{"id":146753,"date":"2014-12-10T21:20:47","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T21:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gregpalast.com\/?p=10183"},"modified":"2014-12-10T21:20:47","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T21:20:47","slug":"palast-wins-sidney-prize-for-exposing-new-threat-to-voters-of-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/palast-wins-sidney-prize-for-exposing-new-threat-to-voters-of-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Palast wins Sidney Prize for Exposing New Threat to Voters of Color"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Sidney Hillman Foundation<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>NEW YORK \u2014 Greg Palast wins the December Sidney Award for \u201cJim Crow Returns<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cChallenging Crosscheck<\/a>,\u201d a two-part Al Jazeera America expos\u00c3\u00a9 that shows how millions of innocent people were flagged as suspected vote fraudsters just because they have the same first and last name as someone in another state.<\/p>\n

On the eve of the 2014 elections, officials had begun to purge voters based upon Interstate Crosscheck, voter fraud prevention software. More than 40,000 voters were dropped from the rolls in Virginia alone.<\/p>\n

Read The Backstory<\/a>, our Q&A with Greg Palast<\/p>\n

The Crosscheck program, used in 28 states, is ostensibly designed to prevent voter fraud by identifying people who voted in different states in the same election. The system is billed as a sophisticated fraud-detection tool, but Crosscheck lists obtained by Palast for three states show that the system matches on first and last name alone. Crosscheck flagged more than 2 million names in those three states, Palast found.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was absolute murder trying to get the Crosscheck lists out of the hands of these highly political agencies,\u201d Palast said. \u201cThey knew damn well<\/span> the lists were phonies\u2013just common ethnic names, an excuse to knock off Democrats\u2013and dynamite if exposed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
One more prize and we\u2019re bankrupt!<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I am truly honored to receive this prestigious award. But that don\u2019t pay the bills. It took six months of a team of six of us to lift the Crosscheck purge lists from the locked file cabinets of Secretaries of State who\u2019d make Katherine Harris look like Thomas Jefferson.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

We have ambitious plans for 2015, with investigations insanely difficult (and none too cheap) to execute.<\/span><\/span><\/span>
\nNext: Our latest from our Billionaires & Ballot Bandits investigation will be released as a print series and FILM.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Please support<\/a> the continuation of this crucial work with tax-deductible donation<\/a> to the Palast Investigative Fund.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

You can also browse our signed gifts<\/a> for the holidays.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And we need 12 Donors who can give $1,000 or more<\/a>.
\nYou will get a Producer<\/a> credit in the new film.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you ever thought of helping, now is truly the moment<\/strong>.
\nWith appreciation and holiday wishes \u2014Greg and the team<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In the states Palast studied, anyone with a common name is at risk, but the system disproportionately flags voters of color: If you\u2019re white, you have a 1 in 11 chance of being flagged. If you\u2019re Asian or Hispanic, your odds are 1 in 8. If you\u2019re black, the odds are 1 in 7 that someone in another Crosscheck state shares your first and last name.<\/p>\n

Check Al Jazeera\u2019s interactive database to see if your name<\/a> is in on the list.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreg Palast has uncovered a major threat to voting rights,\u201d said Sidney judge Lindsay Beyerstein. \u201cCrosscheck is casting unwarranted suspicion on innocent people and endangering their right to vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Greg Palast produces investigative reports for the Guardian, BBC TV, and other outlets. Before becoming a reporter, he was an investigator of corporate crime and racketeering for governments and labor unions worldwide. He is the author of several books including \u201cThe Best Democracy Money Can Buy\u201d and \u201cVulture\u2019s Picnic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJim Crow Returns\u201d was produced by Alex Newman, Steve Melendez, Tate Strickland, John Thomason, and Lam Thuy Vo, edited by Mark Rykoff and Jayati Vora, with photographs by Zach D. Roberts and interactive production by Alex Newman.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera America\u2019s broadcast<\/a> of “Crosscheck” was produced by Hanaan Sarhan, with Richard Rowley as director of photography.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0*<\/p>\n

The Sidney Hillman Foundation honors excellence in journalism in service of the common good. Judges are Rose Arce, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hendrik Hertzberg, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Harold Meyerson and Lindsay Beyerstein.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sidney Award<\/span><\/a> is given once a month to an outstanding piece of journalism about social or economic injustice, by the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which also awards the annual Hillman Prizes every spring. Winners of the Sidney receive a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist, Edward Sorel, a $500 honorarium and a bottle of union-made wine.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0*<\/p>\n

For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper\u2019s and Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n

Greg Palast is the author of several\u00a0New York Times<\/em> bestsellers\u00a0including\u00a0The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and<\/em>\u00a0Billionaires & Ballot Bandits<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Make a tax-deductible donation<\/a> and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to Palast’s\u00a0Newsletter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0podcasts<\/a>.
\nFollow Palast on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

www.GregPalast.com<\/a><\/p>\n

ShareThis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Sidney Hillman Foundation NEW YORK – Greg Palast wins the December Sidney Award for “Jim Crow Returns,” and “Challenging Crosscheck,” a two-part Al Jazeera America exposé that shows how millions of innocent people were flagged as suspected vote fraudsters just because they have the same first and last name as someone in another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-146753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}