Uncounted Picks Up Where Recount Ends
Joan Juliet Buck in the May issue of Vogue Magazine was the first to connect Uncounted with the HBO film Recount - which stars Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary and tells the behind the scenes story of 2000’s controversial Florida recount. Now others are doing it. Anthony Lappé, Executive Editor of the Guerrilla News Network, connects the two movies literally, while the Recount screenwriter, Danny Strong, connects the Florida shenanigans with Uncounted’s premise that the manufacture of electronic voting machines without paper trails is criminal. It’s been 8 years, one would think we’d have licked this problem by now.
Not licked, but progress has been made. In Tennessee, our home state, we are quickly moving away from the disaster for democracy that is electronic voting machines and towards auditable paper ballots. But the enemy’s of a free and fair vote are clever and remain one step ahead by once again moving the goalposts. This time they are crafting legislation like Indiana’s voter-id law and Missouri’s proof of citizenship constitutional amendment that has the potential to disenfranchise millions:
Lillie Lewis, a voter who lives in St. Louis and spoke at a news conference last week organized to oppose the amendment, said she already had a difficult time trying to get a photo ID from the state, which asked her for a birth certificate. Ms. Lewis, who was born in Mississippi and said she was 78 years old, said officials of that state sent her a letter stating that they had no record of her birth.
“That’s downright wrong,” Ms. Lewis said. “I have voted in almost all of the presidential races going back I can’t remember how long, but if they tell me I need a passport or birth certificate that’ll be the end of that.”
For a little perspective, “from October 2002 to September 2005, the Justice Department indicted 40 voters for registration fraud or illegal voting, 21 of whom were noncitizens, according to department records.”
21 versus millions.
It’s time to vote. Do you know where your birth certificate is?
November 12th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
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