Election Reform, Fraud, & Updates Thread for Thursday

[Melissa G]

Election Reform, Fraud, & Updates Thread for Thursday

In order to organize and document MelissaB thought it would be a good idea to have a daily thread to place items related to reform, fraud, protests, and other items. This also make it easier to "catch up" when we are away from the computer for a while.

If you see something that isn't here post it with a link to the thread and a thanks to the author. MelissaB is busy for a while so I'm taking over and Need Lots of Help posting news items!
Thanks,
Melissa G

Link to previous thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x370319

[Melissa G]

1. Ohio House OKs election reform bill

Ohio House OKs election reform bill
Roadblocks to voting remain, critics say
Wednesday, May 18, 2000

Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer Bureau
Columbus- A provision aimed at easing public concern over electronic voting eked its way into a sweeping election-reform bill Tuesday, as the legislation passed the Ohio House.

The amendment, which cleared the floor by a single vote, would require counties to crosscheck electronic vote totals against paper records in a single countywide race.

The result of the audit would not be binding, but could quell criticism that the machines are unreliable and subject to manipulation, said Rep. Tom Brinkman, its champion.

The move came as a Franklin County judge granted Mahoning County's request to block Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's Monday deadline for picking a machine maker.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1116408835284371.xml&coll=2

[Melissa G]

2. Is Labor Headed for Splitsville?

NEWS ANALYSIS
By Aaron Bernstein


Is Labor Headed for Splitsville?
Unless President John J. Sweeney goes, the deepening divisions within the AFL-CIO could see the union movement break into rival federations


Fifty years after the American Federation of Labor merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the U.S. labor movement may be heading for a breakup. Five unions that want to unseat AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney are considering leaving the federation should he win reelection when his term expires in July, BusinessWeek has learned.

Those unions, which account for roughly 40% of AFL-CIO membership, include the Service Employees, the Teamsters, the Food & Commercial Workers, the Laborers, and UNITE HERE, the needletrades group.

snip
Will the five really leave? As with any negotiations, there's an element of bluff in such threats. Ongoing efforts at compromise -- including the search for a new president both sides can agree on -- could forestall a showdown in July. Sweeney has held one-on-one discussions with three of his opponents in recent weeks and has asked all five to meet with them as a group. But their leaders may not be able to back down once they fire up their membership against him.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2005/nf20050519_4395_db016.htm

[Melissa G]

3. Public disgust with Legislature grows

Public disgust with Legislature grows
by Sean Doogan - Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Anchorage, Alaska - As the special session moves into its second week, many Alaskans appear to be losing patience with their elected officials in Juneau. Throughout the past week, a number of legislators have spoken publicly, but what do the people think?



Outside New Sagaya in Midtown, two things were plentiful -- people and opinions. The former were average Alaskans, from schoolteachers to sheet metal workers. The latter were their opinions about the Alaska Legislature and the special session that many say isn't so special after all.



As Day 8 of the special session comes to a close in Juneau, the state is still without an operating or capital budget, and without resolution to bills supposed to fix the Public Employees Retirement System, the Teachers Retirement System and workers� compensation.
snip
For the first time in recent memory, this special session wasn't called for an expansive issue like a fiscal fix or a solution to the subsistence dilemma. This time, the budget and election reform are on the overtime agenda.



http://www.ktuu.com/CMS/templates/master.asp?articleid=13443&zoneid=4

[Melissa G]

4. Shays would rather fight than switch

Shays would rather fight than switch
By Alexander Bolton


Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who has been booed by his Republican colleagues behind closed doors and who acknowledges tension with the rest of the House GOP, says that Democrats often hint he should switch parties but that he would never consider doing so.

“There are a lot of people who hint at it, but I’ve never had a serious discussion,” Shays said in an interview with The Hill.

“I believe in the market,” he said. “I can’t vote labor right or wrong.” Shays added that “you can’t be in that party” and vote against organized labor.

Shays, in his 10th term, barely won reelection last year, taking 52 percent of the vote in the Fairfield County-based 4th Congressional District, which Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) narrowly won in last year’s presidential election.


http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/051905/shays.html

[Melissa G]

5. Electoral reform: make your voice heard

Electoral reform: make your voice heard
19 May 2005


Today we are asking you, our readers, to sign up to The Independent's Campaign for Democracy, which aims to persuade the Government to reform our unfair electoral system. The response to this campaign, launched after this month's general election, has been extraordinarily positive. We have been inundated with letters of support. And as our survey this week demonstrated, public opinion in Britain is now broadly in favour of some form of proportional representation being introduced into the Westminster elections. It emerged that 62 per cent of the British public disagree with Downing Street's recent assertion that there is no appetite for reform of the current system.

Now we are giving you the chance to make your case directly to the Government. If you are in favour of making the composition of the House of Commons more representative of the way the country casts its votes, fill out the form below and send it to us. We will then collate the list of names and deliver it to Downing Street - together with the hundreds of letters received calling for reform.

Those who would defend the status quo have had ample opportunity to make their case over the past two weeks - and indeed have done so. But our campaign has demonstrated that the arguments against proportional representation are tenuous at best. There is simply no reason why a PR system would inevitably result in an unstable coalition government, as the experience of many continental European nations attests. The single transferable vote system functions perfectly well in Ireland. Austria has the alternative vote.

snip
And the truth is that our present system is emphatically not working. The pitiful turnout in all constituencies two weeks ago - except where there was a real chance of unseating a candidate - shows that the health of our democracy is at a lower ebb than it has been for some considerable time. The fact that the Labour Party was able to claim a majority with just 36 per cent of the popular vote, and 22 per cent of the electorate, ought to serve as a warning that our democracy cannot continue to stagger on unreformed.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=639561

DU discussion
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x370756

[Melissa G]

6. Election Problems In Berks County

Election Problems In Berks County

GOOD EVENING, I'M ROB VAUGHN.
THE POLLS HAVE BEEN CLOSED FOR MORE THAN 24 HOURS, AND STILL AT LEAST 3 RACES IN READING ARE HANGING IN THE BALANCE.

A VOTING MACHINE PROBLEM IS TO BLAME, BUT SOME ARE ALSO BLAMING THE CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING UP TO ELECTION NIGHT.

WFMZ'S JOEL D. SMITH IS LIVE IN READING WITH THE LATEST.

ROB, TWO CARTRIDGES ABOUT THE SIZE OF THIS TAPE ARE LIKELY TO DRAW OUT THIS ELECTION PROCESS AT LEAST ANOTHER 3 WEEKS.

YET IT WAS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 3 WEEKS BEFORE THE ELECTION, WHICH COUNTY COMMISSIONERS SAY HAD TO BE DONE, TO PREVENT POTENTIALLY EVEN MORE TROUBLE, THE FIRING OF THE DIRECTOR OF ELECTION SERVICES.

http://wfmz.com/cgi-bin/tt.cgi?action=viewstory&storyid=3784

[Melissa G]

7. Election Error Omits Candidates from Ballot

Election Error Omits Candidates from Ballot
Erie County election officials discovered an error just before midnight election night involving the County Council race between incumbent Joseph Giles and republican challenger Vicki Taylor.
It appears as though Giles and Taylor were left completely off of the Lawrence Park Township ballot in voting districts one, two and three.
In a statement released by Election Board Chairman Kyle Foust, the mistake occurred during the production of the ballots for the lever machines and was overlooked during the proofing process.
He apologizes for the mistake and has instructed the election department to make the proper changes to prevent future problems.
Giles and Taylor were notified of the situation. They say they`re pleased with the election results and don`t feel a special election is necessary.
Unless the state says otherwise, they`ll be facing off in the November election.

http://www.wjettv.com/news/default.asp?mode=shownews&id=5333

[Melissa G]

8. Counties Urged To Get Voting Machines In Place

Counties Urged To Get Voting Machines In Place

A spokesman for Ohio's chief elections officer says the state's county boards of elections have to be ready with federally compliant voting machine systems by January in case there's a special election for an empty congressional seat.

Spokesman Carlo LoParo says Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is hoping most of the state's 88 counties will have new systems in place by November for municipal elections.

Many county elections officials say they would prefer using the equipment before the statewide primary next May, when federal law requires the systems to be in place, because of heavier turnout expected then.

The federal requirement, which calls for the removal of punch card systems, grew out of problems in the presidential election in Florida in 2000.


http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=3363392&nav=LQlCa1m1

[Melissa G]

9. EDITORIAL / Reducing voting precincts

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

EDITORIAL / Reducing voting precincts

Time was when Neshoba County needed 38 voting precincts, but that was back in the early days of the automobile when even some city streets weren�t paved.

Some of Neshoba County�s 38 voting precincts could be combined in order to comply with the federally mandated Help America Vote Act of 2002 which must be in place by January, members of the Board of Supervisors said Monday.

Consolidation should be a welcomed opportunity to bring more efficiency to ballot counting that has routinely been drawn out into the wee hours of the morning after other counties have long finished and gone home.

Supervisors have asked the county Election Commission to make recommendations for reducing the number of precincts.

http://www.neshobademocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=7&ArticleID=10288&SubSectionID=302

[MelissaB]

10. Bad Faith

Look what I found doing a google search for "voter fraud"!

Bad Faith

1998 was the year I got my first serious inkling that America was becoming a theocracy. That was when the religious right impeached Bill Clinton for committing adultery.

>>>snip

George Bush typifies the deliberate stealth approach to government. If the first administration was the set-up, his second is the payoff. The first time around, Bush became the president by means of rioting Republican staffers and a Republican-dominated Supreme Court; the second time, Republicans refined and universalized the techniques of voter fraud and intimidation that worked so well in Florida in 2000. In his first administration, George Bush promised that his unprecedented tax cuts would stimulate the economy to such a marvelous extent that no offsetting spending cuts would be necessary. In the second, the massive - and now permanent - tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy are driving steep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and, if Republicans have their way, Social Security.

>>>snip

The media, of course, has institutional amnesia about Scalia's demonstrable - and, according to his own philosophy, dangerous - bad faith. This is partly because there is another vector of bad faith: the Democratic leadership. Trained by Bill Clinton, with Hillary plugged into the center, this leadership has an extremely truncated ability to act as the opposition party. They adopted a policy of "allowing no daylight" between them and George Bush's stand on the war. They voted for his defund-the-government tax cuts. They caved in on the question of election fraud in 2004, putting personal ambition above their fiduciary role vis-�-vis democracy.

More: http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/05/19_faith.html

[MelissaB]

11. Lampley Fires Back at Goldstein!

Lampley Fires Back at Goldstein!

In regards to our earlier article today covering IntellectualConservative.com 's Aaron Goldstein in his humiliating attempt to bring a dull knife to Jim Lampley's Election Reform gunfight...This just in via...

In regards to our earlier article today covering IntellectualConservative.com's Aaron Goldstein in his humiliating attempt to bring a dull knife to Jim Lampley's Election Reform gunfight...This just in via Email from Lampley:

Aaron Goldstein is a punk. There is no such thing as "conservative intellectualism". There is no intellect in conservatism. You can quote me. lamps

Consider it done, Lamps.

Lamps also promises more on Election 2004 in the coming week via Huffington Post. We'll let you know when that happens.

And BRAD SHOW promises (presuming we can get over the technical problems that plagued us last week!) to air the entire Jim Lampley interview on this week's Saturday show! Hope you'll join us! (And feel free to help us defray the cost!)

Link: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001404.htm

[MelissaB]

12. Local Official Wants a Recount.. of Every Race

Local Official Wants a Recount.. of Every Race

May 19, 2005 2:26 pm US/Eastern
Beaver (KDKA) Usually voters only hear about recounts involving close election results; but one local official wants Beaver County's Bureau of Elections to hold a recount of every race in the Primary Election.

Last month, an examiner with the state's Election Commission decertified the county's electronic voting machines -- amid questions over whether they could accurately tabulate votes.

As a result, Beaver County voters had to go back to using paper ballots this week -- for the first time in seven years.

State Representative Mike Veon says since Tuesday's election, voters have been calling his office to complain about the paper ballot system.

Now he wants a recount of all the races.

When asked why he was calling for the county-wide recount even though no problems were reported, Veon told the Beaver County Times, "Everybody in the county said there weren't any problems when we had a 5 percent under-vote for president that led to the de-certification of the election machines."

Link: http://kdka.com/local/local_story_139142707.html

[MelissaB]

13. Jeb Bush builds on GOP base as Florida governor

Jeb Bush builds on GOP base as Florida governor

"In the last seven Legislative sessions he was able to obtain in one fashion or another everything he set out to do," said former Gov. Bob Martinez, a Republican.

But Florida's teachers unions say vouchers hurt public schools that need the most help. Activists complain that Bush's tax cuts benefit the wealthy and businesses and that his legal reforms deny justice to victims of medical malpractice. Many say the election system is still flawed, most notably because touch-screen voting machines do not produce a paper record.

And civil rights leaders have organized thousands of marchers to protest his One Florida plan to remove affirmative action quotas in college admissions and some state contracts.

"He consolidated more power in the governor's office than any of the past governors and he set out a right-wing agenda and accomplished it," said former Florida Democratic Party chairman Scott Maddox, who is running for governor in 2006.

>>>snip

In 1992, the Democrats controlled the state Senate, the House and governor's office. Now, they have only 14 of 40 Senate seats and 36 of 120 House seats, and Bush became Florida's first Republican governor to get re-elected.

More: http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050519/BREAKING/50519010

[MelissaB]

14. Discussion

here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1795416

[MelissaB]

15. Bill Maher show openly discusses vote fraud, smoking gun memo and the trut

Thursday 19th May 2005 (16h48) :

Bill Maher show openly discusses vote fraud, smoking gun memo and the truth about Iraq

clips from the last Bill Maher show of the season with Al Franken, Liz Marlantes and GORE VIDAL!
full transcript

Okay, let�s get to it. Ohio , what went wrong in Ohio ? The Democrats seem to be in two camps about losing the last two elections. One camp says, �Get over it! You know, you�re making us look worse by just belaboring the fact that we lost to this man.� And the other side says, �No. There are irregularities and they�re stealing elections. And the one thing the Democrats shouldn�t do is get over it.�

GORE VIDAL: Well, I quite agree. We shouldn�t. If we�re to have a republic. And after the 2000 election, somebody said, �Do you think he�ll get re-elected?� I said, �Well, he hasn�t been elected, so far.� �But he may be reappointed by the Supreme Court.� But I said, �Look, he�ll lose again, but he�ll probably serve a second term, because they�ve got four years between 2000 and 2004 to make sure that he gets an overwhelming vote from Diebold, the electronic machines

MAHER: Yeah, I mean, the thing that I found disturbing about this - and I�m not a conspiracy theorist - is that everybody agrees there were irregularities. And when you say that, the Republicans go, �Well, shit happens.� Except that all the shit favored Bush. All the shit that happened seemed to favor one guy.That does strike me as-

LIZ MARLANTES: The Republicans will, if you ask them - I mean, they will offer up certain examples of things they think went wrong that didn�t favor them, like dead people being on the voting rolls in Ohio . They will point to irregularities that didn�t work in their favor as well.

VIDAL: Well, there�s one interesting irregularity. There were three third-party candidates that nobody in Ohio had heard of, except perhaps their mothers--and they�re on the ballot. They got more votes, just three of these people that nobody knew, than Kerry, who was the best-financed Democratic candidate for president in years. Now, that�s very odd.

FRANKEN: Where? I thought Kerry came in second in Ohio , not fifth.

VIDAL: Oh, no. It looked like fifth, but it wasn�t.

FRANKEN: But, as a radio host, and as a liberal radio host, I was - I had to think about this right away, on November 3 rd , 4 th and 5 th , 6 th and on. And I didn�t want to be a conspiracy theorist. We called the best experts we knew in voter machinery and voter technology. A guy named Steve Ansolabehere at MIT, a guy at Cornell, and went through as well as we could. I know that you�ve written the introduction to the Conyers Report.

They won dirty, there�s no doubt about it. Blackwell, the Secretary of State of Ohio , ran - did this in a dirty way. First, he sent out voter registration slips on the wrong weight of paper, and then said they weren�t eligible - the people that had registered that way weren�t eligible. He had to reverse that. He said that people had to - if they filed a provisional ballot, if they weren�t allowed to vote, they had to have tried to vote in the right precinct. And then Republicans called people in the days and nights before the election and told them the wrong precinct to go to.

He didn�t send - he didn�t put enough voting machines in...

MAHER: But your point is that this is normal. That this goes on everywhere, and that�s the way a democracy is run.

FRANKEN: It�s dirty. It�s somewhat normal. They�re dirtier. The Rove people are dirty. They�re just dirty.

FRANKEN: And - and listen, if they wanted people not to have conspiracy theories, they would have a paper trail. So if they wanted to actually play this clean and not get people doubting - if you really believe you�re going to win, you don�t want people doubting that you won. You want the certainty- ----------

Much more: http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6098