Florida: Where a decorated vet is told he can't vote

DO YOU KNOW  the fellow in the picture?

No? If not, you have a lot of company .  The election officials in Florida don't know him either.  That explains why, at the urging of the state's kookish Republican governor,  they have included Bill Internicola in the massive purge of people who want to vote this year in the never-ending GOP quest to smash fraud wherever it exists - or doesn't exist.

Let me tell you about  this designated victim of Gov. Rick Scott's hit list.  He's 91, a decorated WWII veteran (Bronze Star for bravery in the Battle of the Bulge) and  for the past 14 years has voted in Florida.

Not good enough for the state's flawed election bureaucracy - the same one that wiped a lot of voters in the 2000 presidential election  in which George Bush defeated Al Gore in the state by 537 votes  with help from the U.S.Supreme Court.

So here we go again.  While GOP officials scoff at references to their efforts as "voter cleansing", there is no reason to believe them for the Republican-led assaults on voter lists across the country that largely deny blacks and Latinos a visit to the voter booth. There was a time when the party prayed for bad weather  to keep certain voters from the polls;  that, plus poll taxes down south.

Internicola is the second case in this messy plot to reach the Net , largely exposed by ThinkProgress. By the way, it also noted that in the first five months of 2012,  three major newspapers - the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today - failed to mention a word about the scandalous behavior  in the  Sunshine State.  See how easy it is for me to be cynical.

 We mentioned in an earlier blog Maureen Russo, who has yet to be reinstated to the eligibility list  despite her valid profile.  So if your local Republican officials  tell you that there is no plot to deny selected voters their rights with the shopworn guise of good government,  let them scoff and sputter.  But don't believe them.  They are lying - which is one of the few things that they do well.