michelle
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Post by michelle on Nov 6, 2006 20:31:46 GMT 4
11/06/06 VOTER INFO AND HOW TO PROTECT YOUR VOTE:“How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?” - Seymour Hersh - Taken from www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5450Karl Rove has been bragging for weeks about his "72-hour program" to swing the elections, which predict a Democratic takeover of Congress.
Now we know what it is: a dirty trick campaign using robocalls.The calls are made to Democrats and swing voters at all times of day or night to make them angry. And they pretend to be from the Democrat ("Hello, I'm calling with information about Lois Murphy"). If you hang up, they call back 7-8 times, and each time you hear the Democrat's name, to get you angry at him or her. If you stay on, you get to hear a scathing attack on the Democrat. Karl Rove's whole career has been devoted to dirty tricks. In 2002, his dirty trick was to force Congress to vote shortly before Election Day for the Iraq War based on two months of White House lies about WMD's and Al Qaeda ties. That dirty trick has cost the lives of 2,834 brave young Americans (16 so far in November), $2 trillion in debt to our children and grandchildren, and unleashed massive bloodshed in Iraq. It's too late for legal action or even newspaper stories. If you receive one of these calls, write down the time and candidate and call every radio and TV show you can and urge everyone listening to vote against the disgusting Republican dirty tricksters. And forward this email to everyone you know so they aren't fooled by Karl Rove's dirty trick. Let's make this Karl Rove's LAST campaign by voting ALL Republicans out of office.More details: www.talkingpointsmemo.comdailykos.com____________________________ BlueRevolution.us vigils are now planned for 29 counties! Bring a candle and a "count every vote" sign to your County Election Offices right after the polls close on Election Night: bluerevolution.us If your county is listed at the top of BlueRevolution.us, please join the vigil! Login to Democrats.com and click the "local" link: democrats.com/local Then click the Forum Topic announcing your county's "Blue Revolution" vigil and post a reply saying you'll be there with a candle and a sign. If your county is not listed BlueRevolution.us, please start a vigil! Login to Democrats.com and click the "local" link: democrats.com/local Then create a New Forum Topic coded "Blue Revolution," select "County," post the location of your County Election Office, and spread the word to your friends. ____________________________ Stop Fraud in Your PrecinctUpload Results for Real-Time Election Forensics on Election Night! Go to www.electiondefense.net(1) Download and print the data collection form (2) Go to your local poll at close of election, and copy data from the publicly-posted poll tally tapes (3) Return to www.electiondefense.net, enter your data in webform, and send Election Day Rapid Response Data Analysis Project will compare precinct results to county tabulator results and flag discrepancies. ____________________________ Be Prepared for Election Day Problems!Make sure your voter registration has not been purged - "google" your registration:myDem.com Verify the location of your polling place:electionimpact.votenet.com/pfawf/pollboothlocator/index.cfmBring the following to your precinct when you go to vote:A photo ID or two forms of non-photo ID Any mailings you received from your County Election Office (voter card, polling place locations, etc.) A cell phone so you can call 1-(866) Our-Vote / 1-(866) 687-8683 for English and español, or 1-(888) Vey-Vota / 1-(888) 839-8682 para la ayuda en español Read the latest election theft exposes at BradBlog.com . Prepare for other election-stealing strategies at ProtectMyVote.org and EP365.org and Vote411.org . Listen to www.airamerica.com for breaking coverage of election problems.Volunteer to stop election fraud at:electiondefensealliance.org/election_day_rapid_response_0www.velvetrevolution.us/electionstrikeforce/verifiedvoting.org Report election fraud to 1-888-VOTETIP or tips@velvetrevolution.us and you might collect a reward of up to $500,000 for information leading to overturning a House or Senate race and conviction of the person or persons responsible. Lots more tips from Cactus Pat:www.democrats.com/Make-Them-Steal-Your-Vote----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The theft of American elections is a media issue - by Andi Novick, Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media (October 31, 2006) MUST READ! freepress.org/departments/display/16/2006/2205(...) Not only does the main stream media refuse to investigate and report on the impossible discrepancies between the 'official' count and the exit polls, but they are actively complicit in this fraud. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the AP own the exit polls and have defied John Conyers' request for the raw data, keeping that data secreted from even qualified independent researchers. We are all trying to take optimism from the lead democrats have in the polls going into the election. Keep in mind that they had these leads in 2002, when the Republicans got themselves total control, and they had even greater promise going into the 2004 elections. If you are still not convinced of the massive fraud that is going on, you can look at my 'cliff notes' version about the theft, which I wrote thinking people might read a few pages as opposed to an entire book www.freepress.org/departments/display/16/2006/1865 (...) It is precisely because the exit polls are so reliable in proving the actual vote that for the first time in a half century, there will be no exit polls this year. The media consortium which owns the exit polls is actively suppressing the evidence we need to maintain our democracy: in this case information about how we've lost the ability to elect or evict our government. Without exit polls, it will be exceedingly difficult to have the evidence establishing the theft. Just like electronic voting, not a trace of evidence should be left to expose the greatest theft of this country's history. How to fight back? Firstly, we need the most massive turnout -- some people think if it's high enough we can overcome the level of the theft. Others think it will at least make it more difficult for the Republicans to explain how they somehow won again, even though Americans have never returned, and never would return, such an unpopular, incompetent and corrupt crew to office. Secondly, we need independent exit polling. Independent exit polls have been used successfully to prevent fraud. (...) Now we have independent exit polls. Steve Freeman has teamed up with Ken Warren of The Warren Poll and created exit polls you can do this year, _instructions for doing your own exit poll_ electionintegrity.org/Do_Your_Own_Exit_Poll.pdf CLIP
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALSO SEE:Video the votewww.youtube.com/watch?v=DaEECHjWptUMUST SEE! Join them at www.videothevote.orgElectronic Vote Machine Security (7 min - April 23, 2006) video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3074338748583195498&pr=goog-sl&hl=enSo much for free and fair democratic elections? Black Box Votingwww.blackboxvoting.org/REVIEWS on HBO "Hacking Democracy" and much MUCH more including "State-by-State Guidelines for Who Can Observe Elections Processes" - Their Citizens Tool Kit at www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.html is especially recommended! 12 WAYS YOU CAN SAFEGUARD THE VOTE - EXCELLENT AND COMPREHENSIVE!www.yesmagazine.org/newsletters/vote2006.htmlWill it happen again? On November 7 we may see voters waiting in long lines, only to find they're not on the voter rolls. We may see election workers struggling with malfunctioning machines. If you're worried that we will wake up November 8 to find that, once again, election procedures in key races are in question, read on. The staff at YES! Magazine has researched the recommendations of voting integrity advocates and offers 12 ways you can protect your own vote-and the fairness of the system. Please forward this checklist to others to help make our election system work. Other recommended resourceswww.verifiedvoting.orgwww.VotersUnite.orgwww.truthout.org/voters.rights.htmIt all comes down to who we really believe is in power. To the extent we believe that the world's leaders (or powerful individuals secretly controlling them) are in power, we are at their mercy. If, however, we know that the real power lies deep within each one of us, then we become powerful co-creators of the world and universe in which we live!
It is is high time that PEOPLE show to those governing them just who is the BOSS. No matter what "they" might attempt to hold on to power, it is an incontrovertible fact in everyone's mind and heart that they have lost whatever shred of legitimacy they could possibly ever have had, and that the US voters will massively trounce them out of power this Tuesday November 7. No gerrymandering will be tolerated. The truth is out and whomever will replace the failed Congress representatives and Senators have better swiftly implement overdue changes with the powerful mandate soon to be given to them to correct the abysmal wrongs of the past 6 years and get rid of the wrongdoers right up to the top.
The entire planet is supporting you, all the Good people in America, those not blinded by greed and self-preservation at the cost of everything else, who are about to reset history back on track for a wonderfully better future and not let those bent on destroying all life on Earth for the sake of their overfilled bottom line bring about tyranny, more wars, and the final descent into hellish oblivion.
The buck stops with US!
They have attempted to pull every strings they can and conjure up all the nightmare scenarios they could to maintain everyone into abject fear and thus rob us all of our rightful sovereign power over our lives.
If we let them have their way, we lose all that is dearest to us. We lose our freedom, we lose our peace of mind, and we lose the sacred, living planet nurturing us all.
The choice has never been clearer. The time has come to empower ourselves to masterfully bring back all the living colors of laughter, innocence, love and compassion in every nook and cranny of this astoundingly beautiful Earth/Gaia. The time has come to BE the radiant souls that we truly ARE. The time has come to Let Love Be the guiding beacon blazing a perfect pathway onward into a blessed future for all sentient beings.
The TIME is NOW![/color]
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Nov 8, 2006 5:37:15 GMT 4
11/07/06 I was 5th to vote at my precinct today. I hate using the electronic machines they forced on us this year. I felt no confidence using it, especially since Pennsylvania's machines do not offer a voter receipt; man, do I miss pulling a mechanical lever. Throughout the day, Pennsylvania reported the highest incidents of voter complaints in the nation. The most frequent were not being found in the election registrations and being asked for ID when it wasn't necessary. In Westmoreland County, EVERY ONE of the electronic machines was not set correctly and voters were turned away until the problem was corrected; all machines' dates were set to the wrong date and showed that the polls were closed. Our state's elections, although it has not gotten the most national attention, has one of the most important races with Republican Senator Rick Santorum lagging far behind Democratic candidate, Bob Casey. I have been continuously embarrassed to have Santorum as my Senator spouting his sometimes bizarre religious claptrap, his intense focus on the "war on terror", and close ties to Bush. Michelle
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Nov 8, 2006 9:49:31 GMT 4
GREAT NEWS! Pennsylvania delivered 3 seats to the House and one to the Senate. As a matter of fact, the Democrats have won more than enough seats to take control of the House . It is too early to tell about control of the Senate.
Our new Pa. Senator, Bob Casey, Jr., is the first the first Democratic Senator we've had since the 1960s. I just returned from Jason Altmier's victory speech. He is the winner of another very important win for the Democrats in the 4th Congressional District.
Political NEWCOMER, Jason Altmire beat Representative Melissa Hart [member of Ways and Means Committee] in a nationally watched tight race. The final count was Altmire 53% to Hart 47%. This is a significant win for a number of reasons. First of all, Altmier is new to politics. Ms. Hart has had 16 years of public service, six of which were in the House of Representatives; her politics were locked in step with President Bush. She has never before faced serious competition in defense of her seat.
This upset for the Republicans should tell us much about the mood of the country. Western Pennsylvania is a part of the country whose people have faced terrible personal strife; we have countless numbers of displaced workers with no future in site. It is a land of out of work [steel] 'mill honkers' and coal miners. Our infrastructure is a shambles, our schools are crap, our landscape is being bulldozed for malls, and our mountains blown up, destroying some of the most beautiful areas in the country. Environmental air and water pollution is killing and sickening many. We have been abandoned, sold out, by our public servants at both the federal and state levels.
I have a good feeling about Representative Altmire's win. He was humble and emotional toward his victory. And, hopefully true to the people he vows to represent, he held his election watch at a local pizza and bar establishment, making himself accessible to myself and the rest of the little people here in the 4th District.
Michelle
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Nov 24, 2006 7:38:29 GMT 4
Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections HackedOpEdNews Exclusive November 17, 2006 at 10:59:41 by Rob Kall Results Skewed Nationwide In Favor of Republicans by 4 percent, 3 million votesA major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate races across the country is indicated by an analysis of national exit polling data, by the Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization. These findings have led EDA to issue an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment. "We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape," said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7. "The findings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting systems used in the United States," according to Sally Castleman, National Chair of EDA. "This is a nothing less than a national indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!" Read the rest; you can also take action here:www.opednews.com/articles/genera_rob_kall_061117_clear_evidence_2006_.htm
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Dec 3, 2006 12:56:46 GMT 4
When Votes Disappear By Paul Krugman The New York Times Friday 24 Novmber 2006 You know what really had me terrified on Nov. 7? The all-too-real possibility of a highly suspect result. What would we have done if the Republicans had held on to the House by a narrow margin, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggested that a combination of vote suppression and defective - or rigged - electronic voting machines made the difference? Fortunately, it wasn't a close election. But the fact that our electoral system worked well enough to register an overwhelming Democratic landslide doesn't mean that things are O.K. There were many problems with voting in this election - and in at least one Congressional race, the evidence strongly suggests that paperless voting machines failed to count thousands of votes, and that the disappearance of these votes delivered the race to the wrong candidate. Here's the background: Florida's 13th Congressional District is currently represented by Katherine Harris, who as Florida's secretary of state during the 2000 recount famously acted as a partisan Republican rather than a fair referee. This year Ms. Harris didn't run for re-election, making an unsuccessful bid for the Senate instead. But according to the official vote count, the Republicans held on to her seat, with Vern Buchanan, the G.O.P. candidate, narrowly defeating Christine Jennings, the Democrat. The problem is that the official vote count isn't credible. In much of the 13th District, the voting pattern looks normal. But in Sarasota County, which used touch-screen voting machines made by Election Systems and Software, almost 18,000 voters - nearly 15 percent of those who cast ballots using the machines - supposedly failed to vote for either candidate in the hotly contested Congressional race. That compares with undervote rates ranging from 2.2 to 5.3 percent in neighboring counties. Reporting by The Herald-Tribune of Sarasota, which interviewed hundreds of voters who called the paper to report problems at the polls, strongly suggests that the huge apparent undervote was caused by bugs in the ES&S software. About a third of those interviewed by the paper reported that they couldn't even find the Congressional race on the screen. This could conceivably have been the result of bad ballot design, but many of them insisted that they looked hard for the race. Moreover, more than 60 percent of those interviewed by The Herald-Tribune reported that they did cast a vote in the Congressional race - but that this vote didn't show up on the ballot summary page they were shown at the end of the voting process. If there were bugs in the software, the odds are that they threw the election to the wrong candidate. An Orlando Sentinel examination of other votes cast by those who supposedly failed to cast a vote in the Congressional race shows that they strongly favored Democrats, and Mr. Buchanan won the official count by only 369 votes. The fact that Mr. Buchanan won a recount - that is, a recount of the votes the machines happened to record - means nothing. Although state officials have certified Mr. Buchanan as the victor, they've promised an audit of the voting machines. But don't get your hopes up: as in 2000, state election officials aren't even trying to look impartial. To oversee the audit, the state has chosen as its "independent" expert Prof. Alec Yasinsac of Florida State University - a Republican partisan who made an appearance on the steps of the Florida Supreme Court during the 2000 recount battle wearing a "Bush Won" sign. Ms. Jennings has now filed suit with the same court, demanding a new election. She deserves one. But for the nation as a whole, the important thing isn't who gets seated to represent Florida's 13th District. It's whether the voting disaster there leads to legislation requiring voter verification and a paper trail. And I have to say that the omens aren't good. I've been shocked at how little national attention the mess in Sarasota has received. Here we have as clear a demonstration as we're ever likely to see that warnings from computer scientists about the dangers of paperless electronic voting are valid - and most Americans probably haven't even heard about it. As far as I can tell, the reason Florida-13 hasn't become a major national story is that neither control of Congress nor control of the White House is on the line. But do we have to wait for a constitutional crisis to realize that we're in danger of becoming a digital-age banana republic? Source: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112406C.shtml------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also see:Missing Votes in FL-13 Favored Demswww.truthout.org/docs_2006/112206S.shtmlThe group of nearly 18,000 voters that registered no choice in Sarasota's disputed congressional election solidly backed Democratic candidates in all five of Florida's statewide races, an Orlando Sentinel analysis of ballot data shows. Among these voters, even the weakest Democrat - agriculture commissioner candidate Eric Copeland - outpaced a much-better-known Republican incumbent by 551 votes.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 3, 2007 21:17:08 GMT 4
2006 Missouri's election was ground zero for GOPRead this one carefully, interesting stuff. Seems that the GOP wasn't really bent on voter fraud but rather, their intent was to keep as many as possible away from the voting booths. What happened in Missouri is part of a larger national scheme. The Justice Department, spearheaded by Bush appointees, has been very busy. Later, I'll be putting some stuff together on exactly what has happened to our Justice Department under the thread: Broken Governement....MichellePosted on Wed, May. 02, 2007 U. S. ATTORNEYS 2006 Missouri's election was ground zero for GOPBy Greg Gordon McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON - Accusations about voter fraud seemed to fly from every direction in Missouri before last fall's elections. State and national Republicans leaders fretted that dead people might vote or that some live people might vote more than once. The threat to the integrity of the election was seen as so grave that Bradley Schlozman, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and later the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, twice wielded the power of the federal government to try to protect the balloting. The Republican-controlled Missouri General Assembly also stepped into action. Now, six months after freshman Missouri Sen. Jim Talent's defeat handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys show that that Republican campaign to protect the balloting was not as it appeared. No significant voter fraud was ever proved. The preoccupation with ballot fraud in Missouri was part of a wider national effort that critics charge was aimed at protecting the Republican majority in Congress by dampening Democratic turnout. That effort included stiffer voter-identification requirements, wholesale purges of names from lists of registered voters and tight policing of liberal get-out-the-vote drives. Bush administration officials deny those claims. But they've gotten traction in recent weeks because three of the U.S. attorneys ousted by the Justice Department charge that they lost their jobs because they failed to prove Republican allegations of voter fraud. They say their inquiries found little evidence to support the claims. Few have endorsed the strategy of pursuing allegations of voter fraud with more enthusiasm than White House political guru Karl Rove. And nowhere has the plan been more apparent than in Missouri. Before last fall's election: -Schlozman, while he was acting civil rights chief, authorized a suit accusing the state of failing to eliminate legions of ineligible people from lists of registered voters. A federal judge tossed out the suit this April 13, saying Democratic Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan couldn't police local registration rolls and noting that the government had produced no evidence of fraud. -The Missouri General Assembly - with the White House's help - narrowly passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification cards, which Carnahan estimated would disenfranchise 200,000 voters. The state Supreme Court voided the law as unconstitutional before the election. -Two weeks before the election, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters threatening to disqualify 5,000 newly registered minority voters if they failed to verify their identities promptly, a move - instigated by a Republican appointee - that may have violated federal law. After an outcry, the board rescinded the threat. -Five days before the election, Schlozman, then interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, announced indictments of four voter-registration workers for a Democratic-leaning group on charges of submitting phony applications, despite a Justice Department policy discouraging such action close to an election. -In an interview with conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt a couple of days before the election, Rove said he'd just visited Missouri and had met with Republican strategists who "are well aware of" the threat of voter fraud. He said the party had "a large number of lawyers that are standing by, trained and ready to intervene" to keep the election clean. Missouri Republicans have railed about alleged voter fraud ever since President Bush narrowly won the White House in the chaotic 2000 election and Missouri Republican Sen. John Ashcroft lost to a dead man, the late Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose name stayed on the ballot weeks after he died in a plane crash. Joining the push to contain "voter fraud" were Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., who charged that votes by dogs and dead people had defeated Ashcroft, Missouri Republican Gov. Matt Blunt, whose stinging allegations of fraud were later debunked, and St. Louis lawyer Mark "Thor" Hearne, national counsel to Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, who set up a nonprofit group to publicize allegations of voter fraud. Many Democrats contend that the efforts amount to a voter-suppression campaign. "The real problem has never been vote fraud," said Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo. "It's access to the polls. In the last 50 years, no one in Missouri has been prosecuted for impersonating someone else at the polls. But thousands of eligible voters have been denied their constitutional rights. . . . It's sickening." However, Jessica Robinson, a spokeswoman for Blunt, said a report he'd authored in 2001 as secretary of state "documented credible instances of fraud." She said Blunt wanted the legislature to take another shot at passing a photo ID bill as "a reasonable step . . . to help stamp out" such abuse. The Republican-dominated legislature is considering the bill again this year, along with a resolution asking voters to pass a constitutional amendment so the measure can withstand court challenges. In a separate assessment of alleged voter fraud in Missouri, Lorraine Minnite, a Barnard College professor, found scant evidence of it. The study was undertaken for the nonpartisan policy-research group Demos, which despite its name isn't affiliated with the Democratic Party. Minnite, who's writing a book on the issue of voter fraud, said successful drives to register poor people and minorities in recent years had threatened to "tip the balance of power" to Democrats, so it was understandable that the Republican Party would seek restrictions that "disproportionately hinder the opposition." It's difficult to capture the emotional debate over the issue of voter fraud in Missouri without considering the Election Day tumult in St. Louis on Nov. 7, 2000. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of voters were turned away because their names weren't on official lists, and many of them converged on the city's election board seeking assistance. Responding to the bedlam, Democrats won an emergency court order that kept some polls open beyond their scheduled 7 p.m. closings. That outraged Republicans, and Hearne, the Bush campaign lawyer, in turn won an emergency appeals-court ruling that shut the polls within an hour. In the ensuing days, Bond blamed Ashcroft's defeat on "a criminal enterprise." The following summer, then-Secretary of State Blunt alleged in a 47-page investigative report that the use of affidavits to allow more than 1,000 "improper ballots . . . compels the conclusion that there was in St. Louis an organized and successful effort to generate improper votes in large numbers." But an investigation by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, launched before Ashcroft settled in as U.S. attorney general in 2001, found the reverse. In a 2002 court settlement with the department's Voting Rights Section, St. Louis election officials acknowledged that they'd improperly purged some 50,000 names from voter lists before the 2000 elections and had failed as required by federal law to notify those people properly that they'd been placed on inactive status. No one knows how many eligible voters were denied their right to cast ballots. Missouri's Rep. Clay charged in a recent interview that Blunt's report was an attempt "to violate the voting rights of certain Missourians." Things didn't heat up again until 2005, when Schlozman authorized a Justice Department suit naming the newly elected Missouri secretary of state - the daughter of the late governor - as the defendant. It alleged that her office had failed to make a "reasonable effort" to remove ineligible people from local voter-registration rolls. A federal judge dismissed the suit last month, saying the government had provided no evidence of fraud. Speaking on behalf of Schlozman, who's now with the Justice Department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, agency spokesman Dean Boyd said: "We are disappointed with the court ruling." Separately, Hearne helped establish the nonprofit Center for American Voting Rights in February 2005, which issued lengthy reports alleging voter fraud in states across the country, including Missouri. One director of the supposedly nonpartisan group was Brian Lunde, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee who switched his allegiance in 2000 and headed Democrats for Bush in 2004. Barnard's Minnite said the center's summary on Missouri consisted of "a litany of overblown allegations of fraud appearing in newspapers, most of which turn out to be minor problems or no problem at all." Republican state Sen. Delbert Scott of Lowry, Mo., chief sponsor of the photo-ID bill last year, said Hearne had helped draft it and served as a key adviser. Hearne didn't respond to several requests for comment. His organization closed down its Internet site in March and has disappeared from view. Last fall, with Missouri's new voter-ID law thrown out by the court, allegations of fraud arose over registration drives among Democratic-leaning minorities in St. Louis and Kansas City by the Democratic-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN). Brian Mellor, a Boston lawyer for ACORN, said many of the accusations surrounded the submission of duplicate or multiple registration forms for the same voters. Such duplication would be caught by election officials and wouldn't enable anyone to vote twice, he said. But officials at St. Louis' Board of Elections took the unusual step of alerting the FBI to those and other irregularities, Mellor said, and he wound up turning over copies of 40,000 St. Louis-area registration forms to bureau agents. Facing the FBI scrutiny, Mellor said, ACORN reviewed its forms in Kansas City and found several with similar handwriting, suggesting that they were bogus. He said the group turned over evidence involving four workers to a county prosecutor in mid-October. That same month, at the initiative of a Republican appointee, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters warning 5,000 people who'd registered through ACORN that their voting status was in question. They were given one week to return signed copies of the letter and confirm personal identifying information or they'd lose their registration status. ACORN attorneys charged that the notice "appears to be an unlawful attempt to suppress and intimidate voters of color." The board sent another mailing withdrawing the threat. Meanwhile, the evidence against the four ACORN workers ended up with the FBI. Five days before the election, U.S. Attorney Schlozman got another voter-fraud headline, announcing the indictments of the four workers. The indictments charged that six applications that ACORN had submitted were fraudulent. "ACORN abhors fraud," Mellor said. He said the timing of the indictments seemed to be aimed at hurting Democrats. Justice Department spokesman Boyd said the policy that prosecutors "refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election" didn't bar pre-election indictments and was intended to ensure that investigators didn't intimidate voters during an election. Boyd said officials in the department’s Public Integrity Section approved the indictments. But Joseph Rich, who headed the department's Voting Rights Section from 1999 to 2005, said the timing of the indictments "flies in the face of long-standing policy. . . . There was no need to bring cases on the eve of the election." McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Margaret Talev contributed to this report. Source:www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17168096.htm
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 8, 2007 10:04:59 GMT 4
RFK: Rove And Rove’s Brain, ‘Should Be In Jail,’ Not In OfficePublished May 7th, 2007 Monday, May 7, 2007 NEW YORK — Voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for prison time for the new US Attorney for Arkansas, Timothy Griffin and investigation of Griffin’s former boss, Karl Rove, chief political advisor to President Bush. “Timothy Griffin,” said Kennedy,”who is the new US attorney in Arkansas, was actually the mastermind behind the voter fraud efforts by the Bush Administration to disenfranchise over a million voters through ‘caging’ techniques - which are illegal.” [Hear Kennedy on Griffin, Rove and ‘caging lists’ below or here]: www.gregpalast.com/Podcasting/RadioInterviews/Apr282007RingOfFire.mp3Kennedy based his demand on the revelations by BBC reporter Greg Palast in the new edition of his book, “Armed Madhouse.” On one page of the book, Palast reproduces a copy of a confidential Bush-Cheney campaign email, dated August 26, 2004, in which Griffin directs Republican operatives to use the ‘caging’ lists. This is one of the emails subpoenaed by Congress but supposedly “lost” by Rove’s office. Palast obtained 500 of these, fifty with ‘caging’ lists attached. ‘Caging’ lists are “absolutely illegal” under the Voting Rights Act, noted Kennedy on his Air America program, Ring of Fire. The 1965 law makes it a felony crime to challenge voters when race is a factor in the targeting. African-American voters comprised the bulk of the 70,000 voters ‘caged’ in a single state, Florida. Palast wrote in his book, “Here’s how the scheme worked. The Bush campaign mailed out letters,” particularly targeting African-American soldiers sent overseas. When the letters sent to the home addresses of the soldiers came back “undeliverable” because the servicemen were in Baghdad or elsewhere, the Republican Party would, “challenge the voter’s registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.” The Republicans successfully challenged “at least one million” votes of minority voters in the 2004 election. Kennedy, a voting rights attorney, fumed, “What he [Griffin] did was absolutely illegal and he should be in jail. Instead [Griffin] was rewarded with the US Attorney’s office.” “They [Griffin, Rove and their confederates at the RNC] knew it was illegal.” Kennedy has called on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to expand their investigations of the firing of US Attorneys to include a probe of their replacements, especially Griffin, as well as Rove’s knowledge of the caging operation. In preparation for just such an investigation, Kyle Sampson, former aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, wrote a confidential email, dated December 19, 2006 outlining a strategy to stall Congress’ from questioning the propriety of the Griffin appointment. “We should gum this to death,” wrote Sampson, “Ask the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we’ll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in ‘good faith,’ of course.” Sampson has since resigned. Palast said, “Just as Rove is known as ‘Bush’s brain,’ Griffin is ‘Rove’s Brain.’ I’m flattered by his ‘review.’” Palast first reported on the caging list operation for BBC Television’s premier current affairs show, Newsnight, in 2004. In a February 7, 2007 email obtained by subpoena from Rove’s office, Griffin boasted that, “No [US] national media picked up” the BBC story. Griffin attached an excerpt of Armed Madhouse. Griffin sent his remarks to Monica Goodling, Senior Counsel to Attorney General Gonzales, who has since resigned and invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer Congressional questions. Griffin and Rove refused several requests from Palast and BBC to respond to charges of illegal, racial ‘caging’ of voters. However, a Republican spokeswoman, while admitting the lists could be used to challenge soldiers’ votes, said that was ‘not the purpose’ for gathering the lists. ********** Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: From Baghdad to New Orleans — Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House GONE WILD.
To see Palast’s reports for BBC, obtain more information on Armed Madhouse or the prosecutor firing scandal, or to request an interview with Palast, go to www.GregPalast.com
Hear Kennedy on Griffin, Rove and on Palast’s book — “a masterpiece,” says RFK: download this recent segment of “Ring of Fire” at www.GregPalast.com Palast will return to speak with Kennedy and his Air America co-host, attorney Mike Papantonio, this weekend. Check Air America listings.Listen Now: www.gregpalast.com/Podcasting/RadioInterviews/Apr282007RingOfFire.mp3Source: www.gregpalast.com/rfk-rove-and-roves-brain-should-be-in-jail-not-in-office/------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jun 5, 2007 17:45:56 GMT 4
Editor's Note: This story was reported last Thursday. The time references reflect May 31. - jl/TO Conyers Requests Palast's "Vote Caging" Evidence By Brad Friedman t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor Monday 04 June 2007 House Judiciary chair tells Palast in interview: "We're not through with Griffin by any means."
Indicates caging operation could not have been done without knowledge of Rove, according to Palast team. As reported previously [1], investigative journalist Greg Palast was scheduled to meet with Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) this evening for an on-camera interview for the BBC. His team, just out from the interview, sends this dispatch to The BRAD BLOG [2]: Rove Pick for US Attorney Resigns After Conyers Seeks Evidence From BBC Tim Griffin, formerly right-hand man to Karl Rove, resigned Thursday as US attorney for Arkansas hours after BBC Television "Newsnight" reported that Congressman John Conyers [had] requested the network's evidence on Griffin's involvement in "caging voters." Greg Palast, reporting for both BBC "Newsnight" and "Democracy Now," obtained a series of confidential emails dating from the 2004 presidential election, in which the GOP operative transmitted so-called "caging lists" of voters to state party leaders. Experts have concluded the caging lists were designed for a mass challenge of voters' right to cast ballots. The caging lists were heavily weighted with minority voters, including African-American homeless men, students and soldiers sent overseas. Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee investigating the firing of US attorneys, met Thursday evening in New York with Palast. After reviewing key documents, Conyers stated that, despite Griffin's resignation, "We're not through with him by any means." Conyers indicated that he thought it unlikely that Griffin could carry out this massive caging operation without the knowledge of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rove. Griffin, who was chosen as US attorney at Rove's request, has not responded to requests by BBC to explain the caging memos. For more on the caging lists, see Palast's BRAD BLOG Exclusive from last week[3], just after Monica Goodling's stunning admissions concerning vote caging [4] allegations about Griffin in her House Judiciary Committee testimony. Also, see our coverage of Slate's article[5] late this afternoon as it became the first MSM-ish outlet to give a serious look at Goodling's overlooked-by-the-MSM, yet bombshell, statement. Palast first reported on the emails from Griffin containing vote caging lists for BBC's "Newsnight," prior to the 2004 presidential election [6]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- URLs in This Post: [1] reported previously: www.bradblog.com/?p=4608 [2] The BRAD BLOG: www.BradBlog.com [3] Palast's BRAD BLOG Exclusive from last week: www.bradblog.com/?p=4594 [4] stunning admissions concerning vote caging: www.bradblog.com/?p=4591 [5] our coverage of Slate's article: www.bradblog.com/?p=4619 [6] for BBC's Newsnight, prior to the 2004 Presidential Election: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkvWkwv7UVo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was originally published on The BRAD BLOG: www.bradblog.com/?p=4620. Source:www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060407R.shtml
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jun 27, 2007 13:49:28 GMT 4
Hope for Fair 2008 Elections Renewed with House Passage of Deceptive Practices LegislationYesterday, the U.S. House passed the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act (HR 1281), which makes the practice of deceiving voters a felony that carries a penalty of up to $250,000 or five years in prison, and increases the criminal penalty for voter intimidation to five years imprisonment.This is a major victory and one of the highest priorities on PFAW and PFAW Foundation's Democracy Campaign agenda. It addresses voter suppression tactics like: Middle-of-the-night robo calls that purport to be made by a candidate, but are really meant to annoy and mislead voters. Attempts to send voters to the wrong polling place, or threaten them with arrest if they haven't paid a parking ticket. Flyers with false information about candidate endorsements. Passage of this bill puts real momentum behind the movement to clean up these shameful tactics once and for all. The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Act also requires the Department of Justice to notify voters with accurate information when deceptive practices are confirmed in order to better protect voters before Election Day. Read more: www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=24269
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jul 27, 2007 11:17:05 GMT 4
Make Every Vote Count in 2008!Enact a paper record with The Holt Bill [H.R. 811] The House is ready to strip key reforms and delay implementation until 2012.
Fix the system NOW instead of protesting after another election debacle.....Michelle H.R. 811: Our Best Hope For Election Integrity By 2008 Few people would argue that one of the most pressing problems facing American democracy today is the questionable integrity of our elections. Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) has introduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R. 811) to help repair our broken electoral system. Unfortunately, as reported in the New York Times[1], forces in the Congress are moving to gut the Holt bill's reforms and delay imperative voting reforms until 2012. If passed in its current form without modifications, H.R. 811 will prevent the use of paperless electronic voting machines and will require audits to check the accuracy of the vote counts for federal elections. The bill includes security provisions that ban Internet connections for voting machines, as well as for systems that tabulate the votes on election night. It also makes the paper ballot the official record in audits and recounts, and requires election officials to post a notice explaining to voters the need to verify their vote. This bill has over 200 bi-partisan co-sponsors, and represents our best hope for establishing a voter-verified paper record in time for the 2008 elections. However, the bill has been hung up in the House and is being modified to allow for the continued deployment of "tiny, cash-register-style printers" of the sort infamous for losing 10 percent of the ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio in 2006. This is a step in the wrong direction. The version of H.R. 811 that was reported out of committee in May, would have immediately halted the further deployment of such substandard equipment, while still requiring full auditability and accessibility in 2008 in paperless jurisdictions, and requiring the already-papered jurisdictions (those using touch screens with printers) to upgrade their auditability and accessibililty by 2010. Voting system reform cannot be delayed any longer. Tell your representative to demand that H.R. 811 be brought to the House floor -- as reported out of committee in May -- for a full vote and vote YES on this bill.1 Overhaul Plan for Vote System Will Be Delayed New York Times July 20, 2007. Go To: actforchange.workingassets.com/campaign/HR811------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also of interest:Are Voter Registration Drives Being Put Out of Business?By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet Posted on July 25, 2007 In 2004, Floridians overwhelmingly voted to raise their state minimum wage after low-income advocates collected ballot petition signatures, registered thousands of new voters and turned out the vote. The following spring, Florida's Republican-majority Legislature reacted. It passed a law that so severely regulated voter registration drives that, before the 2006 primary, Florida's League of Women Voters stopped registering voters for the first time in its history. The league feared mistakes on just 14 voter registration forms could result in penalties equal to its entire $70,000 budget. Florida's actions were not unique. In Ohio, where the 2004 presidential election lingered as its Electoral College votes were challenged in Congress, Ohio's Republican-majority legislature passed a series of election reforms, including tough new rules and penalties for voter registration drives. In 2006, that law stopped the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, and community and church groups from registering voters in the state. "In Florida, it absolutely shut down voter registration by all groups going up through the primary election of 2006," said Wendy Weiser, deputy director of the Brennan Center, a New York-based public-interest law firm that challenged the Florida and Ohio laws. "In Ohio, before there was an injunction in the case, voter registration was halted." Both Florida's and Ohio's voter registration laws were challenged in court and were enjoined, or suspended, before the 2006 election, allowing voter registration to resume. Federal judges found they violated First Amendment rights and were hurting efforts to sign up new voters. But the trend of regulating voter registration drives did not end there. Between the 2004 election and today, six other states adopted similar laws -- Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, New Mexico, Missouri and Washington -- and like-minded bills have been proposed in New Jersey, Arizona and elsewhere, according to the Brennan Center. Not all of these laws were passed by Republican partisans seeking political revenge. But the line between ensuring an accurate registration process and intentionally suppressing voters is very thin, according to academics, opponents and supporters of these laws. On Wednesday, July 23, the Senate Rules Committee will hold a hearing on sections of an election reform bill (The Ballot Integrity Act of 2007 or S. 1487) that would ban states from passing laws that would negatively impact voter registration drives. "I think it is a real serious concern," said Dan Tokaji, assistant professor of law at Ohio State University and an election law expert. "There are constitutional rights, free speech rights and petition rights at issue. What has a lot of voting rights activists concerned is states with GOP-dominated legislatures are going to put a lot of voter registration groups out of business." American democracy depends on private groups more than the government to register voters. As a result, registration efforts have always been sources of political friction. "The attempts to restrict registration and attempts to smear groups that attempt to register voters comes from people who don't think those voters are likely to support them," said Kevin Whelan, ACORN communications director. "I think there is another response to people who don't like to see a lot of minority voters coming onto the rolls. They could campaign for those votes." "It was done to address real needs," said William Todd, president of the Ohio chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association, speaking of his state's voter registration reforms, which were since found to be unconstitutional. "Ohio was not alone in not having an updated election code. People hadn't looked at some of those laws in 50 years." "There were two stories that stuck in my mind," he said, recalling lobbying for the laws. "Certainly there were a handful of fraudulent registrations here and there. The other thing was the state organization of election officials was complaining that there were certain groups that would save registration cards for months and then dump them on the boards of election at the last minute. Because they were brought in in such an untidy manner, the boards couldn't verify them and process them, and people lost the opportunity to vote." ACORN's voter registration efforts have been criticized in more severe tones by the GOP and their allies -- especially in the heat of a close election. Between 2005 and 2006, the group registered 1.6 million voters in 23 states, Whelan said. In Ohio in 2005, ACORN and other voter registration groups working in Ohio were sued by "The Free Enterprise Coalition," a GOP-funded group that promoted voter fraud concerns and disappeared after litigation began, causing the suit to be dismissed. However, in other states some problems were found with some of ACORN's voter registration forms, although the politics surrounding the most high-profile example is murky at best. In Kansas City, Mo., four ACORN temporary workers were indicted on felony charges of falsifying seven voter registration forms just days before the 2006 midterm election. ACORN had alerted state authorities and had been cooperating with the FBI, Whelan said, but the interim U.S. attorney, Bradley Schlozman, went against established Justice Department procedure and announced the indictments. While the ACORN workers later pleaded guilty, Whelan said the number of voter registrations affected was "less than a fraction of a fraction of one percent" of all its registrations nationwide. Still, that did not stop the Republican Party from accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election, the very political meddling the Justice Department policy was intended to prevent. Republicans, for their part, also had problems with submitting fraudulent voter registrations. In late October 2006, just before Election Day, 11 volunteers working for the Republican Party of Orange County, Calif., were charged with registration fraud after they submitted registration forms where Democratic voters were misidentified up as members of the Republican Party. And in Nevada, a firm that the Republican National Committee hired to register voters, Voters Outreach of America, was found to be throwing out registrations for Democrats while turning in forms for Republicans. But election law experts say problems like these, whether in Kansas City, Orange County or Las Vegas are by far the exception, not the rule. Moreover, they say new state laws passed since 2004 that have already impeded hundreds of thousands of voters from registering are a much bigger concern and of an entirely different magnitude. "The numbers are enormous," said the Brennan Center's Wendy Wieser, speaking of the voter registration restrictions that were in effect in Florida and Ohio in 2006. "But they weren't as effective as they were intended to be. They were thrown out. They were effective when they were in place." "They got into a huge fight in Ohio on whether the regulations were onerous and punitive," the Republican National Lawyers Association's Todd said. "But if you register a person to vote, you have an obligation to turn the registration in, and make sure they are registered and can vote." Ohio State's Dan Tokaji said the Senate Rule Committee's hearing was timely, because both political parties are now jockeying for position before the next presidential election. "It is a perfect time to be talking about this," he said. "I expect there would be all kinds of efforts by other states and GOP-dominated legislatures to regulate voter registration between now and 2008." Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.Source: www.alternet.org/story/57815/
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jul 31, 2007 17:21:36 GMT 4
In Violation of Federal Law, Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election Records Are Destroyed or MissingBy Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet Posted on July 30, 2007 Two-thirds of Ohio counties have destroyed or lost their 2004 presidential ballots and related election records, according to letters from county election officials to the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner. The lost records violate Ohio law, which states federal election records must be kept for 22 months after Election Day, and a U.S. District Court order issued last September that the 2004 ballots be preserved while the court hears a civil rights lawsuit alleging voter suppression of African-American voters in Columbus. The destruction of the election records also frustrates efforts by the media and historians to determine the accuracy of Ohio's 2004 vote count, because in county after county the key evidence needed to understand vote count anomalies apparently no longer exists. "The extent of the destruction of records is consistent with the covering up of the fraud that we believe occurred in the presidential election," said Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney representing the King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association, which filed voter suppression suit. "We're in the process of addressing where to go from here with the Ohio Attorney General's office." "On the one hand, people will now say you can't prove the fraud," he said, "but the rule of law says that when evidence is destroyed it creates a presumption that the people who destroyed evidence did so because it would have proved the contention of the other side."Brunner's office confirmed the 2004 ballots were missing, but declined to comment. "Because this case is still pending, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is unable to comment on this," said Jeff Ortega, a spokesperson. "Ultimately, whether the boards of elections are in violation of a federal court order is a matter for the court to decide." The missing presidential election records were discovered this past spring by Brunner, a Democrat and former judge who was elected Secretary of State in 2006. Her predecessor, Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell, was sued in August 2006 by a Columbus community organization that alleged the former Secretary of State and other "unnamed" officials "selectively and discriminatorily designed and implemented procedures for the allocation of voting machines in a manner to create a shortage. For certain urban precincts where large numbers of African-Americans resided," according to the complaint. Under federal and Ohio law, all ballots and election records from federal races must be preserved for 22 months after Election Day, which fell on Sept. 2, 2006. While election integrity activists and reporters from a Columbus website, FreePress.org, had sought the ballots and other election records soon after the presidential election, Blackwell would not allow county boards to release the ballots, citing court challenges to the 2004 results and a 2005 suit from the League of Women Voters alleging the state was not following the newest federal election law, the Help America Vote Act. By spring 2006, after the League's lawyers stipulated they were not challenging the 2004 election results, some counties began to release their 2004 election records. Scrutiny of those records raised questions about the conduct of the election and some county vote totals. On Aug. 23, 2006, lawyers for the King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association notified the Secretary of State's office of their voter suppression suit. The following day Blackwell's office sent letters to all 88 of Ohio's county Boards of Election, notifying them of the suit. It is customary for public officials to preserve potential evidence when notified of pending litigation. Ian Urbina, a New York Times reporter working on the story, reported that Blackwell said he would be creating a process whereby county election records could eventually review and dispose of the 2004 ballots. On Sept. 11, 2006, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ordered the election boards "to preserve all ballots from the 2004 Presidential election, on paper and in any other format, including electronic data, unless and until such time otherwise instructed by this Court." Two months after Marbley's order, Blackwell lost the race for governor to Democrat Ted Strickland and Brunner was elected Secretary of State. During the following winter and spring, Brunner and the state's attorneys began negotiating a settlement for the voter suppression suit, according to lawyers involved in those talks. Part of that agreement, which has not yet been brought before the federal district court, was the creation of a statewide repository of the 2004 presidential ballots. When conducting an inventory and attempting to collect those records, Brunner's office learned that seven counties had no ballots to turn over and 56 counties only had partial records from the 2004 vote. "This is not just a violation of a 22-month ballot retention law. It is a violation of a court order," Arnebeck said. "Blackwell told the New York Times that he would create a clearance procedure before destroying any ballots. The combination of Blackwell's directive and my letter should have been enough to give the counties notice." What happened to the 2004 ballotsThe presidential ballots and election records were lost, misplaced, damaged by water, taken to landfills -- all apparently by mistake, due to miscommunications, or because the local election administrators were not aware of the state ballot preservation law or the federal court order, according to letters to Brunner's office from the various county election boards. "Our staff unintentionally discarded boxes containing Ballot Pages as requested in (Brunner's) Directive 2007-07 due to unclear and misinterpreted instructions," wrote Butler County Board of Election Director Betty McGary and Deputy Director Lynn Kinkaid in a May 9 memo. "Several boxes containing all the wire-bound ballot pages were discarded into a Rumpke dumpster. The dumpster would have been emptied into the local landfill." "The Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Board of Elections was unable to transfer the unvoted precinct ballots and soiled precinct ballots," wrote John Williams, Hamilton County Director of Elections on May 16, 2007. "To the best if my knowledge, the above ballots were inadvertently shredded between January 19th and 26th of '06 in an effort to make room for the new Hart voting system." "No one could remember the disposition of said ballots," wrote Mike Keeley, of Clermont County's Board of Elections on May 10, 2007, referring to the "unvoted" or unused ballots from the 2004 presidential election. Since the 2004 election, a handful of media organizations, civil rights groups, attorneys, historians and authors have been investigating how the president won in Ohio by 118,775 votes. These inquiries have had two primary focuses: examining Republican-led voter suppression tactics and problems with the vote count, suggesting vote count fraud. The partisan voter suppression tactics have been easier to document. Before the election, Blackwell, who was co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign, issued numerous administrative orders that fueled an extreme partisan climate. One of the most notable came as Ohio was seeing large voter registration drives in mid-2004. Blackwell issued an order, which he later rescinded under pressure, saying only voter registrations on 80-pound paper would be accepted and processed. At the time, Republican Gov. Robert Taft told reporters that directive could disenfranchise 100,000 voters. The state Republican Party also threatened to send thousands of poll challengers to local precincts, to ensure only properly registered voter exercised that right. On Election Day in many Ohio cities, the turnout -- or voter accommodation rate -- in these traditional Democratic strongholds was markedly lower than in nearby suburbs, where Republicans have tended to be the majority. In Columbus, the King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association sued saying African-American voters in Franklin County were disenfranchised because urban precincts received fewer voting machines per capita than the whiter, wealthier suburbs. They noted urban precincts had many more voting machines during the spring primary. Ohio's Secretary of State and Attorney General are engaged in settlement talks in the neighborhood association suit, suggesting the voter suppression claims have merit. In contrast, the case for Republican vote count fraud in the rural areas has been much harder to prove, even as the certified vote count is problematic in some counties. Compared to Ohio's Democratic urban core, turnout in the Republican districts was higher than the 2000 election. Moreover, in a handful of counties there were vote count anomalies that made post-election observers question whether Bush's vote was padded. The most notable example is more than 10,000 voters from several Bible belt counties who voted for Bush and voted in favor of gay marriage, if the results are true. In a dozen rural counties, virtually unknown Democrats at the bottom of the ballot received more votes that Kerry, an oddity in a presidential year.Reporters associated with FreePress.org and Arnebeck's legal team hoped the court order preserving the 2004 ballots would enable them to investigate how these results occurred. Depending on the ballot type and vote-counting machine used, they have theories about how Bush's vote could have been inflated. But because many of these rural counties apparently have destroyed the very 2004 election records that would clarify what happened, it is now virtually impossible to determine what happened. In Warren County, where county election officials said on Election Day that the FBI had declared a homeland security alert -- which they later retracted -- ballots were diverted to a warehouse before counting. The local media was not allowed to observe the vote count. According to a letter from the Warren County Board of Election to Brunner's office, the election board cannot find 22,000 unused ballots from the election. In nearby Butler County, unused ballots are also missing, fueling speculation that they might have been used by Republican partisans to pad the president's totals.
"The missing records reveal where the fraud occurred," said Arnebeck. "You take as an example, Warren County. It is well documented that there was a phony homeland security alert and that was the excuse for excluding the public and the press from observing what was going on during Election Day. So the missing unused ballots would suggest that ballots were remade to fit the desired result."
"The same situation occurred in Clermont County," he said. "We have sworn affidavits from people who saw white stickers placed over the Kerry-Edward ovals in this optical scan county," he said, referring to one way of masking a would-be Kerry vote, because optical-scan machines read ink marks on paper ballots. "So the missing unused ballots would suggest they were used to remake ballots to reflect the desired vote for Bush."Many rural Ohio counties did not have vote count problems, Arnebeck said. But enough did have significant problems that called for further investigation. "The Attorney General says the rural counties all say human error was to blame (for the missing ballots)," he said. "There are some counties where ballots are missing and we don't believe anything was wrong with the vote count. But there are others where that human error covers up what we think was vote count fraud."Another big category of votes that will never be explained are the nearly 129,000 ballots that were rejected by voting machines and not counted. Many of these 2004 ballots -- a mix of computer punch cards, paper ballots to be marked by ink and electronic votes -- are among the incomplete 2004 election records. One post-election analysis found 94,000 of these ballots come from Democratic-majority precincts, and estimated these that ballots could have cost Kerry an additional 26,000 votes. Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006). © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.Source:alternet.org/story/58328/
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Nov 6, 2007 21:15:10 GMT 4
November 6th 12:15PM ESTProtecting Today's Elections 11/6/2007 11:40:27 AM Eastern Standard Time Today, voters in Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia will participate in various state and local elections. Will they be able to vote unobstructed? Will certain voters be targeted in voter suppression efforts?People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation are doing our part to make sure that all voters' rights are protected today and in November 2008. Along with Election Protection coalition partners the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the NAACP, People For the American Way Foundation is sponsoring and disseminating the Election Protection hotline (1-866-OUR-VOTE), tracking reports of voting problems via the Election Incidence Reporting System (EIRS), making sure lawyers are on hand and informed about these states' election laws and making sure local election officials are completely informed about voters' rights. This level of vigilance is demanded every Election Day. But there is so much that can be done on the policy level to protect voters, and measures that we need to enact before voters head out to the polls next November. Senator Obama's (D-IL) Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Act (S. 453) has been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the full Senate must not delay in making sure this bill becomes law in time for the '08 elections. The Supreme Court this term will be hearing a case on the validity of a voter ID law in Indiana. Even advocates for restrictive photo ID laws admit that they disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, and studies confirm that minorities, students, the elderly and the poor are disproportionately excluded by these laws. (In addition, the type of fraud these laws claim to prevent -- in-person voter impersonation at the polls -- doesn't even exist! * Note: See article below)Because the Roberts-Alito-Scalia-Thomas bloc of the Court has been so dominant, no one should hold their breath in anticipation of the Court protecting the right the vote. That is precisely why Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) has introduced H.R. 4026, a bill that would prohibit the requirement of a photo ID to vote in federal elections -- a bill we should all support. And this week, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is introducing a bill (no # yet) that will criminalize the practice of "vote-caging" -- a voter suppression tactic that gained some notoriety in the U.S. attorney purge when allegations arose that Tim Griffin, the appointed interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas (and Karl Rove's former deputy), had been involved in caging during the 2004 presidential campaign. With one type of caging, a group sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable -- because, for example, the voter refuses to sign for it, the voter isn't present for delivery (due to military service or being away at school perhaps) or the voter is homeless -- the group uses that to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent. Here's what you can do:If you live in a state with elections today, make sure you vote. And make it your mission to call five friends and make sure they vote too. If you have friends in one of these states, encourage them to vote and make sure they know about the Election Protection hotline (1-866-OUR-VOTE). Tell your senators and representative to support the pending legislation mentioned above. Get their contact information here: actions.pfaw.org/siteapps/advocacy/search.aspx?c=enJHKINrFqG&b=2488379 Together, we can protect the right to vote and thwart voter suppression -- today, and in 2008. -- People For the American Way & People For the American Way Foundation's Democracy Campaign P.S. As always, there is one more action you can take, and that is helping to fund the important work of the Democracy Campaign with a generous donation today. Thanks. www.kintera.org/site/lookup.asp?c=feIJKQMEF&b=2794443------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Democracy Campaign The Fraud about "Voter Fraud" from Ralph G. Neas, People For the American Way Foundation March 29, 2007 In an effort to downplay charges that the Bush administration engaged in blatant political manipulation of the Justice Department in firing eight U.S. Attorneys for failing to be adequately “loyal Bushies,” right-wing activists have posited that the reason these federal prosecutors were fired was that they failed to prosecute or investigate rampant voter fraud. Attorney General Gonzales claimed, “The president recalls hearing complaints about election fraud not being vigorously prosecuted.” However, the facts demonstrate that the dismissed prosecutors diligently investigated claims of fraud, and found no evidence to prosecute any crimes. Indeed, the evidence, including statements from Republicans and administration officials, indicates that voter fraud is not a significant problem in our elections. In 2002, the Bush Justice Department launched the “Voting Access and Integrity Initiative,” which directed Justice Department attorneys, including those in the U.S. Attorneys’ offices, to prioritize investigations of alleged voter fraud. Despite being a top priority, the initiative resulted in only 24 convictions for illegally voting nationwide from 2002 to 2005, compared to the hundreds of millions of votes cast during that period. Republican former U.S. Attorneys and other Justice Department officials agree: Former U.S. Attorney John McKay of Washington stated that he conducted a “very active” review of allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington, and testified under oath that “there was no evidence of voter fraud or election fraud.” When the Republican Party in Washington brought its own suit regarding this election, the judge rejected every claim, stating that he found no evidence of fraud. The long-time director of the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Branch, Craig Donsanto, concurred with McKay that no federal crimes had been committed in that election. Furthermore, he has stated that “the number of election fraud related complaints has not gone up since 2002.” Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico, who was one of only two U.S. Attorneys to start a voter fraud task force in 2004, stated that, “After reviewing more than 100 complaints of voter fraud, I felt there was one possible case that should be prosecuted federally. … As much as I wanted to prosecute the case, I could not overcome evidentiary problems. The Justice Department and the F.B.I. did not disagree with my decision in the end not to prosecute.” Even FBI Director Robert Mueller concurs. At a Senate hearing on March 27, 2007, Senator Charles Schumer asked, “Since 2001, have there been any FBI investigations related to election fraud which you believe should have resulted in an indictment but did not?” Mueller responded, “Not to my knowledge … and nothing has come to my level.” Virtually every academic study of voter fraud concludes that it is not close to being a substantial problem, if it exists at all. For instance, in states where alleged voter fraud was used as the justification for restrictive voter ID requirements, the supporters of voter ID have made the following admissions: The State of Indiana, and its Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita, in defending the state’s voter ID law in court documents, admitted that it could not find one single instance of voter impersonation fraud in the history of the state. Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20321 (S.D. Ind. 2006). The Republican Governor of Missouri, who had formerly been the Secretary of State (and run Missouri’s elections), admitted that elections in Missouri were “fraud-free,” before unsuccessfully defending the restrictive voter ID laws in court. Weinschenk v. Missouri, 203 S.W.3d 201 (Mo. 2006). Missouri’s current Secretary of State agrees, noting in a recent report that “As in previous elections, the absence of reports of voting impersonation or voting fraud in the 2006 election in Missouri was notable.” The State of Arizona and its counties, in defending their restrictive voter registration laws and voter ID laws, admitted that, of the over 2.7 million registered voters in Arizona, not one had been convicted of registering to vote illegally, and not one instance of voting by an ineligible non-citizen had led to a conviction. This is the legal testimony of those who have the greatest incentive, and the greatest obligation (in order to justify the burdensome restrictions they impose on voters), to prove the existence of real fraud. And yet, they cannot prove it exists. Study after study reaches the same conclusion. A report produced by Political Science Professor Lorraine Minnite (of Barnard College at Columbia University), released in early March, 2007, concludes that: Voter fraud of any type is extremely rare, with only 24 people convicted nationwide between 2002 and 2005, despite clear laws on the books criminalizing election and voter fraud in virtually every state and at the federal level. Unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud have infected policy discussions regarding elections since Reconstruction, with Democrats using alleged and nonexistent fraud as a pretext to justify restrictive and burdensome laws against black voters. The same types of baseless claims are being used once again to impose extra burdens on the most vulnerable among us, particularly minorities. Bipartisan experts contracted by the Election Assistance Commission made similar findings, in a report they submitted to the EAC in 2006 (the entirety of which the EAC has yet to disclose to the public). The experts concluded that: “There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud, or at least much less than claimed, including voter impersonation, ‘dead’ voters, noncitizen voting and felon voters.” “Most [researchers] believe that false registration forms have not resulted in polling place fraud.” “On balance, more researchers find [polling place fraud] to be less of a problem than is commonly described in the political debate.” “Voter intimidation continues to be focused on minority communities.” “There was only one self evident instance of a noncitizen registering to vote.” Source:www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=23789&tr=y&auid=3152274------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Parade.com has an online poll which asks, "Should voters have to show a valid photo ID in order to vote?"Right now, the pro-voter ID side is winning! As someone who has a deeper understanding of the issue, values an unobstructed right to vote and knows that for some people, in some places, obtaining a photo ID can be no easy task, please take a moment to go cast a "No" vote now:Intelligence Report® By Lyric Wallwork Winik, David Wallechinsky and Daryl Chen Published: November 4, 2007 Should We Limit Who Votes?One of the hottest cases on the Supreme Court’s schedule this term could affect how you vote. The question before the court: Should voters have to show a valid photo ID in order to vote? Supporters of the practice think that having voters prove their identity is vital to combatting voter fraud. Opponents argue that requiring valid ID will be a barrier to poor and minority voters—many of whom lack driver’s licenses or passports—and recalls the worst of voting-rights discrimination. What do you think? Tell us in the comments section below.Go to: www.parade.com/opencms/opencms/articles/editions/2007/edition_11-04-2007/Intelligence_Report
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jan 10, 2008 14:33:46 GMT 4
NH: "First in the nation" (with corporate controlled secret vote counting)I'm moving the topic of recent conversation on vote fraud, by evelyn, at Kucinich for President!, here; where it belongs. I have more on this below and what recently went down in New Hampshire.
Two presidential terms later, we have not fixed [pardon the pun] what should be our number one concern in this country: FRAUD AT THE VOTING BOOTHS!
When you combine this out and out cheating with media censorship of quality candidates there is little hope that the priorities of the average U.S. citizen will be at the head of meaningful legislation. In terms of Congressional action, all we get is lip service to our pressing needs...a game of bringing bills to the floor...a dog and pony show of concern...then utter failure to bring ANYTHING OF SIGNIFICANCE into law because our Congress and higher governmental figureheads do not want to steer us into anything other than what is good for corporate and wealthy concerns.
In conclusion, all I can say is it is up to people like you, who read and educate themselves, to bring this and other issues to the attention of neighbors and friends who do not have access to the Internet [and there are many] or the time or inclination to investigate. It is also up to you to write letters of protest to local newspapers, and petition your representatives for change. Without this type of action, like a dog hanging on our government's pant leg, all complaining and highlighting of the situation is futile. I would also tell all to vote with their conscience and do not let the establishment railroad us again into voting against OUR interests!
START SCREAMING BLOODY HELL, PEOPLE!
Enough said by me, Michelle Here are evelyn's comments from Kucinich for President!:DT1, We're all getting handed "our ass(es)". And though possibly we may never know definitively why, certainly massive fraud cannot be excluded. Just for starters, check out the use of computers in New Hampshire: www.libertybroadcastnetwork.org/locations_nh.htm Only the brain dead would have faith in the humans operating these machines. Where Paper Prevailed, Different ResultsFor detailed analysis, got to the links provided below..M 2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary Results --Total Democratic Votes: 286,139 - Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008 Hillary Clinton, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 39.618% Clinton, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 34.908% Barack Obama, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 36.309% Obama, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 38.617% Machine vs Hand: Clinton: 4.709% (13,475 votes) Obama: -2.308% (-6,604 votes) Source: ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS2008 New Hampshire Republican Primary Results --Total Republican Votes: 236,378 Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008 Mitt Romney, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 33.075% Romney, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 25.483% Ron Paul, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 7.109% Paul, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 9.221% Machine vs Hand: Romney: 7.592% (17,946 votes) Paul: -2.112% (-4,991 votes) Source:ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=REPUBLICANS------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NH: "First in the nation" (with corporate controlled secret vote counting)81% of New Hampshire ballots are counted in secret by a private corporation named Diebold Election Systems (now known as "Premier"). The elections run on these machines are programmed by one company, LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. We know nothing about the people programming these machines, and we know even less about LHS Associates. We know even less about the secret vote counting software used to tabulate 81% of our ballots. People like to say "but we use paper ballots! They can always be counted by hand!" But they're not. They're counted by Diebold. Only a candidate can request a hand recount, and most never do so.[/color] And a rigged election can easily become a rigged recount, as we learned in Ohio 2004, where two election officials were convicted of rigging their recount. (Is it just a funny coincidence that Diebold spokesman is named Mr. Riggall?) We need to get the count right on election night. Right now, nobody in New Hampshire, except the programmers at LHS Associates and Diebold Election Systems, knows if we are getting it right or wrong. Our state officials and representatives know this. They learned all about it when computer security specialists Harri Hursti and Bruce Odell testified before the legislative subcommittee on e-voting in September 2007 (Hursti's testimony is shown in this video). Scientific reports about the vulnerabilities and risks with Diebold optical scanners have been available since 2003. We love our state. It takes courage and strength to admit where we are going wrong and to fix it. May our state officials and representatives find that courage and strength soon. Before we lose the other 19% of our votes. Click the link to learn more, or just click the BlackBoxVoting.ORG video below. For Source and video go to:www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/5307url for this post: tinyurl.com/2yx39k
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Post by evelyn on Jan 10, 2008 20:59:23 GMT 4
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Post by evelyn on Jan 10, 2008 23:05:38 GMT 4
Primary Concerns mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2008/01/primary-concerns.html(Excerpt)The exclusion of Kucinich from the debates, and the mainstream media’s indifference to and/or tacit approval thereof, strikes me as part of the same phenomenon as their inability to incorporate news of ongoing voting-machine insecurity into actual election coverage.
The unacknowledged backstory of the election process, you might say, is that it’s primarily entertainment; and downer stuff like unreliable numbers or a short, pedestrian candidate who insists on talking about real — and possibly unpleasant — issues just don’t belong in the package presented to the public. No grit, please! No matter the current administration has trashed the Constitution, dragged us into a disastrous war, abandoned New Orleans, blown national security and made torture fashionable, this election is about . . . feelings, personal drama.
So with Kucinich out of the debates and out of mainstream consciousness, the simmering concerns of far more than 1 percent of the population are also excluded from these debates that, after all, are about the nation’s and the world’s future. I was dreading the onset of the primary season because I knew it would not be what it affected to be: something, uh, related to reality.
Thus impeachment, that unpleasant topic, is not something any of the top-tier, media-vetted Democratic candidates will be talking about, no matter that it has far more support among the electorate than the impeachment of Hillary’s husband ever did. And the Iraq war itself is reduced to a yes or no question, with no discussion of the bloated U.S. defense budget on the table, or the role of aggressive neocon-style militarism in our national security. Westin’s thumbs up signaled media exclusion of all such matters from the national debate.
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