Turns out -- it's pretty damn low ...
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“What they did was absolutely illegal -- and they knew it and they did it anyway," Kennedy told me.
by Greg Palast for Truth-out.org -- August 27, 2012
What they did was called voter "caging." The RNC sent letters by the thousands to soldiers, first class, marked, "DO NOT FORWARD." When the letters were returned undelivered, the Republicans planned to use these "caged" envelopes as evidence the voters were "fraudulent" -- then challenge their ballot.
A soldier mailing in his or her vote from Iraq would have that ballot disqualified -- and the soldier wouldn't even know it.
That's not just sick, it's a crime, a violation of the Voting Rights Act drafted by [Robert] Kennedy's late father. And it was a crime because of whom the RNC caging crew attacked: not just any soldiers, but soldiers of color.
Running a vote-challenge operation based on racial profiling is a go-to-jail felony.
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Who is "they"?
None other than Karl Rove and his inside-guy at Justice, Tim Griffin -- now Republican Congressman.
When? Back during the height of the Bush vs Kerry contest. Where? Florida et al.
They can compile these biased "caging lists" and hand them to sympathetic Election Boards to challenge these "suspect" voters, or as in the case described above the RNC simply does challenge legwork themselves.
If the Challenge postcards get returned to sender, because they never get forwarded -- and because the challengee was off at war -- well I don't suspect Karl and Tim shed many tears over it.
Good thing they're not around any more, doing stuff like that, eh? ... huh, say what!?
Meet Karl's Caging operation version 3.0.
Greg Palast on How the GOP Is Planning to Steal the 2012 Election
by Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview -- 12 September 2012
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Greg Palast: Karl Rove -- "Turdblossom" as Bush called him -- has a computer-data-mining system called DataTrust, which he's joining up with a data-mining computer system set up the Koch brothers called Themis. These are voter-eating machines, designed to juice the attack on voter rolls by GOP secretaries of state. Ready for this? Over 22 million names were purged from voter rolls in the last two years. Those figures are from the US Election Assistance Commission -- hidden in plain sight. And who gets purged?
Black voters, Latinos, Native Americans. In Colorado, the Republican secretary of state purged 19.4 percent of voters - that's one in five!
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Who knows what Karl can accomplish with hundreds of millions in mad-money and nearly blanket anonymity.
I guess we're about to find out.
I hope Mr Palast and Mr Kennedy are wrong about their assessment of Rove's cagey reach.
But I fear that they're not, since THIS is what happens when no one is held accountable in any significant way, when it comes to blocking our votes. Again and again and again.