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From: Greg Palast <PalastReport@gmail.com>
Date: November 18, 2014 at 6:21:12 PM EST
To: <yes@therainbow.com>
Subject: The Secret Lists that Swiped the Senate
Reply-To: Greg Palast <PalastReport@gmail.com>

The Secret Lists that Swiped the Senate

GregPalast.com Does this email not look right or do you wish to translate it? View it in your browser. The Secret Lists that Swiped the Senate By Greg Palast Tuesday, 18. November, 2014 S tatistics guru Nate Silver simply can’t understand why every single legitimate poll indicated that Democrats should have gotten 4% more votes in the midterm elections than appeared in the final count. The answer, Nate, is “Crosscheck.” No question, Republicans trounced Democrats in the Midterm elections.  But, if not for the boost of this voter-roll purge system used in 23 Republican-controlled states, the GOP could not have taken the US Senate.   It took the Palast investigations team six months to get our hands on the raw files, fighting against every official trick to keep them hidden. Here’s what we found.   Interstate Crosscheck is computer system that officials claim can identify anyone who commits the crime of voting twice in the same election in two different states.  While the current list of seven million “suspects” did not yield a single conviction for double voting, Crosscheck did provide the grounds for removing the registrations of tens of thousands of voters in battleground states. The purge proved decisive in North Carolina, Colorado, Kansas and elsewhere.  Without Crosscheck, the GOP could not have taken control of the US Senate.  [Read my original investigative report.] Nate Silver might want to punch these numbers into his laptop: In North Carolina, Republican Thom Tillis upset incumbent Senator Kay Hagan by just 48,511 votes.  North Carolina’s Crosscheck purge list targeted a stunning 589,393 voters.  In Colorado, Cory Gardner, the Republican, defeated Mark Udall by just 49,729 votes.  Colorado’s Crosscheck “potential double voter” list totals 300,842.   The Crosscheck purge list also swamped GOP Senate margins in Alaska and Georgia and likely provided the victory margins for GOP gubernatorial victories in Kansas and Massachusetts. No, states do not purge every name on the lists.  Typical is Virginia which proudly purged 64,581 “duplicates” from its voter rolls in 2013, equal to about 19% of its Crosscheck list.  Other states refuse to provide numbers, but their scrub methods are the same, or even more aggressive, than Virginia’s.   We can conservatively calculate that the purge of 19% of the Crosscheck lists accounted for at least three GOP Senate victories – and thereby, control of the Senate. If the Crosscheck lists truly identified fraudulent double voters, then we’d have to concede that the election results are legit.  But the ugly truth is, the lists are nothing more than racially-loaded lists of common names. Click to Enlarge And that’s why GOP Secretaries of State, a gaggle of Katherine Harrises, hid the lists until we cracked through the official wall of denial and concealment. These election chieftains refused our demands for the lists on the grounds that these millions of voters are all suspects in a criminal investigation and so must remain confidential.   Eventually (and legally), we were able to get our hands on 2.1 million of the 6.9 million names—and had them analyzed by the same list experts who advise eBay and American Express.   What we found is simply a giant list of common names—a lot of voters named Michael Jackson, David Lee and Juan Rodriguez.  The racial smell of it was apparent and awful.  As the US Census tells us, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Hispanics are 67% more likely to share a common name as a white American.  In other words, the lists heavily targeted “blue” Americans, Democratic leaning voters. While state officials claimed that the criminal double voters were matched by social security number and other key identifiers, we discovered that, in fact, they only matched first and last name.  Nearly two million of the pairs of names lacked middle name matches.  Example:  James Elmer Barnes Jr. who voted in Georgia is supposed to be the same person as James Cross Barnes III of Virginia. Republican officials have gone to great lengths to cover Crosscheck’s operations.  Voters purged are not told they are accused of voting twice.  The procedure, created by Kansas’ Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach, is to send a postcard to each “duplicate” voter requiring them to re-verify their registration.  A large percentage are never delivered—Americans, especially renters and lower-income Americans, move often—or cards are tossed away confused for junk mail. Brad Friedman, the investigative reporter with encyclopedic knowledge of elections shenanigans, was also bemused by Nate Silver’s confusion over the missing Democratic four percent.  He cites the Crosscheck purges we discovered and adds in all the other tried and true methods of bending the vote, from Photo ID restrictions to missing voter registrations and a deliberate shortage of paper ballots in minority precincts.  In Georgia alone, 56,000 registration forms collected by a coalition of minority voting rights groups were simply not added to the voter rolls.  The Tool to Take 2016 The purge of those snared in the Crosscheck dragnet has only just begun. The process of actually removing names from the voter rolls is subtle and slow, involving several steps over many months.  Some states mark their voters on the Crosscheck list as “inactive”— which means that, if they failed to vote in this midterm election, they will be blocked from voting in 2016.  As a result, Crosscheck will take an even bigger bite out of the 2016 voter rolls. This bodes ill for the upcoming Presidential contest when, once again, Ohio is expected to be decisive. Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, John Husted, has embraced Crosscheck.  We enlisted Columbus State University professor Robert Fitrakis, an expert in voting law to canvas county voting officials.  He found these local elections officials concerned that the Republican Secretary of State is pushing counties to scrub voter rolls of “duplicates” within 30 days of receiving the names from the Secretary’s office.  This gives counties little time and no resources to verify if an accused voter has, in fact, voted in a second state. Secretary of State Husted has refused to give us the list of the 469,201 names on Ohio’s Crosscheck list—but we’ve obtained thousands anyway.  We found that Ohio’s lists have the same glaring mismatches as we saw in the Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia lists. We have now launched an investigation to uncover the names of all the voters Ohio plans to scrub from the registration rolls by 2016.  The answer may well determine who will choose our next president: the voters or Crosscheck.   Please support our continuing investigation into Crosscheck and other election trickery. Make a tax-deductible donation of at least $40 and receive a signed copy of Vultures and Vote Rustlers, Palast’s compendium of investigative reports.  Or for $50 minimum donation, get a signed copy of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. Or become a credited Producer ($1,000) or Co-Producer ($500) on our upcoming film based on the book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. Watch the trailer.  You can, of course, support our work for any amount you can afford, no matter how small or large. we appreciate it all. For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.  Greg Palast is the author of several  New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. Palast is a Puffin Foundation Fellow for Investigative Reporting. Make a tax-deductible donation and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.   Follow Palast on Twitter | Like Palast on Facebook | Forward to a friend  Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter | Podcasts Share this with Copyright © 2014 Greg Palast, All rights reserved. You are receiving this Newsletter because you are a subscriber. Our mailing address is: Greg Palast PO Box 90 Greenport, NY 11944 Add us to your address book  unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

From: "Progressive Change Campaign Committee" <info@BoldProgressives.org>
Date: November 16, 2014 at 3:56:24 PM EST
To: "Herb Gart" <yes@therainbow.com>
Subject: FWD: Elizabeth Warren's Op-Ed in The Washington Post
Reply-To: "Progressive Change Campaign Committee" <info@BoldProgressives.org>

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Herb... ideas like this inspired Elizabeth Warren's colleagues to appoint her to Senate Democratic leadership this week.

Read her op-ed below, then tell us what big ideas you think Democrats should rally behind.

(After reading it, sign our card thanking Warren for her leadership.)

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Elizabeth Warren's Op-Ed in The Washington Post:

Elizabeth Warren: It’s time to work on America’s agenda There have been terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Election Days for Democrats before -- and Republicans have had a few of those, too. Such days are always followed by plenty of pronouncements about what just changed and what’s going to be different going forward. But for all the talk of change in Washington and in states where one party is taking over from another, one thing has not changed: The stock market and gross domestic product keep going up, while families are getting squeezed hard by an economy that isn’t working for them. The solution to this isn’t a basket of quickly passed laws designed to prove Congress can do something -- anything. The solution isn’t for the president to cut deals -- any deals -- just to show he can do business. The solution requires an honest recognition of the kind of changes needed if families are going to get a shot at building a secure future. It’s not about big government or small government. It’s not the size of government that worries people; rather it’s deep-down concern over who government works for. People are ready to work, ready to do their part, ready to fight for their futures and their kids’ futures, but they see a government that bows and scrapes for big corporations, big banks, big oil companies and big political donors -- and they know this government does not work for them. The American people want a fighting chance to build better lives for their families. They want a government that will stand up to the big banks when they break the law. A government that helps out students who are getting crushed by debt. A government that will protect and expand Social Security for our seniors and raise the minimum wage. Americans understand that building a prosperous future isn’t free. They want us to invest carefully and prudently, sharply aware that Congress spends the people’s money. They want us to make investments that will pay off in their lives, investments in the roads and power grids that make it easier for businesses to create good jobs here in America, investments in medical and scientific research that spur new discoveries and economic growth, and investments in educating our children so they can build a future for themselves and their children. Before leaders in Congress and the president get caught up in proving they can pass some new laws, everyone should take a skeptical look at whom those new laws will serve. At this very minute, lobbyists and lawyers are lining up by the thousands to push for new laws -- laws that will help their rich and powerful clients get richer and more powerful. Hoping to catch a wave of dealmaking, these lobbyists and lawyers -- and their well-heeled clients -- are looking for the chance to rig the game just a little more. But the lobbyists’ agenda is not America’s agenda. Americans are deeply suspicious of trade deals negotiated in secret, with chief executives invited into the room while the workers whose jobs are on the line are locked outside. They have been burned enough times on tax deals that carefully protect the tender fannies of billionaires and big oil and other big political donors, while working families just get hammered. They are appalled by Wall Street banks that got taxpayer bailouts and now whine that the laws are too tough, even as they rake in billions in profits. If cutting deals means helping big corporations, Wall Street banks and the already-powerful, that isn’t a victory for the American people -- it’s just another round of the same old rigged game. Yes, we need action. But action must be focused in the right place: on ending tax laws riddled with loopholes that favor giant corporations, on breaking up the financial institutions that continue to threaten our economy, and on giving people struggling with high-interest student loans the same chance to refinance their debt that every Wall Street corporation enjoys. There’s no shortage of work that Congress can do, but the agenda shouldn’t be drawn up by a bunch of corporate lobbyists and lawyers. Change is hard, especially when the playing field is already tilted so far in favor of those with money and influence. But this government belongs to the American people, and it’s time to work on America’s agenda. America is ready -- and Congress should be ready, too.

Do you agree? Which big ideas do you think Democrats should rally behind?

(Then, sign our card thanking Warren for her leadership.)

Click here to share Elizabeth Warren's op-ed on Facebook, and click here to share it on Twitter.

 

 

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