Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Saturday8/11/05

[MelissaB]

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Link to previous Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x388799

All previous daily threads are available here:

http://www.independentmediasource.com/DU_archives/du_2004erd_el_ref_fr_thr_calenders.htm




Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

[Botany]

1. None Dare Call it Stolen

Herper's Aug. issue

About time. Straight forward w/ facts. Ohio was stolen and
the media except for Keith Obermann did not say shit except
to call us conspiracy nuts. NY Times was one of the big ones
for that.

Fact from the Article:
Democratic areas 250% increase in voter registrations.
Republican areas 25% increase in voter registrations.

And that Gay Marriage was a red herring and most people
did not care about it.

I live in Columbus, OH and saw and heard the fraud 1st hand and
feel like I have been living in a bad movie where I see a murder
but nobody believes that it was a murder and every now
and then the murderer shows up and winks @ me to let me know
that he knows that I know. Examples Blackwell gives talks about
ethics to groups around the state and bush makes jokes about the
White House Christmas tree being too blue and asks Rove to change
a light or something to red and then he laughed and said I think I
will call the tree Ohio.

Sorry to rant :rant:


Well worth the $6.00 I wonder what is up in Aruba?

http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptNoneDare.html

[MelissaB]

4. No need to apologize. Rant anytime.

:hi:

[MelissaB]

2. Unacceptable Regimes In Iraq And The United States

If this is old, I'm sorry. I haven't seen it.

Unacceptable Regimes In Iraq And The United States

Occupying troops, diplomats, aid workers and media people are killed, as are Iraqis, in far greater numbers. But President George Bush’s war is not only against opponents in Iraq and the Middle East: it is a war against his fellow Americans.

by Howard Zinn




BOSTON, MA -- (OfficialWire) -- 08/13/05 -- It has quickly become clear that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country. We became familiar with that term during the second world war. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who occupied countries. The United States liberated them from occupation.

...snip

But more ominous, perhaps, than the occupation of Iraq is the occupation of the US. I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over. Those Mexican workers trying to cross the border, dying in the attempt to evade immigration officials (trying to cross into land taken from Mexico by the US in 1848), are not alien to me. Those 20 million people who are not citizens and therefore, by the Patriot Act, are subject to being pulled out of their homes and held indefinitely by the FBI, with no constitutional rights, are not alien to me.

But this small group of men who have taken power in Washington (Bush, Richard Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of their clique), they are alien to me.

I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president who was first elected in November 2000, under questionable circumstances and largely thanks to a Supreme Court decision. He remains, since his re-election last November, a president surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water, the air, or what kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren.

More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong, that this is not what we want our country to be. More and more every day the lies are being exposed. And then there is the largest lie, that everything the US does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a "war on terrorism", ignoring the fact that war is itself terrorism, that barging into people’s homes and taking away family members and subjecting them to torture is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more but less security.


More: http://news.baou.com/main.php?action=recent&rid=20416

Discussion here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2006660

[MelissaB]

3. Mississippi: Counties adopt touch-screen voting machines

Counties adopt touch-screen voting machines

Saturday, August 13, 2005

George and Greene counties joined 42 other counties across Mississippi that have signed on to accept new touch-screen voting machines, Secretary of State Eric Clark said Friday.

Jackson County was not on the list. Harrison and Hancock counties are also absent, though Clark said no counties have opted out of the the statewide voting machine purchase.

"I hope the remaining counties will choose to be part of the statewide purchase," Clark said

All touch-screen machines supplied by the state will include a voter-verified paper trail, Clark said. Counties will get their machines beginning in 2006.

Link: http://www.gulflive.com/news/mississippipress/index.ssf?/base/news/112392810469500.xml

[MelissaB]

5. PA: Then there were three

Then there were three
Luzerne committee narrows voting machine choices

By PAUL KRUPSKI

The Standard-Speaker

USA - WILKES-BARRE - The committee charged with recommending new voting machines for use in Luzerne County in 2006 narrowed its choices Friday to three models, a small touch-screen machine and two full-faced-lever models in the style of the county's current machines.Members of Luzerne County's Electronic Voting Machine Committee agreed to meet Oct. 7 to finalize its recommendation.

The three finalists are the WINvote touch screen system and the Sequoia and Dancher full-face machines.

Chairwoman Maryanne Petrilla said the committee could choose to recommend one or all three machines to the county commissioners.

Election Bureau Director Len Piazza said, "I think the commissioners would like to have a choice."


More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8932546/

[MelissaB]

6. Citizen Group Contests Election Results

Citizen Group Contests Election Results
Group To Request Recount

POSTED: 4:01 pm PDT August 12, 2005

SAN DIEGO -- It looks like last month's San Diego mayor's election is headed for a recount.

Unlike the recount last November, this one is not about filling in the bubble next to the candidates' name.

Instead, it's about the accuracy of the voting machines.

An organization called Citizens Audit asked people in 11 precincts to vote a second time as they left their polling place.

They then compared their results to the official results and believe there is something wrong.

They will make their recount request after the official results are certified, probably within the next two weeks.


Link: http://www.10news.com/politics/4846134/detail.html

[MelissaB]

7. What if the Democrats Continue to Fail and America Falls?

What if the Democrats Continue to Fail and America Falls?

Billions of people in countries outside the US watch and worry as the world's most powerful nation plunders itself and its helpless targets, creating laws and pandering to corporations, producing cancer-like wasting symptoms within the country as it eats its “seed” signing on to laws and treaties that suck off jobs and industries, handing them to bottom feeding poverty wage nations.

by Rob Kall

http://www.opednews.com

What if the Democrats Continue to Fail and America Falls?

The whole world is watching the ineffective, weak, spineless Democratic party lose more and more power, more and more congressional and senatorial seats. They see fascism, corporatism, theocratic insanity becoming more and more established in the US.

...snip

It used to be that the rest of the world loved Americans but detested Bush and his administration. But the corporations that support Bush have such a complete job taking over the mainstream media and influencing more and more of the less educated people and more educated men, so now, the world is beginning to dislike Americans too. How long can Americans be so stupid and blind?

As a liberal, progressive American, I find myself sharing much of the rest of the world’s contempt for “red” America. And I am also becoming less tolerant of the centrist part of the Democratic party. It is becoming clearer and clearer that these leaders are like the Nazi sympathizers in occupied France, too friendly with the enemy, too willing to sell out the people.

Now is the time that Democrats must stand up for the principles that separate democrats from Republicans. There can be no more disloyalty on votes that take away consumer or worker protections. Now is the time that America is at a crossroads. The mind-numbed evangelical herd has begun to run towards the cliff that spells the end of America’s future as an economic and moral leader of the world. If the democratic party does not pull together and get tough and clear on its goals, if it does not severely punish and eliminate traitors and sellouts, the end of the USA is near. It will become a corporate fiefdom, a banana republic run and operated by corporations.

..snip

If the vote system is not fixed in the US, then there is no longer democracy. It has been stolen and murdered by enemies of Democracy and America like Florida’s Katherine Harris and Ohio’s Ken Blackwell, people who should, at the least be locked in jail for life, since we don’t yet have death penalties for murderers of democracy.

Much more: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rob_kall_050813_what_if_the_democrat.htm


Discussion here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x388920

[MelissaB]

8. National Summit to Save Our Elections - Portland, Sept. 30, Oct. 1 & 2

More information coming this week on workshops and presentations!

See flyer at http://www.oregonvrc.org/files/Summit%20Flyer_B&W.PDF

The right to vote and to have our vote counted as intended is the heartbeat of our democracy.

Today, private corporations with partisan political and financial conflicts of interest count our votes on trade secret software, preventing us from verifying that our votes are counted as intended. America’s elections are thus conducted under conditions that ensure inconclusive results. Our democracy is in peril.

Join some of the nation’s top election
reform activists to explore:

• How corporate-owned electronic election
systems affect your vote and election
outcomes

• How innovative election reform
approaches from around the country are
making a difference

• How you can help to restore citizenship
ownership of our elections

Featured Presenters:

The Honorable Jesse Jackson Jr., U.S. House of Representatives

David Cobb, 2004 Green Party Presidential Candidate

Thom Hartmann, Radio talk show host and author

Bob Koehler, nationally syndicated columnist, Tribune Media Services

Ronnie Dugger, Alliance for Democracy

Cliff Arnebeck, Ohio Honest Elections Campaign

Brad Friedman, The Brad Blog and The Brad Show

Ellen Theisen, VotersUnite

Paul Lehto, Attorney, plaintiff in lawsuit against Sequoia Voting Systems and Snohomish County, WA

For more information and updates on the conference visit
www.Summit.OregonVRC.org

The conference will be held in downtown Portland at the First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 12th and Portland State University, 724 SW Harrison

Sign up to receive future conference announcements: [e-mail]
Oregon VRC contact information:
503-499-9000 or [e-mail]

Sponsored by:
Oregon Voter Rights Coalition &
Alliance for Democracy - Portland


Thanks to Amaryllis here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x388919

[MelissaB]

9. Election Fraud Continues in the US

Published on Saturday, August 13,2005 by CommonDreams.org

Election Fraud Continues in the US
New Data Shows Widespread Vote Manipulations in 2004

By Peter Phillips

In the fall of 2001, after an eight-month review of 175,000 Florida ballots never counted in the 2000 election, an analysis by the National Opinion Research Center confirmed that Al Gore actually won Florida and should have been President. However, coverage of this report was only a small blip in the corporate media as a much bigger story dominated the news after September 11, 2001.

New research compiled by Dr. Dennis Loo with the University of Cal Poly Pomona now shows that extensive manipulation of non-paper-trail voting machines occurred in several states during the 2004 election.

The facts are as follows:

In 2004 Bush far exceeded the 85% of registered Florida Republican votes that he got in 2000, receiving more than 100% of the registered Republican votes in 47 out of 67 Florida counties, 200% of registered Republicans in 15 counties, and over 300% of registered Republicans in 4 counties. Bush managed these remarkable outcomes despite the fact that his share of the crossover votes by registered Democrats in Florida did not increase over 2000, and he lost ground among registered Independents, dropping 15 points. We also know that Bush "won" Ohio by 51-48%, but statewide results were not matched by the court-supervised hand count of the 147,400 absentee and provisional ballots in which Kerry received 54.46% of the vote. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio the number of recorded votes was more than 93,000 greater than the number of registered voters.


More: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0813-29.htm


Thanks to GreenPartyVoter here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4339142

[Botany]

13. Go Dr. Loo

and the media is going to cover this when?

[MelissaB]

10. Wisconsin: Doyle Vetoes Voter ID Bill

Doyle Vetoes Voter ID Bill

Wisconsin
Aug 13, 2005


Governor Doyle vetoed a bill that would have required voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot on Friday.

Republicans say an ID would cut down on voter fraud. But the governor says it would just make voting more difficult for people who don't have driver's licenses or state-issued photo ID's, especially senior citizens.

Republicans say they want to amend the state constitution to require a picture ID at voting booths.

The bill would have to pass in two consecutive legislative sessions and a statewide referendum to evade the veto pen and enshrine it in the state constitution.

Link: http://www.wxow.com/news/publish/articles/article_2618.shtml

[MelissaB]

11. Reform Ohio Now! Get these 3 referendums on the ballot!

Go to http://ReformOhioNow.org

Among other things, they want to take the SoS out of election biz and go with a bi-partisan independent state BoE! YES!!!

Help them get this on the ballot along with the other 2 initiatives this November.

And KICK this damn thread until it bleeds please!

Also nominate and cross post to Ohio forum, GD and GDP if it's not there already!


Thanks to Bill Bored here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x388548

[Bill Bored]

12. Firm's operations could trouble voters

<http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/0BBD3CDDFF737C5F8625705C001C70BB?OpenDocument>


Firm's operations could trouble voters
By Christopher Carey
Of the Post-Dispatch 2005, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
08/13/2005

A company whose touch-screen voting machines won state certification in Missouri last month has been raising money through stock placements that found their way to unlicensed securities "boiler rooms" in Europe.

AccuPoll Holding Corp.'s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that the company's financial backers include the children and business associates of a man who went to prison for fraud in the 1990s.