Open Thread - Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Friday, 5/9/2008

[Mnemosyne]

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.







Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.



If you can:

1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.





2. Post stories using the new Spring 2006 Edition of "Election Fraud and Reform News Directory" listed here:



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3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.





4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.








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I am running this as an open thread because I have several family emergencies occurring at once today. None good. I will try to return later and post some articles.

Sorry. :(

[livvy]

1. States n/t

[livvy]

2. Poll Workers' Errors Blamed For Bad Call in Chesapeake Race

Poll workers' errors blamed for bad call in Chesapeake race

CHESAPEAKE

Suzy Kelly was among the Republican City Council candidates Tuesday night who joined hands before a cheering crowd and raised their arms in victory.

A mile and a half way, a disappointed Vice Mayor Dwight Parker left the Democratic gathering , thinking he had lost the final council seat to Kelly by a mere six votes.

In less than an hour, word of a mix-up reached the candidates: Parker had apparently held onto his council seat by 41 votes.

How could this happen? Chesapeake uses electronic voting machines, not paper ballots, and this was a local election with relatively low turnout.

more...

http://hamptonroads.com/2008/05/poll-workers-errors-blamed-bad-call-chesapeake-race

[livvy]

5. WV:Poll Workers Desperately Needed in Monongalia County

Poll Workers Desperately Needed in Monongalia County
Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 ; 05:41 PM
Updated Friday, May 9, 2008 ; 05:50 PM

With the Primary Election only a few days away more needed to run polls
Story by Courtney Dunn
Email | Bio | Other Stories by Courtney Dunn

MROGANTOWN -- The West Virginia primary is just a few days away and election officials across the state are scrambling to make sure everything goes smoothly.

From the voting machines to the proper ballots - workers are putting in countless hours to make sure everything is in place.

But in Monongalia County, the right number of poll workers is missing.

A training session was held Friday morning but the county still needs at least 20 Republican poll workers.


more...

http://www.wboy.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=38410

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

15. that county is short 20 republican poll workers?

awesome.

[livvy]

8. Voter ID Resolution Passes MO House

Voter ID Resolution Passes MO House
Marshall Griffin/Maria Hickey


JEFFERSON CITY/ST. LOUIS (2008-05-09) Less than 24 hours after giving first-round approval, the Missouri House has passed a resolution that would open the way for a new voter I.D. law.

The resolution would place a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot that would allow lawmakers to pass another voter I.D. law. An earlier law was struck down two years ago by the Missouri Supreme Court. G.O.P. House Member Brian Yates of Jackson County suggests that current law makes it's very easy to commit voter fraud in Missouri:

"We have the door open for people to counterfeit, to make up fake documents, to use somebody else's utility bill they found, or a paycheck next door in the trash, and go vote for them."

Democrats argued that a new voter I.D. law would disenfranchise voters. The bill passed on a party line vote and now heads to the State Senate.

more...

http://publicbroadcasting.net/kbia/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1274738§ionID=1

[livvy]

10. IN: Clerk Reports Limited Problems With Voter ID

May 9, 2008


Clerk reports limited problems with voter ID

One man in Precinct 23 said he was insulted that the government would not recognize his Veterans Affairs health care card as an adequate form of identification.

By NICK WERNER
[e-mail]

MUNCIE -- Chris Conley was aggravated his Veterans Affairs health care card would not get him into the polls Tuesday.

The card met three of four criteria required by the State of Indiana's three-year-old voter identification law.

It displayed his photo.

It displayed his name.

It was issued by the State of Indiana or U.S. government.

What it lacked was an expiration date.

"A veteran never expires," Conley, 50, said. "I mean, come on. Have we lost common sense in our country?"

more...

http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080509/NEWS01/805090346/1002

[livvy]

3. Opinion, Editorial, Blog... n/t

[livvy]

4. The Right To Vote

The Right To Vote
Author: PWW Editorial Board

Last week’s Supreme Court decision allowing states to require a photo ID to be able to vote is a big step in the wrong direction.

At the founding of our country, the right to vote was denied if you were a woman, didn’t have enough property, or were not white. This year’s two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination would not have been able to vote.

It wasn’t until the 15th Amendment in 1870 that, at least on paper, the right to vote was extended to African American men, and it took 50 years more for that same right to apply to women under the 19th Amendment.

Nevertheless whole communities continued to be disenfranchised by literacy requirements, poll taxes, ballot information not in their language and even violence.

more...

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/13024/1/266/

[livvy]

6. Loving, Revisited

Loving, Revisited

Roy Ulrich

Posted May 9, 2008 | 05:00 PM (EST)


Mildred Loving died of pneumonia last Friday at her home in Central Point, Virginia. As reporter Jocelyn Stewart wrote in an obituary in the Los Angeles Times, "For marrying the only man she loved, Mildred Loving paid a price: she was arrested, convicted and banished from her home state." She and her now-deceased husband were the couple involved in the United States Supreme Court's 1967 decision, Loving v. The Commonwealth of Virginia. In that case, the court ruled unanimously that Virginia's law banning interracial marriage was unconstitutional.

Yet I will argue here that it is not far-fetched to wonder whether the current Supreme Court would reach the same conclusion in Loving were it on the court's docket anytime soon.

snip...

The second case is Crawford versus Marion County Election Board, decided late last month. First, a little background. It's important to recall that the Warren Court in the 50's and 60's struck down literacy tests and poll taxes meant to deny blacks the chance to cast ballots in southern states.

This court is now moving in the opposite direction. By a 6-3 margin, the court upheld Indiana's voter ID law which requires voters to present a government-issued photo identification at the polls. For those without a driver's license - mostly poor and minority members - the burden is considerable. The Indiana law's rationale was to prevent people from impersonating others at the polls, but even the majority opinion recognized that "the record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history." The more likely reason the law was enacted was that the Republican legislature sought a way to disenfranchise those who lean Democratic. In summary, then, the law risks putting a major barrier between voters -- particularly minorities -- and the ballot box to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roy-ulrich/loving-revisited_b_101062.html

[livvy]

7. There's Something Happenin' Here

Column: There’s something happenin’ here
By Stephanie Salter
THE TRIBUNE STAR (TERRE HAUTE, Ind.)


TERRE HAUTE, Ind Fri, May 09 2008

— Tuesday's impressive turnout at Indiana polls was a textbook good news/bad news equation.

The good, of course, was that hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers made time on a weekday to get to their official polling place and cast a ballot. Added to the hundreds of thousands of Indiana residents who already voted at satellite centers or via absentee ballot, participation may have been unprecedented for a primary — and bumping up against some general elections of late.

The bad news: It took a hotly contested Democratic presidential race to set a fire under Hoosiers and get them engaged in a process that occurs regularly, that deeply affects our lives, but which we’ve been blowing off at an increasing rate.

Not that we are alone.

more...

http://www.news-tribune.net/statenews/cnhinscolumns_story_130145413.html

[livvy]

9. Counter-Framing Voter ID: Voting is a Right, Not a Privilege

May 9, 2008

Counter-Framing Voter ID: Voting is a Right, Not a Privilege

By Project Vote


Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters
Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns and Nathan Henderson-James

Project Vote normally uses this update to give news roundups on voting rights-related stories from the past week. However, with the reverberations from the Supreme Court's Crawford vs. Marion County voter identification decision just starting to filter down into statehouses across the country, we felt it was necessary to spend this update concentrating solely on voter ID, giving progressives a concise summary of the problems associated with it and offer some framing devices to help fight against it.

Although voter turnout in presidential primaries has been at an all time high across the nation, voter ID laws bode ill for electoral participation in the future, especially in races that are not subject to the kind of energy and excitement engulfing the contested Democratic nominating contests.

Supporters of strict voter ID requirements often invoke the ease of obtaining ID in order to dismiss any opposition to their measures. Indeed, Justice Antonin Scalia asserted that the burden of obtaining photo identification in order to vote is "minimal and justified," in his opinion upholding Indiana's voter ID law last week. But at least 21 million Americans without valid ID have a different idea of what the Justices deem "minimal". These real people include several elderly nuns and college students in South Bend, Indiana who were turned away from the polls for lacking proper ID Tuesday.

However, to engage solely on the relative size of the barrier to exercising the foundational right of American democracy is to miss the larger frame. Fundamentally, strict voter ID laws exist to stop otherwise eligible people from voting. The battle should not be about the size of the barrier, but about the existence of the barrier in the first place.

more...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_project__080508_counter_framing_vote.htm

[livvy]

11. FEC Nominee Caroline Hunter Emailed in 2004 Ohio Caging Scheme

FEC Nominee Caroline Hunter emailed in 2004 Ohio Caging Scheme
by drational
Thu May 08, 2008 at 10:31:26 AM PDT
As has been covered extensively at TPM muckraker and noted by Adam B on the front page here today, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has been disabled by the Bush Administration's efforts to confirm notorious vote-suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky to the FEC.

Democrats rightly continue to block approval of von Spakovsky. However, in another shameless effort to install Republican Partisans in influential positions in our elections bureaucracy, the Bush Administration has nominated for the FEC a lawyer intimately acquainted with how to suppress voters:

Caroline Hunter

Caroline Hunter was deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison until her nomination and approval as an elections assistance commissioner (EAC) in February of this year. Despite that she had never worked in election administration, Caroline Hunter was approved by Senate voice vote, in what some described as "necessity" to fill the commission before the 2008 elections.

Democrats were aware of questions about Hunter's qualifications, Gantman said, "but currently on the commission there are two Republican nominees and one Democratic nominee. With the 2008 election approaching, it was important that these positions be filled without any ongoing partisan standoff. And it became clear to us that in order to move commissioners, we needed to move both the Democratic and Republican nominees. That that's the only way these would move through the Senate."

more...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/8/133126/8717

[tbyg52]

12. Thanks, vickiss and livvy! A few more recs, please! nt

[CelticWinter]

13. K & R and off to the

greatest pages with you :-)
Hope all is well with your family
Take care
Celtic

[BigBearJohn]

14. A K/R for my sweet friend!

:hug: