You Can Draw a Straight Line from the 2000 Recount to 2016 Voter Suppression

[ehrnst]

"The principal strategy of the Republican side of the battle over Florida's pivotal 25 electoral votes was to delegitimize publicly the institutions that the Republican side found inconvenient to the effort to make George W. Bush president. These included Florida state laws regarding recounts, the Florida courts, and the simple process of hand-counting ballots. (Then-Governor Marc Racicot of Montana was a particularly pious charlatan in this regard. Last July, Racicot wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post stating his opposition to the nomination of Donald Trump. He should've thought of that 16 years earlier.) Then the Supreme Court decided to delegitimize itself. Voter suppression and institutional delegitimization are two sides of the same coin. One is essential to the other. Justice Stevens saw where this was headed, and it was headed to where we are right now.

The past 17 years has been the worst period for voting rights since the collapse of Reconstruction, and it all goes back to the dynamics unleashed in our politics in 2000. In 2000, for example, Florida contracted for a voter "purge" list that disenfranchised an estimated 20,000 voters, most of them minority citizens, because their names were similar to those of convicted felons. And, now, we have the Interstate Voter Crosscheck Program, which is to that Florida purge list what an oak is to an acorn. The entire Republican political apparatus, state and federal, has been dedicated to rolling back every hard-won expansion of the franchise and democratization of the franchise back to 1913.

............................................................................

That mockery of a presidential commission sat for the first time Wednesday morning, but it was years in the making. John Paul Stevens saw it coming. In 2000, the Supreme Court blessed official ratfcking with a constitutional imprimatur. Famously, it held that its decision in that case was "limited to the circumstances" of the 2000 election and, therefore, had no precedential value. That may be true in the nation's courts, but it has proven to be a deadly precedent in our politics. It is going to take a generation, at least, to reverse."

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a56423/2000-recount-republican-voter-suppression/

[annabanana]

1. Yup! Here's the Leon County Sheriff's Office, removing the uncounted ballots:

And here's the Brook Brothers Riot that precipitated it:

[DK504]

2. I know the Shrub

has never been smart enough to think this up on his own much less execute such a plan. Jebbie, yeah, not even his father would go that far. The war profiteer and his cabal, absolutely would ramp up a war against American civil rights.

[lark]

3. This is what gets me, the blame Dems first meme I see everywhere.

Dems have a winning message, we have won the popular vote every time and had it stolen by voting machine hacking or machinations too many times. Like those districts in WI that had more Repug voters than people that lived there, think there were 9. There was also large urban city that narrowly went for Drumpf where 80% of the people didn't vote for president but voted for other races. That's impossible and obviously changed. The results from Broward County in FL also look very suspect. I'm sure if all the districts were really scrutinized, Drumpf lost. If Repugs didn't intentionally remove voting districts from urban areas and consolidate them to keep poor people from being able to get to their polling place, the voting lines wouldn't be 8 hrs. long and more Dems would have voted. If they didn't remove people from voting roles for the sin of being black or a woman, Dems win.

We have the policies people want -
full employment
tax the rich
healthcare for all
clean livable environment
clean drinking water
good education
civil rights
reproductive choice

Stop Russia and the Repug party shenanigans and we win if we have a candidate without 30 years of vilification. She would have won anyway, without Russia, and should be president at this minute. However, I do think we need a younger candidate next time.

[ehrnst]

4. +1000 (nt)

[byronius]

5. So true.

[Podkayne K]

6. Not really

The same type of a*^%^holes who voted for Jill Slime and the New Mexico nutball this time are the same type of elitist jackasses that voted 90K strong for Ralph (as in I ralphed that sickening food I ate a few hours ago) Nader (since everyone knows it's I before e, it really means low point) in Florida.

All that other stuff is correct, but take away that low life who was really working for Norquist, and Al Gore--who wants single payer, is fanatic about saving the environment, who would not have ignored 52+ warnings that we were going to be attacked--would have won. Think about it, no Roberts, no Alito, no voter suppression, and well I could go on. But because a bunch of voters who cared more about their egos than their country allowed Bush and now Drumph to win, we have the US spiraling dangerously close to dictatorship which won't matter much in the long run as the world heads for climate doom.

All in all it boils down to this. In the last election, there were only TWO candidate who could win.
If you didn't vote for her, YOU VOTED FOR HIM!

[Amaryllis]

7. I've said for years that was the beginning of the end. It gave us the Bush SCOTUS which

gave us Citizens United, gutting the voting rights act...and all the stuff in the OP.

[VOX]

8. It's also a straight line from the sequelae that dropped out of Nixon's dying rectum...

To the abominable mess we're in today.

Sorry for the colorful language, but the worst GOP nitwits and extremists hail back to Nixon. The worst of Bushco (Cheney, Rummy, et al), and now, Roger "Kidney" Stone, etc. The dirty tricks of "Tricky Dick" have only gotten dirtier over the decades.