What about 'spoiled' votes?

Journalist Greg Palast claims that Kerry Won if all the votes had been counted:

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

Particularily if they are voting with black boxes in Ohio [Machine Error Gives Bush Thousands of Extra Ohio Votes] More on Ohio's problems here.

According to Mr. Palast, on average about 3% of ballots in American elections are not counted due to 'spoilage'. Most of the 'spoiled' ballots just happen to be from areas with higher numbers of Democrats. How convenient for the Republican Party. In New Mexico, it appears that much of the pro-Kerry Hispanic vote was diverted into uncounted 'provisional ballots':

Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.

"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?

Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

Of course, it would be difficult for the leaders of the Democratic Party to demand that all votes be counted before conceding. That would be too confrontational. They'd rather surrender; how typical.

Of course, if the Democrats had gone to the courts they would have been crucified by the SCLM and the Republican Party. We can only win if we have an overwhelming advantage in both the popular vote and the electoral college. Let's adapt the populist politics of William Jennings Bryan: economic populism with a healthy dose of respect for conservative Christian values. (Not a phony marketing campaign to simulate 'values' but an expansion of the discussion of ethics and morality to all aspects of politics and public policy.) If we don't change we will become a permanently out-of-power coalition of minorities (ethnic and social), and the Republican party will dominate American politics as its libertarian and theocratic wings battle each other for ultimate control.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)