Voting Issues and Reform's topics - tribe.net

"Perfect Storm" on Election Day

ForrestJ — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:53:12 GMT

A "perfect storm" could be building for US election day on November 4 because of a combination of sky-high voter interest, new ballot machines and a shortage of poll staff, the independent Pew group warned yesterday.

The Washington-based group set out a long series of problems still facing the US despite reforms aimed at avoiding a repeat of the 2000 and 2004 debacles.

The launch of the 77-page report came as legal clashes over voter registration and hours-long queues formed outside booths set up for early voting in states across the US. Voting is now underway in 46 of the 50 states, though election day is still almost a fortnight away.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/22/uselections2008

http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=45314

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Republicans target ACORN: the great “voter fraud” fraud

steveargue2 — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 06:02:31 GMT

US Republicans target ACORN: the great “voter fraud” fraud
By Tom Eley
18 October 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/vote-o18.shtml

A community activist group called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has become a lighting rod for Republican attacks as the US presidential election approaches.

In Wednesday night’s presidential debate, John McCain warned that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” He demanded to “know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship” to this purportedly criminal organization.

In a recent fundraising email, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin warned that “far-left groups in this country will do anything to help the Obama-Biden Democrats win the White House and maintain their majorities in Congress. The left-wing activist group, ACORN, is now under investigation for voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states.... We can’t allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election.”

ACORN is now at the center of a media controversy fueled by Republican accusations. The FBI has announced an investigation, as have a number of states, counties and municipalities.

What is this group that is allegedly responsible for “destroying the fabric of democracy”?

ACORN describes itself as an organization of “low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families” which focuses on such goals as raising the minimum wage and expanding access to affordable housing. It unreservedly supports the Democratic Party and has endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency. In the lead-up to the 2008 election, ACORN has launched a major voter registration campaign to bring poor and minority people—who tend to vote Democratic—to the polls in the upcoming election. It claims to have registered over 1.3 million voters, largely in critical “battleground” states.

There is no evidence that ACORN has committed fraud, a charge that implies intent. As is typical of registration and petition drives, ACORN has hired low-paid workers to carry out registrations. Some of these workers, in an effort to take home more pay, have invented the names of registrants. However, ACORN claims that it examines all registration material and flags forgeries in an attempt to assist state officials in prosecuting cases of fraud. In fact, ACORN claims that Republican officials have used the same registration cards ACORN has flagged for attention as a means of discrediting the group’s operations.

In any event, the Republicans have yet to explain the mechanics of how the supposedly false voting cards would actually result in thousands of false votes. The hue and cry over finding names like “Mickey Mouse” on a registration form begs the question: How could anyone cast a ballot under such a name? If the voters are fictional, as the Republicans claim, presumably they will not show up at the polls.

The Republican charge of “voter fraud” is itself a fraud. Through sensational accusations the Republicans hope to resuscitate their faltering presidential and Congressional campaigns. These charges could also be used to cast doubt over the legitimacy of the electoral outcome.

More fundamentally, however, the aim is to suppress the vote among sections of the working class and youth in an attempt to manipulate the outcome of the election. This is the real “voter fraud”—and there is a history to it.

The current charges against ACORN are only the latest chapter in this right-wing campaign to suppress voting rights. The campaign to restrict the franchise, found its most anti-democratic expression in the US Supreme Court’s intervention in the 2000 presidential election to hand victory to Bush by means of invalidating legally cast ballots, ruling that there was no inherent right among citizens to vote for the president. (Purchase online: “The Crisis of American Democracy: The Presidential Elections of 2000 and 2004”).

Since 2000, the Republican Party has taken steps to impede the vote not seen since the days of the Jim Crow voting restrictions targeting blacks in the South. Republican strategists sense that as the most rapidly growing sections of the electorate—youth, minorities, naturalized immigrants, and workers—punish their candidates at the polls, survival will depend on limiting these groups’ access to the ballot.

On October 9, the New York Times ran an exposé revealing that tens of thousands of voters in the “swing states” that will ultimately decide the presidential election had been purged from the election rolls, perhaps illegally.

In Ohio, the Republican Party sued the secretary of state in an effort to toss out the names of 200,000 legally registered voters for discrepancies—most likely clerical errors—in their registration data. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Republican Party did not have the right to bring the case.

In other states, new restrictions on the right to vote are aimed at those whose homes have been foreclosed and those who lack photo identification, such as drivers’ licenses.

The mainstream media conveniently forgets that the US attorneys scandal that led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales also arose from a Republican attempt to suppress the vote. A number of the attorneys were sacked because they did not comply with Republican pressure to expedite the prosecution of voter fraud cases, so that they would take place before the 2006 elections. For example, the US Department of Justice has found that US Attorney David Iglesias was dismissed for failing to investigate a local ACORN chapter in New Mexico. (See “Special prosecutor appointed to investigate US attorney firings”)

More craven than the Republican attacks on ACORN has been the cowardly response of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. In response to McCain’s attack on ACORN, Obama disowned any relationship to the organization, which has worked feverishly on his behalf for months. Moments earlier he had disowned Bill Ayers, the former radical routinely condemned by Republicans as a terrorist. (See “In defense of Bill Ayers”) Shortly afterward he listed those he considers his true associates. These include the world’s richest man, Warren Buffett, and former Federal Reserve Board head Paul Volcker, whose high interest rate “shock therapy” in 1979 was responsible for devastating many of the communities where ACORN now seeks to register impoverished voters.

The Democrats are not opposed to voter suppression in either principle or practice. They engage in it when it suits their purposes, regularly purging the nominating petitions of left-wing, and especially socialist, opponents. Barack Obama’s benefactors in the Illinois state Democratic Party have twice attempted to invalidate thousands of signatures of registered voters from third party nominating petitions in order to remove Socialist Equality Party legislative candidates from the ballot—Tom Mackaman (in 2004) and Joe Parnarauskis (in 2006). Obama personally came to Danville, Illinois, to campaign against Parnarauskis. (See “Democrats conspire against voters in bid to remove SEP from ballot” and “Judge orders election board to certify Illinois SEP candidate”).

The notion, pedaled by the Republicans—that the great threat to American democracy is that ineligible voters might somehow cast ballots—is absurd. The US is a country where only half of the eligible population votes and where the great majority of the electorate is politically disenfranchised by the two-party duopoly of big business.

In fact, the greatest threat “to the fabric of democracy” is the capitalist class, which cannot maintain democratic norms under conditions of growing social inequality in which the vast majority of the population is increasingly impoverished.

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Homer tries to vote for Obama

steveargue2 — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:15:04 GMT

Homer tries to vote for Obama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ

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Faulty Equipment in 1,750 Jurisdictions

ForrestJ — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:52:22 GMT

Disclosure of an election computer glitch that could drop ballot totals for entire precincts is stirring new worries that an unofficial laboratory testing system failed for years to detect an array of flaws in $1.5 billion worth of voting equipment sold nationwide since 2003.

Texas-based Premier Elections Solutions last week alerted at least 1,750 jurisdictions across the country that special precautions are needed to address the problem in tabulation software affecting all 19 of its models dating back a decade.

Voting experts reacted skeptically to the company's assertion that election workers' routine crosschecks of ballot totals would have spotted any instances where its servers failed to register some precinct vote totals when receiving data from multiple memory cards.

Like nearly all of the nation's modern voting equipment, Premier's products were declared "qualified" under a voluntary testing process overseen from the mid 1990s until 2005 by the National Association of State Election Directors.

Computer scientists, some state officials and election watchdog groups allege that the NASED-sponsored testing system was a recipe for disaster, shrouded in secrecy, and allowing equipment makers to help design the tests.

The federal Election Assistance Administration, created in 2002, took over the testing responsibility in 2005, but has yet to certify a single voting machine.

As a result, charged Susan Greenhalgh, a spokeswoman for watchdog group Voter Action, the systems on which Americans will decide the race between Barack Obama and John McCain in November are "scandalously flawed" and "the integrity of this election is in question."

http://www.kentucky.com/676/story/500701.html

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Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

steveargue2 — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:01:48 GMT

Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

The Democrats and Republicans are the paid agents of the oil, armament, and insurance industries. Their continued rule of America will assure a future of more imperialist war, a healthcare system that doesn't work, and no meaningful action on global warming (the single biggest threat to the future of humanity and a healthy planet).

The Cool Earth Party is being established on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism. We call for an end to the dictatorial power of the wealthy through the nationalization of major industries and for the establishment of a planned economy run to meet human and environmental needs. This socialist society must be established within the framework of full democratic freedoms and multi-party proportional democracy. To be truly Democratic all parties running in elections will be legally guaranteed equal time in the media, big campaign spending will be outlawed, and electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections) will be eliminated.

Upon taking power the Cool Earth Party will establish a system of socialized medicine for the United States, end all U.S. military occupations of other countries, end U.S. military aid to repressive governments, and nationalize the auto and energy industries to carry out immediate emergency measures to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

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Is There Democracy In Florida?

ForrestJ — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:23:51 GMT

More Election Troubles in Florida, but That Doesn’t Bother the Governor

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/us/politics/17crist.html?ref=politics

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W. Virginia Defends Machines

ForrestJ — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 18:45:15 GMT

The West Virginia Secretary of State’s office is standing firm in its support of electronic voting machines, despite security and accuracy concerns raised by other states.

“We are comfortable moving forward with the voting systems we have in place,” Deputy Secretary of State and agency spokeswoman Sarah Bailey said Wednesday, just weeks after top officials in Ohio and Colorado declared such machines unfit for elections.

Thirty-four West Virginia counties use Election Systems and Software’s iVotronic touch-screen machines. They became widely used across the state before the 2006 primary and were purchased as part of a $3 billion nationwide conversion laid out in the federal Help America Vote Act.

http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2008010336

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Colorado Voting Machines Tossed Out

ForrestJ — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:51:53 GMT

Colorado Voting Machines Tossed Out
By GEORGE MERRITT – 1 day ago

DENVER (AP) — Colorado's secretary of state has declared many of the state's electronic voting machines to be unreliable, but said Tuesday that some of them could still be used in November if a software patch was installed.

Other machines that failed could be replaced with equipment certified for use in other states, Secretary of State Mike Coffman said.

Coffman met with a task force of state lawmakers to discuss what Colorado should do the day after he decertified three of the four voting equipment manufacturers allowed in the state, affecting six of Colorado's 10 most populous counties.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i2JcFxCLC-TauSMvY-IHU41Sm0tgD8TK2DP81

The same voting machines judged faulty in Colorado are being used by other states:

http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=7522777&nav=menu102_2

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071219/POLITICS/712190435/1022/POLITICS

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071220/NEWS01/71219149

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Ohio Machines Flawed

ForrestJ — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:49:46 GMT

Ohio's top elections official recommended Friday that Ohio counties replace their touch-screen voting machines because the devices — in use for roughly two years — are vulnerable to manipulation.

A report released by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner found a variety of possible ways: When empty, a portal in the electronic machines can be manipulated with a magnet or personal digital assistant; ballot-creation programs are either not password-protected or use a universal password; and invasive computer messages could be introduced by a voter and spread easily.

Touch-screen machines have been purchased across the nation to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act. Nationally, $3 billion was spent to replace the punch-card voting system that faltered in the 2000 election.

In the 2004 race between President Bush and Democrat John Kerry, Ohio bore the brunt of claims of voting problems. Complaints included limited access to voting machines, difficulties finding proper voting precincts and the accuracy of vote totals in precincts using electronic machines.

Kerry conceded the election after narrowly losing Ohio and its 20 electoral votes.

The Ohio review involved touch-screen machines built by Election Systems & Software, Hart Intercivic and Diebold's Premier Election Solutions. Some Ohio counties started using them in November 2005, and the rest in May 2006.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004074547_ohio15.html

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Purging Voters

ForrestJ — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:43:59 GMT

The latest Republican scheme to purge the voter rolls:

http://alternet.org/rights/62133/

The theory that there are millions of fraudulent voters eagerly waiting to influence the next election seems to be a standard theme for Republicans today . . .

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Hackable Voting Machines

ForrestJ — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:28:41 GMT

Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state.

The reports, the latest to raise questions about electronic voting machines, came to light on a day when House leaders announced in Washington that they had reached an agreement on measures to revamp voting systems and increase their security.

The House bill would require every state to use paper records that would let voters verify that their ballots had been correctly cast and that would be available for recounts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/us/28vote.html

http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm

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Florida Dumps Touch-Screens

ForrestJ — Fri, 04 May 2007 19:40:04 GMT

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida's experiment with touch-screen voting machines is over.

The Florida Legislature voted Thursday morning to spend nearly $28 million to scrap the ATM-styled machines used in 15 Florida counties, including Miami-Dade and Broward and replace them with ones that use paper ballots.

The push to switch Florida from the touch-screen machines was a top priority of Gov. Charlie Crist, who said he doesn't want the state to be embarrassed anymore by its elections.

http://www.miamiherald.com/458/story/95130.html

About time!

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

New Important videos

Wolf_Pack — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:05:27 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj3sQ_T-x7M

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7618741732329303591

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Removal of Threads

gentrified — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:27:38 GMT

I will remove all threads that don't pertain to voting reform. Political posts are not appropriate for this tribe. It does not matter if I as the moderator respect your opinion, or care about your politics. If it is about voting reform it stays, if not it goes.

Don't spam this tribe with political discussions that are not on topic.

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Vote By Mail, worse than touchscreens because people like "convenience"

gentrified — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:38:01 GMT

Link to post in politics tribe:
http://uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/0918e7cb-a6eb-47c8-8e26-23c979dc8025

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2 Convicted for Vote-Rigging

ForrestJ — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:12:08 GMT

Two election workers were convicted Wednesday of rigging a recount of the 2004 presidential election to avoid a more thorough review in Ohio's most populous county.

Jacqueline Maiden, elections coordinator of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee. They also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty.

Prosecutors accused Maiden and Dreamer of secretly reviewing preselected ballots before a public recount on Dec. 16, 2004. They worked behind closed doors for three days to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand, prosecutors said.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012507M.shtml

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Scratching my head!

Heroness — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:33:31 GMT

how can we be on a major voting election ..and there is NO ACTION IN THIS TRIBE?

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 4 replies

A Challenge to You!

gentrified — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:56:44 GMT

Just thought I'd issue a challenge to you tribe folks. Invite new people to this tribe and let's maybe get things lively for awhile?

Anyone with me?

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Hacking or Democracy

Heroness — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:22:43 GMT

I am new to this tribe..just found ya..

and want to say ..that...THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST ISSUES That is facing our country today..

I feel so frustrated..with the lack of interest..or ..maybe frustration..

glad to be here..hope this gets rolling and we can make a difference...

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

An Electronic Canary

johnpowers — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 21:59:58 GMT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112300965.html God article by E.J. Dione. One of the points he makes that's very important is voting issues needn't be a partisan issue. We all have a stake in this and it's one issue that translates across ideological lines.

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Revolution..

Heroness — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:54:27 GMT

I think has actually been a revolution..!

we have to keep it in momentum...

and we need to clear up this VOTING SITUATION..than they will really see..who counts in AMERICA!

and I love that site you posted..thanxxxxxxxxxxx

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TPM Election Scorecard

johnpowers — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 00:26:00 GMT

http://www.tpmcafe.com/race/overview

Handy site

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

Video the Vote

Heroness — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:28:54 GMT

http://www.videothevote.org/

this is the video call to arms...please take note of this important..way of being a video warrior!

a voting video warriorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

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Hacking the Vote

johnpowers — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 01:21:37 GMT

Great article by Jon "Hannibal' Stokes at ars technica http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ars also available in the handy for printing pdf http://arstechnica.com/etc/How_to_steal_an_election-ArsTechnica.pdf

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Whiskey Bar

johnpowers — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:37:02 GMT

Billimon paints a very interesting senario of close races being decided by the House of Representatives http://billmon.org/archives/002880.html It's worth reading.

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Machines truncate names

johnpowers — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:35:33 GMT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102301178.html

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No to Angelides and Schwarzenegger! Yes to Janice Jordan!

steveargue2 — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:31:52 GMT

No to Angelides and Schwarzenegger!

Critical Support For Janice Jordan, Peace and Freedom Party Candidate For Governor

By Steven Argue

Last night’s debate between Phil Angelides and Arnold Schwarzenegger was a grueling hour of corporate politics. Angelides leveled criticisms against Schwarzenegger for cuts to education under his governorship. Schwarzenegger countered by asking where Angelides was when Democrat governor Gray Davis was making cuts to education and asked why Angelides supported those cuts under Davis. Schwarzenegger went so far as to ask why Angelides didn’t join in the student protests for education that had marched by his office under Davis.

It was a valid criticism, yet Schwarzenegger never supported those student protests either and as Angelides pointed out, he has made his own cuts to education.

On a similar note Angelides criticized Schwarzenegger for his praise for the racist anti-immigrant vigilantes called the “Minutemen” while in the same breath calling for a "guest worker" program that would create a new class of super-exploited worker with no political rights. Under the same type of program in the past U.S. bosses often failed to even pay Mexican workers for their hard labor. The fact that Angelides and the Democrat Party are now calling for this kind of legalization of indentured servitude place them firmly in the same racist camp as Schwarzenegger.

What was missing from the debate was the voice of an official candidate that will be on the ballot in November, but was excluded from the debate by the California Broadcasters Association. This candidate, Janice Jordan of the Peace and Freedom Party, could have chimed in that she did in fact support the protests against the cuts of both Davis and Schwarzenegger and that she opposes both the racist Minutemen and the racist guest worker program. But she was excluded from the debates, showing once again the bias of the corporate media as a pillar in preventing true democracy in America.

A truly democratic society would eliminate corporate control of the elections by nationalizing the corporate media and allowing all candidates equal access to the airwaves, cable, and print. Likewise a truly democratic society would carry out a sweeping “campaign finance reform” through the nationalization of the means of production (using that wealth for human and environmental needs rather than decadence and deception).

It will take a socialist revolution to bring democracy to America.

Liberation News sees the participation of socialists in the corrupted electoral politics of America as a critical platform in explaining how we differ from the capitalist Democrat and Republican parties. Likewise all of the undemocratic measures that are used against us, which will only intensify as we grow stronger, expose the parallel need for a revolutionary program to accompany any socialist electoral activity.

The Peace and Freedom Party is primarily an electoral party that speaks of the need for socialism, but generally avoids talk of the only step that will bring socialism, a step that can be summed up in one word: revolution. Revolution is about abolishing the current racist anti-worker and anti-poor police, military, and judicial system and carrying out a sweeping redistribution of the wealth.

Likewise the campaign literature the Peace and Freedom Party hand out at demonstrations often contain good criticisms of the Democrats and Republicans and outline a good platform for social and economic emancipation, but are usually missing another key component that will make putting human and environmental needs before profits possible in a socialist society. That being the nationalization of industry including oil (and other energy), “defense”, auto, the banks, the railroads, chemical, and the agricultural monopolies.

It is due to this lack of a true socialist program in the Peace and Freedom Party, and lack of any campaign statements from Janice Jordan countering it, that Liberation News can only give critical support to the campaign of Janice Jordan.

In giving this critical support to Janice Jordan we recognize that the social reforms called for by the Peace and Freedom Party do still have a revolutionary component in that they go far beyond anything that the capitalist class of the United States will ever allow short of their total overthrow. In giving critical support we intervene to denounce the undemocratic actions of the corporate media and capitalist campaign financing used against the campaign of Janice Jordan, but unlike the Peace and Freedom Party, we take those undemocratic actions to their logical conclusion: the ultimate need for socialist revolution.

While giving critical support to Janice Jordan’s campaign for governor, Liberation News is withholding support for the Peace and Freedom Party’s candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Stewart Alexander. Alexander’s campaign is spreading illusions in the Democrat Party. In his campaign statements Alexander pretends that the Republicans represent corporate interests and that the Democrats do not, their problems being "sitting on the fence" and an unwillingness to spend "political capital". This is nonsense; the Democrat Party is just as much a corporate party as the Republican, both in its financing and in its program.

In another campaign statement Stewart Alexander opposes the Peace and Freedom Party’s platform that calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq from the right. In the statement he claims that the Peace and Freedom Party needs to draw up an exit strategy from Iraq. Yet immediate withdrawal is an exit strategy. It is an exit strategy that takes no consideration of continuing to prop up the undemocratic puppet death squad government the U.S. established, nor does it consider the logistical needs of keeping troops fighting and dying in Iraq to defend military hardware as it is evacuated. Troops are to be evacuated immediately by air, sea, and land the same way they were sent in; and the biggest cause of the bloodshed in Iraq will be gone. This is the exit strategy.

Liberation News calls for U.S. troops out now! Build the mass movement! For the labor movement to break from the Democrat Party of war and exploitation and to end the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. For the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. For student actions against recruiters, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. For building the socialist movement as part of the anti-war resistance today and to ultimately end U.S. imperialism through socialist revolution.

While Phil Angelides and Arnold Schwarzenegger will carry out austerity connected to the U.S. war in Iraq and the economic problems of capitalism, neither the Democrats nor Republicans offer any solutions to the problems of war and capitalism because they support both.

Vote Janice Jordan for governor!

Money for social and environmental needs, not for war and capitalist profit!

For socialist revolution to end imperialism and establish democracy in the United States!
On other state offices Liberation News critical support to the following Peace and Freedom Party candidates:

Gerald Sanders for State Treasurer

Margie Akin for Secretary of State

Liz Barron for Controller

Jack Harison for Attorney General

Tom Condit for Insurance Commissioner

Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

mirror Liberation News:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Liberation-News/

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Give Peace A Vote Petition-Please Sign!

Code Pink — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:28:03 GMT

Dear Friend:

Aren't you ready to let the politicians know that we, the majority of Americans, want an end to the ongoing war in Iraq? Then please join me, along with Yoko Ono, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, Dolores Huerta, Cornell West, my friends at CODEPINK, and MANY MORE in signing Give Peace a Vote (www.givepeaceavote.org).

This is a Voters Pledge that we will only vote for candidates who publicly call for a speedy withdrawal from Iraq and will keep us from engaging in future unjustified wars. Let's send a clear message this November and beyond, that we believe in international law and diplomacy over aggression.

Please sign the Voters Pledge and ask at least 10 of your friends to sign as well. With millions of peace voters, we can elect leaders who will Give Peace a Chance. That's all we are saying.

Simply copy and paste this url in the address bar of your web browser to sign up NOW: www.democracyinaction.org/dia/o...on.jsp

Thank you for taking action!

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

devestating

barnaby — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 06:35:59 GMT

http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/

Hopefully the final nail in the coffin....

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

Princeton YouTube Video

johnpowers — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:07:24 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZws98jw67g

This video is less than ten minutes long and very clearly demonstrates the problem in a calm and convincing way.

Mostly what I get when talking with others is "It can't happen here." However I also know from experience that even those who are skeptical that there's a problem can be convinced when they look into the matter themselves.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Electronic Voting Found Unreliable

ForrestJ — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 20:39:42 GMT

A Single Person Could Swing an Election
Electronic Systems' Weaknesses May Be Countered With Audits, Report Suggests

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, June 28, 2006; Page A07

To determine what it would take to hack a U.S. election, a team of cybersecurity experts turned to a fictional battleground state called Pennasota and a fictional gubernatorial race between Tom Jefferson and Johnny Adams. It's the year 2007, and the state uses electronic voting machines.

Jefferson was forecast to win the race by about 80,000 votes, or 2.3 percent of the vote. Adams's conspirators thought, "How easily can we manipulate the election results?"

The experts thought about all the ways to do it. And they concluded in a report issued yesterday that it would take only one person, with a sophisticated technical knowledge and timely access to the software that runs the voting machines, to change the outcome.

The report, which was unveiled at a Capitol Hill news conference by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice and billed as the most authoritative to date, tackles some of the most contentious questions about the security of electronic voting.

The report concluded that the three major electronic voting systems in use have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities. But it added that most of these vulnerabilities can be overcome by auditing printed voting records to spot irregularities. And while 26 states require paper records of votes, fewer than half of those require regular audits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/27/AR2006062701451.html

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Steal This Vote

ForrestJ — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:15:42 GMT

[Editor's Note: This is an edited excerpt from Steal This Vote by Andrew Gumbel, published by Nation Books.]

If you do everything, you'll win. -- Lyndon Johnson

A few days before the November 2004 election, Jimmy Carter was asked what would happen if, instead of flying to Zambia or Venezuela or East Timor, his widely respected international election monitoring team was invited to turn its attention to the United States. His answer was stunningly blunt. Not only would the voting system be regarded as a failure, he said, but the shortcomings were so egregious the Carter Center would never agree to monitor an election there in the first place. "We wouldn't think of it," the former president told a radio interviewer. "The American political system wouldn't measure up to any sort of international standards, for several reasons."

What, after all, was to be done with a country whose newest voting machines, unlike Venezuela's, couldn't even perform recounts? A country where candidates, in contrast to the more promising emerging democracies of the Caucasus or the Balkans, were denied equal, unpaid access to the media? There were a number of reasons, in the sharply partisan atmosphere surrounding the Bush-Kerry race, to wonder whether campaign conditions didn't smack more of the Third World than the First. Every day, newspapers recounted stories of registration forms being found in garbage cans, or of voter rolls padded with the names of noncitizens, fictional characters, household pets, and the dearly departed. The Chicago Tribune, a paper that knows its voter fraud, having won a Pulitzer for its work on the infamous Daley machine, found 181,000 dead people on the registration lists of six key battleground states.

Bush opponents were all too inclined to believe, in fact, that the Republicans were about to steal the presidency, just as they believed it had been stolen the last time. The Republicans, for their part, laughed this off as conspiratorial nonsense, but they also weren't shy about announcing how hard or how dirtily they were prepared to fight if it came down to another Florida-style tug-of-war. Long Island's GOP congressman Pete King, caught on camera by the documentary maker Alexandra Pelosi during a White House function on election day, bragged even as the first polls were closing that Bush had already won. When Pelosi asked him how he knew, he answered, perhaps jokingly, perhaps not: "It's all over but the counting. And we'll take care of the counting."

http://www.alternet.org/story/32084/

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

"Programmer Built Vote Rigging Prototype at Republican Congressman's Request!"

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 03:55:47 GMT

---EXPLOSIVE STUFF HERE---

WHISTLEBLOWER AFFIDAVIT: Programmer Built Vote Rigging Prototype at Republican Congressman's Request!
CLAIM: Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) Asked Company to Create E-Vote Fraud Software!

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001024.htm

"In stunning revelations set to rock the vote from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill -- and perhaps even a bit further up Pennsylvania Avenue -- a Florida computer programmer has now made remarkable claims in a detailed sworn affidavit, signed this morning and obtained exclusively by The BRAD BLOG!

The programmer claims that he designed and built a 'vote rigging' software program at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida's 24th Congressional District.

Clint Curtis, 46, claims that he built the software for Feeney in 2000 while working at a sofware design and engineering company in Oviedo, Florida (Feeney's home district).

Curtis, in his affidavit, says that as technical advisor and programmer at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) he was present at company meetings where Feeney was present 'on at least a dozen occasions'.

Feeney, who had run in 1994 as Jeb Bush's running-mate in his initial unsuccessful bid for Florida Governor, was serving as both corporate counsel and registered lobbyist for YEI during the period that Curtis worked at the company. Feeney was also concurrently serving as a Florida state congressman while performing those services for YEI. Feeney would eventually become Speaker of the Florida House before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002. He is now a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

At an October 2000 meeting with Feeney, according to the affidavit and BRAD BLOG interviews with Curtis over the past three days, Feeney inquired whether the company could build a 'vote fraud software prototype'.

At least three YEI employees are said to have been present at that meeting; Curtis, company owner, Mrs. Li Woan Yang, and her executive secretary, Mike Cohen. Two other YEI employees may have come in and out at different points of the meeting according to Curtis.

Curtis says that Feeney 'was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program.'

'He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected.'"

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Sam Alito Supreme Court Nominee Heavily Invested in Slaughterhouses

veganesh — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 17:36:41 GMT

Sam Alito Supreme Court Nominee Heavily Invested in Slaughterhouses

Sam Alito twice broke his promise to recuse himself from
Vanguard lawsuits in which he is heavily invested. Vanguard is perhaps of publicly investigated mutual funds the one most heavily invested in several kinds of slaughterhouse operations.

Slaughterhouse, safari hunt and other money has in some cases gone underground with private equity funds. The British are less forthcoming
about stockholders than Americans.

www.senate.gov
202 224 3121
God defeat this nomination.

VANGUARD: INVESTED IN ANIMAL SLAUGHTERHOUSES

Vanguard manages more than US $700 billion and has
more than 5000 institutional investors. It is invested
in many slaughterhouse and war operations.
1 It is the major investor in the world's most corrupt bank,
Citibank whose chairman helped jailed Bernie Ebbers buy Canada's
biggest cattle ranch with stolen MCI customer money.
2 It is a major investor in McDonald's (and since NPR has 200 million
in McDonald's stock,
... the 'public radio' network promoted Vanguard)
28,385,755 2.24 $883,932,410 31-Mar-05
3. It is a major investor in Yums, owner of the boycotted KFC
www.kfccruelty.com and of Taco Bell which finally settled with
unions.
4. It is a major investor in Lonestar Steak House which causes
cancer, heart disease, slaughterhouse agony, and deforestation.
(THE) 409,292 1.99 $11,832,631 31-Mar-05
5. It is a major investor in Triarc (Arby's beef)
6. Wendy's Vanguard is a major investor in the world's
3rd largest cowslaughter fast food chain
7. Vanguard is invested in SBC, a pricegouging conglomerate illegal
in Teddy Roosevelt's days
8. It is invested in Dominion, a gas company which has
been pricegouging the poor with doubling of charges.
9. It is a major investor in ConAgra.. 'butterball' turkeys
and other slaughterhouse items.
10. It is invested in Goldman Sachs, neocon warmonger.

John Bogle its CEO has been touted on NPR
because both are heavily invested in McDonald's. NPR was
allegedly left 200 million in McDonald's stock by Joan Kroc.
It is indeed humorous that Bogle would write a book on
business ethics.

Some of the other funds heavily invested in animal agony: Barclay's, J P Morgan Chase,
Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Charles Schwab

------
Those who are not vegetarian or vegan might consider that
the incubation period of Mad Cow, Mad Deer, Mad Pig, Mad Chicken,
Mad Fish etc is 50 years according to Dr David Heymann of the CDC
speaking on the CBC... Heymann is one of the few truthtellers
at the pharmaceutically dominated CDC. Any investment in animal
flesh is unwise.

The British are less forthcoming
about stockholders than Americans.
Quote:

Republicans always find it hard
to get out the numbers... in some
cities they hand out tickets to Democrats
when their high paid speakers paid for
with public money come
to town.. in order to swell the audience

Yesterday, as unelected Bush nominee
Sam Alito was questioned by senators,
there were Rent A Republican mobs
outside. It was a hastily done affair..
virtually
everyone with the same sign.

Neocon CNN owned illegally by Neocon
Time Warner... gave frequent flash coverage
to this small group of people.

Poster saw this standing in line
at a grocery store.

www.senate.gov

God end now all violence to any being and listen to
St Francis and Leonardo, two animal rights activists, want
this nomination defeated.

_________________
www.worldanimalnet.org
ivu.org
pcrm.org
www.alitosamerica.org
www.internationalanswer.org
www.network54.com/forum/460325
news108.forumup.org

With the string of state murders in the US ratified by the 'Supreme' Court,
one can only describe the 5 judges who have executed with their
pens... 'serial killers'. They have ratified torture, installed an unelected
pawn of war profiteers, ravaged our earth.
The Supreme Court is the only 18th Century institution unchanged.
Since 1776, the Senate has become popularly elected (in theory..
although Diebold ESS Sequoia Pacific Triad etc. have changed that
www.whatreallyhappened.com/vote...html)
The US is one of the few socalled democracies not electing its high court.
Reformers have suggested an 18 year term, with 1 justice elected
every 1 or 2 years.

One way to find in what investments a corporation, mutual fund
etc. holds... go to finance.yahoo.com type in the symbol
for that entity, and then scroll down on left to 'major holders'.

MSN has such a service too with more listings.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

Californians! Don't let Diebold to STEAL Certification this Monday 11/21

aleta — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 21:39:49 GMT

Anyone near Sacramento should take the day off of work and attend this protest to block Diebold. Those Californians in other parts of the state can use this link to send a message to the people responsible for this Diebold takeover. And those non-Californians can spread the word to people you know in California.

http://www.usalone.com/diebold2.htm

The Secretary of State has scheduled a hearing for November 21, 2005 on the question of whether certain Diebold voting systems will should be certified before the end of the year. But "The Secretary of State has disbanded the Voting Systems Panel that's supposed to conduct these hearings and has replaced it with one person, a stenographer, and a tape recorder," said Sherry Healy, a steering committee member of the California Election Protection Network (CEPN), a non-partisan organization of over 25 groups across California who have come together to try and ensure the integrity of California's election systems.

The rally/protest is this Monday in Sacramento, we have ONLY next week to voice our concerns so they go on the record.

Monday Nov. 21, 10 a.m. - May be your last chance to block Diebold
Secretary of State's Office, 1500 11th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
(Downtown Sacramento - 11th and "O" Streets)
CONTACT: Dagmar Zakim (415) 389-0250 (there will be carpools)

WE RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING URGENT APPEAL FROM SHERI MYERS

Believe me, I really don't want to ruin your day. But you need to hear this. This is an URGENT ACTION ALERT.

If you don't read this and take action, you are allowing your vote to be stolen. California will turn red.

If you read this and do nothing, you are giving up your rights as a citizen. Do it for your country. Your children. Our future.

All Californians who care about the sanctity of their vote must let Secretary of State McPherson know that they WILL NOT ALLOW him to certify Diebold machines, that they are OUTRAGED that he is undermining our democracy.

CALL OR FAX:
Bruce McPherson, Secretary of State
916-653-6814 (main menu, press 6, then 3 - starting at 8:00 am Monday)
916-653-3214 (the FAX is on tis weekend)

McPherson was appointed by Schwarzenegger to replace Democrat Kevin Shelley. Folks, if they can't win legally, they WILL steal the votes they need. THAT'S YOUR VOTE.

This is a Republican coup, and they are counting on YOU, and ME to do NOTHING. Is it worth FIVE MINUTES OF YOUR TIME to send a FAX, an email or make a call? PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Diebold Does It Again!

ForrestJ — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 19:58:10 GMT

While debate still rages over Ohio's stolen presidential election of 2004, the impossible outcomes of key 2005 referendum issues may have put an electronic nail through American democracy.

Once again, the Buckeye state has hosted an astonishing display of electronic manipulation that calls into question the sanctity of America's right to vote, and to have those votes counted in this crucial swing state.

The controversy has been vastly enhanced due to the simultaneous installation of new electronic voting machines in nearly half the state's 88 counties, machines the General Accountability Office has now confirmed could be easily hacked by a very small number of people.

Last year, the US presidency was decided here. This year, a bond issue and four hard-fought election reform propositions are in question.

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1559

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

Pass these banners on to others and place them on your website.

Dennis — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:42:44 GMT

Pass these banners on to others and place them on your website.

http://www.hoflink.com/~dbaer/election.png

http://www.hoflink.com/~dbaer/wage.png

http://www.hoflink.com/~dbaer/prescriptionbenefit.png

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Ohio Voters Support HB 60.. Others demand same legislation in your state

RushYes — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 16:04:06 GMT

Ohio HB 60 is in my views meant to restrict the Secretary of State from being a part of any campaign other than the campaign for themselves!
Problem, Ken Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State as many of you might know was also on President Bush's Campaign. I live in Ohio and I witnessed first hand corrupt voting practices in Central Ohio that were upheld by our Secretary of State.
You may remember the 2000 Florida Elections. Wasn't their Secretary of State on Bush's campaign? Now, in 2004, did Ohio have simular issues as Florida?
Funny isn't it!

Ok, here is a link to HB 60 in Ohio. It's status is the bill is in committee. I'm urging all representatives to support this bill and I'm urging all Ohioians to contact there representatives.

http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=126_HB_60

I'm really mad about this. I'm an Ohio State Employee and I am forbidden by Law to participate in any election capaign but right now the law allows the Secretary of State who is in charge of overseeing every aspect of voting, it allows him/her the right to be on someone's campaign. Can you smell fraud?

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Diebold Machines Vunerable to Hacking

johnpowers — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 04:03:48 GMT

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/11811936.htm

More people at local levels are taking the issue of security seriously as this test in Leon County Florida shows.

Everyone here already knows there are problems. the hard part is figuring out how to convince others; well then the hard part comes in trying to figure out something to do about it.

Posting this just for information purposes. I'm interested in what's going on at the locally around the country. So I hope others will post links too.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

FEC trying to regulate the internet

Cedwyn — Tue, 31 May 2005 17:59:02 GMT

don't let them!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/31/133629/447

<<Moreover, the FEC commissioners - who are divided about how far to extend regulations to the Internet - are also striving to clarify regulations about online volunteer campaign activity.

The draft rules have prompted a stormy response from bloggers and those opposed to extending FEC regulations to the Internet. . . . >>

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

progressives/polls

maryanne — Sun, 29 May 2005 23:02:28 GMT

Subject: Poll - America Seeks Bold Progressive Leadership

(http://action.ourfuture.org/ctt.asp?u=3629843&l=94645)
America's Future | _www.ourfuture.org_
(http://action.ourfuture.org/ctt.asp?u=3629843&l=94645)
Dear Steven,
According to a new poll just completed by the Democracy Corps with the
Campaign for America's Future, the American people feel overwhelmingly that in the
Washington of Bush, Frist and DeLay, the right wing that is in control is
out of control. [1] Poll results highlight that the right wing is peddling an
agenda that the American people just aren't buying. Mugged by reality,
Americans are alarmed by the current course and are looking for bold progressive
solutions to real problems.
The poll results completely counter the President and right wing's
post-election claim of a "mandate" to impose their radical agenda on the American
people. In fact, the three signature policies of the so-called conservative
revolution -- the war in Iraq, Social Security privatization and economic
prosperity through tax cuts for the wealthy -- were all rejected by a majority of
Americans.
* 56% oppose Bush's Social Security privatization scheme.
* 57% feel that the Iraq war has not been worth the cost of U.S. lives
and dollars.
* 62% feel that our economy is not good for middle and working class
people.
Get the complete poll results here:
_http://www.ourfuture.org/newpoll.cfm_
(http://action.ourfuture.org/ctt.asp?u=3629843&l=94649)
Beyond merely opposing the right wing's agenda, this poll shows that
Americans strongly embrace progressive solutions for the future, and want an active
government to work to solve the problems facing our country.
* 83% support a national commitment to energy independence -- such as
that outlined by our very own Apollo Initiative -- with investments in
alternative energy and energy efficiency.
* 86% agree that the government should "guarantee that every child
receives the basics" in education -- a healthy start, good nutrition, quality
preschool, small classes and well trained teachers.
* 76% support guaranteeing health care to all through a program
similar to Medicare.
* 76% want action to end tax breaks to companies that move jobs abroad
and to provide incentives for those who create jobs here and allow unions to
organize.
This poll shows that the American people are hungry for bold, progressive
leadership. A majority of Americans (55%) would rather see Congressional
Democrats stand strong against President Bush and the Republicans to prevent them
from pushing their agenda too far -- than work in a bipartisan way to help
pass the President's radical agenda. The message to the Democratic and
progressive leadership in Congress is clear: Don't cower before the Republicans --
stand up, speak out and fight for progressive values!
In less than one week, over 1000 progressive Americans will gather in
Washington, DC at our _Take Back America 2005_
(http://action.ourfuture.org/ctt.asp?u=3629843&l=94653) conference. The failure of the right and the remarkable
public rejection of the policies -- and increasingly the philosophy -- of
Bush, Frist and DeLay opens the door for a progressive challenge. At Take Back
America 2005, progressive leaders thinkers and activists will come together to
highlight the new ideas that progressives are putting forth to challenge
the right and forge a new progressive majority.
We hope that you'll be able to join us in Washington next week, and we look
forward to continuing our work together to build the emerging progressive
majority, and take our country back.
All the best,

Robert L. Borosage, Co-Director
Campaign for America's Future
P.S. You can get more information about our Take Back America 2005
conference -- including our latest agenda here:
_http://www.ourfuture.org/projects/national_conference/2005/agenda.cfm_
(http://action.ourfuture.org/ctt.asp?u=3629843&l=94644)
P.P.S. Please spread the

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

New mexico/more election findings

maryanne — Sun, 29 May 2005 21:54:53 GMT

http://www.scoop.co.nz/features/?s=usacoup

apparently new mexico is covering up something.....and more news on fl and ohio.....

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

1 million votes gone/racist purge

maryanne — Sun, 22 May 2005 02:30:03 GMT

Home Issues May 17, 2004 issue Vanishing Votes

Vanishing Votes

Gregory Palast

On October 29, 2002, George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Hidden behind its apple-pie-and-motherhood name lies a nasty civil rights time bomb.

First, the purges. In the months leading up to the November 2000 presidential election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, in coordination with Governor Jeb Bush, ordered local election supervisors to purge 57,700 voters from the registries, supposedly ex-cons not allowed to vote in Florida. At least 90.2 percent of those on this "scrub" list, targeted to lose their civil rights, are innocent. Notably, more than half--about 54 percent--are black or Hispanic. You can argue all night about the number ultimately purged, but there's no argument that this electoral racial pogrom ordered by Jeb Bush's operatives gave the White House to his older brother. HAVA not only blesses such purges, it requires all fifty states to implement a similar search-and-destroy mission against vulnerable voters. Specifically, every state must, by the 2004 election, imitate Florida's system of computerizing voter files. The law then empowers fifty secretaries of state--fifty Katherine Harrises--to purge these lists of "suspect" voters.

The purge is back, big time. Following the disclosure in December 2000 of the black voter purge in Britain's Observer newspaper, NAACP lawyers sued the state. The civil rights group won a written promise from Governor Jeb and from Harris's successor to return wrongly scrubbed citizens to the voter rolls. According to records given to the courts by ChoicePoint, the company that generated the computerized lists, the number of Floridians who were questionably tagged totals 91,000. Willie Steen is one of them. Recently, I caught up with Steen outside his office at a Tampa hospital. Steen's case was easy. You can't work in a hospital if you have a criminal record. (My copy of Harris's hit list includes an ex-con named O'Steen, close enough to cost Willie Steen his vote.) The NAACP held up Steen's case to the court as a prime example of the voter purge evil.

The state admitted Steen's innocence. But a year after the NAACP won his case, Steen still couldn't register. Why was he still under suspicion? What do we know about this "potential felon," as Jeb called him? Steen, unlike our President, honorably served four years in the US military. There is, admittedly, a suspect mark on his record: Steen remains an African-American.

If you're black, voting in America is a game of chance. First, there's the chance your registration card will simply be thrown out. Millions of minority citizens registered to vote using what are called motor-voter forms. And Republicans know it. You would not be surprised to learn that the Commission on Civil Rights found widespread failures to add these voters to the registers. My sources report piles of dust-covered applications stacked up in election offices.

Second, once registered, there's the chance you'll be named a felon. In Florida, besides those fake felons on Harris's scrub sheets, some 600,000 residents are legally barred from voting because they have a criminal record in the state. That's one state. In the entire nation 1.4 million black men with sentences served can't vote, 13 percent of the nation's black male population.

At step three, the real gambling begins. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 guaranteed African-Americans the right to vote--but it did not guarantee the right to have their ballots counted. And in one in seven cases, they aren't.

Take Gadsden County. Of Florida's sixty-seven counties, Gadsden has the highest proportion of black residents: 58 percent. It also has the highest "spoilage" rate, that is, ballots tossed out on technicalities: one in eight votes cast but not counted. Next door to Gadsden is white-majority Leon County, where virtually every vote is counted (a spoilage rate of one in 500).

How do votes spoil? Apparently, any old odd mark on a ballot will do it. In Gadsden, some voters wrote in Al Gore instead of checking his name. Their votes did not count.

Harvard law professor Christopher Edley Jr., a member of the Commission on Civil Rights, didn't like the smell of all those spoiled ballots. He dug into the pile of tossed ballots and, deep in the commission's official findings, reported this: 14.4 percent of black votes--one in seven--were "invalidated," i.e., never counted. By contrast, only 1.6 percent of nonblack voters' ballots were spoiled.

Florida's electorate is 11 percent African-American. Florida refused to count 179,855 spoiled ballots. A little junior high school algebra applied to commission numbers indicates that 54 percent, or 97,000, of the votes "spoiled" were cast by black folk, of whom more than 90 percent chose Gore. The nonblack vote divided about evenly between Gore and Bush. Therefore, had Harris allowed the counting of these ballots, Al Gore would have racked up a plurality of about 87,000 votes in Florida--162 times Bush's official margin of victory.

That's Florida. Now let's talk about America. In the 2000 election, 1.9 million votes cast were never counted. Spoiled for technical reasons, like writing in Gore's name, machine malfunctions and so on. The reasons for ballot rejection vary, but there's a suspicious shading to the ballots tossed into the dumpster. Edley's team of Harvard experts discovered that just as in Florida, the number of ballots spoiled was--county by county, precinct by precinct--in direct proportion to the local black voting population.

Florida's racial profile mirrors the nation's--both in the percentage of voters who are black and the racial profile of the voters whose ballots don't count. "In 2000, a black voter in Florida was ten times as likely to have their vote spoiled--not counted--as a white voter," explains political scientist Philip Klinkner, co-author of Edley's Harvard report. "National figures indicate that Florida is, surprisingly, typical. Given the proportion of nonwhite to white voters in America, then, it appears that about half of all ballots spoiled in the USA, as many as 1 million votes, were cast by nonwhite voters."

So there you have it. In the last presidential election, approximately 1 million black and other minorities voted, and their ballots were thrown away. And they will be tossed again in November 2004, efficiently, by computer--because HAVA and other bogus reform measures, stressing reform through complex computerization, do not address, and in fact worsen, the racial bias of the uncounted vote.

One million votes will disappear in a puff of very black smoke. And when the smoke clears, the Bush clan will be warming their political careers in the light of the ballot bonfire. HAVA nice day.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Keep the Issue on Front Burner

johnpowers — Fri, 13 May 2005 16:37:03 GMT

The issue of electronic voting is a national issue, but it plays out at the local level. Like so many political issues we Americans get fired up about the big elections and are rather blase about local ones. As far as election fairness goes there are a whole host of issues besides electronic voting to be concerned about--just look at Ohio in the past election.

I'm a chief offender when it comes to not paying enough attention at the local level. But recently a local citizen took the state of Pennsylvania to task for the electronic voting system used in my locale and the State decertified the system!

So I want to encourage people to pay attention to local elections and how they are conducted. I'll try to do the same.

At Atrios http://atrios.blogspot.com/ there's a thread that points to two different views about electronic voting--Pro: http://spitfiresgrill.blogspot.com/2005/05/topic-of-day-electronic-voting.html and Con: http://www.schneier.com/essay-068.html

You might want to check them out. Spitfire's pro is actually less pro about what computer voting systems actually look like now in America. It's good because the main argument is that people who oppose computer voting are anti technology--"Whenever something new comes along there will be nay sayers." Following Spitfire is a way to argue for secure electronic voting and still highlighting the problems with existing sytems.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Chairman of voting reform panel resigns

Tedster — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 03:11:16 GMT

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2005/04/22/resign/print.html

Chairman of voting reform panel resigns

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Erica Werner

April 22, 2005 | Washington -- The first chairman of a federal voting agency created after the 2000 election dispute is resigning, saying the government has not shown enough commitment to reform.

DeForest Soaries said in an interview Friday that his resignation would take effect next week.

Though Soaries, 53, said he wanted to spend more time with his family in New Jersey, he added that his decision was prompted in part by what he called a lack of support.

"All four of us had to work without staff, without offices, without resources. I don't think our sense of personal obligation has been matched by a corresponding sense of commitment to real reform from the federal government," he said.

Soaries, a Republican former New Jersey secretary of state, was the White House's pick to join the Election Assistance Commission, created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to help states enact voting reforms.

A Baptist minister, Soaries was confirmed by the Senate in December 2003 and elected the independent agency's first chairman by his three fellow commissioners. His term as chairman ended in January 2005 and since then he has stayed on as a commission member.

Soaries and the other commissioners complained from the beginning that the group was underfunded and neglected by the lawmakers who created it.

"It's bad enough to be working under extremely adverse circumstances, but what throws your thinking into an abyss, as it were, is why you would be doing that when, for instance, you have to beg Congress for money as if the commission was your idea," Soaries said.

White House spokesman Allen Abney said only, "We appreciate his service and we are working to fill the vacancy promptly."

Envisioned as a clearinghouse for election information that would make recommendations about technology and other issues and distribute $2.3 billion to states for voting improvements, the commission initially couldn't afford its own office space. The commissioners were appointed nine months later than envisioned by the Help America Vote Act, and of a $10 million budget authorized for 2004, the panel received just $1.2 million.

Soaries said the commission could claim some credit for last November's relatively smooth election, including recommending "best practices" to voting administrators and getting the election reform money to states faster than it otherwise would have gone. The commission has sent about $1.8 billion to states so far.

But the commission has failed to preside over the kinds of sweeping reforms some hoped for, with many counties still relying in November on the same punch-card and lever machines derided after the 2000 election. Soaries said the commission is making progress with improvements, including technical guidelines and centralized voter registration lists, that are supposed to be in place for the 2006 election.

"There is so much more work to do to bring federal elections to the standard I think that the citizens expect, and there doesn't seem to be a corresponding sense of urgency among the policy-makers in Washington," Soaries said. "Nor does there seem to be a national consensus among leaders of the states about what success looks like."

Soaries said election reform was on the front burner after the 2000 presidential recount, but it moved to the back burner — and stayed there — after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat and a lead sponsor of the Help America Vote Act, said Soaries' resignation underscored a need to give the commission adequate resources.

"I hope this administration and Congress seriously consider Mr. Soaries' observations as we develop the fiscal year 2006 budget," Hoyer said.

The commission also has run into opposition from state officials accustomed to running their own elections and wary of federal involvement. Earlier this year, the National Association of Secretaries of State approved a resolution asking Congress to dissolve the Election Assistance Commission after 2006.

But Soaries said that despite his frustration and Congress' lack of engagement, he saw a lasting role for the Election Assistance Commission.

"Someone's got to wake up every morning with the mission of improving federal elections in a way that assures the voting public that they can have confidence in voting," he said.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Surprise more problems in FL

gentrified — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 08:36:24 GMT

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/11291822.htm

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 2 replies

Unilect Decertified in Pennsylvania

johnpowers — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:34:14 GMT

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/4/prweb227391.htm

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/4/prweb227383.htm

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

Great website

gentrified — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 08:30:01 GMT

http://www.votersunite.org/info/groups.asp

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

Not just voting machines anymore

gentrified — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 23:27:18 GMT

Just wanted to open up this tribe to more voting related issues than just the machines....

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 3 replies

A speech on voting machines I wrote

gentrified — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:07:01 GMT

What do we need?

What do we want?

If we're going to call ourselves a Democracy, what is the minimum that we the people require to participate?

I'm going to talk about the need for retaining paper ballots... But in doing so, I'm not so much interested in the how, I'm more interested in the why. Why do we need paper ballots?

To me the answer is just one word: Faith.

In order for me to vote, I must have faith. Faith in the system, faith in the process, and it's faith that makes me believe that it matters that I participate at all.

And anywhere along the way, if society, our government, elected officials, or individuals damage that faith, or cause me to question that faith, it doesn't just hurt me, it hurts the system itself, it attacks our beliefs and undermines our Democracy.

Democracy can't be bought with guns or bombs. Democracy is born as an idea and grows in the hearts and minds of those who believe in it, those who have faith in the system.

Why is the American Dollar stronger than the Peso? ... at least the last time I checked...

Faith

Take away my ballot, my real life paper ballot, and you've undermined my faith at the most basic level. The tactile level, the level at which I can touch and feel the reality of my vote.

I'm not a Luddite, and I'm not against machines counting paper. But I wouldn't trust a bank without deposit slips, or an ATM without a receipt.

I don't have faith in Corporations, weathermen, or politicians. And I shouldn't have to trust any of them to count my vote.

Referring to arms control treaties with the Soviet Union, Reagan once said, “Trust but verify”. But I say, provide me a way to verify and then I can start to trust.

And don't tell me that YOU trust the system. There's got to be a way for me to trust the system. I need to be able to understand the process and verify the results in order to gain faith in the process. This is a new bill of goods those who would take away my paper ballot are trying to sell. They want me to believe in mathematics, a cryptography solution, VoteHere is one such company pushing this solution. Some fancy math, and a receipt that I can punch into the Internet that shows me that I voted. But no one seems able to explain to me how this works.

Fancy mathematics and fancy words loose my attention. While I might not be able to calculate the weight of the sun, I should be able to understand how we count votes. If we are going to have a Democratic society, it must allow me, and YOU, and any average citizen to be bad at math, but still be able to convince me that the system is valid. The average member of society isn't going to understand a fancy system of cryptography, just as most of us realized long ago that fancy math hasn't helped us predict the weather. A 60% chance of a valid election doesn't sound very good to me. I just don't have faith in fancy math.

I especially don't have faith in fancy “proprietary” math. Another word for proprietary is secret. So when someone tells me they have some fancy mathematics, a cryptography solution, that makes my paper ballot unnecessary, once again, I'm not really that interested. Because I don't have much faith in mathematics that I don't understand. And if you have to resort to explaining the system with metaphor and simile, or if you need several experts to explain it to me, you've lost me. And I'll have no faith in the system you build.

These machines, these blackbox voting machines. Already in place in Snohomish and Yakima. They require me to trust without verification. Trust the election officials, trust the government, trust the companies, trust the programmers, trust the mathematicians. But frankly none of these people ever had my trust to begin with.

The media, the voting officials, the voting machine companies, even the Supreme Court, is arguing that speed is of the essence, and obviously these machines are far speedier without paper ballots clogging up the process. But I don't care so much about speed, I'm more interested in accuracy. The battle isn't for speed. My faith isn't challenged by slow and steady bookkeeping with proper auditing. It's challenged by secrets and lies. And once you've lost it, faith is a hard thing to regain.

These companies, and our election officials have lied to us, are lying to us, and will continue to lie to us, they've committed fraud, and it IS a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy to get rid of paper ballots, and I for one am losing my faith in the system.

Don't be fooled though, it's not just about the paper. The devil is in the details, and the details are in the words used. It's a verbal shell game, where “paper trail” and “paper receipt” are used to confuse you.

The words paper and ballot should not be separated. The go together hand in hand, and to separate them undermines the strength they have when unified. Paper is tangible, traceable, hard to destroy. Electrons, on the other hand are small, we can't see them, most of us would have a hard time really explaining what they are. When I loose a $20 bill, I notice it's gone. When I lose an electron, I don't really notice.... unless my computer crashes, or I can't find a term paper, or my music skips. Scratch a piece of paper, I can still read what you wrote, scratch my new CD, it's worthless.

Paper trail, paper receipt, what do these terms mean? To me it means someone's trying to put one over on me. Cause when it comes to voting I know what a ballot is. It's been defined by law over hundreds of years. When I go to the grocery story I get a receipt, when I sell a house I sign a contract, and when I vote I get a ballot. Similes mean similar, they don't mean the “same”, and people who know the difference use the wrong words on purpose. They want some wiggle room... they want to change the system, they want to redefine the terms, get rid of the paper, turn the ballot into electrons, and give you a receipt, or a paper trail. Trick you into having faith in the system. So let's be clear here, and let's not mince words, a receipt is something that I get when I buy a banana, a ballot is something with which I vote. I'm not fooled by the verbal shell game. My eyes are still on the ball, and I'm not letting go of my paper ballot any time soon. Too adopt the words of the NRA you'll have to pry my paper ballot from my cold dead hands.

Words have meaning, and meaning builds faith. Faith is built on a foundation of trust. Take away my trust, and you've undermined the foundation. Bastardize the meanings built on that foundation and you weaken the structure that holds up even weaker words. And just as assuredly as a house starts to crumble as the foundation is eroded, and the walls start to fall, democracy is being undermined as the meaning is corrupted and the foundation is slowly torn from underneath. Take away my paper ballot, and you strip away the keystone on which I build my faith in the system.

So all this talk about faith, and really so far, very little about the actuality of how a paper ballot works to increase my trust in the system. You may ask me how a system of paper, in which ballot boxes turn up in Lake Michigan, or are lost in the back of the rooms of King County, inspires my faith.

The key is, that they do turn up later. One might be able to steal a few hundred votes, a few ballot boxes might disappear, but their very physicality makes those ballots hard to destroy. But click a button, and send a few electrons off into the “ether”, who knows if it ever gets where it's going, there's no physicality, and if it's lost, where will we find it. My term paper that I lost in college is still lost, it never turned up in the back of the lecture hall, or under the bed in my dorm room. Electronic votes that are lost will never be found in the back room, and no ballots will ever turn up in the river, or in the trunk of someones car. Just because the machine recount tells me the same number when I ask, doesn't mean it's more accurate. Data can be precise and simultaneously inaccurate.

Paper ballots are not a panacea, they won't fix the system. No, they are simply the foundation on which the system is built. There are many layers above the foundation on which the house of democracy is built, and there are many checks and balances that must be in place to assure that our votes are counted accurately. Random audits, checking the paper against the machine counts, correlating the number of votes with registered voters, all good and necessary ways to double check the accuracy of the process. And any system is going to have a certain calculable margin of error, and if any of us are going to be honest about what just happened in Washington State's Governor's race, or what happened in 2000 in Florida, the margin of victory fell well inside that margin of error, regardless of recounts, neither side can statistically claim victory, so the only victory left are those played out in court. There are obviously more than one way to lose faith in a system of belief.

But without a solid foundation there's nothing for me to build my faith upon.

Voting in this country use to be a public process. We voted in public, the vote was counted in public, by the public. We trusted in the system, because we the people were the system. And every battle we the people fought was to increase that trust, either to increase the number and types of people that voted, or to increase the validity of the system by reducing the influence of others on our personal choices. But now we vote in secret, using a secret ballot, on machines with secret code. I think something has been lost here, don't you?

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Florida

johnpowers — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 05:13:39 GMT

http://www.bradblog.com/ClintCurtisSummary.htm

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Heinz-Kerry On 2004 Elections

johnpowers — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 19:31:44 GMT

I hope everyone takes my positing with good humor. I appreciate all of you who bother to read them.

I live near Pittsburgh, a very provencial town, so Terresa Heinz-Kerry's doings are of interest. Saw a news paper piece about her recent visit to Seattle

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/214744_joel07.html

She had a few words on the 2004 election

"Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Heinz Kerry said. She identified both as "hard-right" Republicans. She argued that it is "very easy to hack into the mother machines."

"We in the United States are not a banana republic," added Heinz Kerry. She argued that Democrats should insist on "accountability and transparency" in how votes are tabulated.

"I fear for '06," she said. "I don't trust it the way it is right now..."

"Basically, we are at a crux, a crossroads right now," Heinz Kerry said. "It's no place for self-indulgence. It's no place for looking back. We must be totally committed to this journey ... to believe again, to hope again."

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Inviting New Members

gentrified — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 03:37:00 GMT

Anyone interested in inviting new members should feel free, as my motivation has waned. But there's so many conversations on tribe about this issue that it should be more popular.

Any takers?

Also I'm glad to see more posts of late.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

Vote Trust

johnpowers — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 00:39:34 GMT

Hi I just got a link to a new organization:

http://www.votetrustusa.org/

Many communities are in the process of deciding on new vote counting equipment. It's important for citizens to be engaged in these importnat decisions.

In my community the local county government decided on a DRE system without public comment. Now we're stuck with a deficient system (Unilect Patriot). The Pennsylvania state will probably demand a software fix. I strongly suspect that sooner or later the system will be scrapped and the decision to purchase them proven a costly mistake.

Votetrust.org seems like it provides good non-partisan approaches for communities to make good decisions about vote counting equipment.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Divestment

johnpowers — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:12:46 GMT

Here is a link to a story in re a campaign to pressure voting counting companies to make responsible changes
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=140

Also here's a link to a video of Clint Curtis's sworn testimony before the House Judiciary in December. Wow! An important confession
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2004/12/18.html#a1102

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 2 replies

Count Every Vote Act

johnpowers — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 03:46:45 GMT

Where I vote we use DREs--Eee gads! I'm not alone in my community saying they suck, but it turns out the whole subject gets complicated once everything is up and running. Lot's of issues come into play because basically elections in America are local affairs. Clinton and Boxer have introduced legislation http://www.boxer.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=232372 to ensure that votes get counted.

I'm sure there are holes in this legislation, but I think it goes along way towards construtive solutions to a complicated problem. How we run elections shouldn't be a partisan issue. Alas...

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Unilect in Western Pennsylvania

johnpowers — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 01:15:03 GMT

Hello all,

New to Tribe, so hope I'm not making some newbie mistake. Actually, I'm not very computer savvy at all, and in an odd way that makes some of the problems about electronic vote counting easy to understand. Case in point: Where I live elections are conducted with Unilect Patriot machines. A local activist has challenged the certification http://geocities.com/the_american_voter On February 15 at meeting in the state capital the president of Unilect was demonstrating the machines when the screen froze http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05047/458149.stm A dumb computer user like myself says, “typical” I'm used to things mucking-up.

There's much more to this issue and I know it. In the past election there were a number of problems with Unilect machines observed. I'd be interested to here of other local efforts in re Unilect.

It's often said that people love using DREs. I can see that to some extent. User-friendly interfaces are certainly quite possible using the technology. My opinion is that Unilect seriously misses the mark in this regard. I find the machines dim and navigating through pages unintuitive. For heaven's sake, if your community is considering adopting them, raise you're voice.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 2 replies

dv documentry on Black Box Voting

eldorado7122 — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 03:34:37 GMT

So i have been working on this subject for over a year now.. Plenty of interviews with Washington State officals, Bev Harris and local activists... the Washington Sec of State actually walked out on interview.. i ran out of $ for this plus no one is interested..no producers,,, anyone got any ideas?

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 1 reply

New Blackbox Voting Lawsuit Florida

gentrified — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:06:08 GMT

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

10. The Elections office has provided incomplete data regarding Early Voting and Absentee ballots. The Supervisor of Elections, for example, reported that the total number of absentee ballots and Early voting ballots, combined equaled 89,999 votes, yet the published figures for those totals is 84,100 votes, leaving over 5,800 votes unaccounted for.

11. In addition to the pattern of delay in providing the requested information, the true election results are in doubt because of numerous violations of election law procedure and unanswered questions concerning the results.

12. The polls were opened early and closed late during Early Voting.

13. Many public records, including one signed results tape from a voting machine were found in the trash. Many of the requested records not furnished by the Elections office have been found in the trash. Results from the tapes found in the trash do not match the results of the copies of tapes furnished.

14. An email from Mark Earley, of Diebold Elections Systems, Inc., to the Elections office was provided which asked the recipient for an explanation of why Volusia County had more memory card failures than all of their other Florida customers combined, and then asked why the 17 memory card failures which the Elections office reported on November 3, increased to 25 before November 12, 2004.

15. The reported memory card failures were significant and troubling and included reporting zero votes after one week of voting, requesting permission to upload votes before the voting began, and messaging whether the card should be reformatted.

16. According to a statement by the Supervisor of Elections on November 17, 2004, the GEMS computer is not networked, and is "stand alone." The furnished computer logs show evidence of at least two attempts to remotely access the GEMS central tabulator, which is claimed to be secure. A computer screen shot printout on November 17, 2004 (found in the trash) shows that the GEMS computer at that time had two networked hard drives.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Recount Funding!!!

Cedwyn — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:04:28 GMT

ralph is pushing new hampshire and cobb and badnarik need about another 100K for Ohio.

msnbc.msn.com/id/6469559/

please contribute!

www.votenader.org/contribute/index.php

web.greens.org/c/cobb/supporters.cgi

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies

Investigate the Vote

marti — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 21:25:54 GMT

From MoveOn.org

Subject: Tell Congress to Investigate the 2004 Election

Dear friend,

Questions are swirling around whether the election was conducted honestly or not. We need to know -- was it or wasn't it?

If people were wrongly prevented from voting, or if legitimate votes were mis-counted or not counted at all, we need to know so the wrongdoers can be held accountable, and to help prevent this from happening again.

Members of Congress are demanding an investigation to answer this question. Join me in supporting their call, at:

www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/

Thanks.

posted in Voting Issues and Reform - 0 replies