On the Cover of the Rolling Stone -- Stealing back your vote

By Pistol Tanker Palin

"If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering."
-- By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Greg Palast

From the current newstand issues of the Rolling Stone Magazine, "Can the Republicans Steal the Election?: The GOP is at it again, deterring new voters and discarding democratic votes"

Illustration, Rolling Stone June 2008 article
"Was the 2004 Election Stolen", by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

"Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House."

-- Rolling Stone Magazine, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"

I will keep this brief this morning. The articles are long enough to read already, and important enough to bother. I have already written about this here (summary of caging efforts from Obama's Rapid Response Team) and here (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s Sept. 24 warning of 30 Republican scams to get Democratic voters off the rolls, particularly in swing states).

In the cover story of this month's issue of RS, "Obama's Moment", Eric Bates asks Senator Obama about the Republicans efforts to suppress the Democratic vote in Ohio, whether he is worried about that this time out, and what he's doing about it.

In the last two elections, the Republicans worked to suppress the vote, especially in Democratic precincts. Reporting by Bobby Kennedy in Rolling Stone has raised questions about whether the Republicans stole the 2004 election in Ohio. Are you worried about those kinds of tactics this time? And what are you doing in advance to keep that from happening?
Without leveling any accusations about past misdeeds, I can tell you that we're paying a lot of attention to how the election a month from now is going to take place. We've got an extraordinary team of lawyers in every battleground state — hundreds of them — fanning out across these states. A lot of the work is actually being done now: We have organized such a surge in voter registration that there were clerks having difficulty processing the registration, and there was some question as to legal requirements for them to hire more clerks. So there's already been a lot of work done, and I feel pretty confident that if there are any shenanigans out there that we'll be on top of them.

But John Kerry said the same thing in 2004. Lawyers are mainly useful after the fact, when it's too late. Is there anything you can do before the fact to keep the vote from being tampered with?
Well, in Ohio the thing we did was make sure there was a Democratic secretary of state.

Replacing Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican who was in charge in 2004.
Right.

....

An email from contributing investigative
reporter, Greg Palast

Don't worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of "GOP vote tampering" on a massive scale.

- Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls.

Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge - ten times the average state's rate of removal.

- While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures signed into law by George Bush.

Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of 'Jim Crow' tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.

- A fired US prosecutor levels new charges - accusing leaders of his own party, Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block legal voters as "fraudulent."

- Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging" ultimately took away the rights of 1.1 million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict that, this November 4, it will be far worse.

There's more:

- Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list management' rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls."

Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's purging his registration was particularly shocking - he's the county elections supervisor.

The Kennedy-Palast revelations go far beyond the sum of questionably purged voters recently reported by the New York Times.

"Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics," report Kennedy and Palast, under the cover of fighting fraudulent voting, are "systematically disenfranchis[ing] Democrats."

The investigators level a deadly serious charge:

"If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering."

Block the Vote by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Greg Palast in the current issue (#1064) of Rolling Stone. [Media enquiries - Dave Falkenstein, Sunshine Sachs & Assoc, via interviews@gregpalast.com.]

Note - Kennedy and Palast are releasing, simultaneously with the Rolling Stone investigative report what they call, the vote-theft 'antidote': a 24-page full-color comic book, Steal Back Your Vote org> , which can be downloaded or obtained in print from their non-partisan website, StealBackYourVote.org org>

....

Stealing back your vote

I have voted. That's part of a happy story. After a more than gracious exchange of emails with the Republican Assistant Registrar of the Town of Greenwich, Ms. Ruby Durant -- there is also a Democratic Registrar of voters for the town --, and a phone call to the Town Clerk's Office, I received my Connecticut Absentee Ballot, mailed to all requesting it as they promised on October 3, during the next week, and after a moment spent appreciatively with it, I filled it out, scanned it for posterity and sent it back to Carmella Budkins, the Clerk of the Town of Greenwich, with no shortage of fanfare at the post office in Bonnières sur Seine.

I was almost embarrassed by the attention and care my ballot and I received in a crowed post office in France, filled with small children, some guys and a few elderly persons.

On the phone with the the Town Clerk's Office, I had asked the woman on the other end of the phone if they really do count the absentee ballot, her tone just a little weary and bemused.

"That's why we are sending them all out October 3, so we can count them all." She sounded like they get a lot of them, and like the whole thing isn't much of a picnic, but sworn to do they duty, they'll do it. I felt somewhat comforted and thanked her, telling her that my vote is very important to me and appreciate the respect it receives from them.

I didn't have to say that -- it's their job -- but I thought she might like to know what their job means to one citizen, multiplied by millions away from home, or living outside of the United States. She took it in a sort of "Is this caller cracked? Think nothing of it" fashion.

That's Connecticut, though, friends. I have never lived in a Swing State, unless my family's residence in Maryland can be in any way thought to qualilfy. New York and Connecticut (that's all?), with summers spent in California (a blood red part, Orange County) and Massachusetts (no red part whatsoever).

Check your Voter Registration
It cannot hurt anyone to check your voter registration and make sure you are on the voter rolls. You can also check with your secretary of state or board of elections website (I called the local Registrar of Voters).

Make a habit of it if you live in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Obama's bi-racial heritage, coupled with the current political landscape ("Off with their Republican heads!") putting States like Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, and Virginia in play, with reports of West Virginia begining to feel just a little blue -- acording to Electoral-Votes.com, Insider Advantage has Obama just 2 points under McCain on October 13, and West Virginia Blue's West Virginia Lover reported on ARG's poll putting Obama 8 points up at 50% to McCain's 42% on October 9 --, you might want to check regularly, check often there, too.


Vote early
Check to see if your state permits early voting. This will give you time to act if you find that you are not on the voter rolls before November 4, and it will help ease congestion at the polls on Election Day, Tuesday, November 4, when record numbers are expected to cast their ballots.


Volunteer to help steal the vote back (legally of course)
Whether you are a lawyer, a law student, a paralegal or merely a concerned citizen, there are ways to help. You can use the following links to sign up with:

• The Obama Voter Protection Program, and
• Election Protection with the National Campaign for Fair Elections site. You can still sign up here to volunteer even if you don't have a legal background!

If you are a student, registering to vote for the first time and are planning to vote away from home by absentee ballot
Make absolutely certain to read this Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. piece, if you want you vote to be counted and not end up in the trash bin. His advice for you:

"If you're a newly registered voter... you MUST include your license or some other state I.D. when you come to vote. What that means is that if you're a college kid... if [you] send in the absentee ballot, and [you] don't include a copy of [your driver's] license, [you] vote is going to be thrown into a trash can. And none of these people know this, because you had to have to read the law in order to know it. There is no notification [of this requirement] when you fill out your registration form, so all of those 12 million people that the Democrats have regstered -- those ballot are going to be just thrown out."

If you are an United States Citizen living outside the United States
It is not to late to request a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot from Vote from Abroad, http://VotefromAbroad.org.

They walk you through it. It couldn't be easier.

And for those of you unfamiliar with how the language is applied in the case of US citizens living outside the United States, when we register to vote, it is only valid for that particular Federal Election.

When I left the country in 2002, I was registered in the State of Connecticut in my last town of residence, Greenwich. I voted in the 2004 election, but do not remember how I received my ballot. I had thought that it had been automatically sent to me because of my registration, but I am starting to think that I have forgotten something because I panicked when I used the check your voter registration tool provided by the Obama campaign, and it didn't find my registration.

After making some phone calls, I learned that a card I received and returned to the Registrar of Voters in Greenwich, confirming that my current address is outside the United States caused my name to be legitimately removed from the state's voter rolls. You can only be on them if you are living in your state and paying property taxes. This may vary in some states.

We all know already that we cannot vote in state and local elections.

In order to vote in the federal elections in which we are entitled to cast our vote, you must request a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot (FWAB) using a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA). If you haven't done this already (the deadline was October 4), go to VotefromAbroad.org, use the wizard, and mail in your FWAB along with your FPCA.

"Every voter who sublits a valid ballot request 30 days before the election is legally entitled to use the FWAB. In addition, some states have later deadlines. You may send the FPCA and FWAB right up until Election Day, but it will depend on your state whether your ballot is deemed valid.

NOTE: The FWAB instructions refer to a 'Security Envelope', which goes inside your mailing envelope. YOu may use any black encelope to serve as the Security Envelope."

Have questions? Vote from Abroad also helpfully encourages you to email them with any questions at VoterCentral@democratsabroad.org, and if you have specific questions about your registration, to do what I did -- pick up your phone and call your Registrar of Voters office directly, "nothing can replace speaking to your local election officials... if you do not agree with the answer they give you, please contact [VoterCentral@democratsabroad.org] -- we may be able to help you."

I Googled "registrar of voters Greenwich CT" to get the phone numbers.

My French husband still cannot get over that this is even an issue in the United States of America and wonders, along with the rest of Europe, what is wrong with our country that we can't insure the most basic of democratic rights. It is a wrong that must be righted and protected indelibly.

Please do your part and make sure you are registered, continue to show as registered on your state's voter rolls, and that your vote is accepted on November 4 and cast by showing up to vote with all possible forms of ID anyone can ask from you.

And then, demand that it is counted and counts by demanding legislation for fairness in voting and ballot receipts.

If you suspect foul play with your voter registration
Contact the office of your Secretary of State and file your complaint. If you have difficulties doing so, contact your Democratic elected officials and state Democratic Committee officials. Consider writing a letter to the editor of your local paper, and contacting the media if your complaint goes without action.

Heck, do it anyway.

You betcha'.
....

Do we grow bananas in the USA?: Caging and other vote sabotage

Your easy to use 2004 absentee ballot
from www.electronic-vote.org

This one is missing the arrow next to Bush-Cheney.


In God and bananas we trust

It's becoming very uncomfortable to talk about US democracy in Europe. There's a large dose of skepticism over here for just how comitted Americans are to rule of democracy. I find my belief in America's ideals, everything I was taught about my country of origin in social studies class (why don't we call it history, like they do here in France? That might already be more straightforward, after all history and historiography are actual academic fields with methods, social studies means whatever you want it to mean) called into question.

Even if they don't claim to speak English particularly well, or at all, they know the word "chads". They even know the whole phrase "hanging chads". They'd even be able to pronouce it perfectly even if it contained a "th" instead of the easier "ch", as in "hanging thads", because they can't stop talking about it.

They know all about how Gore won the popular election but lost the electoral (this concept and why we do it, and have states in the first place, requires lot of repeat explanations that don't sit that well with them) because of problems with the vote count in Florida, and they aren't really interested in an explanation from me of how this happened. They already know. They'd like to be sure that I do.

And, here we go again.

A friend on one of the Obama groups wrote 9 days ago, on September 14:

Anyone - and I mean anyone - who does not think more stuff will hit more fans over the next seven weeks is living beyond a delusional state and should not be consulted on the weather, much less the election. I expect to witness no less than the most amazing, death-defying, dazzling display of election theft and vote-rigging ever attempted by man, woman or child.

Obama's Rapid Reponse team has put out a lengthy compilation of all the McCain campaign caging attempts to date. I will copy it all in dutifully just below, for those of you who care to go do the reading.

There are two sites for lawyers, law students and paralegals to go to to volunteer to:

• The Obama Voter Protection Program, and
• Election Protection on the National Campaign for Fair Elections site.

You can still sign up to volunteer even if you don't have a legal background!

....

A history of the McCain caging attempts

What follows is a round-up of the McCain Campaign caging attempts, from Obama Rapid Reponse, a group on Mybarackobama.com to follow attacks and smears in the campaign and counter them immediately. It is in reverse chronologic order, with the most recent developments appearing first, and the history of the strories following.

From Rapid Response:

Remember when Obama won his seat in the Illinois legislature? He had each signature checked for authenticity and voter registration. HOWEVER, I think we need to pound this into the press daily until they wake up the citizens to check thhie stuff. Really, the only absentee ballot or voter registration form people should be filling out are those provided by the county where you live.

When you pound the media outlets with this send it to newspaper early on a Saturday morning for the Sunday distribution. Or early on Tuesday for the Wednesday coupon day. Newspaper distribution is the highest on those days.

If you send it to the broadcast media, send it early in the morning Monday through Thursday. Viewership is in the commode Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Although viewership is higher on Sundays than Friday-Saturday, you have football now and news runs whenever the games are over. People don't know when to catch it. And, the cable news outlets run their specials and very little original newscasts.

But, please send it on to the media. The following is lengthy but outlines all of McCain's caging attempts.


Saturday, September 20, 2008

Federal Agency (EAC) failed to warn swing states about voting machine defects.

CNN reports a study by Common Cause and the Century Foundation indicates that ten vital swing states have significant voting glitches that have not been addressed.

It also shows that the Election Assistance Commission has failed to inform election officials around the country about electronic voting machine shortcomings...

The ten states listed as having problems are Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Virginia and Wisconsin.
-- http://ozarksfirst.com/content/fulltext/?cid=61641

Confusing mailers in Florida

From Rapid Response:

Sasha of the "Sound Off with Sasha" radio show interviewed journalist David Rosenfeld, of Miller-McCune about mass mailers the McCain campaign was sending to Florida Democrats. On top of being from the wrong party, the voters also happen to be "snow birds". The concerns were that this was a caging effort, something Floridians are quite familiar with. If it wasn't a caging effort, then the worry was that the mailers would disenfranchise voters some other way.

Update: September 16, The St. Petersburg Times reports that the McCain campaign has sent mailers targeting elderly democrats, and the mailers create confusion about the voter's registration status, "We have you registered as a Republican..."

Background:

Unsolicited Absentee Ballot Requests Surface in Virginia, Ohio, and Florida

So far I've seen official reports of unsolicited absentee ballots from Florida (see Florida Voter Caging Warning: McCain mailer w/absentee ballot requests ) Ohio and Virginia. If you get one of these "request for absentee ballots", save it and do not do anything else with it until you speak with election officials and report it to the local media.

Ohio: Ballot snafu endangers votes Sept 9, 2008.
About one-third of the absentee ballot applications received at the Hamilton
County Board of Elections have been ruled invalid because Republican Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign printed a version of the form with an extra, unneeded box on it...

Even though the box is unneeded, by not checking it voters are essentially admitting they’re not eligible, Brunner said.

“I have not seen a ruling that indirectly impacts voters to the enormity of this since I’ve been here,’’ Hamilton County Board of Elections Deputy Director John Williams said of his nearly five-year tenure at the board.

More than 750 absentee ballot requests in Hamilton County have been invalidated because of Brunner’s ruling, Williams said.

Virginia: September 10, 2008 Be careful if you receive unrequested absentee ballot application With less than two months to go to the general election, you may be inundated with political flyers in the mail. But be careful where you put your signature.

Lynn Murdock recently received a mailer from John McCain's campaign in Arlington. It's an application for an absentee ballot; something for which she says she never asked.

...the application does raise a red flag for both officials because it doesn't include instructions.

-- http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/index.php?/archives/276-Unsolicited-Absentee-Ballot-Requests-Surface-in-Virginia,-Ohio,-and-Florida.html

From Rapid Response:

Here's what we know: The Florida mailer that David Rosenfeld shared with me is not an absentee ballot application, but a mailer asking voters to change their registration to the GOP party. Its not clear if there are absentee ballot cards being mailed out in Florida by the McCain Campaign.

The mailer that David Rosenfeld reprted was a form to Florida voters to "verify" your "party affiliation" and to encourage you to re-register as republican if you weren't already.

This mailer can't be used for caging purposes because "non profit" postage is used. Non profit postage won't cover the costs of returning the mailer to the sender, which is the GOP. (It takes first class postage to get mailers returned.)

If the voter is out of townm or if the voter has moved, it still won't matter because the mailer won't be returned to the sender. The Florida activists checked with the USPS and were told that this type of mail, if not deliverable, is trashed.

Pam Haengle, Vice President of the Florida Voters Coalition advises that the Advancement Project has an ongoing investigation into these mailings in Florida, and cannot report on it yet. If anyone is in possession of one of these mailings, please scan them and send them to nsylver@advancementproject.org so that they can be examined and included in their investigation.

McCain's Absentee Ballot Mailer Fiasco Spreads - Could Disqualify Some Voters

If only things were so good in some of the other states.

We did hear good news today that the ballot request mailer in North Carolina would be accepted in most cases by Boards of Elections.

Pam advises that, "In the meantime, we need to tell voters -- especially those registered 9/8 or later -- to check their voter's registrations with their county elections office to be sure they are good to go for November."

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

McCain-Palin 2008 Launches "Honest and Open Election Committee"

From the Blackboxvoting.com piece:

McCain-Palin 2008 Launches "Honest and Open Election Committee"

Sept 15. 2008 ARLINGTON, VA -- The McCain-Palin 2008 campaign today announced the formation of the Honest and Open Election Committee, with a mission to ensure that every qualified citizen has the opportunity to vote in a fair and transparent manner. The committee will work with state and local election officials to anticipate, and where possible resolve in advance, problems likely to arise on Election Day.

The advisory committee will be co-chaired by former United States Senators John C. Danforth and Warren B. Rudman. The committee also includes current and former members of Congress and former state secretaries of state, election officials, and state attorneys general, along with prominent academic experts in election law. The diverse composition of the committee reflects the McCain-Palin campaign's desire to put partisan politics aside in the hope of seeing a fair and transparent election in November.

Lawyering up is part of the plan

The committee will advise the campaign with respect to policy and actual or potential legal proceedings involving the campaign laws and practices in various states working towards avoiding litigation when possible.

Rich Hassen over at Election Law Blog says that the effort is a step in the right direction, but he wonders Will It Make A Difference in the Election Administration Wars?

...Note that the first goal of the group is one Democrats would endorse; the second goal, "No qualified voter should have his or her vote canceled or diluted by illegal votes," echoes Republican (but not Democratic) calls for voter identification laws and a concern (in my view, mostly unfounded) about voter fraud.)

My initial reaction to this is that in spirit this is a step in the right direction, but I don't expect it to stop one bit aggressive efforts to challenge election administration laws in the battleground states.

To explain, while I don't know everyone on the impressive list of members of the committee, those I know personally (along with Trevor Potter, Sen. McCain's general counsel), are people of the highest integrity.

Monday, September 15, 2008

McCain's Absentee Ballot Mailer Fiasco Spreads - Could Disqualify Some Voters

Reports from around the country advise that John McCain's campaign has sent confusing or incorrect absentee ballot request forms to voters in ten states at least. Affected so far are Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon (reported by blogger, not confirmed) Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin so far. In each state, the mailers have a different error, in any of these cases, the voter could be disenfranchised by the error. In at least one state a voter could disqualify themselves or be vulnerable to election challenges if they mailed these forms in. Mailers sent to Wisconsin voters are encouraging voters to send their applications to clerks in communities where they do not live. If you receive an absentee ballot request form from the McCain campaign ( or any private entity) and you do want to vote absentee, then instead check with your County Board of Elections to get the correct information.

See the post for the round-up of the states.


Sunday, September 14, 2008

McCain Confusing NC Republican Voters

The McCain campaign is flooding voters in many states with absentee ballot requests, in hopes of increasing his turnout. North Carolina is one. Blogger Greg Flynn has the flyers on his "spot" and a great write up.

Pushing absentee voting this way has been successful for other politicians including George Bush in 2000. The problem is, that the request forms in Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina have either incorrect, incomplete or confusing information on them. This hurts... the GOP vote. Greg Flynn points out that the forms he saw in Wake County NC are missing critical fields and also have an incorrect address to mail them too. Here's an excerpt, please visit his blog to read and see it all:

McCain Confusing NC Republican Voters by gregflynn, Thu Sep 11, 2008

Pierce County Instant Runoff Voting System has new bug, says WA SOS - may affect San Francisco

This email from the Secretary of State of Washington outlines another bug in the new IRV voting system for Pierce County. It affects "rank choice voting" (IRV/Instant Runoff) only. Pierce County Washington adopted "instant runoff voting" in November 2006. In May 2008, officials were backed into a corner and ended up getting permission to use uncertified IRV software, violating their own state's laws.

Pierce county has Sequoia "Insight" optical scanners and DREs. The tabulating software, WinEDS 4.0.34 is still under test by iBeta. There is not even a test plan presented to the EAC for this system at this time. Washington State provisionally certified this software for use even after finding that there were problems with the use of the Insight machines when used in the RCV process. San Francisco is also using this system, and currently it is not certified in California to count IRV. San Francisco officials still don't know how they will count their "ranked choice" voting in November 2008.

Here's the email (Thanks to John Gideon of www.VotersUnite.org for sharing)


Friday, September 12, 2008

The "Palm Beach Mess"

Palm Beach Elections Goes from Missing Ballots to Having too Many

This could all change, but here's the latest update on the Palm Beach Mess:

In Palm Beach County it goes from missing ballots to too many ballots By Mark Hollis | South Florida Sun-Sentinel 6:13 PM EDT, September 12, 2008

It's no longer a missing ballots problem in Palm Beach County. Now there are too many ballots.

After a cumbersome resorting and recounting of ballots from the Aug. 26 election, investigators produced two new troubling findings Friday.

First, auditors have discovered electronic evidence that 110 ballots from voters at a Delray Beach precinct weren't included in election night results. Those votes also weren't included in totals from a recount.

Second, auditors verified that there are 139 more paper ballots on hand at elections offices than the number of ballots reported cast on election night. The combination of the findings means there could be 249 more ballots than were counted on election night - though that estimate could change before an audit is finalized this weekend...

more at the link

Unsolicited Absentee Ballot Requests Surface in Virginia, Ohio, and Florida


The original Palm Beacn "problem" -- 3,400 missing Palm Beach ballots:

Palm Beach Fiasco: Officials Say Ballots Not Trashed

[I'll put the whole thing in here... oy vey]

Palm Beach County Florida still can't account for 3,400 missing ballot. So on September 10, the Florida Voters Coalition Called on State to Secure Palm Beach Elections. The very next day, an explanation was floated - a sort of "Dog ate my homework" theory: the ballot were accidentally thrown away. Today, officials dispute the claim and say ballots were not thrown away, and the theory is an "urban legend".

Missing ballots mistaken for trash? Reported by: Tim Malloy Sept 11, 2008

..."Were they inadvertently thrown out by elections officials who thought they
were trash? NewsChannel 5 has exclusively learned that is the leading theory on officials' minds...We've learned that the ballots in question, likely came from a precinct in Boynton Beach."

3,400 ballots is alot to be missing from a single polling place, unless that place was an early voting site, which serves more voters for more days. Boynton Beach did host an early voting site at West Boynton Branch Library, 9451 Jog Road, Boynton Beach.

Then today, Sept 12, Election Officials say that the ballots were NOT thrown out! Ccommissioner McCarty called this theory an "Urban Legend."

Election workers: Ballots not trashed Reported by: Eric Glasser Sept 12, 2008

..."It did not happen," insisted Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty. "I can't say that a garbage bag didn't come here. Nobody knows what it had in it."

"All I can tell you," added Brad Merriman, heading up the ballot recount, "is that ballots left the precincts in ballot boxes. That's how they were transported."

For a third time county workers found themselves recounting nearly 100,000 votes by hand, trying to figure out why their first recount, stemming from a disputed judge's race, showed a disparity of nearly 3,500 votes from the original tally on election night.

"We have identified that we have found some ballots that were not counted during the recount," said Merriman, although not being specific.

So we have the sherriffs department (who transports the ballots) saying one thing, and election officials (who account for the ballots) saying another. It still isn't clear if the chain of custody procedures were violated. Did the Sheriffs dept transport a trashbag from any of the polling places? Lets hope that procedures are put into place to prevent the missing of ballots in the November 04, 2008 election.

***UPDATE*** Ballots found say election officials.

Palm Beach County's missing ballots appear to be found By Mark Hollis | South Florida Sun-Sentinel September 12, 2008

...Investigators searching for nearly 3,500 missing ballots from the Aug. 26 election say they have located a "substantial number"— and perhaps nearly all — of the unaccounted-for ballots.

Despite rumors, the ballots hadn't been mistakenly dumped in a landfill or left behind at voting precincts. Rather, they were found in the county's vote-tabulating center near West Palm Beach. ...more at the link

And Stanford University says...

Computer Scientists Issue Warning about Internet Voting

Thursday, September 11. 2008

21st Century Jim Crow in Michigan - Lose Your Home, Lose Your Vote

1st only certain people could vote, then, some people only had 3/5 of a vote, next, came poll taxes, then, came literacy tests. Folks in Michigan who lost their homes haven't suffered enough, figured the Michigan GOP party. They lose their vote, too! This will affect more than 62,000 households in the state. Here comes Jim Crow to Michigan!

"Lose Your House, Lose Your Vote", ByEartha Jane Melzer, 9/10/08 Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

...One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

Guess who was the biggest victim of the sub prime loans?

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth....

Florida makes last ditch effort to block the vote - No Match No Vote

You would think that after 2000, Florida would want to do everything it can to enfranchise voters. But no. Florida has decided to start enforcing the draconian "No Match No Vote" law that requires voters' personal information to match up with two different government databases. Given that Government databases contain errors, and often do not match each other, many voters will not match! Through no fault of their own. Florida is only one of four states doing this. North Carolina eliminated this rule in 2007. The "No Match No Vote" law will be enforced just weeks before the deadline to register to vote in Florida, right when about 20% of new voters are registered.

Florida's 'no match, no vote' enforcement could be too much, too late Mike Thomas COMMENTARY September 11, 2008

[it's longish... go to the link for the whole thing]

....

A plea

for paper ballots and urns

What goes on in the USA is entirely absurd and undefendable to intelligent members of democratic countries outside the US. They laugh sardonically and say that we need Jimmy Carter and the UN to oversee our elections.

There should be no sophisticated machinery or computers involved.

France, a country of some 60 million people, manages to vote by casting paper ballots into specially designed, sealed boxes called urns. The procedure is simple.

On a Sunday -- yes, Sunday, many fewer people work on Sundays, meaning it is he easiest day to vote -- you go to your local mairie to vote. You are given a packet of slips of paper. Each piece of paper has the preprinted name of one of the candidates presenting in the election. You choose the piece of paper with the name of the individual for whom you wish to vote, and slide it into the opening in the urn. You sign a paper, I believe, attesting that you have voted.

You do this in the presence of a representative from each of the political parties, who are there to insure that the voting is conducted properly.

Then, you stand around and chat with your neighbors.

When the polls close, the party representatives and those who have volunteered to count the vote, in the presence of town elected officials, proceed to the count. This generally takes no longer than a few hours. It is done by hand.

There are no voting machines. There are no computers. There are no holes to punch. There are no chads to be left hanging with democracy.

Need to be away on business or planning to be at your country home or with family outside of where you live on that Sunday? No problem, you can request an absentee ballot and mail it in. They only come from your town hall.

Let's get real for a change. It's not because it's made in the USA or American that it's the best.

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McCain in Spain, Virginia absentee voting and caging in Ohio

It's so easy to get caught up in all those strings

It's really tough to be connected, politically active and responsible all at once.

I'm doing my level best.

Take right now, I am making lunch, setting up Twitter (I just had to after reading this in the New York Times the other day and seeing it show up on Fivethirtyeight.com), and trying to figure out just how much to say about caging in Ohio (not free-range hens, votes) and absentee balloting possibilities in Virginia. Major tipping state and a toss up.

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McCain in Spain
and other newsworthy failures

I don't even know how to begin to keep up with the cascade of news revelations, like how big a splash McCain made in Spain with his presidential campaign-winning-defying bellyflop failure to recognize a) that Spain is in Europe and not our region nor hemisphere, like Mexico, where those confusing Zapatista bad guys hang out, and South America, b) that it is generally considered to be a friendly regime by The United States, as a member of NATO and the European Community, and c) who José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is.

But, he knows a lot about (The Republic of) Georgia and Russia. Does Spain have oil? Do they drill over there? More to the point, will we ever be able to drill over there, wherever it is?

It's not next to oil-producing Venezuela? Oh, to hell with Spain then.

"McCain in Spain stayed mainly on his campaign plane, for shame" to be sung to the tune of the famous song from My Fair Lady, preferably in Julie Andrews' voice. Gosh! Two Julie Andrews' references in a single week!

And the other big belly flop of the past week or so, performed without grace, or the saving one of the Koreans and the Feds, by Lehman.

Can someone make up new lyrics to a song in memory of the loss of this 128-year-old bank?

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Absentee balloting in Virginia

Virginia is the 3rd most important swing state, or tipping point state according to the 538.com method of calculating which states can tip a loss to a win, with the 4th highest return on the investment.

It's an important state for Democrats in November.

College and university students living outside Virginia in a blue state should definitely consider voting in Virginia by absentee ballot.

See Zennie's Zeitgeist for further information on who qualifies and how to obtain an absentee ballot in Virginia.

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Ohio caging

We'll get to that as soon as I am back from an appointment.

Check back in later.
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