The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: Part I
Jim Crow in Cyberspace -- The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida

"The guts for Michael Moore's opening screed on how Bush 'stole' the 2000 election," writes the Village Voice, "came from investigative reporter Greg Palast, whose own book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has fast become a cult fave among progressives." Now, WorkingForChange brings you an exclusive serialization from Palast's New York Times bestseller. Over the next two weeks, you can get your daily dose of Palast's opening chapter, "Jim Crow in Cyberspace" -- which we will interrupt only to bring you BBC reporter Palast's latest comments -- on Liberia, on Iraq and on the economic wars at home.

This series is part of the WorkingForChange campaign, in cooperation with Martin Luther King III of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to prevent the theft of the presidential election of 2004. With each excerpt we are including links to sign onto the WorkingForChange/King petition.
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Here’s how it worked: Mostly, the disks contain data on Florida citizens—57,700 of them. In the months leading up to the November 2000 balloting, Florida Secretary of State Harris, in coordination with Governor Jeb Bush, ordered local elections supervisors to purge these 57,700 from voter registries. In Harris’s computers, they are named as felons who have no right to vote in Florida.

Thomas Cooper is on the list: criminal scum, bad guy, felon, attempted voter. The Harris hit list says Cooper was convicted of a felony on January 30, 2007. 2007?

You may suspect something’s wrong with the list. You’d be right. At least 90.2 percent of those on this “scrub” list, targeted to lose their civil rights, are innocent. Notably, over half—about 54 percent—are Black and Hispanic voters. Overwhelmingly, it is a list of Democrats.
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