THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER

• Protecting television evangelicals

Dear editor,

     I read with interest your article on the IRS challenge of the NAACP's tax-exempt status because of the remarks Julian Bond made regarding Mr. Bush.

This is a common tactic used by the Bush administration that is being implemented in order to deflect attention from the religious right and to protect their tax-exempt status. Time after time, the Bush administration and his supporters have diverted attention from themselves and their actions by projecting their attitudes and misdeeds onto others. In this case, the IRS has been alerted to investigate the NAACP's tax exempt status in order to protect the religious right's own status.

This preemptive attack on the NAACP is designed to protect television evangelicals. These people have clearly supported Bush while denigrating the "liberal" Democratic "agendas" and thus abused their spiritual authority over millions of voters in order to secure votes for Bush.

This is more heinous than what the NAACP is accused of. The NAACP will eventually be cleared and this will also clear the way for the lucrative businesses of the religious right.

This is actually a stroke of genius, and seems to be very much like a Karl Rove move. Shall we say "Rovian"? Nobody is going to outrightly attack the NAACP and many would rally to support the exempt status of the organization. On the other hand, many would not support the evangelicals and might even condemn them for their actions.

Therefore, this accusation of the NAACP makes a good precedent case for this issue and will serve to protect these highly influential evangelicals from any investigation by the IRS.

Teresa Wood

• In support of fair voting

Dear editor,

We have a real threat to voters from touchscreen voting machines with no paper trails and the computerized purges of voter rolls.

In 2002, Congress passed the wrongly named “Help America Vote Act” which required every state to computerize, centralize, and purge voter rolls before the 2004 election. This is the very system which the state of Florida used to remove tens of thousands of eligible African American and Hispanic voters from voter registries before the presidential election of 2000.

The act also lays a minefield of other impediments to voters: an effective rollback of the easy voter registration methods of the Motor Voter Act; new identification requirements at polling stations; and perilous incentives for fault-prone and fraud-susceptible touchscreen voting machines.

We must demand security against the dangerous “Florida-tion” of our nation’s voting methods through computerization of voter rolls and ballots. Computers were part of the problem in Florida, not the cure. NO voter should be purged from centralized voter rolls without proof positive that the voter is ineligible. We also must demand a halt to further computerization of balloting until such methods are made unsusceptible to political manipulation, fraud, and racial bias.

To sign a petition in support of fair voting, go to          www.workingforchange.org. and join Martin Luther King III, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Greg Palast, author of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” in the movement for a better democracy.

Marie Baker