Katherine Harris x's 50!!! Voter "cleansing" off of registration DB's

[autorank]

Katherine Harris x's 50!!! Count on it. Huge disruptions. GET THIS TO YOUR DEMOCRAIC CENTRAL COMMITTEE. This is how they've aready "hacked" the election. Just read the article. Voter registration database "cleansing" sponsored by the Help America Vote Act.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17616&ch=infotech

Monday, October 16, 2006
Computerized Voter Registration Databases Need a Major Overhaul

Political scientist Thad Hall says federal standards
are required to prevent state electronic registration
databases from disenfranchising people.

By Katherine Bourzac

Voters can get purged from the rolls because there are no federal electronic standards for maintaining registration databases.

What Americans should be most worried about this November, say elections experts like Thad Hall, a political scientist at the University of Utah, is not that someone might hack the Diebold machine they're using to vote--but that their names might disappear from the rolls entirely. According to him, the greatest risks of fraud or disenfranchisement concern voter registration.

As Hall spells out in a report for the IBM Center for Business and Government, voter registration databases are difficult to maintain because there are no electronic standards for creating them. That makes it hard for elections officials to compare their databases with motor-vehicle registries and prison records--let alone other states' elections records.

Earlier this year, the state of Kentucky was sued by its attorney general for attempting to remove 8,000 voters from the rolls--without notifying them--based on a comparison of its database with those in Tennessee and South Carolina, in search of voters registered in multiple states. Hall says that if the state had not been sued, many voters would have been disenfranchised because of database errors.

[LynneSin]

1. If she wins that election everyone will know it was voter fraud

That beast has been behind in the polls by 30pts since she first opted to run (well all polls except straw polls held by local civic groups where you have to pay $25 to vote and even 6 year olds can vote).

If she was even 10pts behind she could probably get away with it. But she would have to be a total dingbat to attempt it at 30 points

[autorank]

2. Well, no doubt abou tthat. But the Harris "purge" technique is nationwide

It's called "Centralized Voter Registration Databases" and the states can do what they please.

And, you guessed it, some states have. In fact her's, Florida has done this.

http://www.advancementproject.org/press_releases/2006/092006.html

"No Match. No Vote" - if anything about your name is inconsisent with any other state file there, theoy dump you off the rolls. Nice huh. That's what Bush calls democracy.

Enjoy and have a good one!!1

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. The concept is not a bad one.

It will cut down on duplicate voting, and yes, it does happen. What's wrong is that this thing sounds like it's going down to the wire. The purging should take place a year before an election term to give the voter ample time to check on his status.

[never_get_over_it]

14. This is not to cut down on VOTER FRAUD

do you have any information that VOTER fraud occurs in any significant numbers - meaning VOTERS who vote more than once or when they are not eligible - this is purely a method to suppress the vote - don't fall for the BS.

"The purging should take place a year before an election term to give the voter ample time to check on his status"

Do you know there were people purged in FL in 2000, supposed felons, who by 2004 were still unable to get back on the voter rolls....

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. Yes. I have my doubts.

I have written about them on DU before. I was a poll worker a couple of years back when a voter came in and told me that he wasn't sure, but that he might be voting twice. We called it in to check, but no one could find anywhere in our County records that he had voted at all, and he said he did send the absentee ballot in ample time. He was tipped off that the vote didn't register because someone called him from the Republican party to tell him to come down to vote because the records showed that he had not voted yet. I wasn't trained on absentee ballots, so I didn't know the system well enough to find out where the hang up was. We had no choice but to let the man vote since none of us could figure out why our County office didn't have any record of his absentee ballot. It was only later that it dawned on us that he could have been sent an absentee ballot from another county where he had another residence. So, there was a crime committed, with no malicious intent from anyone, because we all thought, including the innocent voter, that our state was sophisticated enough to have ONE data base for everyone.

So, I say purge them if you must, but stop one year before election time to make sure that each person you removed has a chance to be notified.

[autorank]

20. Pure "voter fraud" is not statistically significant compared with larger

versions, called elction fraud. Voter fraud can be managed at the local level quite well. When it's not managed, you're usually talking about some parts of the Alalacian area, Louisiana, and a few other places where vote fraud is a tradition. There was a huge push by Republicans right after 2004 to focus on "vote fraud" as a diversion to what was obviously massive voter suppression by Blackwell and other major problems showing up in Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, etc.

They created a fake elction rights organization, which was supposedly bipartisan. It wasn't. It was set up in concert with Rep. Ney, R, OH and some Republican operatives. Ney's committee took testimony from this group formed just 7 days before the committee hearing. They kept it in place and names Milwaukee as the "vote fraud" capitol of America. With a cooperative federal attorney, they went for it. This was their time and place. Guess how many convictions they got in this happiest of all
hunting grounds for "vote fraud." FOUR or FIVE. That's it. They had "suspects" and brought TV crews with them for ambush interviews. One was a kid who lived in Milwaukee but was headed back to college. he was legit. The other, and this was a real crack up, was a Catholic Priest, real hard working guy who had two or three parishes around the state, outside of his own. He traveled a lot and this caused them to confuse him as having multiple addresses. It was an unhappy ambush interview. The good father was in a hurry and a bit annoyed.

Voter fraud is imiportant to catch but it's a drop in the bucket. A huge study was done some time ago, which I'll post when I dig it up. Well done, it showed a small number of votes over a large number of years.

This is a separate issue from election fraud, what we're delaing with now: the systematic eviceration of voting rights through voter suppression, voter disenfranchisement, and systems fraud - voting machines and tabulation machines.

Here's a good place to go for a lot of resources:

http://electionfraudnews.com/resources.htm

[The Backlash Cometh]

21. Loved the story about the priest. They should have to pass an

ethics test for their jobs.

I still think the one data base per State is a good idea, I just don't think that the purges should continue after a certain date prior to the election because they can be politically manipulated.

[autorank]

35. The priest was innocent!!!! Theiri test case,Milwaukee,failed - 4 charges

maybe one conviction. Meanwhile the city does not providing voting opportunities for those detained in county lock up WHO ARE GUILTY OF NO CHARGE.

Hate to break this to you, but your position is inconsistent with democracy...these databases are remote and unreliable. There is no sense in a cutoff date to stop political manipulation. It goes on year round. That was the whole point here...it's non stop pruning people, people who match, lightly, a felon list form another state (like the one Harris got from Texas in 1999).

This is pure voter suppression. It's outrageous and inconsistent with anything other than the
Republican Party knowledge that poor and minority folks are vulnerable to cross checking voter
registrations with other social services databases. The vulnerability comes in the form of an "exact match requirement" which is in place in Florida and else where. Oh, Mr. Rank, your first name in the Medicaid database is Otto, sorry you no longer registered to vote. When do they find out, when they show up to vote and they're denied.

[The Backlash Cometh]

38. Oh, My mistake on the priest story!

Okay, I think we can agree that democracy REQUIRES that some kind of verification is necessary because democracy requires a reliable election process. No one likes to feel that the other party cheated or beat the system. And no candidate is going to get the respect of the public if the public feels that there were shenanigans involved in the election process. So to protect the integrity of democracy, you need to protect the integrity of the election process.

The purging, as it was conducted in Florida, should be stopped. But do you have any reason why a state can't use the one social security number, one vote process? Do you see anything wrong with contacting the voters to tell them what they're going to do BEFORE you purge them?

[autorank]

39. We agree...

It's vital to have a verification of voters as being qualified. When it is used in a partisan way it has to be stopped. A neutral criteria needs to be established. Whatever we've done the last years, short of all this new junk, works because there is so little "vote fraud" that can be identified. Always remember, when you hear this charge (and everybody opposes vote fraud, except the crooks), that Milwaukee (and St. Louis) were their test cases, they chose them...and WTF...4-5 voters 3-4 who were just fine like our "Father Flannigan";)

Put together a committee of real political groups, not BS ones, including poverty and civil rights workers and all the legit voting rights folks. Have them hammer it out and cal lit the "X" standard (insert appropriate buzz word. Have the basis for this be the two or three states where this issue never comes up. There you have it. Call anyone who wants extra regulations what they are-those who wish to deny the vote. Then that's done and everybody is happy.

Good idea!

[liberaldemocrat7]

17. We need civil servants registering voters, maintaining voter registrations

We need to take the republican party out of the business of registering voters and maintaining the database of voter registrations and employing civil servants will stop Republican secretaries of state throughout the nation from illegally purging democrats from voter rolls.

We need vote by mail. Employing vote by mail will stop Republican illegal dirty tricks throughout the nation. Republicans cannot set up police roadblocks in Florida to slow down Democrats from voting, hide voting machines in Ohio and prevent Diebold from flipping votes from Democrat to Republican.

We need paper ballots Employing paper ballots will insure that no vote will get flipped by Diebold and no voter will get stopped from voting due to hiding the voting machines and kept on long voting lines.

The civil servants will prevent ballot boxes of paper ballots from ending up in the county lake or ocean.

Simply asking the republican party to implement this will not do.

We need to kick the Republican contributing companies in the balls with a consumer boycott.


We need to demand that GOP contributors Wendy's restaurants ( Of Ohio ) and Outback Steakhouse ( of Florida ) get these reforms by calling them and emailing them right now and do not let up until they get the GOP congress to get this into law and signed by the chimp.

You can email Wendy's and Outback Steakhouse at http://www.dmocrats.org

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. Civil servants are the answer, without a doubt.

However, they were the first to go because other Americans were just too damn jealous of their benefits & others resented their loyalty to their country. Forget the fact that the salaries for most civil servants are a pittance of what you can get in the private sector.

[WCGreen]

18. The states have always done what they please...

It is up to the state, by the Constitution, to determine how they wish to enroll people and then qualify them for voting...

As long as they don't favor one person over another, it is constitutional...

[autorank]

22. So what. HAVA promised more equity and fairness.

The states can't do anything they please because we have a constitution. They get away with it all the time, because we don't pay attention.

In my state, 300,000 black males are not allowed to vote because they have a felony conviction. 90% of these convictions DO NOT involve violence or child abuse. 100% of the 300,000 have served their time, paid their debt to society. Why can't they vote with a felony? Because when the Republicans abandoned Reconstruction after the Compromise of 1876, the KKK and other white supremacist groups took over again and wiped out voting rights through the same techniques used now. That may or may not be constitutional but it's vile and it belies any notion of democracy. 700,000 black males are in a similar situation in Florida and another 1.5 million face this around the country...These are people who have served their time.

No as for Ohio, anything Blackwell does will produce an advantage for the Republicans. Elections are too important to allow this garbage to go on. The very idea that Blackwell gets to break the tie from the county board in SW Ohio is insane, even hesitating to withdraw himself is a breach of ethics so broad, you need a bridge to cross it.

Hopefully, the courts will realize that the founders presumed universal suffrage by what ever base standard there was. As it evolved, all can vote but many face impediments to voting.

That has to stop.

PS I'm glad to hear that Republican Central, the RS CC, has abandoned DeWine. I'd love to see Brown get in and that comes from a die hard Hackett supporter.

[WCGreen]

28. I understand what you are saying....

HAVA didn't strip away the constitutional rights of the states to administer their own elections....

The constitition is silent on how elections are regulated on the local level..

It is just the way it is...

I agree it is wrong but it must be addressed on a state by state manner...

[autorank]

36. The Voting Rights Act, the Amendments,DOJ monitoring-all FEDERAL

Those are objective evidence that it's not all up to the sates.

Look at this and tell me it's all about the states;)

Election Nullification II: Speaker of House had
Special Source for Election “Certification

California Assistant Secretary of State for Elections Tells House Clerk, it’s all good!

By Michael Collins
“Scoop” Independent Media
Washington, DC
http://tinyurl.com/qa4hz

What would you think if you heard that a Member of Congress was sworn in prior to the official certification of his hotly contested and controversial election?

Would it matter to which political party the Member of Congress belonged?

On August 25, 2006, "Scoop" revealed that there was something very wrong with Brian Bilbray’s swearing in as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Republican Bilbray allegedly defeated Francine Busby in a close and controversial special election in California’s 50th Congressional District. There were immediate cries of foul and demands for both an investigation and a recount. The problems were well publicized before the swearing in.

Nevertheless, this sequence emerged:

June 6 - unofficial results announced with Bilbray over Busby by a few thousand votes, followed by immediate public protests;

June 13 - Speaker Hastert swears in Republican Bilbray on the House floor and Bilbray becomes a Member of Congress; and,

June 30, 2006 - 17 days after Bilbray was sworn in as a member of the House, Mikel Haas, Registrar of San Diego County, officially completed the audit of election results required for certification, and officially certifies the election of Bilbray over Busby based on 163,931 total votes.

The problem with the sequence is simple to spot. The swearing in of Bilbray occurred a full 17 days before the election became official as a result of the San Diego Registrar’s certification of results. The question raised in the previous article was, how could Speaker Hastert swear in Bilbray without notification that the election results were official? We have an answer.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

33. Might serve Bill Nelson right...

Right before the 2004 election he was at all the Kerry/Edwards Florida campaign stops, bragging about how he would PERSONALLY be the one to fight for voter rights and he would DEMAND justice "if this time around any of the votes are tampered with." He all but beat his chest like King Kong. And then after the election, he didn't lift a finger to help John Conyers or the others who were begging for Senate support to demand an investigation into vote fraud. I did vote for Bill (nose plugged) on my absentee ballot and I certainly don't want Cruella to win...but just for a split second, I might laugh if Bill got his comeuppence.

[ClintonTyree]

3. I still think hacking of Diebold machines remains a serious......

problem. I agree, voter purges are happening and are a legitimate problem, but the hacking of thousands of Diebold machines remains the paramount concern. At least in my opinion. Both together are a sure sign that our election system is broken and HAVA has been an abject failure.

[autorank]

8. It's all a problem - corrupt people=corrupt system(s) Check this out

http://www.cbpp.org/9-22-06id.htm
The research center at this Link researched the impact of voter ID laws. This is analogous to the impact of registration databases because those databases are used for the voter ID database. Remember, the states can set up any criteria they want for registration databases. If you have this many people, as indicted below, with "low doc" (low documentation) then any inconsistency in the name that they use for Restoration and the name(s) in various social services (medicaid, child support, etc.) plus the absence of certain types of documentation can throw them right off the rolls If 1-3% get tossed by these arbitrary clerical criteria, not examined by anyone other than the state government folks, then we're in big trouble. There are reports that in some states this is happening. The problem is we won't really know, or at least have an idea, until election day in many places.

I pictured Ms. Harris because in Florida 2000 she kicked 50,000 fully qualified black voters right off the registration rolls. At least 60% of them showed up and they were turned away. Cost Gore the election period. No hanging chads or anything else did it. It was voter registration database "cleansing."

[BrotherBuzz]

29. Sasha Abramsky says Felony disenfranchisement laws contributed....

to the theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections. He examines the fact that over four million Americans, a voting block unlikely to vote republican, have been systematically disenfranchised. Most of these people can legally vote but have been intimidated and discouraged to try and restore their right to vote and have given up. Defeated.



Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House by Sasha Abramsky

More than four million Americans, mainly poor, black, and Latino, have lost the right to vote. In some states, as many as a third of all African American men cannot take part in the most basic right of a democracy. The reason? Felony disenfranchisement laws, which remove the vote from people while they are in prison or on parole, and, in several states, for the rest of their lives.

Award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky takes us on a journey through disenfranchised America, detailing the revival of antidemocratic laws that came of age in the post–Civil War segregationist South, and profiling Americans who are fighting to regain the right to vote. From the Pacific Northwest to Miami, with stops in a dozen states in between, Abramsky shows for the first time how this growing problem has played a decisive role in elections nationwide—from state races all the way up to the closely contested 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

• In Alabama and several other Southern states, where power has shifted decisively toward the Republican Party in recent years, as many as a third of all African American men may be disenfranchised.

• In Virginia, over 300,000 are without the right to vote.

• Between half and three-quarters of a million Floridians are voteless because of past felony convictions. Had 1 percent of these individuals voted in 2000, splitting sixty-forty for Gore, the Democrats would have won the White House.

• In Washington state, where the 2004 governor’s race came down to a handful of votes, almost 200,000 are voteless.

http://www.sashaabramsky.com/

[ClintonTyree]

30. Wow, I had no idea of the complete scope of this.

Thanks for the info. I need to 'edjamacate" myself more than I thought.

[AtomicKitten]

4. Purging voters off the roles forces voters to use provisional ballots

which in turn are easily disposed of with nary a trace. If by some miracle the Dems actually do take Congress in November, remedying election fraud and vote manipulation must be #1 on their to-do list.

[autorank]

9. ...which then do not get conted...

These Republicans are clever, no?

Hey, is that guy trying to crush me? No way, I'll do the same to him;)

[Champion Jack]

5. If these machines are so easy to hack

shouldn't the right wing nazis be afraid of a left wing counter hack?

[William769]

6. Gat a grip people!

Bill Nelson will NOT be defeated. You can take that to the bank.

[midnight]

7. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

[autorank]

10. That's the great irony here. You're right. She stole it for Bush but

the Bush team won't and can't do it for her.

Her defeat will be a cause for real celebration.

Let's hope you clean out the House delegation of some of those freaky Republicans.

Foley is gone but there are more.

[mod mom]

11. Purges, registration issues, IDs, dirty tricks...didn't Palast say we go

into an election down millions of votes before it even starts? YOu are correct Auto, what started in FL then moved to OH has spread nationwide!

[autorank]

23. If he didn't say that, he should have.

Just kidding, I believe he did while touring Ohioi a few months ago.

[EFerrari]

26. Yes, he did but for the life of me, can't remember where.

Maybe in an interview with Amy?

[mod mom]

31. He said it when he spoke in Cols OH in June and I believe it is in Armed

Madhouse.

[never_get_over_it]

15. Ok maybe you need to get a grip

this post IS NOT about Katherine Harris Senate race - it is about her voter roll purging technique which is being used in other places throughout the country.

[autorank]

24. Thanks! I should have been more precise. My fault. But isn't that pic

great. She's the female version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray.":evilgrin:

[Straight Shooter]

13. We need an unanticipated glitch removing everyone from the rolls.

That's probably what it would take to wake Americans up, if everyone who went to vote were told, "Sorry, we can't seem to find your name on the rolls."

Of course the Repubs, led by Limbo and O'Bite-Me, would scream the Democrats caused it. :(

[autorank]

25. OMG!!!

:sarcasm:

Not just the Democrats, it's Bill Clinton's fault:rofl:

[SoCalDem]

27. Shit like this is why we need a national "Voter registration MONTH"

I propose AUGUST.. of EVERY year.

Just like we are advised to "check our smoke detector batteries yearly"..why not "check our voter registrations" yearly too.

Absence on the registration list is NOT something you want to find out about on election day..

If people get in the habit of checking it every year, perhaps there would be some fear in "purging" those lists.

People move quite often these days, and it would also be a reminder to make sure the address is correct.

It's not unusual for the slightest discrepancy to be used as a disqualifier.

Beat them at their own game...stay on top of it..

[autorank]

32. Right, massive drives...dunno know why we didn't do it.

And I don't mean DU, I mean the movers and shakers since its a huge, time and money intensive operation. It needs to be pushed just like fraud awareness has been by us. Excellent excellent points.

[Qutzupalotl]

34. Link to see if you're registered to vote

Send this to your friends:
http://www.canivote.org/

[Justice Is Comin]

37. The NAACP is going to have a lot of eyes on this election

in a lot of the right places.

Stealing the election this time will be like walking into a Toyota dealership in a prison orange jumpsuit and attempting to drive a Prius off the showroom floor and down the street.