American Lie

So I finished reading Free As In Freedom and I just started reading a new book: Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. I’m in the middle of the first chapter and it has rekindled the anger and frustration I had felt over the 2000 presidential elections.

As much as the media hyped it, it wasn’t about those stupid hanging and dangling chads. It was about Katherine Harris going through the voter list and removing anyone “suspected” of being a former felon (ex-felons cannot vote in FL) in the summer of ’99. You’d think that was bad in itself, but how they did it was even worse. The company responsible for going through the list were instructed to check people with the same name, birthdates, or social security numbers as known felons, and if there was an 80% match with this criteria, they would be added to the ineligible voter list.

Well this was a pretty big net and it comes as no surprise that thousands of eligible voters weren’t allowed to vote. 173,000 registered voters in FL were permanently wiped off the list. In one county, 66% of the voters removed were black. In another county, 54% were black. Black voters are overwhelmingly Democrat. Hmmmm...

It was about the fact that 8,000 additional voters were wiped off the list thanks to a felon list supplied by another state. It turns out that the felons on this list had already served time and had their voting rights reinstated, and there were people on this list who had only committed misdemeanors – littering, parking violations, etc. This was so screwed up that Linda Howell, who was not a felon, wasn’t allowed to vote. Who’s Linda Howell? Just the Elections Supervisor for Madison County, FL.

What was this state that provided this extra felon list? Texas. Hmmm...

It was about the fact that while the FL result was still too close to call, one network, Fox News, declared that Bush had won FL (which caused the other news networks to jump on the bandwagon, fearing that they would look slow or not up to date otherwise). And who was in charge of Fox’s election coverage? John Ellis, first cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush. Hmmmm...

There are more facts in this chapter about the exile of elected President Gore. I’ve just touched on a few points. It should be noted that the author of this book did not vote for Gore, and I’m expecting to see some Democrat bashing in this book as well, if the liner notes in the book cover are any clue.

Well I wish I could read more of this book right now, but it’s getting late and I need to rest up for work. Oh, speaking of work, I got my head scanned in the other day so there’s a chance I could be in this game! Yaaayyy!