Remember when the issue of vote fraud was considered fare fit only for fringe-dwellers? Now, many big names are standing up to call for a fair count. Read it here.
One day, this call may be considered one of the key documents in our nation's history.
6 comments:
Only two Senators and one Representative? What a pathetic Congress. But it's gratifying to see even this little groundswell. There's a civil war coming after November, when it becomes obvious how very stolen the elections were.
just watched the tail end of chris mathews with robin williams and barry levenson tonight, and when chris asked each to make a final statement, robin emphasized exercising the right to vote, and levenson emphasized the need for a paper trail and getting money out of campaigns.
not enormous, but national tv.
i'll predict here that if repugs keep congress, we'll see a whole lot more outrage about the disintegration of our election process.
i live in a state where my representation is so good i don't have much to complain about. good, in that i generally trust them to do the best they can, but not so good in that it makes for passive instead of active politics. however, those of you in 'swing' states might want to consider training to be a poll watcher. we need a LOT of poll watchers out there on the 7th.
Paper trails and paper ballots are quite different. That a machine spits out a piece of paper saying that so many people this way and so many voted that way is NOT proof. Paper ballots can be checked and re-checked to verify the vote. Paper "trails" cannot.
Abolition of the electroal college should also be considered as a means of restoring integrity to the vote. And election judges should be suspended from voting and should be sworn to neutral as long as they are judges. Neutrality in the polling places is of the utmost importance.
Absentee ballots provide somewhat of a verifiable record. It's better than e-voting any day. I guess we'll just have to cross our fingers and wait until February when the actual results of the voter fraud is made public. Of course, by then, we'll be attacking another country so no one will care.
Well, I'll know I've arrived when someone asks me to sign one of those open letters, but then again, "I'd never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member." I'm full tilt opposed to election fraud and here's proof (my web page): http://www.electionfraudnews.com
But I have my doubts about the effectiveness of this effort. First, paper ballots are the last to get counted. They'll be behind "provisional" ballots and you know how those get handled. Second, the vote count is a big joke. In Busby-Bilbray, the night Busby conceded (at the advice of a DNC consultant she says) there were 65,000 uncounted ballots. That's right, 65,000. Those paper ballots, I despair, will be among the uncounted election eve. Third, then with our ballots herded into a coral, we lose and have to claim "it was stolen."
I'm in favor of everybody and their uncle showing up on election day. Massive turnout. Then we'll see what really happens with the Cris Dodd-Stenny Hoyer (Dem cosponsors )Help America Vote Act 2002 does.
Also, the ballot concern, while very valid, is possibly a distraction (like a magic trick) for the real culprit of voter suppression - CENTRALIZED VOTER REGISTRATION DATABASES. They will reek havoc this election, totally. Think of a cloned Katherine Harris x's 50 "fixing" all those registration databases. Yep, that's the deal. Wonderful, no?
I like all the people on that page and admire them. However, it's not the type of ballot, it's the corruption.
On a more optimistic note, when MSM turns on the Republicans using their key issue, then you know it's going to be a tough day. I just saw Wolfe Blitzer, uber flack, nailing some Republican talking head on Foley.
This one's a toss up. I've got a steak dinner bet with one of the heavy hitters on that petition. My bet is that the Democrats will win. My additional comment is this - they'll do little to nothing and be Mark Pryor bots...that's just the cynical side coming out. If they do win and fail to act, then it's Bull Moose time.
Great blog as always here.
Michael Collins
I have a question. If verified paper ballots were really worth ALL that trouble and effort, then why are the voter verified paper ballot (VVPB) organizations jumping on the pure paper ballot program? Let me elaborate, there are maps showing 12-14 states with VVPB programs required and another 12-13 with voluntary but in place programs.
I think it's fair to assume that the call for a national program of pure paper belies the usefulness (ever) of voter verified paper ballots in those full or partial implementation VVPB states. Were it otherwise, there would be some qualification like, “Well in these states where we have verified paper ballots, we’re ok.” There isn’t any such statement out there.
Further, I think that Holt and particularly those who spend eons of time on this issue H.R. 550 just might have put their efforts into a return to real paper. After all, they've conceded that paper is the only verifiable way to go, and NOT paper attached to a machine.
Of interest, disagreeing with the VVPB crowd proved risky at times for many who were castigated as failing to be politically correct on “election integrity." The issue isn't "election integrity," it's the integrity of those who run elections. The issue isn't some abstract computer bits and bytes argument; it's the fact that, for the most part, election fraud (now we can use that term) is a race and class crime.
Those issues, the entirely corrupt government in place and the racist nature of election fraud have received much less attention than they deserved in the "new" addition to the voting rights movement (not in the traditional version represented by NAACP, Advancement Project, etc. who do a wonderful job researching and fighting this worst of all crimes in a democracy.).
Time to rethink the issue and look at the value of resources and time placed behind "solutions" when, as it turns out with VVPB, those solutions are dead on arrival.
Michael Collins
N.B. Now I know I'll never get to sign one of those petitions. Oh well...
This is an historic moment and document, but emergency paper ballots will just mean that a certain X% of Democratic votes gets siphoned away from the vote counts announced on ELECTION NIGHT, and from there Dems will have to crawl back to even and then to lead. But this will take days and weeks, and in the mean time Republicans will be doing every thing in their power to quash the count, as usual. Do I like touch screen DREs? I'm the last person in the world, it's just that they've screwed up our elections system REAL good, and it's too late to fix it now because any type of balloting system has to have both a legal and administrative infrastructure behind it in order to be legally and practically effective. And our star player of paper ballots is getting sent into battle pretty much naked here, and in any event will depress Dem%'s on election night artificially.
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