I've noticed that I'm becoming pretty inured to outrage and disgust here in the 5th year of the Bush regime. With this pack of organized criminals running the show, it's amazing how little surprises me these days... but this really does have my blood pressure going up:
Republicans are working hard to kill democracy in Ohio, according to a piece written by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman for freepress.org:
A law that will make democracy all but moot in Ohio is about to pass the state legislature and to be signed by its Republican governor. Despite massive corruption scandals besieging the Ohio GOP, any hope that the Democratic party could win this most crucial swing state in future presidential elections, or carry its pivotal US Senate seat in 2006, are about to end.
More below the fold:
The GOP-drafted House bill HB3 is designed to all but obliterate any possible future Democratic revival. Opposition from the Ohio Democratic Party, where it exists at all, is diffuse and ineffectual.
HB3's most publicized provision will require positive identification before casting a vote. But it also opens voter registration activists to partisan prosecution, exempts electronic voting machines from public scrutiny, quintuples the cost of citizen-requested statewide recounts and makes it illegal to challenge a presidential vote count or, indeed, any federal election result in Ohio. When added to the recently passed HB1, which allows campaign financing to be dominated by the wealthy and by corporations, and along with a Rovian wish list of GOP attacks on the ballot box, democracy in Ohio could be all but over.
And then there's the electronic voting issue:
HB3 will make it virtually impossible for any challenge to be mounted involving any votes cast or counted on electronic machines or tabulators---meaning virtually every vote cast in Ohio.
Full article here along with many other great articles on the same topic:
http://www.freepress.org/...
As far as I can see the only way to stop this criminal abuse of our electoral rights would be the passage of a comprehensive federal voting act that lays down strict, clear guidelines for the conduct of elections at every level of government. I agree with the other kossacks who have written about this problem that this needs to be a number issue with Democrats and progressives. It won't matter how good our candidates are, how good the advertising and grassroots work is -- if the election systems are rigged, none of it matters.