Posted on 07/14/2004 10:13:47 PM PDT by esryle
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry yesterday announced the formation of a nationwide SWAT team of election lawyers to combat the kind of voting irregularities that occurred in Florida four years ago, contributing to the disputed election of President Bush.
Kerry said his team would take "tough action" to prevent the kind of voter "intimidation and harassment" that kept about 1 million African American voters from the polls in 2000 and prevented about 57,000 black voters from casting votes in Palm Beach County, Fla.
The legal team is led by Washington, D.C., attorney Robert Bauer and backed by teams of lawyers around the nation.
Kerry outlined the election program in an interview with executives of The Hearst Corp. and representatives from the company's newspapers, including Kenneth Bunting, executive editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Also at the meeting were representatives from Hearst's television stations and magazines from across the country.
Kerry said his lawyers would "go after" local election officials who erroneously "purge people" from the rolls of registered voters.
Kerry also expressed concern about some of the new digital voting machines fielded in some states as part of the congressionally backed, multibillion-dollar effort to modernize the election system in the aftermath of the 2000 irregularities.
On other issues, Kerry:
Hinted that he may travel overseas before the Nov. 2 election "not to negotiate but to listen" to foreign leaders about their views on U.S.-led operations in Iraq and other international issues.
Declined to rule out a visit to Iraq "at the appropriate time."
Promised to hold monthly news conferences if elected.
Kerry declined to identify countries he may visit before the election, but he mentioned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordanian King Abdullah II, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Helmut Schroeder as allied leaders who should be enlisted in U.S. efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq.
Kerry noted that some past presidential nominees have traveled overseas before elections.
Iraq was "not high on the list" of countries he might visit, Kerry said, adding: "If I could (visit Iraq) at the appropriate moment, of course I'd go - for a troop visit, certainly."
Separately, Bauer said in an interview that the election teams would work in every state during the next few months, talking with local authorities, gathering information on voting procedures and researching possible legal issues that could arise.
"We have an operation that's nationwide," he said. "We want to make sure that every eligible voter who votes has that vote counted."
Bauer said the teams will examine a range of issues, including making sure new voting machines work properly, that voters receive adequate education and training on using the machines and that states don't mistakenly leave eligible voters off registration lists.
"We're trying to anticipate problems, so that when an issue comes up, it's not a matter of free-lancing a solution on the spot, but fixing it before it blows up," he said.
Kerry criticized Bush for building a "flimflam, fraudulent coalition" of nations for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, saying that the United States and Britain bore the burden, the casualties and the costs with only symbolic help coming from a variety of countries claimed as full coalition partners by Bush administration officials.
Kerry said his goal as president would be to get "as many damn countries involved on the ground as possible" in Iraq, in part by sharing reconstruction contracts with participating nations.
Kerry continued to defend his vote in favor of the congressional resolution in October 2002 authorizing Bush to go to war in Iraq as a "last resort," despite the findings last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration had relied on wrong information about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
If he had been president at the time, Kerry said, he would have "wanted authority to use force so I could get something done, but I would have used (the authority) differently" to build an effective international coalition and solicit wider support within the U.N. Security Council to intensify diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N. weapons inspections.
"My regret is not my vote; my regret is the way the president went about going to war," Kerry said.
I thought they set up a "Swish Team"..
They are either going to steal this election or riot
Good ol' John Kerry. So in touch with the average American that he thinks an army of lawyers will be viewed as a good thing.
I hope that talking Cadaver, John Kerry, spends 100 million dollars to have his lefty lawyers oversee the landslide ass whippin he has coming in November. Can we say "POETIC JUSTICE"
Are they going to ensure the St Louis and Chicago polls close on time? Are they going to ensure that 115% of the voting populace on South Dakota Indian reservations aren't going to vote again? Are they going to count all the absentee military balots in Floriduh?
Bump.
This is also written with that unbiased fairness we all expect these days from AP.
Looks like Kerry will pull a Gore and try to rig the election...and if that does not work...he will try to steal it through the use of the evil better known as lawyers.
Why hasn't he announced that he'll stop the Republicans from burning the black churches and sending them back into slavery?
Is Julian Bond writing his script?
An investigation showed the claim of voter intimidation in Florida was political grand-standing. It was a false claim that the Democrats keep repeating.
felony records?
>>>prevented about 57,000 black voters from casting votes in Palm Beach County, Fla.
Whatever you say, whomever the disembodied freak behind the mask of AP might be. LOL. This is a keeper. When you exptrapolate 57,000 from just Palm Beach to a statewide number, it is clear that almost no black voters voted in Florida, even though they voted (and by that I mean votes that were counted) in greater numbers then their percentage of the state population. I hope it is all clear now.
In Kerry's world everyone but Kerry seems to be a crook. And out to "steal" things. Like votes? But it's Kerry who has not been to work in over a year but still takes the money. Who is dishonest? Who is the thief?
In other words, he's ready to contest the election before the votes have even been cast. And your vote and mine shall be counted only if it can get past Kerry's legion of lawyers, who will be doing everything they can to put their patron on a throne.
So kerry wants to tamper with the election process, eh?
kerry wants to stack the deck, eh?
kerry wants to create his own brand of voter fraud!!!!
Some More Interesting historical news about kerry:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091943/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1160580/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1165078/posts
Some of kerry's friends listed below:
http://www.cpusa.org/
http://www.dsausa.org/
DSA's "Progressive Caucus" Links below:
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/members.asp
They are the Enemy Within!!!!
Ping!
The media and the ACLU regard GOP pollwatchers as racist. But Kerry can have pollwatchers but conservatives can't. What a world!
Black or African American alone or in combination 168,585
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