Can someone fact-check this?

[Berry Cool]

I'm posting this here because it has to do with an interview Tweety did with Rosie O'Donnell in which he claims that a great number of African Americans, specifically in Cuyahoga County, Ohio (which he, by the way, does NOT know how to pronounce correctly), voted Republican because they had been persuaded they had to over the "gay issue." My understanding is that overall, Cuyahoga went blue (despite any attempts to fix the election...for our purposes, we won't even go there). But does anyone know for sure what the percentage of African American Republican voters in Cuyahoga in 2004 was? Should this go in another forum?

[mzteris]

1. take a look at this link

it might have the info you're looking for.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/5/94939/4521

[goclark]

2. Yes, I heard that fool say that and I was floored

He is no sure of the trash that he talks.

Of all the things in the world to talk about ~ I think they set him up to say that so Blackwell would look clean.

[FogerRox]

3. Someone in the Election reform forum would know

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=203

[mzteris]

not about Cuyahoga, but

the AA/gay vote issue overall:

"There were about half-million more Black Republican presidential voters in 2004 than in 2000 – bad news, but not nearly as pivotal a development as claimed by the GOP, the corporate media and even some segments of the Black press. The conventional wisdom is that Black churchgoers joined religious whites in defense of “moral values” and, especially, in opposition to gay marriage, which was on the ballot in a number of “battleground” states. Republicans go further, proclaiming that the 11 percent GOP slice of the Black electorate in 2004 (up from 9 percent or less in 2000) is proof that a “new Black conservatism” is emerging – a phenomenon supposedly fueled by, depending on the “spin” of the moment, disenchanted younger Blacks or highly religious older African Americans or comfortable middle-class Blacks of all ages.

Nothing of the kind has occurred. This election cycle was the most expensive and intensive in recent history – it brought out lots of everybody, voters of all sorts. And lots of people were paid to turn out voters, most notably a class of Black preachers coaxed out of the apolitical woodwork by millions of dollars in faith-based bribes from the Bush administration. The Black vote soared from 10.5 million (including about a million Republicans) in 2000 to 13.2 million in 2004, an increase of more than 25 percent. By ’s calculations, almost 20 percent of the new Black voters were Republicans, boosting the GOP’s share of a much larger 2004 Black vote to 11 percent, including about 1.5 million Republicans.

Put another way, the increase of roughly half a million Black Republicans among the 2.6-plus million additional Black voters in 2004 amounted to twice as many additional Black votes as Bush would have gotten had he been kept to 9 percent Black support, as in 2000. With 11 percent of a much larger Black electorate, Bush picked up about a quarter million more Black votes than he should have. In raw numbers, that’s not an eye-popping return on the huge Republican investment in propaganda and bribery in the Black community. "

http://www.blackcommentator.com/114/114_cover_election.html

[tocqueville]

4. I found a DU post on "Bella Ciao" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4815

Anomalies were found. Almost all of the witnesses that I spoke with felt that the ballots were not in random order, that they had been previously sorted. There would be long spurts of votes for only one candidate and then long spurts for another, which seemed statistically improbable to most.
From what they were able to get through, witnesses found that signature counts were very much different from the official recorded number of ballots.

At the time of the orientation, Jacqui Maiden stated that there will be no visual inspection of the remaining 600,000-some ballots in the county.

---------------
This is Jen Frigolette, coordinator in Cuyahoga County. We started our recount today, Thursday December 16, 2004. I have started composing a long description of what transpired, but it occurs to me now that I no longer have the capacity to finish in such detail.

________________________________________

so obviously DU has made its way to Italy... somehow

[Berry Cool]

5. Thanks to all.

I had a feeling Tweety was glossing the truth a bit.

[Ayesha]

6. Also don't forget

That was BEFORE Hurricane Katrina. I think that now those few blacks who voted Repub in the past will tell them exactly where they can stick their "moral values".

[dsc]

7. NPR did a story on this just today

His overall percentage of the black vote was less than doles in 96 but in Ohio he did do better.