The following video is courtesy of Greg Palast, the journalist who previously tipped Salon off to the widespread voter disenfranchisement in Georgia last month. Now focusing his reporting efforts in Florida where the state is under a vote recount, Pa...
The following video is courtesy of Greg Palast, the journalist who previously tipped Salon off to the widespread voter disenfranchisement in Georgia last month. Now focusing his reporting efforts in Florida where the state is under a vote recount, Palast is drawing on his experience covering the 2000 presidential election recount, when the difference between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore winning boiled down to the electoral votes of the Sunshine State.
"Eighteen years later and it's still the same," Palast told Salon. "I never could have imagined that my crews in Florida would be filming the same chants, same trickery, as in 2000."
Salon published Palast's very first investigative report in 2000 about the theft of the vote in Florida, then still in progress. Fast-forward to 2018 and the photos are nearly identical, according to what Palast and his team are witnessing on the ground.
"This week in Florida, my camera crew captured menacing crowds supporting the GOP, chanting 'Stop the Count!' - the exact phrase the GOP chanted in 2000. And in 2018, Democratic demonstrators are chanting, 'Count all the votes! Count all the votes' - the exact same (failed) chant from 2000," Palast told Salon.
According to Palast, in 2000, Democrats were calling for all votes to be counted - no games, no disqualifying ballots for 'hanging chads' or other gimmicks. The Republicans were adamant, led by Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris: don't count all votes. In the end a whopping 178,000 ballots were disqualified - and George W. Bush won Florida and the US presidency by just 537 votes.
Video Credits:
Cinematography by Zach D. Roberts and Jordan Freeman
Produced and edited by Nicole Powers
Music courtesy of Moby Gratis
Watch Palast's reporting on Salon:
Meet a purged Georgia voter whose right to vote was canceled
[Georgia's mass voter purge: Why was this 92-year-old voter denied on Election Day?]
(https://www.salon.com/tv/e/627267/c/3954)
Watch journalist Greg Palast reveal how Georgia pulled off its mass voter purge