of a little more than 30,000—there was found to be an over-count of 3,893 votes for Bush; it was “explained” that the memory card allegedly generated a “faulty” count on its own.

There was much more to the voter suppression tactics by Republicans in control of the electoral process in Ohio in 2004. In largely Democratic precincts, voting was suppressed by such methods as random power outages, precincts opening late or closing early, and insufficient numbers of polling booths per registered voters. Many voters waited for hours inside the polling places, went out for air, and found that they were barred from reentering; other simply went home after waiting in endless lines. In Republican precincts, not surprisingly, there were no such issues. Some voters were told to come back the next day to vote because the polling stations were too busy—which of course they could not do. High numbers of ballots by black voters were “spoiled,” and it was suspected that votes of blacks forced to use provisional ballots were not counted.  In subsequent recounts, paper ballots that were incorrectly tallied were ignored, and black precincts were only partially recounted—on orders of the Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell; he later congratulated himself for “delivering” the state to Bush. 

And now today. The Brennan Center for Justice noted that “Fourteen states have passed restrictive voting laws and executive actions that have the potential to impact the 2012 election, representing 185 electoral votes, or 68 percent of the total needed to win the presidency.” These voter suppression laws aimed at largely low-income—and Democratic—voters comprise of the following according to the Brennan Center:

Florida: Early voting restriction, executive action making it harder to restore voting rights for those with past criminal convictions, and voter registration drive restrictions (Florida also conducted a massive purge of registered voters with Hispanic names, but even Republicans in the state were outraged by the arbitrary actions, and in the end only a handful of over 180,000 names were still on the purged list, and it was unclear if even those people were ineligible to vote). The early voting restriction was blocked in court for violating the Voting Rights Act. 

Georgia: Early voting restriction, photo ID law.

Illinois: Voter registration drive restriction

Iowa: Executive action making it harder to restore voting rights for those with past criminal convictions

Kansas: Photo ID required to vote

New Hampshire: Voter ID required — non-photo IDs allowed for 2012 election, but photo ID required starting September 1, 2013 (a court overturned the requirement that students must register their cars in order to vote)

Pennsylvania: Photo ID requested but NOT required to vote, per October 2, 2012 court decision

Rhode Island: Voter ID required — non-photo IDs allowed for 2012 election, but photo ID required starting January 1, 2014

South Dakota: Law making it harder to restore voting rights for those with past criminal convictions

Tennessee: Photo ID required to vote, proof of citizenship required to register, early voting restriction

Texas: Voter registration drive restriction (the state’s voter ID law was blocked until after the 2012 election)

Virginia: Voter ID required, including non-photo ID

West Virginia: Early voting restriction

Wisconsin: Voter registration restriction (voter ID law blocked by state courts until after 2012 election)

Wisconsin passed a law requiring photo ID to vote, but two state courts blocked that law — it will NOT be in effect for 2012

South Carolina:  A federal court blocked South Carolina's photo ID law for the 2012 election; a voter can use their non-photo voter registration card after 2012, so long as they state the reason for not having obtained a photo ID (pending if the law is determined to violate the Voting Rights Act)

Despite some victories in the courts, most are temporary staying orders since the laws were passed too close to the election before they could be properly vetted. The right-leaning U.S. Supreme Court for its part has already upheld an Indiana voter ID law, claiming that that states do not have to “prove” that the law actually combated legitimate voter fraud.  

But these are just laws that Republican governors and legislators have passed that have a fig-leaf of “legitimacy.” What Republicans and their moneyed backers are doing behind the scenes is far more insidious. The Koch brothers, Scott Farmer of Cintas, Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts and many others have threatened their employees with “dire consequences” if Barack Obama is re-elected. It has also been reported that Mitt Romney has ties to Hart Intercivic—which is providing vote count machines in swing states Ohio and Colorado; these latest machines have also been determined  to be not tamperproof. In fact, it was demonstrated that these machines could be “remotely” accessed by an outside party.

But “insidious” isn’t a strong enough word to use for what former National Security Agency analyst Michael Duniho has discovered. Duniho claims to have unearthed “massive” voter fraud in Arizona, and in particular Pima County. “Vote-flipping,” such as what occurred in Ohio in 2004, seems to have occurred on an unprecedented scale in large precincts, where the unexplained and illogical changes in demographic voting patterns were less “obvious” and better hidden than in smaller precincts. Some of these vote-flips appear to account for as much as 10 percent of the total vote, and Romney is accused of being the beneficiary of these “flips” even during the 2008 primaries—but not enough to overcome John McCain’s vote tallies. McCain is also accused of benefiting from “vote-flipping,” except that Obama’s 9 million vote plurality was simply too much to overcome. The huge lead that Romney enjoys in early voting in previously Obama-leaning Nevada also appears to be suspicious, to say the least.

What can you do to prevent Romney, Republicans and their billionaire backers from stealing this election and turning back the clock to the days when robber barons ruled and working people were rendered voiceless and powerless? One simple thing: Vote, no matter what. And don’t stop with the presidential election; the obnoxious agenda of the Tea Party-controlled House of Representatives has been stymied for now, and it is time to turn out this new version of the Know Nothing Party and its fascism back into the oblivion where it belongs.