Serious Questions Raised About Obama Tactics in 2008 Election<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
By Roger Aronoff
 
Recently AIM interviewed Gigi Gaston, director of the documentary film, "We Will Not Be Silenced." The film documents voter intimidation and corruption by forces working for then-candidate Barack Obama at Democratic precinct caucuses and state conventions during the 2008 Presidential primary. The filmmaker is surprising in that she is a lifelong Democrat, whose grandfather was the mayor of Boston and later the governor of Massachusetts, and she is a Hollywood screenwriter.
 
She says that after receiving a call from a former congressional investigator, she went to Texas to look into charges of voter irregularities in the Democratic caucus process to choose their presidential nominee. It was down to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. What she found, as described on the website for the film, was "falsified delegate counts, falsified documents, and other violations" And she describes the "disenfranchising of American citizens by the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign," and said that the "infamous campaign of 'change' from Chicago encouraged and created an army to steal caucus packets, falsify documents, change results, allow unregistered people to vote, scare and intimidate Hillary supporters, stop them, threaten them, lock them out of their polling places, silence their voices, and stop their right to vote."
 
Through interviews with people with a first-hand knowledge of what was going on, including civil rights activist Helene Latimer, a very disturbing picture formed of what the Obama campaign was up to in order to "win" the nomination. Attorney Gloria Allred is shown calling for the elimination of the caucuses.
 
Ms. Gaston described how the Clinton campaign attempted to bring evidence of some of these irregularities to the attention of the media, but they were largely ignored.
 
You can listen to the full interview, or read the transcript here. 
 
Here are some additional quotes from the interview.
 
"In Sioux City, Iowa, alone, out of a caucus where a hundred people caucused for Obama, 40 people had the same address.  Different things like that I saw, but the people are really the things that made me realize what was going on was far more serious than what I'd gone down to do, which was basically to prove everyone wrong.  And I was even more startled that when you actually tried to say something about it, and let people know, especially the press in this country-I think not only is our voting in great jeopardy here, but I think the press is."
 
"...if you had an Obama sticker on, they didn't check ID, they just waved you into the room to stand on the side of Obama.  That happened constantly.  A lot of people weren't even from that precinct, in that area.  If I want to caucus, and, say I'm in Venice, California, or Santa Monica, California, I can't go to Malibu and caucus also.  There were a lot of repeats, of people going all over. Bussing in was the worst part.  I don't know if you saw, in the documentary, where all these parents didn't know where their kids had been taken, and they'd been taken across from Illinois into Indiana, and caucused, bought dinner, and returned.  It's not legal to pay someone to vote for you."
 
"I haven't left the [Democrat] party yet, because I'm in to try to see if this is one last shot, that they could totally be heroic, unite the party, and address this.  I know it's a crazy hoop-dream, but I haven't left the party yet.  I definitely don't believe in what-the great gifts we were given as people that came to this country.  I don't believe that it's still there.  I really am concerned about our voting.  I really don't feel we're going to have-that our votes are ever going to be represented again if we, as people, don't go, 'Hey!  You guys have to address this!'"
 
          Roger Aronoff is a media analyst with Accuracy in Media, and is the writer/director of the award-winning documentary, "Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope." He can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org.