FL’s former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist says the GOP’s suggestion “that there’s some massive fraud going on” by Florida voters is “laughable”.
Rachel Maddow’s entire intro and interview with Crist last night is very much worth watching, and so we’ll post both at the bottom of this article. But one point in particular during the interview with the Republican-turned-independent needs to be highlighted here.
Longtime readers of The BRAD BLOG will recall that it was the progressive Crist who, during his time as Governor in the Sunshine State, among other things, restored voting rights for former felons in the state, expanded early voting hours and even banned all 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems for use other than as disabled-accessible voting systems for those who might wish to use them (in order to meet the disability voting requirements in the horrible federal Help America Vote Act of 2002).
The contrast couldn’t be more stark from his successor, the reprehensible current Governor Rick Scott, who spent much of this past election year rolling back Crist’s improvement to the voting system, in an attempt to keep legal, Democratic-leaning voters from being able to cast their vote at all, as even other Republican officials in the state are now beginning to admit out loud.
In the following, powerful clip from Maddow’s full interview last night, she asks Crist, as the former Republican Governor of Florida, about the ridiculously transparent claims by the GOP that restrictions on voter registration, the right to vote by former felons, and the shortening of early voting is “only about voter fraud” and “voting integrity.”
“Is it clear to you that is just bunk?,” she asks Crist who replies directly in turn: “It’s crystal clear to me. You couldn’t be more right, in my humble opinion. And, you know, we can say this about all these road bloacks that are put in the way of people exercising their right to vote, and we saw it in a dramatic fashion this last Election Day in Florida”…
Rachel Maddow’s full intro to the interview with Charlie Christ, describing how and why he was purged by the party (likely had something to do with his progressive position on democracy!) and the full 11/27/12 interview with the former Republican FL Governor, both follow below…
Intro…
Full Interview…
Late Votes and the True Vote Model indicate that Obama may have won by 16 million votes
From Richard Charnin’s Blog (True Vote Model)
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/late-votes-and-the-true-vote-model-indicate-that-obama-may-have-won-by-16-million-votes/
I saw this when it was on Rachel. It was wonderful. It was wonderful to hear a completely credible former Republican governor calmly and unequivocally state that Republicans know they have to keep people from voting if they’re gonna have a chance to win.
It felt so great to hear a few of the vital pieces of the grand Republican dysfunctional scam mosaic Brad has been covering so brilliantly for the last decade actually getting some national air-time.
And I had this glorious new thought/feeling. It was a realization of possibility and hope.
The Republican agenda is and has been(in reality) so unpopular for so long. And the country is more hip than ever to the fact that we can’t wait for Daddy Obama and the Demoblobs to fix much of anything. And there seem to be so many highly motivated active political factions in this country ready to address our problems in a real way that promotes real change.
And I thought if we could just clean up and fix our electile dysfunction, I think we the people would put so many people into office who were truly dedicated to change that we’d actually have a chance of turning this thing around.
I realize this all hinges on a fix that we do not have yet. But the vision was so clear and simple as a legitimate possibility. And there was such an unprecedented feeling of hope with it. I wanted to at least share it with my tribe.