This Man Could be the Devil

GREG PALAST: I drove into Detroit to investigate whether Republican plans to stop fraudulent voters might also capture innocent victims of the economic crisis. In Michigan, 62,000 families now face losing their homes to foreclosure on their mortgages. In neighborhoods like this, half the houses have been repossessed.

ROBERT PRATT: This house here is vacant. I mean, they’re nice houses. Look at this house. This is a nice house right here.

GREG PALAST: This is Robert Pratt. He’s next on the list.

ROBERT PRATT: This house here is vacant. Yeah, it’s empty. This house is empty.

GREG PALAST: That makes it impossible for you to sell your house.

ROBERT PRATT: To sell any house. This house is vacant. Then you look across the street over there, those houses are vacant.

I work straight with no overtime, no off-days. I’m talking seven days a week, eight hours a day. Yes.

GREG PALAST: So you’re trying to get these built [inaudible].

ROBERT PRATT: Yes, yes, yes. I want to build. I want—I mean, look at our neighborhood. Our neighborhoods are starting to look like a battle zone.

GREG PALAST: As the neighborhood spun down into poverty and violence, his son, just twelve years old, playing in the backyard, was shot dead by a stray bullet.

ROBERT PRATT: This is my son. This is my son here. This is Robert.

GREG PALAST: He’s lost his son, his home, and now he could lose his vote. A reporter for the Michigan Messenger wrote that the local Republican chairman told the journalist that his party would challenge residents right at the polling station to stop them from voting if their names are on a foreclosure list. The Republicans now deny this. But the Michigan Messenger sticks by its story.

There’s another issue. If you lose this house, there is an allegation that the Republican Party is—

ROBERT PRATT: Don’t want us to vote. And that’s not—I mean, that’s like saying we’re not a United States citizen anymore. You know, we lose our house, we lose our right to vote. That’s not right. That’s not fair.

GREG PALAST: This is the second time this family has faced foreclosure. Last time, they were thrown out by a company called Trott & Trott, a firm that evicts more than a hundred Michigan homeowners every day.

ROBERT PRATT: Trott & Trott—I mean, come on. That’s a mortgage company that’s here in Michigan that then got a lot of peoples and put a lot of peoples out on the street. I mean, to a lot of homeowners, that’s like an enemy.

GREG PALAST: Home after home after home, foreclosed, boarded up, abandoned.

But in an exclusive enclave nearby, there are no boards over the windows. These go for $10 million apiece.

Wow! No foreclosure sign on this house. This is the home of David Trott. He is Michigan’s foreclosure king. No one has evicted more families in this state.

What’s this below the Stars and Stripes? The Jolly Roger? It’s Mr. Trott’s flag. And this is Mr. Trott’s office. And it’s also Mr. McCain’s office.

The Republicans are renting their local headquarters from Mr. Trott’s eviction operation.

Greg Palast, BBC Television.

The Republicans wouldn’t speak with us, but they deny they are going to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters. So, we went upstairs.

And right upstairs from McCain headquarters, Mr. Trott.

David Trott not only houses the Republican Party, he’s also one of their biggest Michigan contributors. He and his wife have given hundreds of thousands to the party.

McCain has just given up on Michigan, yet the foreclosure controversy remains key to swing states Nevada and Florida.

And now, to the critical swing state of Colorado, where SUVs have replaced the buffalos that used to roam the plains. According to this report, Colorado voters are going the way of the buffalo: they’re disappearing. This government report says that nearly one in five voters, 19.4 percent, were taken off the rolls in an unparalleled, massive purge. Democrats accuse Republican Secretary of State Donetta Davidson of orchestrating the purge. But she says local officials have the final say over voter rolls.

She ended up here, in Washington, when George Bush appointed her head of the United States Elections Assistance Commission, where her job is to tell the rest of the nation how to run unbiased elections. She commissioned a report on election fixing. The report came in like this, but came out like this. It was written by Republican and Democratic experts. They concluded that Republican fears of widespread voter fraud were unfounded. This is the report’s author, Tova Wang.

The whole story is available at: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/25811/26/