This is Scott bellows with off the bus. I'm lucky enough to spend a few minutes with two of the most knowledgeable people in America about election fraud. Greg Palast an investigative journalist for the BBC, and for the British paper, the observer and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, a professor at Pace University School of Law and the co host of Air America radios. Ring of Fire. Gentlemen, thank you very much for being with me.
Thanks for having Well, I
definitely want to talk about your new movie and the graphic voters guide you're coming out with But first, I'd like to lay some foundation for why you guys are concerned about election fraud in the upcoming election. Can you give me a kind of primer on the difference between voter fraud and election fraud and the forms that election fraud can take?
Well, the difference is that voter fraud doesn't exist, basically, on voter fraud is Republican Phantom. That is that is that is a allegedly, there's there are large numbers of people in this country, according to Karl Rove and his acolytes 5 million, 5 million people who are going to try to you know, vote twice or vote, you know, or, or somehow,
when the Rio Grande to vote, they have 5 million illegal aliens voting according to their guy hans Von Spakovsky. By the way this reg pass, we did ask them and went to their lawyer, the Republican National Committee's legal spokesman on this and said, so give me the list. If there's 5 million legal voters, can you name some? And they said, how do we do that? If they won't, they're illegal registered voters, you'd have to name and address. They did give us a couple I have to tell you. They found an obvious case of fraud. They did produce some registrations. One was obviously someone who had two signatures on two different registration forms, same name. It was a waitress, and we went to her and Albuquerque to find out this evil fraudulent voter. Turns out she'd sign one voter form at a table and another voter form in her hand. out of 5 million cases. They said this was the number one case of voter fraud making five in the United States of America. This is the crime of voter fraud and why doesn't exist what the woman did was perfectly, perfectly legal, the first or first signature not been legible. And they handed her another form, essentially, so she wasn't trying to deceive or defraud anybody.
This has this this, this scare mongering about voter fraud has allowed the Republicans to pass legislation in many states and also federal federal legislation called the Help America Vote Act that is designed to protect against voter fraud. Now, we know that voter fraud doesn't exist because there's only been 26 cases of voter fraud among among hundreds of millions of voters have voted in the last decade. So on they it's just a problem that doesn't exist. But the Republicans have seized on this in order to erect all kinds of obstacles and impediments that essentially mimic the old poll taxes that were used in the southern states during the Jim Crow period, to keep black people from voting. Today, they're directed towards suppressing the boats, not only blacks, but Hispanics and American Indians, of young people of senior citizens. In other words of Democratic stronghold voters. And I in the last election in the 2004 election, about a million African American voters had their votes thrown out. And about 2 million other Democratic voters. This election, we're looking at much more sophisticated attempts to get rid of those voters. A lot of voting rights activists have focused on the the facility with which the voting machines that were also a requirement of the Help America Vote Act can be hacked. But in fact, the worst mischief by the Republicans is going to be done through another through all arsenal of 20 or 30. On methods that Republican operatives on the ground will use one to discourage people from registering number to discourage them or impede them from voting once they had registered. And number three, to stop them from having their votes counted after they voted. And each one of those areas has its own quiver of weapons that the Republicans are are very, very practiced in utilizing. I will give you a couple of examples, but one of the newest attacks has been on people who have foreclosed homes. The Republicans in Michigan, the head of the Republican Party, has announced that he is going to target people whose homes are in foreclosure, these people no longer have the address that they put on their registration. So they when they come to vote, they're going to be challenged, presumably. But a lot of those people these days are Democrats even if they started out as Republicans and I should add, they're not illegal voters.
You don't lose your home, you know, you don't lose your vote. You're supposed to get a ballot. There's a grace period when you don't have your home. If you move within the district, you get normal ballots. And and if you're still with a state, you'll lose your vote for president the United States is grayed out and I was just in Detroit speaking with Robert Pratt, who's about to lose his home. He works seven days a week he got shafted screw buddies, subprime sharks had countrywide. Now Bank of America as he's losing his home, and now he has to face the loss of his vote, he still has the right to vote, even if they put him in his five kids out of their house. And what we're trying to do by the way, if you want to meet Mr. Pratt electronically, go steal back your vote dot O R G. I filmed him for BBC television, and for Ring of Fire go left TV, where you can see the people who are getting it here. They're now getting in economically now to take you back to vote. The truth is, it's a huge bonanza for the Republican Party to see 3 million families lose their homes because you know what voters they are, it's very clear that the demographic
is that in Michigan, a company that is actually doing the foreclosures is a law firm called tried and tried. And it has been retained by the banking community to do about 40,000 foreclosures. And it gives Andras gives large amounts of money to the Republican Party and 100% of its donations have gone to John McCain in the Republican Party, and it shares offices with the Republican Party in the state. One of the most disturbing new provisions of this new law that was designed by a Republican Congress and a Republican Senate and signed by the Republican President George Bush, designed to suppress Democratic voters to Help America Vote is a provision that is known as a perfect match provision. This is a provision that requires the that the information that is provided by the voter on his voter registration form, matches identically the information in other government records that exists in computers operated by the government that are connected to your information you gave for your social security card, or for your driver's license. For example. If I, for example, on my voter registration, sign my name Robert Francis Kennedy, I signed on my driver's license Robert F. Kennedy, my vote can be thrown out a person his name is Alex and signs the name Alexander can have their votes thrown out. What we know is that 80% from a study that was done in New York 80% of the errors in voter registration, you know, have names that are not hyphenated or they're spelled wrong mom and dad spelled Mohammed when you are in instead of an oil are made actually not by the voter themselves, but by government. porks. But that error in transcription will disqualify that voter from voting. This is a huge problem talking
millions of people and I should mention that never Bowen is the Secretary of State of California told us that almost all the names getting knocked out are what's called unusual names, Vietnamese, Islamic names, Hispanic hyphenated names, these are the people getting thrown off by this game. And in fact, as I as the Huffington Post is picked up before that I discovered that one in five voters Let me repeat that one in five 20% of the voters of Colorado had their names knocked off the voter rolls. They don't even know it. The Republican excuse me, the Democratic governor and his people didn't know about this. It's been done silently, quietly. And Republican Secretary of State Zach Republican,
so you think Colorado is a critical swing state and getting rid of these could be won or lost by five or 10,000 votes, and you know, they're getting rid of 1/5 of the votes in the state.
Let me follow up on that this clearly could throw
the election on just give me one other example that's very disturbing. Two weeks ago, New Jersey sent out 870,000 letters to new voters, saying that their vote said their registrations had been disqualified because of this perfect match provision. Well, New Jersey is another swing state that could be lot won or lost, like 10 or 20,000 votes. And here's the 870,000 voters mainly democratic because there's their new registrations, and there are Very few new people registering as Republicans who may lose their franchise now New Jersey is actually being very polite and courteous, because it is notifying these voters with with perhaps time enough for them to correct the error. However, most of the state, the voters will never even know that their vote was thrown out, they'll be given a provisional ballot. When they show up at the polls, the provisional ballot is just a placebo to get people out of the polling place without getting violent or angry. And then last election 1/3 of provisional ballots, were simply thrown out into dumpsters. And that's what's gonna happen to the provisional ballots this time.
By the way why we've written them facing a democratic crisis we've done the the obvious thing which is create a comic book about it 24 pages feel back your vote dot o RG which, by the way gives the investigative reports that we're doing on that you're going to see on BBC television that you're going to see Rolling Stone and other places but we put in comic book form to get the investigative material but also how you get your vote back like don't take a provisional ballot is a bouncing data belonging down below tickets demand adjudication second, vote early so if there's a problem, you can do something with it. Register and register again. I mean, if you think you're talking about oh, I've been voting in Colorado I've been voting in Mexico for four elections in a row Forget it Jack You better check your registration now and get it straightened out now. Get the ID you need. Don't mail in your ballot you think that they're gonna mess with the computers then you're gonna mail the same characters your votes think a stamp on it. Forget about it. One in 10 absentee ballots gets chucked in the dumpster.
Let me interview there are some other activists are saying use absentee ballots because they create a paper trail? You're saying don't use absentee ballots even it's better to actually use a touchscreen machine. Can you explain? What we're saying is
go in and vote early. All the election groups that we're working with the big ones like Rock the Vote is get your behind and early, you can
now vote early in every state. It's not an absentee ballot, it's actually an early vote. And that's better than an absentee ballot because the absentee ballots are easily manipulated. And we've seen them in the past, that the absentee ballots that tend to get thrown out or last are absentee ballots that come from zip codes that are democratic strongholds,
that is a good number for you an ugly number. The number of ballots lost the so called spoilage a million half ballots that you're just chucked out because they're supposedly unreadable. If you're African American, the chance your ballot will be thrown out is 900%. Higher than if you're a white vote. Now, that's from the US Civil Rights Commission, which did a statistical analysis of the votes that are being thrown out. That was happening here. So be so we are We can't tell you six ways to stop every method of vote. But this is just basic voting hygiene, go to steel back your vote dot o RG, get the story, and then you know, save your miserable little
vote. And I have an article about this. And Danny was with many illustrating many examples of this going on all across the country, but particularly in that the Republicans have targeted the battleground state getting rid of any votes and Hispanic votes in New Mexico and Colorado. And, and black folks across the country, on walls, people are going to be disenfranchised. And again, we've also produced this guide, which is in comic book form, which tells the public the voter, how to get back your vote, how to how to evade all of these, these these sinister techniques and mischievous techniques that are going to be used to try to get to try to exclude you from exercising your franchisee if you're a Democrat.
And one thing I should note, one sad thing is that lot of the attacks we saw in the Native American voters out in the west like in New Mexico, whereby they local Democrats, but as a voting expert John Boyd he sued both parties who said what happens is local fights among Democrats always disenfranchise the low income voter, the voter of color. So you have Native American voters who are the number one target of attacks in a state for example, like New Mexico worn by alcohol by 366 votes won by George Bush later by 5000 votes with the neighbors disenfranchises the big pile, so it doesn't matter who steals the vote at the national level. At the national level the Democrats take the hit that's just the practical matter of and I'm not partisan. I'm not even a Democrat by the way. I just but I know who gets gets hit by this. It's classically look, voting disenfranchisement, this class war by other means, and that's what we set out to investigate isn't even a party Isn't crusade This is about exposing these characters
