GOP Lawmaker,"Suppress the Vote"

Well, somebody finally said it out loud; it's better for the GOP if fewer blacks vote. In this case, it was a Michigan GOP Lawmaker who spoke aloud what some of us already knew was the 'pubs unspoken sentiment.

Democrats on Wednesday denounced a Republican lawmaker quoted in a newspaper as saying the GOP would fare poorly in this year's elections if it failed to "suppress the Detroit vote."

State Rep. John Pappageorge, R-Troy, acknowledged using "a bad choice of words" but said his remark shouldn't be construed as racist.

Pappageorge, 73, was quoted in July 16 editions of the Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."

"I'm extremely disappointed in my colleague," state Sen. Buzz Thomas, D-Detroit, told reporters Wednesday during a conference call. "That's quite clearly code that they don't want black people to vote in this election."

Blacks comprise 83 percent of Detroit's population, and the city routinely gives Democratic candidates a substantial majority of its votes.

How many different ways are there to interpret the representative's comments other than racist?

In an attempt to explain, the representative only seemed to dig himself in deeper.

"In the context that we were talking about, I said we've got to get the vote up in Oakland (County) and the vote down in Detroit. You get it down with a good message. I don't know how we got them from there to "racist,"' Pappageorge said. "If I have given offense in any way to my colleagues in Detroit or anywhere, I apologize."

Only a Republican would defend the notion of "getting the vote down," and the idea that America is better off if fewer people vote.

Comments

[Tim Who?]

The only good thing about his remarks is it may in fact get the vote UP in Detroit.

[Todd Bolitho]

The guy is a dinosaur that should be politically extinct.

[Lorraine]

10/16/04

It is a well known fact that during the 2000 election the Democrats sent teams of lawyers to challenge and disqualify absentee military votes throughout Florida. Technicalities such as no postage mark were cited. (Military mail is somtimes not postmarked.) Later it was found that most were wrongly disqualified, but it was too late to reinstate them. An estimated 1,500 absentee military votes were never counted in Florida.

The Democrats are using the ballot issue of Nader in their attempt to disenfranchise our troops overseas from sending in their vote in a timely manner that by law mandates specific timeframes for allowing absentee ballots to be counted.

If states that the democrats succeed in having Nader removed from thier respective ballots, printing of corrected ballots, as required by law, more than likely will have thousands of troops in a war zone from having their vote count in the 2004 presidential election. These troops are fighting a war and dying and do not deserve to have democrats use their legal powers of challenge to prevent their vote from counting. We have an obligation to our troops and the underhanded strategic manouver by Democrats is unamerican and unethical but totally calculated to improve their vote count.

Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry recently told the NAACP in a speech that his campaign would provide teams of lawyers "in your cities" to "monitor elections and enforce the law." Are Democratic legal teams again planning to challenge the absentee votes of our overseas troops on technicalities?

Anyone who would support a political party that would stoop so low in their quest to gain the power of the whitehouse is not worthy of anothers trust on anything. The strategy should be criminalized as an attempt to defraud Americans of their civil right to have their vote count.

Lorraine Knight
Virginia Beach