Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Governor Rick Scott and Doubts about Florida's Elections

by Nomad
In a recent two-post series, I examined the business career of Florida governor Rick Scott, a man who by most standards would be a very unlikely candidate for higher office. As founder and CEO of a healthcare company which was involved in the largest Medicare fraud in US history, Scott would seem to be unlikely to have aspired to anything higher than a bartender in some small town. Perhaps a born-again preacher.  And yet there he is today, governor of Florida. And ironically the only qualification for holding high office is his... erm.. business experience. 
Of the two questions that remained unanswered about Scott, the most perplexing was: How could such a person, with such a dubious background ever get elected? 

One person thinks he might have found the answer to that. David Kearns,  a former journalist for Florida Today newspaper covering police beat news, city and county government, and the environment, has investigated the suspicious goings-on in Florida's election system. After sorting through the complicated electronic balloting systems, he believes he may have found the method that has been been repeatedly used to rig the election results. 
If Kearns is correct, this audacious election fraud stretched all the way back to the hotly contested presidential election of 2000, which put George Bush in the White House.


And in that election, there were other investigators that raised questions about the results. Not in Florida but in Ohio. (More information can be found on that story by following this link.)

In this three-part video, Kearns narrates a presentation which outlines the theories in his book, Rick Scott: Enemy of the State. (Available in  Amazon's Kindle Store.)





Personally I find Kearns' theories compelling. (Isn't it a fair question, after all, why any voting machine should be able to count backwards or count negative votes?) Why shouldn't every state have a regular and independent audit of its voting process? Why shouldn't voters have a convincing means to recount the votes in any election? More people should be asking these questions, I think.
Confidence in this process is essential. People must believe that their votes mean something. The whole fabric of democracy depends on it and anything that can be done to restore trust in the electoral system is worth the price. 

The most worrying question is not what may have already happened but about what may happen in the near future. After all, Rick Scott has shown that he is willing to stand up against the Department of Justice regarding the eligibility of Florida voters. He has also shown that he is unwilling to look after the best interests of the poor in his state when it came to implementing the healthcare reforms. 
And the stakes are high when it comes to a fraudulent election result, especially in Florida, a key swing state.

Will the same people who allegedly rigged the elections in Florida make another attempt in the 2012 presidential election? And perhaps more importantly, with less than 125 days before that day of decision, what can Florida voters actually do to stop it from occurring. 
They can demand independent federal monitors to inspect all election equipment, and oversee the entire process, top to bottom. The monitors can be equipped with the power of federal marshals to arrest anybody tampering with the voting results.
If not, and if a few unscrupulous Republicans actually are rigging the elections, the people of Florida can expect to see more of the likes of Rick Scott, Marco Rubio and Allen West
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