Tomorrow is the day we take back our country

Imagine that you've been watching your favorite professional football team all year, and they make it into the playoffs, and finally into the Super Bowl.

Imagine that the game is close - very close - and as the final seconds run down, your quarterback has the ball in the air to an open receiver, who comes down in the end zone... victory!

But suddenly the unthinkable happens. A referee makes a terrible call and the touchdown is called back. Your team loses the game. On an erroneous technicality.

Now imagine that you are losing your home, your job, you have no health care, your life has gone downhill in a thousand different ways in the past eight years... your kid is off at war and can't come home because he or she keeps getting redeployed over and over and over again. You have had it. You are going to change this country, and so you register to vote and you get in there early and you cast that vote for change.

Now imagine that your vote, and others like it all across the country... magically disappear.

The landslide that the polls all indicate is right around the corner... doesn't happen. All because an IT firm is secretly flipping bits inside touch screen voting machines and undermining our democracy. Right under our noses.

It could happen again.

I have been agonizing over this election for years, and tomorrow is the day... but I don't feel any better tonight than I did two years ago. We are the ones who have everything to lose. Our government -- even and especially the Democratic Party, who should have known better -- has done nothing to fix this rampant problem.

Here are two must-read stories from truthout.org -- because our mainstream media is light years behind on this do or die issue that concerns the foundation of our democracy.

The first, from Greg Palast:

It's November 5 and the nation is in shock. Media blame it on the "Bradley effect": Americans supposedly turned into Klansmen inside the voting booth, and Barack Obama turned up with 6 million votes less than calculated from the exit polls. Florida came in for McCain and so did Indiana. Colorado, despite the Democrats' Rocky Mountain high after the Denver convention, stayed surprisingly Red. New Mexico, a state where Anglos are a minority, went McCain by 300 votes, as did Virginia.

That's the nightmare. Here's the cold reality.

Swing state Colorado. Before this election, two Republican secretaries of state purged 19.4 percent of the entire voter roll. One in five voters. Pfft!

Swing state New Mexico. One in nine voters in this year's Democratic caucus found their names missing from the state-provided voter registries. And not just any voters. County by county, the number of voters disappeared was in direct proportion to the nonwhite population. Gore won the state by 366 votes; Kerry lost it by only 5,900. Despite reassurances that all has been fixed for Tuesday, Democrats lost from the list in February told me they're still "disappeared" from the lists this week.

Swing state Indiana. In this year's primary, ten nuns were turned away from the polls because of the state's new voter ID law. They had drivers' licenses, but being in their 80s and 90s, they'd let their licenses expire. Cute. But what isn't cute is this: 566,000 registered voters in that state don't have the ID required to vote. Most are racial minorities, the very elderly and first-time voters; that is, Obama voters. Twenty-three other states have new, vote-snatching ID requirements.

Swing state Florida. Despite a lawsuit battle waged by the Brennan Center for Justice, the state's Republican apparatchiks are attempting to block the votes of 85,000 new registrants, forcing them to pass through a new "verification" process. Funny thing: verification applies only to those who signed up in voter drives (mostly black), but not to voters registering at motor vehicle offices (mostly white).

And so on through swing states controlled by Republican secretaries of state.

Read the rest here...

And yet another from truthout.org (they are obviously as worried tonight as I am. But then, they have been covering this issue for years.)

Is the Election About to Be Stolen in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Elsewhere?

Last Friday, a federal court judge in Cleveland, Ohio, ordered Michael Connell, an information-technology consultant to the McCain '08 campaign, to give a deposition in a court proceeding. Mr. Connell, whose firm, GovTech Solutions, built Ohio's 2004 election results computer network, was in a position to have knowledge about the alleged manipulation of electronic voting results in that presidential contest (a technique known as "flipping") in order to switch the winner in Ohio from Sen. John Kerry to President Bush. The deposition is scheduled to take place today, November 3, one day before the 2008 general election.

Connell is a former associate of Karl Rove, who is believed by those familiar with the events in question to have engaged in witness intimidation to prevent testimony about what happened in Ohio in 2004. They also believe that IT companies associated with the Republican Party have redeveloped the capacity to manipulate electronic voting results in Tuesday's election, both within Ohio and outside, including Pennsylvania and other key battleground states such as Colorado and New Mexico. One such firm, Triad GSI, is managing voter registration databases in 55 of Ohio's 88 counties and is hosting 25 of those databases.

All this has led to speculation that the McCain campaign's insistence that they can win Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other states, despite being (in some places, significantly) behind in most of the polls, could be prompted by having been informed about planned cyber interference with electronic voting results. The reality is that a successful cyber attack only requires a few skilled IT experts with an in-depth understanding of digital security. Election returns in many states are presently emailed from local databases for statewide consolidation, without even the standard safeguards routinely used by banks and corporations. In other words, voting data can be relatively easily hacked.

Read the rest here...

I noticed a special on the hacking of our elections on a public television station this evening. I didn't want to watch it. I'm trying to get some actual sleep tonight. I flipped through the stations, only to find that 'Recount' was playing on HBO. Stolen elections have finally made it into the public awareness. Apparently I am not the only one with that sick, gnawing feeling in my stomach tonight.

May justice and democracy prevail tomorrow. Be vigilant. Be wary. Pay attention. And don't let anyone bully you out of voting.

As Fredrick Douglass once said -- and I've read this twice today, in two different places, so I know its relevant:

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Tomorrow... stay the hell in line!

Because this is your time, your voice in our government of the people.

Don't let ANYONE - EVER - stop you from exercising your right to vote! If you have any problems, find a poll worker and demand to speak with a lawyer.

And the 'Great Voter Purge' continues...

The latest targets? First time voters.

The Great Voter Purge of 2008 doesn't really care if you are White or African American. It doesn't entirely care if you are urban or rural. It doesn't discriminate between first time student voters and elderly retirees. If there is any chance - any chance at all - that you plan to vote for Barack Obama... you might find your voter registration has 'suddenly gone missing.'

From CNN:

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- College senior Kyla Berry was looking forward to voting in her first presidential election, even carrying her voter registration card in her wallet.

But about two weeks ago, Berry got disturbing news from local election officials.

"This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote," a letter from the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said.

But Berry is a U.S. citizen, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a passport and a birth certificate to prove it. Video Watch some of the concerns of voting experts »

The letter, which was dated October 2, gave her a week from the time it was dated to prove her citizenship. There was a problem, though -- the letter was postmarked October 9.

"It was the most bizarre thing. I immediately called my mother and asked her to send me my birth certificate, and then I was like, 'It's too late, apparently,' " Berry said.

Berry is one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been "flagged" because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote.

Experts say lists of people with mismatches are often systematically cut, or "purged," from voter rolls.

It's a scenario that's being repeated all across the country, with cases like Berry's raising fears of potential vote suppression in crucial swing states.

Polls mean nothing now. What most of us are waiting anxiously to see is whether (or not) our election system is so thoroughly compromised that an anticipated landslide victory for Obama can be thwarted.

Eight days and counting.

Steal back your vote!

Not much I can add to this: the last two elections have been stolen from us, the American voters. Armies of lawyers and judges are involving themselves in the process this year, (most of them on our behalf,) but nothing can replace the education vigilance of the voting public. Its up to us to guard our democracy.

From RFK Jr. and Greg Palast: Steal back your vote!


Steal Back Your Vote! from Greg Palast on Vimeo.

Judges rule against GOP in Indiana and Nevada

The GOP just can't seem to win these days.

Two rulings came down today -- both in favor of voters (and against the GOP lawsuits thrown up to block or otherwise hamper early voting in urban centers.)

In Indiana, Republican attempts to shut down the early voting centers in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago failed today when Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias-Schneider ruled against them:

The Lake County Board of Elections and Registration is hereby enjoined from terminating the operation of in person absentee voting currently being conducted in the offices of the Clerk of the Lake Circuit Court in the courthouse buildings in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago and the offices of the Lake County Board of Elections and Registration in Crown Point.

It is further ordered that all ballots that have already been cast at the early voting locations in Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, and Crown Point shall not be invalidated except for instances of voter fraud.

And in Nevada, the fight for/against voter suppression has taken a new twist.

Yesterday, Republican chair Sue Lowden asked the Secretary of State to invalidate the registrations of any Nevada citizen whose registration information contained errors or was in any way 'incomplete.' Interestingly, her greatest concern seemed to be the registrations from the urban areas (most likely to vote Democratic.)

Today Nevada Secretary of State, Ross Miller, responded that Nevada Statue 293.5235(6) requires the county to notify the voter of any deficiency and give them 15 days to correct the error. He ruled that because the voters have not been given advance notice of any errors in their registrations, the corrections could be handled at the polls.

Score two for the voters!

Lou! You found the forest!

Is Lou FINALLY starting to get it?

It appears he has set aside his fascination for ACORNs, and focused on the veritable forest of nation-wide voting problems.

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, October 20, 2008

Tonight, we continue to examine the state of our voting system, and most importantly, its integrity as voters prepare to flock to the polls in record numbers. A Superior Court judge ordered stepped up security of 10,000 electronic voting machines in New Jersey Friday. The machines have been proven to be hackable in seven minutes. The court also agreed to release a Princeton University professor's report that questions the reliability of the machines. Princeton's Coalition for Peace Action and others have sued to force the state to return to paper balloting. New jersey does not have a paper trail and electronic machines miscounted voted in the primaries.

Here we go again

Are you voting on a touch screen? If you are, you had best make sure the vote that you think you are casting... is actually the vote on the screen before you walk away.

From the Charleston Gazette, in battleground state West Virginia:

At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.

When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.

On her third try, Matheney managed to cast votes for both Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman, Democratic candidates for the two open seats.

Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.

"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.

Yo Lou (Dobbs)... care to cover this?

Readers and diarists from Daily Kos also said they had experienced these 'glitches' in West Virginia:

THE PROBLEM was that my touch-screen voting machine inaccurately put a green check mark in the McCain/Palin box when I touched my guy's name. I followed the instructions and touched the incorrect check mark to "de-select" it and then used my pinky instead of my index finger to select Obama/Biden. That wasn't the end of my frustration, though.

In my state of WV there is the option of selecting a "Straight Party Ticket." I intended to vote a straight party ticket, but as my wife and I spoke on the way to the municipal building, we wanted the satisfaction of selecting EACH and every Dem. on the ticket. We also wanted to be assured that our vote was correctly recorded for each race. And we especially wanted the final satisfaction of having voted for Barack Obama (see a recent diary here that explains some of our "safety" concerns).

Three times the touch screen mistakenly assigned my preference to the wrong candidate. Now I'm a technologically savvy individual, so it didn't fluster me too much, having read the directions, knowing that I could immediately "un-check" one and select the other, and further knowing that there would be a screen at the end with a summary of my selections, and an opportunity to "Return to the Ballot," before actually casting the "VOTE." Not all voters are as tech savvy as me--in fact few of them are. There was an alert tone that sounded when I touched Obama/Biden, and a bright green check mark appeared in the box (the wrong one, of course, but I could have missed it), and the paper tape that keeps record was printed on and moved. I would imagine that MANY people would move on at that point...I mean, it sounded and "looked" like the right thing happened.

I am also hearing that it is a very bad idea to vote straight Democrat - that is, if you want your vote to actually be counted:

You may have read about this, and Black Box Voting has sent an ELECTION ALERT about this. Here are the details and what to do about it:

THE PROBLEM: "Straight party voting" on voting machines is revealing a bad pattern of miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if you are a Democrat.

Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called Automated Election Services was found to have mis-coded the system in heavily Democratic Santa Fe County, New Mexico such that straight party voters would not have the presidential vote counted.

Straight party voting is allowed in 15 states. Basically, it means that you can take a shortcut to actually looking at who you are voting for and instead just select a party preference. Then the voting machine makes your candidate choices, supposedly for the party you requested.

Additional details follow, but first: PROTECT THE COUNT

1) NEVER CHOOSE THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE OPTION, because it alerts the computer as to your party preference and allows software code to trigger whatever function the programmer has designed.

2) SEND THIS INFORMATION OUT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN, blog it, root n' toot it out there to get the word out.

3) ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, which have straight party voting options:

- Alabama
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kentucky
- Michigan
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- Texas
- Utah
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin

Terrific. Sounds like we haven't fixed a damn thing in eight years.

Get a clue, Lou

Lou... I swear. Sometimes you're right on the money, when you talk about the way corporations have taken over our government. And then there are those other times... when you are way out in right field, parroting back the paranoid propaganda being spread around by the RNC.

I just received an email alert from Lou Dobbs, letting me know that 'Democracy is at stake,' simply because the Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling that challenged thousands of Ohio registrations (based on complaints by Republicans.) And of course... all the mainstream media can talk about these days is ACORN, ACORN, ACORN; talking points in hand, the wild, frantic drumbeat grows ever louder (and a little more desperate as it appears we're just not buying it anymore.)

Once and for all: ACORN isn't out to destroy Democracy. You can rest assured that no one named 'Mickey Mouse' will show up to vote in Ohio. Even if someone - deliberately or by mistake - had managed to register a Mickey Mouse to vote in Ohio, you can bet that everyone would notice if this



walked into the polls and tried to cast a vote. Deep breath, lose the hysteria.

What you are seeing is a concerted Republican effort to suppress new voters -- voters that are expected to vote overwhelmingly for Obama. Are they to be turned away simply because it benefits the GOP's self interest?

Lou: if you were the GOP, and you couldn't stop the flood of new voters, what would you do? Might you question the legality of their registrations in an attempt to somehow keep them out of the polls on election day? That might make sense if you were losing -- right?

Lou -- were you upset with all of the voting irregularities that occurred in Ohio - under a GOP state government - in 2004? Because these irregularities were the turning point in a very close election, and left us with another four years of George W. Bush. Amazing how such an unpopular president managed to miraculously dodge those exit polls and win Ohio, don't you think?

Registrations don't steal elections Lou... elections are stolen when the votes aren't counted, or are falsely invalidated after they have been cast, or when legally registered voters are turned away from the polls, or when absentee ballots somehow 'disappear,' or when votes are electronically hacked from a basement. All of this actually happened in 2004. Where were you then?

If you want to be enraged about an issue, be enraged about the fact that we still don't have voting machine paper trails in many states. No one can vote without an ID; but their votes can still 'magically disappear' after they are cast, depending on who within state government is in a position to manipulate the system once the votes have been cast.

And Lou... that just ain't ACORN.

For God's sake, do a little research... would you? The UK media is way ahead of you.

The truth about ACORN

NYT: Scientists hack into electronic voting machines

The Democrats are addressing our voting hell!

From the New York Times:

Scientists’ Tests Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines
in California and Elsewhere

By CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: July 28, 2007

Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state.

The reports, the latest to raise questions about electronic voting machines, came to light on a day when House leaders announced in Washington that they had reached an agreement on measures to revamp voting systems and increase their security.

The House bill would require every state to use paper records that would let voters verify that their ballots had been correctly cast and that would be available for recounts.

We need to throw some big support behind this bill. Our votes are our voice.

Critics say the California findings suggest that Congress should press for a quicker shift from the touch screens to optical scanning, in which voters mark paper ballots. Advocates of those systems say that the paper ballots would be less vulnerable to manipulation than the paper trails generated by the touch-screen computers and that they would hold up better for manual recounts.

If you haven't seen this week's episode of 'NOW,' you should watch the story about voter caging. Unbelievable. Actually, nothing is unbelievable these days, they GOP has raised the bar so high.

Senators Demand DOJ Investigation

Actual letter from Senators Whitehouse and Kennedy to Attorney General Gonzales:

June 18, 2007

Alberto Gonzales
Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Attorney General Gonzales:

We write to request that the Department of Justice promptly investigate allegations that the Republican National Committee engaged in "vote caging" during the 2004 elections. We also ask that you investigate whether any Department officials were aware of allegations that Tim Griffin had engaged in caging when he was appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and whether appropriate action was taken. Caging is a reprehensible voter suppression tactic, and it may also violate federal law and the terms of applicable judicially enforceable consent decrees.

Caging is a voter suppression tactic whereby a political campaign sends mail marked "do not forward" to a targeted group of eligible voters. A more aggressive version involves sending mail to a targeted group of voters with instructions to sign and return an acknowledgment card. The campaign then creates a list of those whose mail was returned undelivered and challenges the right of those citizens to vote – on the ground that the voter does not live at the registered address. There are many reasons why registered mail might be "returned to sender" that have nothing to do with a voter’s eligibility. A voter might be an active member of the armed forces and stationed far from home, or a student registered at his parents’ address. Even a typographical error during entry of the voter’s registration information might result in an address that appears invalid.

The Republican Party has a long and ignominious record of caging – much of it focused on the African American community. For example, in 1981 the RNC sent a mass mailing into predominantly African American neighborhoods in New Jersey and used the resulting 45,000 letters marked "undeliverable" to challenge those voters’ eligibility. In 1986, the RNC used similar tactics in an effort to disenfranchise roughly 31,000 voters, most of them African American, in Louisiana. These tactics led to litigation and the RNC’s eventual signing of two consent decrees, still in effect, which bar the RNC from using "ballot security" programs ostensibly intended to prevent voter fraud as a tactic to target minority voters.

In 2004, however, allegations of caging by Republican officials arose again – this time over an effort to suppress votes in Florida. Emails sent in August 2004 by Tim Griffin, then Research Director and Deputy Communications Director of the RNC, demonstrate his knowledge and approval of a spreadsheet listing caged voters in predominantly African American neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida. (See attached.) Two years later, Mr. Griffin was appointed, without Senate confirmation, as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Such actions appear plainly to violate the consent decrees signed by the RNC in 1981 and 1986. We ask that you investigate whether in these circumstances Mr. Griffin or others may also have violated the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the mail fraud statute, or any other federal statute.

It also appears that high-ranking officials in the Department knew of Mr. Griffin’s involvement in caging. Monica Goodling recently testified to the House Judiciary Committee that she discussed concerns about Mr. Griffin’s involvement in caging with Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty during a session to prepare for Mr. McNulty’s Congressional testimony. It is very disturbing to think that Department officials may have approved the appointment of a United States Attorney knowing that he had engaged in racially targeted vote caging.

Moreover, it is very disturbing to think that senior officials were aware of this practice and did nothing to refer their information to relevant officials within the Department for investigation and a determination as to whether it was a violation of a consent decree or law within the Department’s jurisdiction to enforce.

We, therefore, ask the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility to conduct an investigation to determine who in DOJ knew about Mr. Griffin’s potentially unlawful activity before he was named interim U.S. Attorney, and whether appropriate action was taken on that knowledge, and to recommend whatever action is appropriate.

At a time when the Department’s political independence and its commitment to enforcement of civil rights statutes have been called into doubt, it is vitally important that the Department thoroughly investigate these allegations of unlawful voter suppression, and the apparent failure of Department employees to forward to the appropriate authorities information they had about this practice.

Sincerely,

Edward M.Kennedy
United States Senator

Sheldon Whitehouse
United States Senator

cc: Paul D. Clement, Solicitor General
Alice S. Fisher, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division
Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division
Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General
H. Marshall Jarrett, Director, Office of Professional Responsibility

###

Here is the press release from Senator Whitehouse concerning the request for investigation:

Press Release of Senator Whitehouse

Monday, June 18, 2007

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) today called for a Justice Department investigation into allegations of illegal voter suppression tactics by Republican political operatives, including former Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin, during the 2004 elections. Griffin is now serving as interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

"At a time when the Department’s political independence and its commitment to enforcement of civil rights statutes have been called into doubt, it is vitally important that the Department thoroughly investigate these allegations of unlawful voter suppression, and the apparent failure of Department employees to forward to the appropriate authorities information they had about this practice," the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The letter cites voter suppression incidents by the Republican Party in the 1980s. During the 2004 elections, e-mail evidence suggests that Tim Griffin, then a political operative at the Republican National Committee, knew and approved of a program to "cage" voters – sending a political campaign mailing to targeted voters and challenging the right to vote of those whose mail was returned undelivered – in predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida. Last year, Griffin was appointed interim U.S. Attorney without Senate confirmation, displacing a federal prosecutor who has testified he was told he was fired to make the job available for Griffin.

Today, Senators Kennedy and Whitehouse demanded an investigation by two DOJ watchdog agencies to determine whether Griffin may have violated the Voting Rights Act or other federal laws, and whether Justice Department officials knew of Griffin’s potentially unlawful activity when he was named U.S. Attorney.

Kennedy and Whitehouse are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is conducting its own investigation into the unprecedented firing late last year of several U.S. Attorneys. Senator Kennedy, a longtime champion for voting rights, will chair a Judiciary Committee hearing this Thursday on oversight of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Whitehouse served as U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island from 1994-1998.

"It is very disturbing to think that Department officials may have approved the appointment of a United States Attorney knowing that he had engaged in racially targeted vote caging," the senators wrote. "Moreover, it is very disturbing to think that senior officials were aware of this practice and did nothing to refer their information to relevant officials within the Department for investigation and a determination as to whether it was a violation of a consent decree or law within the Department’s jurisdiction to enforce."