Ohio Gives Black Voters "Absentee" Non-Ballots
Our Investigation Uncovers Thousands at Risk
of Ballot Loss
...
Several thousand African-American voters in Dayton, Ohio, may find their ballots left uncounted, and they, and America, won’t know it––even if the lost votes change the presidency.
This Sunday, I joined the Freedom Faith Missionary Baptist Church group headed to the one and only Sunday polling station in all of Dayton and Montgomery County.
They stood in a line with nearly one thousand voters. The line — about 80% African-American — snaked through the state building then out, through and around the building’s parking complex.
After the hours of waiting, the patient citizens got their ballots — or thought they did. They didn’t get ballots. They got this: “APPLICATION FOR ABSENT VOTER’S BALLOT.”
WHAT???????
In prior elections, and in some other counties in this current polling, early voters got ballot ballots, not absentee ballots.
I immediately got voting rights attorney Robert Fitrakis, on the phone. I told Fitrakis, also a professor at Columbus State College, about handing voters absentee ballots instead of regular, vote-now ballots.
“That’s insane!” he said, “Completely wrong.” And stone cold dangerous to the vote count.
It’s simple: Not all absentee ballots get counted. Indeed, as I pointed out in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, the US government data indicates that 488,136 mail-in ballots were rejected after they were cast in 2008. The New York Times puts it at two or three million cast and not counted. Not incidentally, the US Civil Rights Commission found that African Americans are 900% more likely to cast “spoiled” votes (those cast and not counted) than a white voter.
Read the full story here: http://www.gregpalast.com/
Ohio Gives Black Voters "Absentee" Non-Ballots
Our Investigation Uncovers Thousands at Risk
of Ballot Loss
...
Our Investigation Uncovers Thousands at Risk
of Ballot Loss
...
Several thousand African-American voters in Dayton, Ohio, may find their ballots left uncounted, and they, and America, won’t know it––even if the lost votes change the presidency.
This Sunday, I joined the Freedom Faith Missionary Baptist Church group headed to the one and only Sunday polling station in all of Dayton and Montgomery County.
They stood in a line with nearly one thousand voters. The line — about 80% African-American — snaked through the state building then out, through and around the building’s parking complex.
After the hours of waiting, the patient citizens got their ballots — or thought they did. They didn’t get ballots. They got this: “APPLICATION FOR ABSENT VOTER’S BALLOT.”
WHAT???????
In prior elections, and in some other counties in this current polling, early voters got ballot ballots, not absentee ballots.
I immediately got voting rights attorney Robert Fitrakis, on the phone. I told Fitrakis, also a professor at Columbus State College, about handing voters absentee ballots instead of regular, vote-now ballots.
“That’s insane!” he said, “Completely wrong.” And stone cold dangerous to the vote count.
It’s simple: Not all absentee ballots get counted. Indeed, as I pointed out in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, the US government data indicates that 488,136 mail-in ballots were rejected after they were cast in 2008. The New York Times puts it at two or three million cast and not counted. Not incidentally, the US Civil Rights Commission found that African Americans are 900% more likely to cast “spoiled” votes (those cast and not counted) than a white voter.
Read the full story here: http://www.gregpalast.com/
See MoreThis Sunday, I joined the Freedom Faith Missionary Baptist Church group headed to the one and only Sunday polling station in all of Dayton and Montgomery County.
They stood in a line with nearly one thousand voters. The line — about 80% African-American — snaked through the state building then out, through and around the building’s parking complex.
After the hours of waiting, the patient citizens got their ballots — or thought they did. They didn’t get ballots. They got this: “APPLICATION FOR ABSENT VOTER’S BALLOT.”
WHAT???????
In prior elections, and in some other counties in this current polling, early voters got ballot ballots, not absentee ballots.
I immediately got voting rights attorney Robert Fitrakis, on the phone. I told Fitrakis, also a professor at Columbus State College, about handing voters absentee ballots instead of regular, vote-now ballots.
“That’s insane!” he said, “Completely wrong.” And stone cold dangerous to the vote count.
It’s simple: Not all absentee ballots get counted. Indeed, as I pointed out in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, the US government data indicates that 488,136 mail-in ballots were rejected after they were cast in 2008. The New York Times puts it at two or three million cast and not counted. Not incidentally, the US Civil Rights Commission found that African Americans are 900% more likely to cast “spoiled” votes (those cast and not counted) than a white voter.
Read the full story here: http://www.gregpalast.com/
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