Yesterday I received an email on the topic of the 2008 election that was strangely familiar.  And there was a reason for the familiarity: I had seen it four years before, forwarded to my email box by the same person.  The reality is that this message is a complete hoax, and the fact that it is regurgitated after multiple elections (first being the 2000 election) and forwarded throughout the internet shows that gullible people are easily fooled because it comports with their established ideology.

First of all, here’s the email:

THIS WILL CURDLE YOUR BLOOD & BREAK YOUR HEART

Interesting  Statistic
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of  Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out facts of 2008  Presidential election:

Number  of States won by:
Democrats:  19
Republicans:   29

Square  miles of land won by:
Democrats:  580,000
Republicans:   2,427,000

Population of counties  won by:
Democrats:  127 million
Republicans:  143 million

Murder rate  per 100,000 residents in counties won  by:
Democrats:  13.2
Republicans:   2.1

Professor Olson  adds:
“In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won by Republicans was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.

Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare.

Professor Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at  stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom

Anyone not blinded by ideology would quickly see these so-called “facts of [the] 2008 Presidential election” are suspicious, starting with the number of states and square miles of land won.  Has it really been that long since the election that people actually think McCain won 10 more states than Obama?  Talk about short-term memory.

It only took me 2 seconds — literally — to search Google to find out that this email is a long-discredited hoax.  FactCheck.org completely dismantles the widely forwarded message in its current 2008 manifestation.  Starting by pointing out that Professor Olson has denied being the source of these “facts” since 2000, FactCheck then addresses the stats:

• President-elect Barack Obama actually carried 28 states (and the District of Columbia), not 20 as claimed in the message. Sen. John McCain carried only 22 states, not 30.The murder rate for counties carried by Obama was 6.56 per 100,000 inhabitants, less than half the rate claimed in the message. The rate for counties carried by McCain was 3.60 per 100,000, much higher than claimed in the message.
• The total area of states won by Obama is actually 1,483,702 square miles, significantly more than the 580,000 stated by the e-mail. McCain’s states have an area of 2,310,315 square miles, not the 2,427,000 claimed.
• The population of counties carried by Obama is just under 183 million, not the 127 million claimed. McCain carried counties with a total population of just under 119 million, far fewer than claimed in this message.
• The murder rate for counties carried by Obama was 6.56 per 100,000 inhabitants, less than half the rate claimed in the message. The rate for counties carried by McCain was 3.60 per 100,000, much higher than [the 2.1] claimed in the message.

As you can see, the stats are not just slightly wrong, they’re way off.  But I doubt this will stop dishonest people from using it again, because in the world of right wing America ideology trumps reality every time.

Technorati Tags: Election 2008, politics, politics of fear, propaganda, Republicans

My friend John Spence over at The Spenny Post has a great post on the recent uproar in right-wing circles over ACORN’s supposed connection to massive voter fraud and the crisis in the US housing market.  The mainstream media, in particular the increasingly irrelevant Fox News, give prominent coverage to baseless accusations made by pundits and political operatives, while real investigations into the issue are swept aside and ignored.  The accusations against ACORN are particularly fraudulent when one considers it was ACORN itself that not only reported to the authorities the false registrations made by some of their canvassers, but that they were the ones actually defrauded.  ACORN paid employees who lied about the number of voters they registered.  If any damage has been done, it’s been against ACORN.

A year ago the NY Times reported that after five years of intensive investigations the US Justice Department, rather than finding the massive fraud consistently alleged, “has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections.”  During this time there were 86 convictions, most of which were because people “mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules.”

Mistakes and lapses in enforcing voting and registration rules routinely occur in elections, allowing thousands of ineligible voters to go to the polls. But the federal cases provide little evidence of widespread, organized fraud, prosecutors and election law experts said.

“There was nothing that we uncovered that suggested some sort of concerted effort to tilt the election,” Richard G. Frohling, an assistant United States attorney in Milwaukee, said.

Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law at the Loyola Law School, agreed, saying: “If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant. But what we see is isolated, small-scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent.”

So what is really behind this oft-repeated mantra of voter fraud?  Spence points to the fact that “those 1.3 million new voters [registered by ACORN in the last two years] are more than likely to vote for Barack Obama than John McCain.”  And this gets at the heart of the matter.  Political science professor Lori Minnite of Bernard College, who has investigated the issue over the lasts eight years, tells journalist Andrew Burmon it’s all nothing more than a “strategic ruse.”

Rather than protecting the election process from voter fraud — a problem that barely exists — Minnite says the true aim of Republican efforts appears to be voter suppression across the partisan divide. According to Minnite, investigating voter fraud has become a Republican cottage industry over the last 20 years because it justifies questioning the eligibility of thousands of would-be voters — often targeting poor and minority citizens in urban areas that lean Democratic. Playing the role of vigilant watchdog gives GOP bureaucrats a pretext for obstructing the path of marginalized and first-time voters headed for the polls.

Essentially the issue is: the more voters, the worse for Republicans, especially this year where a large majority of the newly registered are young people and poor African Americans, demographics heavily in favor of Barack Obama.  Investigative journalist Greg Palast has been covering the issue of vote rigging and voter suppresion at least since 2001.  He recounts what happened in 2004:

In Ohio, during the 2004 Presidential election, 153,237 ballots were simply thrown away — more than the Bush “victory” margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was five times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush’s triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. The official number is bad enough — 1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, according to the federal government’s Elections Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count.

Correcting for that under-reporting, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. Why doesn’t your government tell you this?

Unsurprisingly those most likely to have their ballots rejected are minority groups, blacks and Native Americans, both heavily Democratic.  In looking at purged voter rolls in 2008, the NY Times notes that Colorado has rejected more than 37,000 voters since August 1.  And party affiliation matters.  Thirty-three percent of all registered voters in the state are Democrats, 35% Republican, and 31% are unaffiliated, yet 37% of purged voters were Democrats while only 28% were Repulican.

More than half the voters purged voted in the last two election cycles (54% in 2006 and 51% in 2004).  The Times article doubts whether there has been a concerted effort to purge voters and points to increased screening regulations as a result of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.  Yet, it fails to look into the political and ideological motivations behind HAVA in the first place.  It is precisely this piece of disasterous legislation that has been essential to the concerted effort to purge unwanted voters from the rolls.

Technorati Tags: Election 2008, politics, voter suppression

Updated below

Rick Davis, a long-time Washington lobbyist and currently John McCain’s campaign manager, recently told The Washington Post, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” It was a somewhat rare and candid admission by a high level party operative to how the political process actually operates in the United States. While Davis’ comments might seem specific to this election, both major parties have for years preferred to avoid real issues – universal health care, the militaristic state, corporate crime and domination, a growing prison-industrial complex, to name a few – instead choosing to emphasize the personal qualities and style of candidates, especially when it comes to presidential elections. As in advertising, which permeates American’s consumerist culture, the PR surrounding political campaigns is more about feelings and emotions, faith and brand identity than it is about the issues most important to the public.

Mainstream media coverage plays right along with the charade. In fact, it is the perfect vehicle for the branding of hollow political figures. Talk mostly revolves around questions like “Did he or she win over the public with this or that speech?” “How was the presentation?” “Does he come across as an elitist?” And on and on. It’s simple pundit-driven “journalism,” easy to produce, providing the illusion of substance while serving corporate masters.

When public opinion conflicts with elite interests, the public is silenced. Those seeking office know who their paymasters are, and if any issue supported by large portions of the population but opposed by corporate power gets through media filters, it is framed in such a way to be stripped of any substance. For example, take universal health care. For years large majorities of the American public have been in favor of it. So large in fact it can’t be ignored or easily swept under the rug. Ever since Bill Clinton – who was elected in large part for proposing universal coverage – eventually bowed to the insurance industry and HMOs and failed to make the necessary changes, any and all subsequent reform proposals, if even made, only give lip service to the idea of health care for all while doing everything to avoid making the real changes necessary.

Such is politics and democracy in America, a corporate friendly environment indeed.

UPDATE:

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has a slightly different take on this subject than I do.  Where I see the depoliticization of politics as a much more bipartisan issue, he points to the Republicans as the main culprits:

Ever since Ronald Reagan’s election, this is what the Republicans do every four years. They render issues irrelevant and convert campaigns into cultural wars and personality referenda. They converted our elections into tawdry reality shows long before networks realized their entertainment value. And every four years, Democrats seems shocked and paralyzed by all of this and desperately delude themselves into believing that mean-spirited “negativity” and nastiness will alienate voters, while the media swoons at the potency of these attacks.

While he certainly is correct in his assessment of the GOP’s approach, it seems to me one of the reasons the Democrats cave in is because they are unwilling to push a truly democratic, issues-based politics to the fore.  Basically limited to rhetorical promises at best, Democrats are easily exposed as the hollow populists most of the country sees them to be.  You see, they play the corporate game as well, which limits the depth and reach their campaigns can actually go.

Greenwald takes the stance of a “realist,” which is understandable.  He knows that “cultural tribalism, resentment and alienation are very powerful influences in how people think.”  This is certainly true, but is the most effective response more tribalism, more attacks, an increased focus on qualities and style?  I doubt Greenwald thinks so.  But it’s not so clear what he proposes the Democrats should do.  He rightly deplores the empty, personal attack strategy of the GOP, and calls for a more combative (defensive?) approach:

Democrats have clearly decided (yet again) to cede that lowly playing field to the GOP and are hoping (yet again) that those personality and cultural issues are not enough to outweigh the country’s dislike of Republican policies…. If John McCain remains — even from the mouths of Democrats — the Honored, Honorable, Principled, Heroic Maverick, the GOP chances will be as high as they can be.

As I see it, what is needed to win is not more attention to personality and qualities, but rather a greater focus on the fundamental changes we know are needed.  But the liberal wing of the corporate power structure will never be able to go that far.

Technorati Tags: debate, Democrats, Election 2008, elections, media, politics

Technorati Tags: democratization, digitization, netroots, new media, politics