Last week, Betty E. Brummet received a letter informing her the Republican Party had challenged her voter registration. A challenge was filed by Lori D. Sotelo. . .apparently a Republican hack or wardheeler. The letter told Betty that if she did not defend herself against this challenge, her vote in the November 8th election would be thrown out, and she would be unable to vote in the future.Betty is 82 years old, and has lived at the same address in Kent, Washington since 1953. She has been a faithful and diligent voter for 60 years. The Republicans strongarmed elections officials into telling her they would no longer allow her to vote!
Betty Brummet (my mother) worked a rivetgun at Boeing in the early years of World War II. She WAS Rosie The Riveter (a well-known and powerful patriotic icon). Riveting was not enough for the war effort for Betty. She enlisted in the Marine Corps and served for the duration of the war. She was widowed very early in life, went it alone, and raised three (quite outstanding) children on her own.
Her reward from the G.O.P. for her military service, and for being a taxpayer funding many of their dingbat initiatives and unilateral adventures over the years, was complete and total disenfranchisement. In their anger over losing the governor's house, and the recent string of Republican political disasters--up to, and including, the disintegration of The White House itself--the Republicans decided to go on a voter jihad, and challenged nearly 2,000 voter's registrations, including hundreds of completely legitimate voters.
The Republicans wrongly guessed that at least some of the people they challenged would throw in the towel. They picked the wrong woman this time. She knew what had happened in Florida in 2000!Betty rolled into action, writing letters and calling friends in the community. She even enlisted the noted Seattle attorney Keelin Curran into her cause. They began a campaign to get back her vote, contacting: Norm Maleng, and the King County Assistant Prosecutor that had been assigned the voter challenge case; The Seattle Times; Attorneys for the Republican Party; Chris Vance, the jackbooted Republican thug who masterminded this sloppy effort; and The American Civil Liberties Union.
Ms. Curran and Betty Brummet heard today from the Republicans that, well, maybe they were a bit hasty and would be dropping this particular challenge. According to a reporter from The Seattle Times, "There's a business called Stronghold Self Storage" with an address somewhat similar to Betty's. He went on to say "I suspect [Betty] got caught in the same kind of address snafu I described in my story this morning. The Republicans thought they were challenging the registrations of voters who had registered illegally at private mailbox businesses and self-storage businesses, but, as Chris Vance said yesterday, they didn't check the cities or geographic designations of the addresses they challenged. "
Betty Brummet is about to get her vote back. They're going to have a hearing and make it official on Monday. And The G.O.P. are about to settle back into the hole from which they crawled. As it turns out, hundreds of their challenges are every bit as bogus as the one against Betty Brummet. They should be ashamed.
---o0o---
7 comments:
Hurray for Betty, Hurray for All This is That, and scorn to the GOP. We are through the looking glass, for sure, Jack.
I don't know if you heard Bob Garfield's "on The Media" interview of Judith Miller last weekend. It was priceless to hear her self righteous indignation melt into cocoa butter when she cited how thorough she had been in testing the government's dope on the question of WMD's until Garfield wondered how she could have applied so little skepticism about the DOD and CIA slant when both had gotten so much critical info wrong over the last 30 years. She roared until she bleated "Oh, it will be hard for me to trust them again, that's for sure". Her stint in jail was a career move and I am glad that she's out on her arse but the Times editors ought to get tough with their stable.
And, Woodward is a horse's neck. Journalists, virtually all of them mindlessly cite opposing PR blurbs and consider it reporting. For him to invoke "confidentiality of a source" while calling the it the moment he learned of Plames CIA employment "chatter and causal gossip" is sickening. He ought to be stuffed and mounted in a boy's club.
I didn't hear Garfield, but heard about it.
And yet -- and yet, Woodward is such a marquee star, he seems to be getting off the hook for behavior and ethics and judgement every bit as flimsy as Judy Miller's.
It was intersting listening to Ben Bradlee attempt to somehow justify all this and square it with the Times's more normally rectitudinous reporters.
It's obvious that multi-millionaire, best-selling Woodward has his head so far up The Establishment's keister that he has a case of the proverbial "ring around the collar."
Wow! The Republicans certainly did pick the wrong voter to challenge. Thank You Betty Brummet! I heard Chris Vance on the radio giving out a hollow apology then going on to blame interns and volunteers for the mistakes. When will the repubs step up to their claims of personal responsibility. Hopefully this Sotelo tyrant will be charged with perjury because she will have to defend each challenge in court. You would think she would have done her homework since her name is on each challenge but that would be too much work and their is a democracy to steal.
You are right Jason -- the Republicans all want us to be responsible, and then they do something like this, and hem and haw about the responsibility.
They definitely didn't put the blame for President Clinton's troubles on that intern!
Ha, ha. Yes and Clinton is still a favorite scapegoat (not pet goat) of the Republicans.
I hope that Betty reclaiming her vote doesn't mean that her supporters quit beating up the idiots responsible for this.
If we had more voters like her, maybe we wouldn't be in this whole mess in the first place.
Don't worry Don. In fact the Betty committee had such a ball clobbering the GOP over this one, it was a letdown when they threw in the towel.
Fortunately, these days the Republicans just do one dumb thing after another. Enough to keep us all busy until we win back the WH in 2008.
Post a Comment