Greg Palast (right) interviews Rosario Dawson (left) about the Republican purging of Hispanic females from voter rolls in his documentary The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. (Photo: Cinema Libre)
From busted voting machines intentionally placed in precincts where people of color vote to fraudulent interstate purging of likely non-Republican voters through a process called “caging,” Greg Palast has been sleuthing down the details of GOP voter suppression for more than 15 years. He’s an investigative reporter who is not easily deterred, because it’s often a lonely beat — given that the mainstream corporate media is more interested in the final vote count, not who was intentionally not allowed to vote due to discrimination. Truthout recently interviewed Palast about this expanding scam that often has more impact on electoral outcomes than the actual vote tabulation margin of victory.
Mark Karlin: I’ve known you professionally since the theft of the election in 2000. You were the only journalist who nailed Katherine Harris (Jeb Bush’s secretary of state in 2000, who oversaw voting in the state) when she used a voter-suppression “purge” list through a firm then called Choicepoint to prohibit people with names sounding like felons — who happened to primarily be people of color — from registering to vote. It was in the tens of thousands — far, far more than enough people that if they hypothetically were to have voted would have made Al Gore the president. I asked you then, and I’ll ask you now. Why were your findings — and you have superb statistical proof — not picked up by the mainstream corporate media?
Greg Palast: In…