The abuse and intimidation of black voters in the South did not end with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, no more than it did away with the racism that made the act's passage necessary, as Bunster's dismissal of their claims is a non too subtle reminder. I do not recall all of the specific allegations, but he main complaints were centered around not being allowed to vote which was, in some instances, a product of the long lines, longer I'm sure than what Bunster encountered. What apparently occurred was that there were not enough ballot boxes and election workers in a number of largely black voting areas and as a consequence people waiting in line when the polls closed were denied access to the ballot. You may or not believe that, but it has happened before. In other instances, blacks who had applied for absentee ballots did not receive them, and at least in one instance, in which the husband was white, he received hers but his wife did not. No big deal, huh? Actually, from another standpoint, the election for president was and has been corrupted (if we are talking about democracy) at every stage of the process, so the job for the courts at this point is to determine which corporately-manipulated puppet is going to be able to divide the spoils with the largest shares going to those who needn't bother to vote to get it. As far as reverence for the wisdom of the "founding fathers," that needs a serious reevaluation. With few exceptions, they feared the masses and those without property who could not be trusted to vote responsibly (that is for the protection of property). One of their biggest errors (if indeed it was that, given our penchant for accumulation beyond our needs) was to give the job of electing members of the US Senate to the state legislatures. The criminality that was to issue forth from this stroke of "the founding fathers'" pen, makes any wrong-headed action taken by an "elected" government before or since seem like a hold-up at a 7-11. The US Senate became a den of iniquity.. As puppets for the "robber barons," they gave away much of the country to the likes of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, etc. By 1905, a half dozen were under criminal indictment, inspiring Mark Twain to write in 1907, that "there is no distinctive native criminal class in America except Congress." In 1913, the Constitution, which abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison had called "an agreement with the Devil," was amended to provide the direct election of the Senate. Have things gotten better? Only measured by pre-1913 standards. Recommended reading: David Graham Phillips, "The Treason of the Senate," published in Cosmopolitan (!), March 1906, and reprinted by the Monthly Review in 1953. After Jeff Blankfort had written: > > >What is clear from the silence of Gore-Lieberman and Democratic Party > >apparachiks concerning the violations of the Voting Right Act relating > >to African-American voters in Florida is the Demos intent to distance > >the Party in the public viewpoint from being the party of Black > >Americans. even when it could enhance their presidential chances! Mark Bunster wrote: > > What, exactly, are their claims? > > a) the ballot was confusing. This has been ajudicated, and--fairly or > not--that's about all one can hope for. > > b) the lines were long. Hey, they were really long where I voted, too. In > any case, what possible remedy is there? > > c) they were not allowed to vote. > > Of these, only c) has any useful course of action. I understand 468 > complaints were lodged with the Justice Department. What are they, and how > are they verifiable? Further, do they point to intentional fraud or > malfeasance, or--like the embarassing data cleaning job done on Florida's > list of ineligble voters due to felony conviction--unfortunate but > non-criminal mistakes? > > Seems awfully premature to throw around the rhetoric of abandonment without > a passel of facts to back up the charges. >
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