Street roots., December 09, 2016, Page 4, Image 4

Page 4
Street Roots • Dec. 9-15, 2016
News
PHOTO COURTESY OF GREG PALAST/"THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY"
BY STEPHEN QUIRKE
STAFF WRITER
or the past month, people around the
world have pondered the meaning of
the phrase “President Donald
Trump.”
During this period hate crimes have
multiplied, street resistance has swelled,
tear gas has flowed, and prominent white
supremacists have been nominated for top
positions in the U.S. government.
On television, one prominent Trump
supporter cited Japanese internment as a
positive legal model for what he hopes will
happen to Muslims under “President Donald
Trump”.
But for the next week at least, Americans
would do better to consider not the effect of
the phrase, but its fundamental accuracy.
Donald Trump lost the popular election
by more than 2 million votes, yet is
projected to win more votes in the electoral
college - an arcane institution once
designed to empower the elites of slave
states.
And a week from today that electoral lead
remains in question - not only because of
so-called “faithless” Republican electors who
could change their vote on the 19th of
December, but because the popular election
is not actually over until Dec. 13 - the
deadline for counting the very last vote.
Over the past week, election experts have
patiently explained that many states
declared Trump their winner without
counting all of their votes, including over a
million votes from communities of color who
traditionally vote Democratic.
This revelation has led to a small but
F
organized outcry in defense of voting rights,
as charges of Jim Crow mingle with open
references to “Muslim registries” and
Japanese internment.
On Nov. 25, Green Party Presidential
Candidate Jill Stein took the lead, filing for a
re-count in Wisconsin after raising over $5
million dollars to pay everything the state
charges her. On her website, Stein said this
money was raised in less than three days
and came from more than 130,000 people
giving less than $50 each. The latest count
puts her total in excess of $6 million.
Stein has also filed for recounts in
Michigan and Pennsylvania. Under federal
law, all these recounts must be completed
by Dec. 13, ahead of the the electoral
college vote.
Rolling Stone journalist Greg Palast said
problems like these are not new. Palast, a
former private investigator, is a firebrand
when it comes to critical election analysis.
He has studied voter suppression for the
past 16 years, broke the story on Florida’s
voter suppression in 2000, and has a history
of documenting political corruption,
corporate crime, and the colorful characters
who make them possible.
In his new film “The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy,” Palast investigates the
election fraud of 2016 and excavates its past,
establishing continuity from the KKK to the
Civil Rights Movement to thousands of
people waiting in line to vote.
Palast answered questions for Street
Roots to explain the current recount and
why the movement for civil rights includes
both Standing Rock and the ballot box.
Stephen Quirke: How instrumental was
your election coverage to the Green Party’s
current campaign to count the votes? How did
Jill Stein contact you?
Greg Palast: There’s a lot of stupid going
around. Like, “The election was stolen by
Russians!”
I’m a journalist with 16 years on the
ballot-bending beat for Rolling Stone and
BBC TV. I think Jill Stein asked me to break
the news because I’d get the story right, I’d
have credibility, and I’d immediately put to
rest the idea that she’s on some crazy hunt
for Putin’s fingerprints in the software.
S.Q.: You’ve covered issues with election
fraud since 2000. What’s different this time?
G.P.: In 2000, for BBC and The Guardian,
I discovered that Jeb Bush threw 56,000
African-Americans off the voter rolls
because they were, supposedly, ex-cons,
criminals. All were innocent - but that made
his brother Dubya our president.
In 2016, Trump’s henchman, Kris
Kobach, Secretary of State for Kansas,
pulled off a similar stunt, accusing voters of
color of voting twice (in two states in the
same election). It was just a list of common
names James Brown, Maria Hernandez),
but it cost about 1.1 million voters their
vote, mostly minorities. It’s just a variation
of the faux felon purge - but involved 30
states, including swing states Michigan and
Pennsylvania.
What’s the same is that, in both 2000 and
2016, only the foreign
press is interested in
racial vote suppression in America — and
you.
S.Q.: State-wide recounts are currently
happening in Michigan and Wisconsin, with
limited local recounts happening in
Pennsylvania. What’s the status of these
re-counts, and what issues are they looking
for?
G.P.: “Recount” is really the wrong name.
It should be simply called “the count”
Because the nasty secret of American
democracy is that several million ballots just
never get counted: A million “provisional”
ballots — into the dumpster. A million
absentee ballots — into the dumpster — and
for cockamamie reasons like using the
wrong envelope.
And then there are the ballots kicked out
by machines uncounted, “under-votes”
(blank ballots) and “over-votes,” as when the
machine thinks someone voted for two
presidential candidates, zero vote gets
recorded. Now, I know Detroit schools are
bad, but everyone knows there’s just one
president, and you (are allowed to) only vote
for one. The problem is the machines —
which, in poor cities like Detroit, are
garbage bins with counters on them. Votes
gets trashed by the tens of thousands.
So the Stein recount spends most of its
energies on counting the votes that didn’t
get counted in the first place. And they may
have to fight in court over each one — for
example, provisional ballots filed by students
in Wisconsin with the “wrong” ID.
—
-
See PALAST, page 5
S.Q.: What