McCain Gaming Pals Set 2,000% Odds Against Native American Vote
By Denis
Campbell, The Vadimus Post
Oct 24th, 2008
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Vadimus Post » Features » McCain Gaming
Pals Set 2,000% Odds Against Native American
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Hispanic? Congratulations, you’ve only a 500% chance your vote will not be counted. Black, 900%. Native American, 2,000%! While you may have been purged from voter roles in the first two classes, you can cast a provisional ballot (of course it will not be counted on election night). If you’re a Native American though, you’re out of luck and… no one seems to care.
Russell Means, Lakota Nation leader who withdrew from all US treaties 11-months ago, is running again for Pine Ridge Sioux Tribal President to head the tribal council in South Dakota. In the 2000 election, a total of 2,700 ballots were cast. He lost. Undaunted, he ran and lost again in 2002 with about 3,000 ballots cast. In 2004, he received 3,200 votes, yet somehow lost as his opponent won with 3,500 votes! (More 6,700 ballots were cast, 4,000 more votes or 110% higher than normal.)
He ran again in 2006 and received 2,700 total votes and again list as another 4,000 ballots mysteriously appeared doubling the normal turnout. Imagine double the number of ballots unexpectedly showing up in Grosse Point Park or Westchester? We’d still be talking about it.
According to Means, “we face blatant vote rigging issues and the tribal council and tribal police don’t care if they’re seen… they stuff ballot boxes or lose them and the tribal police are directly involved. They’re the ones who come to the precincts and collect the boxes and somehow ballots disappear or others are added. There is also a pattern of blatant buying of votes, the political parties haul voters to the polls, pay them $7 or $9 for each vote and give them alcohol before and after.”
This week West Virginia voters using touchscreens claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans stand accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility. In the Sioux Pine Ridge Nation elections are just blatantly stolen.
Native Americans on reservations across the USA cannot even get paper ballots counted correctly. They also have no 14th Amendment legal recourse and even their 13th and 15th amendment voting rights are a subject of much debate. “The Federal Courts won’t touch this,” said Means, “we live under a system of colonial apartheid in the USA.”
Every two years though they have to have an election. Said Means, “the 2006 election was so grossly illegal that the Court of Election Appeals, appointed by the Tribal Council, ruled it was an invalid election, that it was crooked.” The existing tribal council simply stated, “no, it wasn’t, ignored the Court they themselves appointed and certified the election result. The BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) then rubber stamped the election result.
In a release from that period, the BIA “found no wrongdoing in the Pine Ridge election.” A senior BIA official though, speaking on condition of anonymity said, “if you thought the revelations of orgies and parties at Interior were news, this is even bigger. The gaming lobby (Rick Davis, Jack Abramoff, John McCain…) controls this bureau and these tribal councils are just figureheads that live and die by the generosity of those in charge of Indian casino gaming.”
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Pals Set 2,000% Odds Against Native American
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