THE John Jackson? October 30, 2014 THE REPUBLICAN GAME PLAN: Keep African-Americans and Hispanics from voting. From a new report by Greg Palast: Election officials in 27 states, most of them Republicans, have launched a program that threatens a massive purge of voters from the rolls. Millions, especially black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters, are at risk. Already, tens of thousands have been removed in at least one battleground state, and the numbers are expected to climb . . . At the heart of this voter-roll scrub is the Interstate Crosscheck program, which has generated a master list of nearly 7 million names. Officials say that these names represent legions of fraudsters who are not only registered but have actually voted in two or more states in the same election — a felony punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison. . . . If even a fraction of those names are blocked from voting or purged from voter rolls, it could alter the outcome of next week’s electoral battle for control of the U.S. Senate — and perhaps prove decisive in the 2016 presidential vote count. . . . . . . all it takes to become a suspect is sharing a first and last name with a voter in another state. Typical “matches” identifying those who may have voted in both Georgia and Virginia include: > Kevin Antonio Hayes of Durham, North Carolina, is a match for a man who voted in Alexandria, Virginia, as Kevin Thomas Hayes. > John Paul Williams of Alexandria is supposedly the same man as John R. Williams of Atlanta, Georgia. > Robert Dewey Cox of Marietta, Georgia is matched with Robert Glen Cox of Springfield, Virginia. . . . “Jr.” and “Sr.” are ignored, potentially disenfranchising two generations in the same family. . . . The search website PeopleSmart notes that 86,020 people in the United States have the name John Jackson. And according to the 2000 U.S. Census, which is the most recent data set, 53 percent of Jacksons are African-American. It’s an extensive report, but that’s the gist. Meanwhile, separately . . . A Georgia judge has denied a push from civil rights groups to force the state’s secretary of State to add 40,000 recently registered voters to the rolls, a setback for groups working to register minority voters that could have a big impact on Georgia’s hotly contested races next week. . . . The suit was brought by the groups after roughly one third of the more than 100,000 mostly minority voters they’d registered hadn’t appeared on the rolls, potentially disenfranchising thousands of mostly Democratic voters. The decision could lead to chaos next week as they try to vote and are forced to do so provisionally, and may well lead to additional legal challenges after the election. . . . . . . [Some] suggested the judge was playing politics. “A Republican-appointed judge has backed the Republican Secretary of State to deny the right to vote to a largely African-American and Latino population. It is outrageous that Georgians’ rights are being ignored,” Dr. Francys Johnson, president of the Georgia Conference of the NAACP, said in a statement. And the Ebola death toll — that has now stands at zero American lives . . . dominates the news. OH, NO WAY! It’s a flying car. A real one. Just watch and try not to crack your cheek bones smiling. (Not that you’d ever find me strapped into one of them.)