learn morE - UNDERSTAND
Caging 101:

Listen to an interview with Greg Palast about the latest caging incident
Monica Goodling was trying to tell us something important in her Senate testimony after she was granted immunity. She accused her bosses of perjury. The issue was her allegation that they knew all about “caging.” And no one questioned her about it. Not even a question such as "what is 'caging' and why would they commit perjury to cover it up?"

CAGING 101 and the gang who got caught by shooting emails to the wrong place

A political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. On the premise that the voter cannot be reached at the address, they "cage" the registration as fraudulent. The party compiles "caging lists" of undeliverable mail. On election day, a party operative with "caging list" in hand for his/her precinct, challenges the validity of voters' registrations who are named on the list.

Hundreds of thousands of Black and Hispanic voters were sent letters — do not forward. Letters returned as undeliverable (”caged”) were used as evidence the voter didn’t live at their registered address. The GOP operatives challenged these voters’ right to cast ballots — and their votes were lost.

But whose letters were caged? Here’s where the game turns illegal. Targeted were Black students in college and vacation, anyone who missed getting the mail — and you’ll love this — Black soldiers sent overseas. They weren’t living at their home voting address because they were in Iraq or Afghanistan. Many military votes were purged also due to underhanded purging, but that's another story.

In the 2000 an 2004 elections, the RNC employed "caging" on a large scale (along with other purging tactics) to challenge tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of voter registrations in contested states such as Florida and Ohio and some other states which might sway a Federal election.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast says 4.5 million votes will be shoplifted in 2008, thanks largely to the “Rove-bots” that have been placed in the Justice Department following the U.S. Attorney firings. Palast was the investigative reporter who uncovered the voter “purge lists” of 2000 that disenfranchised black voters.

RNC did this on a smaller scale in 1981 in NJ and again in 1986 in Louisiana, also racially targeting for the purpose of purging voters.

HOW THE GANG WHO COULDN'T ADDRESS EMAILS CORRECTLY WERE CAUGHT

When you hear the words, "What goes around, comes around," remember how RNC operatives were caught. It is hilarious and something you'd think would only happen in a funny movie:

500 incriminating emails from RNC operatives, many connected with Karl Rove's organization about caging voters did not reach the correct email address. They were sent to the georgewbush.org anti-Bush site instead of the georgewbush.com which is the official Bush campaign site.

Moreover, many had subject lines like "Re: Caging" and attached Excel spreadsheet files titled "Caging.xls" and "Caging-1.xls". These emails were passed on to Greg Palast, a well-known investigative reporter and author of "Armed Madhouse." In addition, the emails supplied information about Attorney General Gonzales and the justice department's role in the firing of federal attorneys for political reasons.

LINK TO SOME OF THE EMAILS.

Caging is not "left," "right" or anything else except a criminal act when it targets a specific ethnic group. Americans, regardless of political party, should be seriously concerned about an organized, concentrated national plan to commit such a crime.

Suppressing votes gives us elected officials who, at best: don't belong there; and at worst: are unfit for the office they hold. With a scandal a day involving real crimes coming out of the current Washington administration, perhaps counting ALL the votes is a wiser method of electing our leaders.

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