The legacy of Florida 2000
by digby
This is Charles Pierce talking about the Mississippi election today:
You have a guy who’s so white he doesn’t even have a shadow asking for help from black voters because the guy he’s running against is a neo-Confederate yahoo. Of course, there is an entire legal and political infrastructure ready to assist the neo-Confederate by any means necessary. Elections are now about how good your side’s lawyers are, or about how firmly your local state legislature is controlled by ALECbots who have no interest in expanding the franchise. In a sane democracy, a half-seditious crackpot like Chris McDaniel wouldn’t get elected to a local zoning board, and Thad Cochran would have retired 10 years ago after a long career as his town’s most successful insurance man. In a sane democracy, the circus is harmless.
That ship sailed some time ago. Remember this?
(By the way, at the time of this decision, the people doing the recount were judges, who the Supreme Court majority apparently assumed were a bunch of hacks.)
Recall that every wag in the nation told those of us who thought this was slightly well, rigged, being that it was all happening in the state that was run by the presidents brother, that we needed to “get over it.” (There’s plenty of evidence that they rigged it, at least in some important respects.) The manipulation of the voting laws and the underlying principles thereof have subsequently become institutionalized. Why wouldn’t they? It works like a charm.
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