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Stealing An Election: The Psychological Impact Beyond the Ballot Box
By Debbe Deane, PsyD
For the first time in American history a Black man is poised to become the darling of the Democratic Party, and there is every possibility that he could win the nomination for President of the United States, leading to what has to be the most historical presidency since the United States began. This monumental moment will only happen however, if diligent, honest eyes and ears continue to monitor and speak out about the nation's dismal, antiquated voting process, beleaguered by massive electronic voting irregularities and laughable technology that were supposed to increase reliability and validity in a sophisticated, streamlined process.
Instead, there is an unprecedented resurgence of voter intimidation, stories of polls closed too soon, voters' prevented from casting ballots due to suddenly living in the 'wrong precinct,' being away serving in the military on tours of duty, or conducting their lives in foreign countries. There are the tales of ballot-hunters buying votes for $3-5 dollars a ballot, reports of thousands of fictitious names on ballots, voters having their party 'switched,' polls running out of ballots...You get the picture. Some may wonder, why bother? Especially, since the objective is to deny tens of thousands of citizens their right to vote. It is a psychological ploy generated to keep certain factions in power, albeit, illegally-obtained. We see it played out on television in other countries repeatedly and want to rescue those denied their voting rights, because something within us knows this is wrong, yet the same behavior occurs on U.S. soil during election years. The watchdog group 'Common Cause' has documented thousands of complaints from American citizens that describe these egregious voting irregularities.
When a people feel disempowered, the motivation to try also decreases, likened to a sort of 'learned helplessness.' The adage that 'if nothing ever changes, then nothing ever changes' is a plausible, yet painful analogy. There is a direct and powerful correlation to how individual voters may they see themselves fitting into their society. During the Super Tuesday Primary, in Horry County, South Carolina, for example, a predominantly Black district, the election activist group, 'Make A Difference,' confirmed that some precinct officials (usually white) passed out note pads and simply asked the voters to write their candidate's name on a piece of paper after nearly 80% of the county's touch screen voting machines suddenly failed. Early reports showed that one precinct reportedly turned away voters for seven hours consecutively. Voting fraud was also widely reported in parts of Rhode Island, Tennessee, South Dakota, and Nevada by numerous 'election-watchers,' 'bloggers,' 'instant messagers,' 'texters,' and news/information technosites including FreedomRadio.com, U-Tube.com, U.S.news.com, and WordPress.com
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine in 2006, depicted even more instances of voter fraud, as he detailed the disenfranchisement of voters that emerged in the days following the November 2004 Presidential Election: "Nearly half of the 6-million American voters living abroad never received ballots, or received them too late to vote after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down its Internet website used to file overseas registrations. The consulting firm Sproul & Associates, hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations...Florida, the state that clinched Bush's victory in 2004, purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards, and one in four Ohio citizens who registered showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to quash the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast their ballots."
The "Help America Vote Act:" A Euphemistic Play on Words
In the November 2000 Presidential Election, Florida voting officials purged nearly 58-thousand names from the registries. George Bush's Help America Vote Act (HAVA) meant that more than 90% of those individuals were supposedly ex-cons who were not allowed to vote in Florida. Most of them lived in decidedly Black areas. The loss of voters meant that Jeb Bush's brother would win the presidency, and thousands of innocent citizens had been denied their civil rights by then Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris. More than 53% of those purged from the rolls in Florida in 2000 were Black and Brown. Bush's HAVA plan also meant a mandatory deadline in which the Secretaries of State in all 50 states were ordered to implement similar searches through checks of computerized voting files in every election in order to purge thousands of innocent "suspect voters." www.ejfi.org. The President is the Secretary of State's ultimate 'parent company,' and the Secretaries' are a state's chief elections officers, charged with addressing reports of voter fraud under HAVA. Commentator Karen de Soto of MSNBC wrote that:
Under HAVA electronic voting machines replaced old voting machines. Votes are recorded on a computer chip that is removed at the end of an election. A paper tape in the machine records the number of votes but has no capability to store any individuals record of each vote cast...so there is no audit trail through which votes can be later verified. The machines are easily hacked and have not been scientifically tested for accuracy. Because the margin of victory in many elections has been won by a very small number of votes, accuracy becomes imperative...and even if a proper audit procedure were available, the results would likely be inaccurate. Anyone who has ever used a computer knows that, just in case, you should save, back up, and print a hard copy of anything important, yet that rule has been disregarded when it comes to one's fundamental right to vote.
Mail-in Ballots-The Most 'Preferred' Method of Stealing Your Vote
Within the context of the absentee voting process there are thousands of horrendous accounts of the myriad ways in which 'ballot bandits' sabotage the voting process through paying for votes, robbing mailboxes and mail trucks, writing a name multiple times in different ways, leading to multiple votes being cast, discarding ballots that could easily have been counted, 'hacking into the system' to manipulate electronic counters that keep tally's, effectively inflating or deflating the numbers of Americans who have voted, and last but not least, the re-constructing of ballots. It is the latter which is the focus of the next section. When registering to vote there is a tacit assumption that once the task is accomplished we remain registered in the party of our choice. It is also a fair assumption to say that most of us will never visit the local Registrar of Voters Office to ensure that our registration remains in the same party we chose and does not magically 'switch' in a fraudulent manipulation of hard copy mail-in registrations, and ballots to support electronically misusing a database.
In Summary
There is an unconcealed level of voter fraud and manipulation of votes that portends as a wake up call to every earnest voter. The types of voter fraud illustrated herein are those perpetrated by criminals who know, for example, that most voters have only elementary or no education, that many cannot read or write, and that they depend upon assistance with the voting process. They know too, that many seniors' must vote by absentee ballot and they know people who get the wrong ballot may not be aware that writing their 'candidate of choice' on the ballot will not count. Other types of voting irregularities occur in the form of technological theft by the easy manipulation of electronic voting machines. Many individuals polled in preparation for this article believed that they could vote across party lines for whomever they wanted, whenever there is any election, without realizing that depending on the election a person must re-register into that other party, or register as an 'undeclared voter,' with certain restrictions that vary from election to election. It is incumbent upon each voter to educate him or her self about the voting process, voting rights, and what to do when violations of those rights occur. The trick is knowing when violations have occurred, especially if you are a mail-in voter.
Author's Note: Highlighting the 'Official Voter Registration Form' exposes voter fraud for the vicious act that it is, and is a poignant reminder that we all share in a moral imperative...one in which each and every person who votes must be ensured that their vote counts. Suggestion: visit the local Registrar's Office prior to any Election to obtain written confirmation, not verbal acknowledgement that your registration is, in fact, with the party of choice; especially given the plethora of electronic votes that disappear and the phenomenon of votes suddenly being 'switched.' Most importantly, make no assumption that because a receipt is retained by a registrant that the registration, or the vote cast, is valid. The Voting Rights Act of 1964 gives African Americans the right to vote. It does not give African Americans the right to have their ballots counted. In at least one in seven cases, they are not, according to the regulatory group, Equal Justice Foundation. Dr. Debra Deane is a clinical psychologist, Executive Board Member, and Media Director of the San Diego Chapter of the National Association of Black Psychologists, a former News Director, multi-award winning broadcast journalist, anchor, and producer. If you would like to comment, send email messages to: ddeane@sdabpsi.org. All messages are screened for content. Offensiveness is reported to the Federal Communications Commission.
CONTACT:
Debbe Deane, PsyD
ddeane@sdabpsi.org
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