Rolling Stone interview with RFK Jr. about possibility of a Stolen Election!!!

ROLLING STONE: IT'S ALREADY STOLEN


Investigation by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast released today



Don't worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an
investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program
of "GOP vote tampering" on a massive scale.

- Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged
one in six names from their voter rolls.

Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by
Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge - ten times the average
state's rate of removal.

- While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more
then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures
signed into law by George Bush.

Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of 'Jim Crow'
tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.

- A fired US prosecutor levels new charges - accusing leaders of his own party,
Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block legal voters as
"fraudulent."

- Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that,
in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging" ultimately took away the rights of 1.1
million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict that, this November 4, it will be
far worse. There's more:

- Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list management'
rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls."

Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an unreported
but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine
Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's purging his registration was
particularly shocking - he's the county elections supervisor.

The Kennedy-Palast revelations go far beyond the sum of questionably purged
voters recently reported by the NYTimes.

"Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics,"
under the cover of fighting fraudulent voting, are "systematically
disenfranchis[ing] Democrats."

"If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at
the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote
tampering."

Block the Vote by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Greg Palast in the current issue
(#1064) of Rolling Stone. [Media enquiries - Dave Falkenstein, Sunshine Sachs &
Assoc, via interviews@gregpalast.com.]

Note - Kennedy and Palast are releasing, simultaneously with the Rolling Stone
investigative report what they call, the vote-theft 'antidote': a 24-page
full-color comic book, Steal Back Your Vote, which can be downloaded or
obtained in print from their non-partisan website, StealBackYourVote.org







Interview about Vote Theft


BuzzFlash: You have been investigating the coordinated and vigorous GOP effort
to suppress and steal votes since the theft of the election in 2000. You and
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just did a BBC Documentary on what nefarious voter
suppression tactics the Republicans have in store for us in 2008. Can you
summarize some of the methods that the GOP are using to disenfranchise
non-Republican voters prior to the election, to prevent them from voting during
the election, and to keep their votes from being counted after the polls close?


Greg Palast: It's ugly. Consider: - In the swing state of Colorado, we found
that the Republican Secretary of State wiped out 19.4% - one in five - voter
names in an unnoticed mass purge. - In swing-state New Mexico, in the February
caucus, one in nine Democrats found their names missing from the voter rolls
supplied by the State. The elections supervisor of San Miguel County - whose
own name was missing from the rolls - has no confidence the state contractors
will fix it. Our statistical analysis showed there was a direct relationship
between your name and your race and income. The poor and the dark were
disappeared. - In Indiana, you heard about 10 nuns who lost their vote because
their ID - drivers' licenses - had expired (they were all over eighty). But
what about the others? We've calculated that 143,000 others were turned away -
disproportionately Blacks and new voters. And so on and so on.

BuzzFlash: BuzzFlash has been covering one public relations effort by the
Republican National Committee to create a false context for claiming voter
fraud. In short, they have been attacking a national community organizing group
called ACORN with news releases, lawsuits, surrogate assaults, etc., falsely
claiming (as they did in 2004 and 2006) that ACORN is engaged in the massive
illegal registration of primarily minority voters. Can you explain the
significance of the ACORN slander by the RNC?

Greg Palast: As RFK and I report, there are only about SIX voters found guilty
of federal voting fraud in a year. SiX! Out of 178 million registered voters.
So the GOP (and Fox and CNN) are running stories about ACORN signing up
zillions of illegal voters. Yep, there are a handful of phony names - but 'Mary
Poppins' has never shown up to vote. However, the Republican cry of 'Vote
Fraud!' has become the cover for purges and challenges to legal voters by the
millions. I even tracked down and filmed some of these so-called fraudulent
voters handed me from a GOP list. Every one was a legal voter. Tell us a bit
about the site and downloadable comic book that you launched with Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr. on how to prevent the theft of millions of votes by the
Republicans, yet again in 2008. The website is:
http://www.stealbackyourvote.org.

Greg Palast: Our Rolling Stone report that's out this week is all about how
they've stolen so many legitimate votes. The comic book, which includes the
Rolling Stone findings also includes the SEVEN WAYS TO STEAL IT BACK. And the
whole thing is illustrated brilliantly by comic crazies Ted Rall, Lukas Ketner
and Troubletown's Lloyd Dangle. I loved doing it. You can download the whole
comic book for a penny or more (donate more please) at StealBackYourVote.org.
And better yet, you can order bunches of the comic book there as well (and see
the short movies). Cool eh?

BuzzFlash: Can you briefly explain the role of ProsecutorGate at the DOJ in
efforts to suppress the Democratic vote in 2006? How did this fit in with Karl
Rove's grand voter suppression and theft plan?

Greg Palast: You betcha! Fired prosecutor David Iglesias told us something
astonishing: He said that he was fired because he refused to arrest innocent
citizens for voter fraud that didn't happen. That's obstruction of justice. It
was all about creating a hysteria over fraudulent voters that didn't exist.
This is what Iglesias basically said: "They wanted some splashy pre-election
indictments [Rove and the RNC] that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal
voters away." Only the voters were legal.

BuzzFlash: Isn't there one bright spot? You cut your teeth on GOP voter
disenfranchisement with brilliant reporting on how the Bush campaign team, Jeb
Bush, and Katherine Harris prevented tens of thousands of valid minority voters
from voting through a scheme to use an outside vendor, ChoicePoint, to create
an inaccurate list of felons who could not vote in 2000 in Florida. Hasn't the
current GOP governor, Charlie Crist, had the right to vote of ex-felons
restored?

Greg Palast: Crist is a duplicitous phony. On the one hand, he pretends they'll
let ex-cons vote as in almost every state. On the other hand less than a
handful of the half million ex-cons in the state have been able to get through
the insane rigamarole required to actually register. In most states ex-cons can
vote like anyone else.

BuzzFlash: As a follow up, from a practical matter, don't the Republicans have
to be within a certain striking distance to steal the election. If Obama keeps
trending up, or ends up with a double-digit popular vote victory, how could the
GOP steal the election? After all, if Nader weren't on the ballot in Florida
– despite all the nefarious Republican voter suppression and theft – Al
Gore would be president, right?

Greg Palast: That's what RFK and I say: you can't steal ALL the votes ALL the
time.

BuzzFlash: What can anyone do to halt another theft of the White House?

Greg Palast: Go to STEALBACKYOURVOTE.ORG. Get the comic book. Now was that so
difficult?*

BuzzFlash: For 8 years, you've been covering this issue. Some others have
joined you over time and it's a bit of a movement, albeit still relatively
small. But, as in 2000, not much has changed with the corporate media. They are
still pretty much ignoring the clear evidence of a coordinated GOP effort to
keep non-Republicans from voting and to steal votes wherever they can. Is there
any reason to think that they might awaken to their journalistic responsibility
to report on the mugging of democracy?

Greg Palast: Zero. That's why we have BuzzFlash. Bless you. [*In brief, Palast
advises voters to vote early; do not mail in your ballot; check on your
registration in advance to make sure there is not a glitch; don't vote a
provisional ballot; volunteer on election day; go to the polls with someone for
mutual support; and use the resources that you can get at
stealbackyourvote.org.]