I think your analysis is only slightly correct, however the mainstream media refuses to investigate or even question the outcome of the election after what one could only call the largest disenfrachisement of voters in the history of this county. Bill Gianni purposefuly released figures that were misleading and down right incorrect. The fact is the number of people turned away was massive.There is no way for anyone to know the exact number but at least a third of the voters that presented themselves to cast a vote in heavily Democratic precincts in which we were monitoring from opening to sometime after 2:00 were either turned away or left without casting a vote.
The talking points coming out of the election commission was like watching Fox News, their story was being repeated in the news paper, the internet blogs, on the radio, and the news without challenge. Since when did the incorrect Data get loaded at the polling site and no one challenged the commission's official talking points or even asked for some type of verification.
Was the need to call the election and move on more of a reaction to having Lutrell and other so called qualified clean candidates quickly anointed to their posts, or should it have been more important to ask tough questions of the Republican led election commission?
I am ashamed of the behavior of some of my fellow Democrats, the media and the Republican party. We cannot go around the world lecturing other third world counties on the virtues of clean, fair, transparent elections if we accept the notion that only a few thousand voters missed their right to participate. Was our slate of candidates so bad that we would look the other way while knowing something went wrong and not objectively challenge the Republican led election commissions talking points. We are relying on a media that is more based in opinions than searching for the facts and the truth not, anecdotal unverified facts from the Republican election commission hacks.
I still hear projections of 210 provisional ballots and the maximum possibly effected of 5000 voters. We ( The Party) have reports and sworn affidavits from some folks being turned away who did not vote in May at all. Which would completely blow out the water the information the election commission gave out and would make the potential size of the voters disenfranchised much more.
Lastly, every four years a slate of Democratic candidates emerge and yes they are largely African Americans and every four years something shaky always happens and the questions are usually summarily dismissed. When will some of the members of this community learn to be fair. Speaking of qualifications, just what makes Jimmy Moore more qualified than Ricky Dixon? not education. Are you telling me Paul Boyd is more qualified than Sondra Becton please give me f.....n break? Did Tom Leatherwood know anything about the Register of deeds office when he was first elected? In adition, how can anyone look down on the black community for electing Fords when the Keys and the Mashburns are still at the table? Can we just be fair. Remember a Republican led Senate overturned the Ophelia Ford election for a handful of dead voters what about the living.
1 comment:
Harris has a point.
I'm not sure why people are taking the Election Commission's line a gospel. I'm just as guilty as anyone of doing it.
The fact is, every day during early voting the Election Commission published voter participating lists. They haven't published the list for election day yet, and that should cause people to question.
Where's the damn list? It wasn't hard to get it out there before, why is it now? Maybe they can't because whatever happened on election day screwed the database up so badly they're chasing their asses trying to fix it. Ultimately, we don't know, and that not knowing should give us pause.
Gianni asked Gibbons to investigate, which he couldn't because he was one of the voters that was affected. Don't think for a second Gianni didn't know this.
So now TBI is conducting an investigation to see if anything "criminal" was done. That's fine, but it ignores a greater Civil Rights question. Voting rights may have been violated without criminal intent. We need to lobby Cohen to push for a Voting Rights Act investigation to see if there was a pattern of voter disenfranchisement. I'm not sure TBI can or will do that.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven, and as I get more background from people who either didn't get to vote, or were hassled due to the screw up by the election commission, whatever that was, it points to, at least gross negligence.
Harris' most important point is that many of us have just accepted the line fed us without any intellectual curiosity of what may or may not have actually happened. Like so many other things, when the investigation is complete it will have faded from the public memory, the outrage will be lost, and no remedy for a potentially spoiled election will be demanded.
That doesn't bode well for future elections.
We need to strike while the iron's hot.
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