Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Saturday, April 7, 2007

[livvy]

You can run,

            but you can't hide.

But Democrats said Goodling's resignation would not end their pursuit of her testimony.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., "remains committed to questioning Monica Goodling, especially with this new development," said spokeswoman Melanie Roussell. "Her involvement and general knowledge of what happened makes her a valuable piece to this puzzle."

See the first post for the story.

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News

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[livvy]

1. Gonzales Aide Resigns; No Reason Given

I'm pretty sure we already know the reason. Be sure to check out her mother's comment at the end of the article.

Apr 7, 2:41 AM EDT

Gonzales Aide Resigns; No Reason Given

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales abruptly quit Friday, almost two weeks after telling Congress she would not testify about her role in the firings of federal prosecutors.

Monica M. Goodling, the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, gave no reason for her resignation. Since she was at the center of the firings, Goodling's refusal to testify has intensified questions about whether the U.S. attorney dismissals were proper and heightened the furor that threatens Gonzales' own job.

"It has been an honor to have served at the Justice Department for the past five years," Goodling wrote Gonzales, advising him of her resignation effective Saturday.

"May God bless you richly as you continue your service to America," Goodling added.

>the rest is here:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FIRED_PROSECUTORS?SITE=PASUN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[livvy]

3. Justice's Holy Hires

Justice's Holy Hires

By Dahlia Lithwick
Sunday, April 8, 2007; B02

Monica Goodling had a problem. As senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Justice Department liaison to the White House, she no longer seemed to know what the truth was. She also must have been increasingly unclear about who her superiors were. This didn't used to be a problem for Goodling. Everything was once very certain: Her boss's truth was always the same as God's truth. Her boss was always either God or one of His staffers.

Last week, through counsel, Goodling again refused to testify about her role in the firings of several U.S. attorneys for what appear to be partisan reasons. Then on Friday, she resigned, giving no reason. Asserting her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, she somehow thought she might be on the hook for criminal obstruction.

A 1995 graduate of Messiah College, an evangelical Christian school, and a 1999 graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School, Goodling is an improbable character for a political scandal. Her chief claim to professional fame appears to have been loyalty to the president and to the process of reshaping the Justice Department in his image (and, thus, His image). A former career official there told The Washington Post that Goodling "forced many very talented career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points." And as she rose at Justice, a former classmate said, Goodling "developed a very positive reputation for people coming from Christian schools into Washington looking for employment in government, always ready to offer encouragement and be a sounding board."

Start digging, and Goodling also looks to be the Forrest Gump of no comments: Here she is in 1997 fielding calls from reporters to the admissions office of Regent's School of Government. Asked whether non-Christians were admitted, she explained that "we admit all students without discrimination. We are a Christian institution; it is assumed that everyone in the classes are Christians." Here, in 2004, she's answering calls at the Justice Department about whether then-Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement knew about the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison when he told the Supreme Court that the United States does not torture. Said Goodling, in lieu of taking the Fifth: "We wouldn't have any comment."

The rest is here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040601799.html

[diva77]

12. maybe she got a book deal??

:shrug:

[livvy]

2. Gingrich Seeks Candidate With Solutions

This article should be titled, "Dumb on the Campaign Trail".

Apr 6, 9:47 PM EDT

Gingrich Seeks Candidate With Solutions

By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newt Gingrich wants somebody running for president - maybe himself - to embrace his solutions to the nation's problems.

He's not thinking about a presidential campaign now, Gingrich insists. Instead, the former House speaker is busy creating ideas, his stock in trade since leaving Congress.

>snip

Among his proposals is establishing patriotic education for children and immigrants, including making English the language of American government and keeping "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance as part of an effort to "re-center" the U.S. on God.

>snip

Other ideas: transforming Social Security into personal savings accounts, reducing lawsuits, simplifying the tax code, pushing Americans to excel at math and science, posting the cost and quality of health care at hospitals and other medical facilities, and investing in "scientific revolution," particularly in energy, space and the environment.

>more :silly:

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/THE_GINGRICH_SOLUTION?SITE=PASUN&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-04-06-21-47-43

[livvy]

4. What Was Charlie Crist Thinking?

What was Charlie Crist thinking?
Why did a Republican governor just add tens of thousands of Democrats to the voter rolls in Florida?

By Farhad Manjoo

Apr. 06, 2007 | During his campaign for the Florida governorship last fall, Charlie Crist frequently expressed deep moral opposition to the state's practice of permanently prohibiting convicted felons from exercising their right to vote. But Crist is a Republican, and his promise to fix Florida's notorious felon-voting ban sometimes sounded like nothing more than campaign puffery. Felon disenfranchisement has long given Republicans a considerable boost at the polls in Florida; if the state's ex-cons had been allowed to vote in 2000, George W. Bush would now be the commissioner of baseball. Was Charlie Crist really going to kill this political golden goose?

On Thursday, he did just that. Crist, who became governor after handily defeating Democrat Jim Davis in November, ushered in a proposal that will quickly restore the voting rights of most of Florida's felons as soon as they are released from prison. The plan looks sure to alter the political landscape in the nation's most populous -- and electoral-vote-rich -- swing state.

"This is going to have a very big impact," says Christopher Uggen, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota who is coauthor, with Jeff Manza, of "Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy." Voting-rights activists say that there are about 950,000 felons in Florida who have served their time but are currently ineligible to vote -- making up roughly 9 percent of the state's voting-age population, and more disenfranchised felons than in any other state. The ex-cons belong to traditionally Democratic demographics -- many are African-American, and many are poor. If they're allowed to vote, they'll likely go to the polls at lower rates than everyone else; Uggen and Manza's work suggests felons turn out to vote at about the half the general turnout rate in any given election. But in a state as closely divided politically as Florida, that could still make all the difference. In the past several decades, say Uggen and Manza, at least two Senate races in Florida would have gone to Democrats instead of Republicans had felons had the right to vote. Buddy McKay would have beaten Connie Mack in 1988, and Betty Castor would have beaten Mel Martinez in 2004. And, of course, the 2000 presidential election would have gone to Al Gore. Uggen and Manza's research suggests Gore might have picked up 60,000 votes from felons.

By restoring ex-cons' rights, in other words, Florida's new Republican governor has added tens of thousands of Democratic voters to the rolls -- possibly pushing a House seat or two into the blue column, certainly making life a little bit easier for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or whoever else wins next year's Democratic presidential nomination.

>The rest is here:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/04/06/crist/?source=whitelist

[livvy]

5. TPMCafe: Voting Rights & Election News Roundup: April 6, 2007

Voting Rights & Election News Roundup: April 6, 2007 Edition

By Erin Ferns

This an entry in a series of blogs to keep people informed on current election reform and voting rights issues in the news.

This week, we focus on two separate but equally important issues affecting voting rights: felon re-enfranchisement and voter ID. Thursday, an Associated Press story published in the St. Petersburg Times reported a movement to re-enfranchise ex-felons in Florida and an editorial in Monday's printing of Fort Wayne Newspapers' Journal Gazette examined “Draconian” ID requirements upheld in Indiana with a focus on a recent academic paper discussing why ID requirements have a severe impact on historically marginalized voters.

According to the Sentencing Project, an organization advocating a fair and just criminal justice system, nearly one million ex-felons in Florida have been stripped of their right to vote. The majority of affected former felons are Black. According to a Project Vote report, minority and low-income citizens are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and underrepresented at the polls: “The disenfranchisement rate of African-American men is seven times the national average at 13%.”

Until Thursday, Florida was one of three states, including Kentucky and Virginia, that permanently disenfranchised most former felons. While this is a step forward in re-enfranchising American citizens who had already served their sentences, essentially “paying their dues,” the Florida rule still does not fully or automatically restore civil rights, and leaves out those who have been released prior to the policy change.

“There isn't even agreement as to how many of those are out there – although it's definitely more than a half million people,” AP reporter David Royse wrote.

>more here:

http://americaabroad.tpmcafe.com/blog/project_vote/2007/apr/06/barred_from_the_polls

[livvy]

6. Laura Flanders: Bottom-Up Power

article | posted April 5, 2007 (April 23, 2007 issue)
Bottom-Up Power

Laura Flanders


This article is adapted from Laura Flanders' new book, Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics From the Politicians (The Penguin Press).

An odd thing happens on the way to an American election. For months politicians talk about the importance of voters, voting and the power of majorities. Then on election night--wham--suddenly the only person who matters is the candidate. Thanks to media that cover elections as if they were races, all the attention goes to the horses; there's little left for the people in the stands. Consider what happened in the wake of the Republican rout in the 2006 midterm elections. Just days after election night, the Sunday-morning TV talk shows were in full gallop, training attention away from the hordes of people and the organizing that had just flipped both houses of Congress and focusing instead on the few politicians who might be expected to run for President.

The brighter the spotlight on the candidate, the dimmer the darkness that falls on everyone else. Take Montana. The first Democrat to win the governorship in sixteen years, Brian Schweitzer, sparked breathless talk about a "Montana Miracle" when he won office in 2004, the same year that Democrats gained power in both chambers of state government after twelve years of GOP dominance. The national public heard more about Schweitzer's bolo tie and boots than they did about his politics--but no matter, when his protégé Jon Tester pulled off a nail-biter win in the Senate two years later, Democratic hopes rose even higher. Maybe the Montana magic will rub off and herald Democratic victories across the West.

When the Democrats hold their national convention in Denver in 2008, Schweitzer and Tester are bound to be headliners. "The future is wearing a turquoise bolo tie wrapped around the open collar of a blue-and-white-striped button-down dress shirt," began a typical article on Schweitzer in Salon. Tester, an organic farmer with a big frame and a flattop haircut, has stimulated similar style-over-substance talk. But the big men are not all that's going on in the Big Sky state. To talk about a one- or even a two-man miracle is to ignore what's really interesting about politics in Montana. As two local feminists, Judy Smith and Terry Kendrick, put it in their essay "Revisiting the Montana Miracle," "rather than a miracle was closer to a perfect storm." As I discovered during my travels out West last spring, what's been happening there may indeed have lessons for national Democrats--but not if the analysis stops with the candidates.

The day I arrive in Missoula, in March 2006, I meet a bright, blond athlete named Betsy Hands. As we drive around town, Hands tells me she is a former Peace Corps volunteer and environmental scientist who spent years in various African countries and once led wilderness trips for Outward Bound. She is program director at homeWORD, a community housing organization that helps low-income women and families buy affordable homes. She's also a competitive telemark skier and, oh yes, she's running for office, a seat in the State Assembly. "Somebody's got to step up, and why not me?" Hands tells me cheerfully. It's an attitude I hear a lot in this state.

>more here:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070423/flanders

[livvy]

7. OH: Voting? Here's What You Can Do To Prove Your Identification

Voting? Here's what you can do to prove your identification
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Mark Naymik
Plain Dealer Politics Writer

With absentee voting already under way for the May elections and the voter registration deadline coming up Monday, voters once again will have to wrestle with confusion over House Bill 3, a sweeping election-reform law that took effect in January 2006.

Voters seem to have the most trouble with the new requirement to show identification at the polls. That requirement is the subject of a federal lawsuit that probably won't be resolved in time for next month's voting.

In the meantime, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has tried to clarify the rules by issu ing a new directive this week that spells out the identification voters will need to vote absentee and in person on May 8.

Here's what voters need to know.

Details here:

http://www.cleveland.com/open/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/isope/117595295613020.xml&coll=2

[livvy]

8. Ohio Likely Not To Tinker With March Primary

Article published Apr 7, 2007
Ohio likely not to tinker with March primary
By JOHN McCARTHY
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBUS - Ohio is being left behind in the rush of states seeking to move up their presidential primaries - by choice.

The state that returned President Bush to a second term in 2004 has made no move to leapfrog other primaries next year.

Some 15 other states are considering shifting their elections ahead to Feb. 5, including New Jersey, Illinois and the November battlegrounds of Florida and Michigan. California already made the move and a bill moving the New York primary to Feb. 5 is expected to be signed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Even more states are expected to act by next year.

Those states covet the relevance - and the boost invading campaigns, reporters and others give their economies - that the states with early primaries enjoy.

But Ohio's relevance in November outweighs any sentiment to join the early February parade. In 2004, Ohio's 20 electoral votes pushed Bush past the 270 he needed to stay in the White House and the state is expected to be key in November 2008.

>more here:

http://www.coshoctontribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070407/NEWS01/704070315/1002

[livvy]

9. Charleston: Board Tosses Town Election

SATURDAY, APRIL 07, 2007 7:49 AM

Board tosses town election
St. George mayoral, council races affected

By DAVE MUNDAY
The Post and Courier

ST. GEORGE - Voters who turned out Tuesday to elect a mayor and three council members may have to do it again.

The town's election commission threw out the election Friday. Anne Johnston, who narrowly defeated Charles Frazier for mayor, said she will appeal.

The commissioners voted 2-1 to hold a new election. They said in a statement later in the day it was because poll workers didn't help people who were confused about how to use the electronic voting machines.

Frazier objected during the hearing that poll workers didn't help voters who asked for assistance with electronic voting machines.

>more of story

http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=localnews&tableId=137919&pubDate=4/7/2007

[livvy]

10. Opinion: Dems. Fiddle on Election Reform as Democracy Burns

Dems. Fiddle on Election Reform as Democracy Burns

Saturday, 7 April 2007, 3:28 pm

Opinion: Bradblog.Com

Democrats and Their Public Advocacy Group Supporters Continue to Fiddle on Election Reform as Democracy Burns

Even While the Republican Governor of Florida (of all people and places) Restores Felon Voting Rights, Calls for a Ban on Touch-Screen DRE Voting and Otherwise Succeeds in Shaming the Democrats...

BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 4/6/2007 9:35AM

Florida's new Republican Gov. Charlie Crist continues to get far in front of Congressional Democrats concerning issues of Election Reform. Previously, he has called for the Sunshine State to replace all DRE touch-screen voting systems with paper-based optical scan systems (and touch-screen ballot marking devices for the disabled) and today, he succeeded in restoring voting rights for former felons to all but the most violent criminals after they've served their time.

While Democrats in Congress, and their public-advocacy group supporters such as People for the American Way (PFAW), MoveOn, Common Cause and VoteTrustUSA, continue to dally around the edges of reform vis a vis Rep. Rush Holt's Election Reform bill (HR811) in the House and a forthcoming companion bill from Dianne Feinstein in the Senate, shamefully, it's the Republican Florida Governor --- of all people --- who is proving to be the true Progressive in the fight for real reform.

There's plenty of blame to go around, of course. The GOP Legislature in Florida is hanging on to their own share of shame in fighting Crist's bi-partisan proposals to replace disenfranchising, democracy-stealing DREs. In Maryland, it's the Democrats in the Senate who are killing Election Reform after House Dems had approved it (as tepid as that reform would be in only requiring useless, panacea "paper trails" for the state's paperless Diebold touch-screen systems. LATE UPDATE 5/6/07 5:07pm PT: Stunning turnaround suddenly in MD's Senate, supporting a paper ballot bill! Breaking details here...)

New Democratic Secretaries of State Debra Bowen in CA and Jennifer Brunner in OH are meeting their voter mandates and doing their respective best to correct dysfunctional, unverifiable, easily gameable voting systems, but they are also facing challenges from both Republicans and local Elections Officials alike who are fighting to put their own self-interests over those of the voters. As usual.

>the rest here:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0704/S00133.htm

[livvy]

11. KS:Voting Bill Future in Doubt Because of Added Measure

Voting bill future in doubt because of added measure

Proponents of voter ID could thwart bill which would help rural voters

By Chris Green

Harris News Service
Grand Prairie

[e-mail]

TOPEKA - A bill that could help make it easier for citizens to vote, particularly in rural areas, faces an uncertain future after lawmakers tied it to a controversial measure.

Legislators have strongly backed a proposal to permit election officers in all 105 counties to offer in-person advance voting at satellite locations outside the main county office.

State law now only allows Johnson and Sedgwick counties to offer early-bird voting sites outside a central election office.

However, a bill to let more counties offer alternative sites for early voters failed to pass this past week. Opponents blocked the bill because it had been amended with controversial voter identification requirements.

>more

http://www.hutchnews.com/news/regional/stories/voterbill040707.shtml

[Kurovski]

13. K&R. Thank you livvy!

And Happy Easter.