Kerry Vows Lights-Out for Diebold & BBV before Florida Dems

[Octafish]

"Don't get mad. Get even," Joseph Kennedy Sr. liked to say. Seems Sen. John Kerry knows the expression. And while he's remembering it, Kerry's looking ahead and he hasn't forgotten the BFEE. — Octafish

Memory of 2000 Vote Fuels Democrats' Florida Meeting

By Adam Nagourney
Published: December 7, 2003, New York Times

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla., Dec. 6 — Democratic presidential candidates came to this state that was at the center of the 2000 presidential battle and stoked the embers of that fight on Saturday, declaring that Republicans had swiped the White House last time and vowing not to let it happen again in 2004.

SNIP…

And Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said: "None of us are going to forget. We are going to be energized."

SNIP…

Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards promised to fight any attempts to adopt an electronic touch-screen voting machine developed by Diebold Elections Systems, arguing that the paperless machines were open to abuse.

SNIP…

And Mr. Kerry said: "When I win the nomination, I'm going to put together the strongest legal team that we've ever had in this country and we are going to challenge, we're going to start with a challenge to the Diebold election system."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/politics/07FLOR.html?ex=1071378000&en=7bc8ba91c42cc7e5&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

[AndyTiedye]

1. Better Not Wait Until You Get The Nomination

Diebold gets to count the primary ballots too.

[Octafish]

6. One percent here... one percent there...

... a fraction off from over there and pretty soon they're talking about some real races.

Oh yeh, Democratic Donkeys have memories longer than an elephant's.

[drfemoe]

2. cspan

Kerry just said he voted against the medicare bill .. I read on DU that he didn't vote .. can you point me to the site that shows the votes? tia

ps.. he mentioned diebold on cspan too . in case you're not watching.

[Vitruvius]

5. Was Kerry "paired" with a Republican who would have voted "for"?

I hope so.

[Myra]

7. Oops, on edit removed drug induced incoherant post.

So sorry.

[Octafish]

9. Doc, I'd like to know too. "Obscure Parliamentary Procedure..."

Kerry voted against the bill, as did Edwards and Lieberman. It's complicated, but the defections from the Democratic ranks made the bill fillibuster-proof. Here's a decent explanation that still doesn't explain the whole thing...

Prescription benefit clears logjam
Feinstein, 21 other Democrats vote to break filibuster

By Carolyn Lochhead
Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Nearly two dozen Democrats -- including California's Dianne Feinstein -- broke party ranks Monday to force a vote on a contentious $400 billion Medicare prescription drug benefit, virtually assuring passage of the largest-ever expansion of the Great Society's most popular program.

The 22 Democrats, along with independent James Jeffords of Vermont, gave Republicans an overwhelming 70-29 majority, 10 more than they needed, to break a filibuster by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., that would have killed the measure. Three Republicans, John McCain of Arizona, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, voted to block it.

Democrats came much closer to blocking the bill a second time using similar but more obscure parliamentary tactics, but they failed again when conservative Republicans Trent Lott of Mississippi and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who oppose the bill, and Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat whose support seemed tentative until the end, stepped forward in a last-minute rescue.

SNIP...

California Sen. Barbara Boxer voted with Kennedy to kill the bill, as did all three Democratic senators running for president. Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards all took time off from their campaigns -- and received prime time on the Senate floor -- to give speeches denouncing the measure as a giveaway to insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

CONTINUED...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/11/25/MNGCM3A5C31.DTL

[oasis]

11. Kerry was very much in opposition to the Medicare bill. You know that.

[TruthIsAll]

3. So....they are finally listening to DU...

Gotta keep kickin'...gonna give Diebold a lickin'..

All I can say is...it's about time..

[RedEagle]

4. While you're finally at it guys....

...how about Sequoia, HartIntercivic, and ES&S?

Wanna bet Kucinich raised the bar on this one?

And not one mention in the article about him. Was he there?

[JohnKleeb]

8. by mentioning dieboid in the first place on Kucinich yeah

Good for Kucinich, this is a great thing of him. Edwards followed Kucinich's lead, and now Kerry is.

[Octafish]

10. All fine vote fraud artistes...

You're right about Dennis Kucinich, RedEagle. The guy's the one who first put BBV into the campaign.

Here's the work of a young journalist with a most promising future — one who ascribes to the idea of a Free Press and a Fair Election. Hope he graduates with a bunch more like him:

Better a bad chad than a corrupt hack job

by Jonathan Mendelson, Junior Staffwriter
November 3, 2003

Imagine a country in which a handful of groups with close ties to the leadership were in control of the voting systems. Imagine that a technology makes the systems easily manipulable, envision a lack of accountability, and suppose that the country was evenly divided, with a few votes able to sway the result.

SNIP...

Diebold and Election Systems & Software together count over two-thirds of the electronic votes in the United States, and both have well documented Republican and fundamentalist Christian ties. Walden O’Dell, the CEO of Diebold, stated in an August 14 letter that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” O’Dell is a fundraising “pioneer” for the Bush administration, using his house in July to host a $500,000 fundraiser for Dick Cheney. Federal Election Commission filings of Diebold’s twelve directors show contributions of over $220,000 to Republicans and contributions totalling $1000 to Democrats.

Election Systems & Software was founded by brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich; Todd is currently a vice-president, while Bob, oddly enough, currently heads the voting systems division of competitor Diebold. When founding the company, they were funded by Howard Ahmanson Jr., heir to a savings and loans fortune, and his wife Roberta, who have given millions of dollars to extreme conservative causes such as the anti-evolution movement. The Ahmansons also helped fund and direct the Chalcedon Foundation, a leading Christian Reconstructionist group which wants a fundamentalist state with “the state, the school, the arts and sciences, law, economics, and every other sphere to be under Christ the King.”

SNIP...

Also, a previous CEO and director of ES&S was Senator Chuck Hagel (R. — Ne.), even though the company counted 85 percent of the votes in Nebraska’s 1996 and 2002 Senate elections. Hagel became Senator in 1996 in a huge upset in which he won African-American communities that had long voted Democratic. He also held and still might hold up to $5 million in investment funds connected to the company and failed to disclose this conflict of interest in Senate Ethics Committee filings.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thetartan.org/98/9/forum/4190.asp

[JohnKleeb]

12. I am glad that Kerry and Edwards have followed lead

May not be my candiates but I appreciate them listening to Dennis. John E I know is a friend of Dennis's not sure about John K but Edwards is a friend.

[Tharesa]

13. demactivist and others deserve credit for pounding away on this issue.

If not for those making it an issue when most voters were not concerned with it, then all of these candidates would still be ignoring it.

Vox populi! B-)

[RedEagle]

14. Don't let them stop talking

Kick!

[Andy_Stephenson]

15. It is not a computer programming problem....

it is an audit problem. Electronic machines are fine as long as they do not count, connect and are open sourced.

Call the accountants not the programmers. Diebold is only the first one to fall. The others must follow.

[RedEagle]

17. Independent audit source

It's an accounting problem because the system does not produce an independent audit source. That would be a voter-verified paper ballot.

OK, let's have people walk away from all other ATM's and electronic transactions, that deal with their money and lives, without evidence of what transpired.

I'll bet even the voting machine execs don't do that.

[dusty64]

16. This is good,

now the ENTIRE party needs to get on this issue before its too late. For once I'd like to see ALL Democrats work together for an important common goal, it certainly seems to work for the other side as they shove their evil agenda down the Country's unwilling throat.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

18. Look like "get over it" meant

(but don't forget) Yep. My teacup has no tears in it now.