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S.E. Wood Legalized voter manipulation I recently wrote an article on pending legislation
that will allocate $6,000 for every voting precinct in the United
States to purchase new voting machines to assure there is no
voter manipulation. The bills even have nice-sounding names, like
Equal Protection of Voting Rights Act of 2001, or Help America
Vote Act of 2001. But any violation of voter integrity at the
local level is small change compared to the wholesale voter manipulation
taking place in state legislatures all over the county. And our
own state House is a sorry example. It all comes from the results of the 2000
Census. Current law mandates "equal representation"
of all residents (illegal aliens or whatever). So here at home,
the total number of Tennessee residents is divided by the total
number of representatives, and the result allocates one representative
for each 57,467 residents, plus or minus 10 percent. And the
party in power, which in Tennessee is the Democrat Party, gets
to divide up the spoils -- obviously to their advantage. The Democrats have delayed publication of
their redistricting plan in order to give newcomer opponents,
Republican or Democrat alike, the least time possible to campaign
against incumbent lawmakers. But since the legislature must act
on their plan right after the first of the year, a preliminary
look was given The Tennessean this past Sunday. As expected, the plan either redraws Republican
voters into dominantly Democrat districts, so their votes will
be overwhelmed, or combines two or more strongly Republican districts
into one, thereby eliminating one or more Republican seats entirely
-- preferably those of representatives who have most strongly
opposed Democrat party programs. So it comes as no real surprise
that Republican Rep. Mae Beavers of Mount Juliet, a leading critic
of the state income tax, now resides in the same district as
Republican Rep. Diane Black of Hendersonville. One of them, of
course, has to go. Following the 1990 Census, six Republican
districts were similarly dissolved. The current plan seeks to
eliminate another six. Republicans now hold 47 of the 99 House
seats. Without a single vote being cast, that number will automatically
drop to 41. The Elections Subcommittee of the House State and
Local Government Committee will conduct hearings, of course,
but as State Attorney Ellen Tewes, counsel to the committee,
says, "There is no Plan B." So as you contemplate the integrity that your new $6,000 voting machines will bring to your precinct, keep in mind that their potential benefit is small potatoes compared to the voter manipulation and control going on right now in the Tennessee legislature. And they have made it all very legal. · · · |