Any word from the Cleveland, OH election reform teach-in?

[Fly by night]

The Cleveland teach-in should be about wrapped up by now. Many of us are interested to hear how it went. If any DUers were there, please post a summary. Thanks.

[corbett]

1. I'd Like To Know, Too

The Buckeye State will be crucial for Kerry's victory in 2008.

Please share the following URL with everyone:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050601/the_key_to_impeachment.php

[Fly by night]

2. kick

[GuvWurld]

3. J30 Yahoogroup is discussing

I saw a report on the J30 Yahoogroup list and asked the author to post it here.

[GuvWurld]

4. The author approved my posting this here

Day 2 of the Cleveland teach in saw some great successes and a few disappointments. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones canceled and the over-all attendance was lower than we had hoped (about 70 people is my guess - not including the presenters). 10 J-30 folks were there including Kimon Kotos fresh from the big conference in D.C. where Howard Dean issued a spate of verbal gaffes.

There weren't really enough people there to properly populate three simultaneous workshops in most cases so each workshop with the exception of Bev Harris' and Kathleen Wynn's presentation were only modestly attended. Clearly a case of having more information to disseminate than there were people to disseminate it to - but that's actually very common and it shows that the organizers were very thorough and conscientious.

It was the CONTENT of the speeches and workshops that was the real treasure at this teach-in.

I organized a workshop that was designed to impart a class-conscious and racially sensitive perspective on the history of voting rights. I introduced the workshop and let the three presenters take it from there. African Studies history professor Marsha Robinson gave a VERY detailed historical overview that took us back to the Iroquois Federation and the great democracies of Africa through the civil rights struggles on the 1960's through the present. Deborah Calhoun who heads up the AFSC's Africa program in Ohio spoke assionately about the need to build a multi-cultural resistance movement that acknowledges the historical contributions of the various races and cultures and seeks to establish parity so that all of the diverse constituencies can negotiate on an equal footing. Butch Wing of the Rainbow Push Coalition went in to detail about the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Everyone who attended said it was a powerful workshop.

Unfortunately my workshop was opposite Bev and Kathleen's so someone who attended their presentation may want to offer reflections here.

Another workshop which featured Thaddeus Jackson, Ohio NAACP chair and a veteran BOE board member detailed the inner political culture of a BOE. That was very enlightening for me. That workshop gradually broadened to talk about the degree to which many voters were turned off by the experience of 2004 and how to win back their confidence. A young African American man named Antonio from the Cleveland area talked about his experience working with America Coming Together ("ACT") to get out the vote. His testimony was very touching - so much so that another participant slipped out of the room and ran down the hallway to fetch documentary filmmaker Dorothy Fadden who instantly set up a taped interview with Antonio for her film-in-progress.

The organizers put on a spread of sandwiches and refreshments that they apparently labored over in lieu of a caterer. Many people commented positively on the food. Victoria Parks was in her prime as she provided some musical accompaniment during lunch.

I was impressed with the degree of African American participation throughout the teach-in. The organizers' targeted outreach must have been effective. I was especially pleased with the level of dialog between the participants, too. There were a few slightly heated but friendly discussions here and there and lots of sharing of information and exchanging of contacts, etc. Over-all it felt PRODUCTIVE, even if by mid-day on Saturday most of us seemed to be suffering from information overload.

My own suggestions for future teach-ins;
1) plan smaller.
2) narrow the focus so that there is less repetition of "stating the problem"
3) balance the content between explaining what went wrong and talking about what can be done
4) less reliance on name-draw folks. People's local experiences are every bit as valid and compelling as what the celebrities have to say (Antonio showed us that).
5) solicit Latino/a participation - I really, really tried but this is a tough frontier. The Latino/a community isn't as organized yet as the African American community and the limited networks and relationships we have between Caucasian activists and African American groups are less developed when it come to the emerging Latino/a presence. We need to work on that.

Victoria Lovegren who did the lion's share of the work (with help from Judy Hanna of Akron, and Pat Blohoviac and Lea Tolls of Cleveland and a little help from J30) did cover one crucial base that should be a model for future efforts; she issued a call for action by inviting people to go to the Cuyahoga County BOE meeting with her on Monday. That gave folks some direction and a sense that there was real action to follow up with..,

All-in-all; definitely a worthwhile event and well done.
Congratulations to all involved and thanks for keeping the flame!
Evan

[Fly by night]

5. Thanks kindly for posting the Day 2 summary. Anything available on Day 1?

[GuvWurld]

8. Day 1 comments

These comments were also posted on the J30 yahoogroup. This is an awesome group of really organized people. - GuvWurld

Things got off to a slightly late start at the beautiful Antioch Baptist Church on Cleveland's near East side as we waited for the crowd to gather. Perhaps 6:00 on a Friday isn't the best time to start a program but still there were over 40 people there for the evening plenary. Many more are expected today.

The speakers were awesome!

Jonathan Simon was passionate and personable as he explained the cumbersomeness of involving electronic voting machines and making the process verifiable. He spoke directly about electoral theft and rigging and cited ample evidence.

Bob Koehler of the Chicago Tribune was fantastic. He recited a long essay with only occasional references to his notes. It sounded like a written column - the kind that reads like the transcript of a great historic speech - only there he was delivering it vocally. He lambasted the commercial media for its complicity in the great cover-up. It was the sort of speech that would make any aspiring journalist want to hit the streets to do their job properly. Most importantly, though, Bob was very hopeful and optimistic about our potential for success. I liked his speech the best of all.

Bev Harris was a little edgy in a spooky kind of way - as if everything had suddenly become more serious than ever. She's usually humorous and jovial and she mostly was this time, too except there was a hard edge to her voice and in her expressions that gave the subtle hint of a message; "O.K., people; time to get BUSY!" Most significantly Bev has now concluded that paper ballots hand-counted at the precincts are the way to go.

Bob Fitrakis gave a boisterous crescendoing speech that I thought jumped from detail to detail a little too much. It was rousing but a little harder to follow than usual. Still, he got a standing ovation and inspired people.

There were about 7 or 8 J30 folks there and much to my delight there was a good percentage of African American folks from the local neighborhood there, too. In speaking with a couple of them afterward we noted that while for many of us all of this is relatively new but for some folks (African Americans, Latino/as, Asians, Native Americans, etc.) electoral disenfranchisement is an experience that has been consistent for generations.

Evan

[Bruce ODell]

9. Simon, Freeman and O'Dell exit poll workshop in Cleveland

I've submitted the following minutes to Vicki Lovegren, the conference organizer, for general posting, but wanted to cite it here for the benefit of DU's readers:

Steve Freeman, Jonathan Simon and Bruce O'Dell led a workshop discussion on exit polls at the Ohio Vigilance teach-in in Cleveland on Saturday June 4th.

First, Steve asked the participants what they knew about exit polls and what they wanted to hear more about.

Jonathan described how he and Steve captured unadjusted exit poll data on Election Night - and how important - and unlikely to be repeated in the future - it was that data was captured. Steve and Jonathan then recapped their analysis of the National Exit poll and some of the criticisms they've received. Depending on how you calculate the probabilities, it was somewhere between "extremely impossible" and "amazingly impossible" for the National Exit poll sample of around 13,000 people to be as far off as it was by chance. Jonathan spoke about his past efforts to fund and organize an independent exit poll.

We all discussed our rationale for believing that while many alternative explanations for the exit poll discrepancy exist, given tens of thousands of anecdotal reports consistent with election fraud, and that the vast majority appear to favor one candidate. The three of us agreed that the "preponderance of the circumstantial evidence" supports (but does not legally prove) widespread vote fraud was the primary explanation for the 2004 exit poll discrepancies.

We noted that election equipment vendors clearly have the means, motivation and opportunity to perpetrate widespread vote manipulation.

Means: in addition to all previously known vulnerabilities, Bev Harris spoke at length in Cleveland about her very recent discovery of powerful and flexible vote manipulation software hidden in the memory cards used in Diebold optical scan equipment; this program appears to have been in use since 1990;

Motivation: ownership relationships of voting equipment vendors by prominent players among the radical right and their employment of programmers convicted of embezzlement and fraud is well documented;

Opportunity: there is a national election every two years.

Bruce explained how data from his recent simulation model could actually be consistent with a surprising new model of widespread vote fraud - a cluster of traditional, hands-on "retail" vote manipulation favoring Kerry in Democratic strongholds, accompanied by signs of widespread, extraordinarily uniform "wholesale" vote manipulation favoring Bush literally everywhere else; the extreme uniformity being consistent with an artificial cause. There are other potential explanations, but the data is so intriguing that Steve, Jonathan and Bruce are currently writing a paper to evaluate whether this new model of vote fraud is worth investigating further, and whether it potentially accounts for the puzzling reluctance of Democrats to aggressively pursue accusations of widespread fraud and exit poll irregularities in 2004. If both parties are involved in vote manipulation, neither may be interested in an aggressive investigation. (The possibility that both parties may be involved with vote manipulation was discussed at length in Sunday's session by Bev Harris.)

Looking to the future, Bruce described the limitations of exit poll data and explained the mission of US Count Votes: to gather and analyze an archive of nationwide precinct-level election data, and apply it to help candidates in the future to spot major anomalies before conceding.

Steve strongly argued that Nixon (much less Clinton) was impeached for much less serious high crimes and misdemeanors, and that we must continue to challenge the legitimacy of the 2004 election and keep working to expose any crimes that were committed.

Jonathan strongly advocated hand-counting paper ballots on election night, as in Canada, but spoke about his belief that things will get much worse before they get better, and that eventually only election boycotts, or a totally outrageous election result will trigger mass public protest - may ultimately be the only way to ever restore accurate elections.

We took questions from the audience. We were asked if we would respond to criticisms from Election Science Institute in regard to US Count Votes, but we were not aware of those, so we could not respond.
People were concerned about what they could do, and they were asked to support an independent exit poll, and to help publicizing exit poll analyses and work by other activists to build public awareness of the terrible vulnerabilities in our election systems and the urgent case for action and reform.

Overall, our joint exit poll workshop went well, people understood the importance of analyzing exit polls and of having an independent exit poll in the future. People were also interested in the new, intriguing (but still very preliminary) vote fraud model implied by some of the election simulation data in Bruce's recent paper.

[Helga Scow Stern]

10. Very interesting, especially the part about Dem cheating:

"Bruce explained how data from his recent simulation model could actually be consistent with a surprising new model of widespread vote fraud - a cluster of traditional, hands-on "retail" vote manipulation favoring Kerry in Democratic strongholds, accompanied by signs of widespread, extraordinarily uniform "wholesale" vote manipulation favoring Bush literally everywhere else; the extreme uniformity being consistent with an artificial cause. There are other potential explanations, but the data is so intriguing that Steve, Jonathan and Bruce are currently writing a paper to evaluate whether this new model of vote fraud is worth investigating further, and whether it potentially accounts for the puzzling reluctance of Democrats to aggressively pursue accusations of widespread fraud and exit poll irregularities in 2004. If both parties are involved in vote manipulation, neither may be interested in an aggressive investigation. (The possibility that both parties may be involved with vote manipulation was discussed at length in Sunday's session by Bev Harris.)"

Please let us know as soon as this paper comes out. Perhaps Republican information on this cheating had to do with the concession.

[emlev]

11. Yes, great post, and also intrigued by this part

"Bev Harris spoke at length in Cleveland about her very recent discovery of powerful and flexible vote manipulation software hidden in the memory cards used in Diebold optical scan equipment; this program appears to have been in use since 1990."

Can you tell us more about that?

[Andy_Stephenson]

17. em with all due respect...

Bev has it plastered all over her site.

Do we really have to rehash it over here?

[emlev]

12. Has anyone checked the soles of Rove's shoes?

I'm wondering if the treads might match what's being cited about apparent Dem fraud. Not that I'd put it past the Democratic Party, but wouldn't it be a really neat way for the Rovers to prevent Dems from challenging the election--make sure some small ("retail") cheating had been done on their behalf?

Did anyone else get this hit from Bruce's post?

[tommcintyre]

14. Yes, see post #13 please n/t

[tommcintyre]

13. FYI:

Read in please:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x374482#376334

[LightningFlash]

6. Conyers recently blogged about this.

It was recently discussed before the DSM became a hot topic in the senate.

[Dee625]

7. Sounds like there was some good information

I would have liked to have gone, but just couldn't justify the 3 and 1/2 hour drive each way plus the time there. I would have thought there would be a larger attendence in Cleveland.

[Stevepol]

15. Kick!! n/t

[autorank]

16. KICK -- it's all good AND see post #10 to explain some things

:kick: