The American people are truly exceptional and it is heartening to
know they will continue to fight against repugican tyranny to win
elections and brutalize the people.…
It is always curious why, in countries with alleged free and fair
democratic elections, a hated brutal dictator easily wins re-election.
Logic dictates that a population brutalized by a monster would vote the
tyrant out of office in a fair election, but still, a tyrant like Saddam
Hussein consistently emerged victorious with an extremely high
percentage of the vote. Last week, a former Iraqi citizen and an Army
Veteran helping supervise Iraq’s first truly free democratic election
explained that Saddam won by using thugs to intimidate voters at polling
places, tossed out ballots, or denied non-loyalists the right to vote.
It is what a brutal tyrant did to win elections, and it is what repugican tyrants are attempting in states across America.
Now, repugicans began claiming after they lost
control of Congress in 2006 and Barack Obama won in 2008 that
out-of-control voter fraud required abolishing the Voting Rights Act and
implementing severe vote suppression tactics. However, out of over a
billion votes cast since 2000 in every primary, general, special, and
municipal election in the nation, a comprehensive
analysis
revealed there were only 31 documented cases of voter fraud; that is
0.000000031% over the past thirteen years. It is likely fraud that was
more as a result of errors than deliberate vote suppression repugicans
practice routinely.
What is a testament to Americans’ resolve to
participate in democracy despite the 8 year repugican assault on voting
rights, including intimidation and death threats, is that true patriots
are undaunted in helping every eligible voter cast a ballot. In some
areas of the country, it is becoming a life-threatening endeavor to
participate in democracy not unlike Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s brutal
tyranny.
In Arizona last week, repugicans were apoplectic when, as the Blaze reported, “Surveillance
video
catches a guy doing something at the ballot box that left the repugican monitor stunned.” In fact, not only were repugicans stunned,
they accused the “guy,” an Hispanic volunteer for Citizens for a Better
Arizona, of being “
a vulgar, disrespectful, violent thug that has no respect for our laws.”
The man, Ben Marine, was following Arizona election procedures to the
letter and delivering sealed absentee ballots to the polling station
according to Arizona elections law.
The chairman of the Maricopa County repugican cabal, A.J. La Faro, told an Arizona newspaper that Marine’s
behavior was suspicious (read Hispanic) and incited a barrage of violent
threats as repugicans demanded the patriotic American be hunted down
and killed for delivering sealed ballots to a polling location “as part of an ordinary GOTV operation.” A sampling of the repugican commenters’ rage and calls for Mr. Marine’s death were; “This is a high crime, it is treason to this country and a betrayal of democracy,” and “This should be a crime punishable by death,” and “I am going to find this illegal-loving scumbag and kill him.”
The man that incited outrage and repugican threats of violence, A.J. La Faro,
certainly knew
the Hispanic man delivering the sealed ballots was following the letter
of the law. La Faro is part of the Russell Pearce xenophobic racist
Arizona repugican cabal that passed a law,
HB 2305, to make it illegal, but even the extremist repugican legislature
repealed it.
La Faro would have felt right at home in Saddam Hussein’s brutal
administration, and based on the overt racism against Hispanics in
Arizona, Mr. Marine displayed true American patriotism in courageously
delivering other Americans’ sealed absentee ballots; particularly
knowing he was being videotaped and that a repugican election monitor
was watching him closely.
Wisconsin repugicans have embraced brutal voter
intimidation tactics Saddam used to win elections. Less than a week
after the Supreme Court
delayed implementation
of Wisconsin’s severe voter ID law, a repugican election official
directed activists to take matters into their own hands and intimidate
voters before they have a chance to mark a ballot. Last week Milwaukee
County repugican Elections Commissioner Rick Baas directed repugican
supporters “
to challenge people you think are not supposed to be voting. You’ve got to do that!” Under a tyrannical Wisconsin law, election workers, official observers, or any member of the public can
challenge the validity of someone’s vote, but they must first swear
under oath
they know with certainty the person is not qualified to vote; a
challenge cannot be based on suspicion or hunch about a voter’s party
affiliation, gender, age, how the person is voting, or a voter’s race.
Another Wisconsin repugican running for attorney general, Brad Schimel, counseled Republicans that “
The best way you can prevent someone from stealing your vote is if you make sure no one can go in and take your line in the ballot box.” Earlier this year, corrupt Scott Walker
signed a law
allowing repugican intimidators to stand as close as three feet to a
voter while they mark their ballot; a tactic that was used to great
effect by Saddam Hussein to win elections. Still, patriotic Wisconsin
Democrats and people of color turn out to vote in spite of clear voter
intimidation tactics by repugican tyrants.
Georgia repugicans, instead of issuing death
threats or calling for polling place intimidation, took another page out
of Saddam’s election-rigging and just
threw out
over 50,000 voter registration forms; all of them belonging to people
of color in the Democratic-leaning regions around Atlanta, Savannah and
Columbus. The repugican tactic was in response to The New Georgia
Project’s massive registration drive last March and April that covered
nearly all 159 counties in the state and registered nearly 90 thousand
people who never voted in their lives; nearly all of them were people of
color and many were under the age of 25. The exact Georgians the
state’s repugicans do not want casting ballots.
When the New Georgia Project’s organizers appealed
to Georgia’s repugican Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, for an
explanation or assistance to locate the lost registration forms, he
refused to meet with them. Undaunted, and willing to fight for the
people’s right to vote, the NGP took the state to court and said, “If
they thought it would have a chilling effect on voter registration
efforts, they were mistaken. It has emboldened our efforts. It has
awakened the consciousness of people that the right to vote is still
precariously endangered.”
It is likely not the response tyrannical repugicans
expected because they just cannot countenance that most Americans are
not timid or terrorized Iraqis willing to sit idly, or quietly, while a
truly vile, brutal, and tyrannical repugican movement relentlessly
attempts to rob them of their right to vote. In that one sense, the
American people are truly exceptional and it is heartening to know they
will continue to fight against repugican tyranny trying to steal elections and
brutalize the people.
![An AT&T logo is seen atop a store in Beverly Hills, California August 31, 2011. [REUTERS/Danny Moloshok]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uaN9fN17fJSoEGZEDf_RJpCVXN-wKl4DjlaTRCLBHHbQLvkVCu9jk5mkG47TxNIiA4eV_6ynK2xDAyNLlKUeQhGvPWP4TEEMZKck8RIHxKCqw3j85bP4-aTn1XmtM-3iqwuuospm0RZmQ=s0-d)
