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Elections Are Stolen From Voters, Not Candidates
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| KY Election Officials Arrested, Charged With 'Changing Votes at E-Voting Machines' |
[Mar. 21st, 2009|09:48 am] |
Circuit court judge, county clerk, and election officials among eight indicted for gaming elections in 2002, 2004, 2006
Used popular, unverifiable ES&S touch-screens to flip votes...
Those of us who have demanded transparent voting systems because we understand that only the ability for complete citizen oversight and transparency can effectively counter those who would game elections, have been disingenuously criticized over the years as somehow questioning the integrity of the hard-working, honest election officials out there.
The fact is, those who know anything about computer security understand that it is the insiders who are, by far, the greatest threat to security on such systems, as even the phony, GOP-operative-created Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission determined in its final report: “There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries.” |
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| Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft |
[Oct. 29th, 2008|09:01 am] |
Virtually the entire mainstream electronic media drank ACORN Kool-Aid this month brewed up by the Republican National Committee. Almost no one seriously challenged John McCain’s comical assertions that ACORN, a grassroots voter registration group, “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”
While the Republicans had the distracted media searching for links between Obama and ACORN, RNC operatives were busily completing one of the most massive voter suppression and purging efforts in American history, stealing hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes across the embattled swing states and striving to arrange chaos and endless lines at the voting booths next week.
First the facts about ACORN. Months ago, we obtained, as part of our investigation for Rolling Stone magazine, the Republican’s list the GOP alleged were the very worst cases of vote and registration fraud by ACORN and similar groups. We went through the names the GOP asserted were “obviously, undeniably and clearly fraudulent” voter registrations.
First, there was Melissa Tais, a dubious ACORN registrant. Her two voter registration forms show, admittedly, suspiciously different signatures. Republicans suggested Melissa was part of a massive fraud to allow Democrats to vote twice.
They were wrong. Ms. Tais, a Cerrillos, New Mexico, waitress, told us she had signed one form on a table and one form holding the paper in her hand. Hence, a second, wobbly signature.
Then there was Patricia White, who Republicans claimed was a fictitious voter. When we filmed her at home in Albuquerque, she seemed real enough.
And so on, through the entire GOP list -- not one fraud. And these were their best cases out of the five million “illegal voters” who Republican leaders claim have infiltrated America’s voting rolls.
The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC’s election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. “We took over 100 complaints,” from the GOP, he told us, “We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn’t find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico.”
Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. “They were looking for politicized -- for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases.”
Certainly ACORN collected some bad signatures. But despite McCain’s claims, now morphed into media theology, none of ACORN’s actions will have any impact on any election. ACORN hired 13,000 canvassers to register new voters. A small number of these workers defrauded ACORN by handing in phony registration forms using names they had invented (e.g. Mickey Mouse), or copied from phone books. In one case ACORN canvassers used cigarettes to bribe a homeless man, now a Fox News regular, to register 17 times. None of these activities constituted voter fraud. It is no crime to register 17 times; only the final registration counts. His multiple registrations would not allow the tobacco lover to vote 17 times. Nor is there any evidence the phone book registrants will cast multiple ballots.
Finally, the removal by GOP officials of hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from voting rolls over the past year provides ACORN with a sound rationale for obtaining new registrations, even from voters who believe they are already registered.
ACORN took pains to screen its registrations and cull out those it considered dubious. However, federal laws make it a felony for voter registration groups like ACORN to discard registrations even when it believes them fraudulent. So ACORN flagged the forms it considered doubtful and handed them in to the registry. Ironically, it was those flagged forms -- the fruits of ACORN’s diligence -- that have been flogged by Republicans as their best evidence of widespread election fraud.
Voter fraud is a phantom according to Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Columbia University. Only 24 cases of federal voter fraud have been uncovered between 2002 and 2005 despite massive government efforts devoted to uncovering evidence of a voter fraud crime wave.
The GOP is ginning up hysteria about non-existent vote fraud by Democrats in order to distract the press from its own campaign to disenfranchise millions of American voters.
The Republicans have created an obstacle course of barriers designed to suppress the vote, purge tens of thousands of Democratic voters from voting rolls, create mayhem and delay at voting venues on Election Day, and stop millions of votes from being counted this election cycle.
Jailed GOP activist Jack Abramoff and his fellow convict, Congressman Bob Ney, wrote the most sinister provisions of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which Congress passed in 2002 creating a series of diabolically cunning new voting impediments. HAVA, for example, allows state voting officials to purge tens of thousands of voters from the polls using algorithms and voter ID requirements that disproportionately disenfranchise black, Hispanic and minority voters, and other Democratic demographics including senior citizens and young people.
In 2004, highly organized GOP tacticians helped disenfranchise no less than 2.7 million American voters. Almost a million of them were African Americans. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found black voters were nine times more likely to have their votes discarded than white voters and that over one-third of the million provisional ballots cast in 2004 -- ballots handed disproportionately to African Americans -- were never counted but simply thrown into dumpsters.
In a technique known as “caging” RNC operatives send millions of first class letters to black voters across the country marked ‘do not forward.’ Republican operatives armed with lists then invade black precincts on Election Day to challenge those voters whose letters were returned to the RNC because the voter was not home to sign when the mail arrived. That tactic deliberately targets black voters, resurrecting Old Dixie’s Jim Crow procedures designed to rid the lists of black voters and create long lines in black precincts.
In this election, new HAVA mandates permit voting officials to precisely match registration form information with the voter’s driver’s license and Social Security application. While it may sound reasonable, in practice, any change, even a dropped hyphen, is cause for eliminating the voter from the rolls. Since 2004, Colorado’s Republican Secretaries of State have purged one out of every five voters from the rolls. The current Secretary of State, Mike Coffman, a Republican also running for office, recently purged an additional 37,000 voters and discarded 6,400 new voter registrations -- overwhelmingly Democratic -- based upon an obscure technical mistake that Coffman’s office encouraged voters to make in the first place.
The GOP “anti-fraud” campaign resulted in one in nine New Mexico Democratic voters finding their names had disappeared from voter roles during this year’s caucus.
Despite a recent Supreme Court decision upholding Ohio’s refusal to disenfranchise 200,000 legitimate voters based on this absurd demand to “match” voter names to databases, White House operatives are still fighting to purge these names from the rolls. President George Bush last week personally asked his Attorney General Mike Mukasey to renew Republican efforts to disenfranchise these voters.
Contrary to Mr. McCain’s assertions, the real threat to democracy is from the GOP itself. ACORN has served as a good distraction from Republican efforts to steal the vote from hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters, a genuine threat that has received almost no media attention.
They’re stealing your vote, but you can steal it back. Here are some steps you should take to protect your vote. First, avoid the November 4th minefield. Voters, wherever possible, should vote early and in person. Where feasible, avoid mailing in your ballot, many are rejected for flimsy reasons, and first time voters in many states must include a photocopy of ID. However, if you have a mail-in ballot, don’t throw it away. Follow directions, use the correct postage (that’s an error that cost a hundred thousand votes last time) and, if possible, walk it in to your elections office.
At the polling station, should you find yourself one of the 2.7 million purged, or your ID rejected, then do your best to resist a “provisional” ballot--one third of which are not counted. Return with proper ID, or call 1-800-OUR VOTE for legal assistance. And never just walk away discouraged. That’s just what they want you to do.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast are authors of an investigation of vote suppression in the current Rolling Stone, and a comic book voter guide, “Steal Back Your Vote,” both available for download at StealBackYourVote.org.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-greg-palast/drinking-the-acorn-koolai_b_138390.html
Cross posted in my journal |
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| Block the Vote |
[Oct. 28th, 2008|10:22 am] |
If you haven’t read this yet, I really suggest that you do. It’s probably one of, if not the most, important pieces of investigative journalism done this year.
Will the GOP’s campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST
These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.
What you can do about it: http://www.stealbackyourvote.org/ |
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| Some voters 'purged' from voter rolls |
[Oct. 27th, 2008|11:43 pm] |
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.
“Vote suppression is real. It does sometimes happen,” said Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University.
“Vote suppression is real. It does sometimes happen,” said Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University.
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.
Click on the link to read the rest of the article and watch the short video. |
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| Florida's GOP lawmakers blamed for early-voting lines |
[Oct. 25th, 2008|08:21 am] |
By Charles Rabin, Larry Lebowitz and Michael Vasquez | Miami Herald
Saying early voting cost too much money with rules that weren’t uniform, Republican legislators led a charge three years ago to set new statewide standards limiting the number of polling sites and their hours of operation.
Those revamped rules trimmed early voting from 12 hours per workday to eight.
During the first presidential election since Gov. Jeb Bush signed the bill in 2005, the new law’s impact can be seen throughout South Florida: exhausting lines at polling sites in Miami-Dade and Broward that led voters to miss work, senior citizens to beg for chairs and voting advocates to question whether some are being disenfranchised.
From Miami City Hall to the Southwest Regional Library in Pembroke Pines, voters on Monday and Tuesday -- the first two days of early voting -- sweated out waits of two to five hours. Broward reported record turnout for early voting, which ends Nov. 2.
Now, the debate over those achingly long lines has turned political. Some Democratic leaders contend the bill intentionally slowed down a process that has historically benefited the party.
‘’They were using their power, their majority, to make it harder for people to vote, to gain a political advantage,’’ said House Minority Leader Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. “It was horrible.’’
Republicans dispute any political motives, saying the new rules set much-needed uniform standards while saving government money by trimming polling times.
The 82-36 House vote was largely along party lines, with Democrat motions to expand the hours all falling flat.
House Bill 1567 took effect during the 2006 election cycle. Before its passage, early voting centers could remain open for up to 12 hours on weekdays, and for a total of eight hours over the weekend.
Today, early voting sites are limited to eight hours on weekdays and a total of eight aggregate hours on weekends. Local governments are now limited to using libraries, city halls and election headquarters as polling sites.
In Miami-Dade, where early voting booths open at 7 a.m., the centers stop taking voters at 3 -- well before most people get off work. Broward’s early voting precincts run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the week.
One of the bill’s sponsors, State Rep. Kevin Ambler, R-Lutz, said his constituents complained it was inappropriate to vote in places of worship, as some counties permitted under old rules.
‘’If you’re Jewish and have to go to St. Timothy’s Catholic Church, people complained to us and said they’re bothered by that,’’ Ambler said.
While absentee ballots, especially in Florida with its large military presence, tend to favor Republicans, early voting has largely benefited Democrats. Early voting figures across Florida show that of the 153,000 early votes cast throughout the state Monday, almost 56 percent were from Democrats, 29 percent from Republicans and 15 percent from others, according to the Florida Democratic Party.
Nearly a quarter of the Democratic votes were cast in Broward, Miami-Dade, Duval, Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Orange counties, the report said.
There were long lines everywhere Monday and Tuesday, with many places giving voters a number to wait their turn, as if in a store line that stretched for blocks outside.
At the North Miami branch library on Monday, the crowd was filled with many Haitian immigrants or first-generation Americans of Haitian descent voting for the first time.
James Gardner, a community college supervisor from North Miami, tried to vote there Monday but left.
‘’I thought it might take me an hour. It’s already been 2 ½,’’ he said.
Though the library stopped letting people enter the line at 3 p.m., some didn’t reach a voting machine for another five hours, said elections office clerk Gerard Perez. ‘’We basically had a 13-hour day,’’ he said.
Ten minutes before polls opened at the Southwest Regional Library in Pembroke Pines, a line stretched 150 strong -- and continued to grow.
Standing at the end of the line, Stan Lubin said he found the wait ironic.
‘’We’re stuck in lines trying to avoid the lines,’’ said Lubin, 64, of Davie.
The delays are likely to continue during the two-week early voting period. Since 2004, Miami-Dade has added 184,514 voters and is now up to 1,243,315.
Broward also totals more than one million registered voters, making the two counties the only ones in the state with that distinction.
Almost 22,000 voters in Miami-Dade and Broward cast ballots Monday. Miami-Dade, with 20 polling sites open for early voting and 9,000 trained poll workers, expects to spend about $6 million during the process.
Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Lester Sola said that for the past three years he has futilely sent legislative packages to Tallahassee seeking more control over the local early process. He is now required to provide a list of polling sites to the state 30 days before Election Day, but says counties need the flexibility to hold early voting outside traditional government buildings.
‘’Why overwhelm a library when you have a large regional park next door?’’ Sola asked. “We had a lot more flexibility before.’’
Sola said plenty of machines are in storage that will be used on Election Day when the county opens 765 precincts -- but he is limited in their use now because the size of the sites available.
Still, he says, staff are constantly monitoring sites around the county, and machines that check identification will be added where necessary.
He brushed aside a suggestion by U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, to offer those in line mail-in ballots instead.
‘’The last thing I’m going to do is offer an opportunity, and have that person not be able to vote. I’m not about to push one means of voting or another,’’ Sola said.
After meeting with Meek, Sola said Goodwill Ambassadors will be added to locations to ease the comfort level, and the county’s elections website will be updated constantly with the addresses of less crowded voting sites. Broward has also released expected wait times for its early voting sites.
Ambler, the Lutz Republican, said voters should not feel as if they are being deprived of the right to vote, and that people can always vote by mail.
‘’This is the first day of early voting. I think you’ll see an initial push, and it’ll taper down substantially,’’ he said.
Late Tuesday, Sola said he expected more voters Tuesday than on Monday. He spoke briefly to Miami-Dade commissioners, telling them the lines were long but not unexpectedly so.
‘’Voting take sacrifice,’’ he said. “And people are willing to take that sacrifice to cast a ballot.’’
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/54582.html |
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| More W.Va. voters say machines are switching votes |
[Oct. 21st, 2008|07:56 am] |
In six cases, Democratic votes flipped to GOP
WINFIELD, W.Va. -- Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week. This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for “Barack Obama” kept flipping to “John McCain”.
By Paul J. Nyden
Staff writer
WINFIELD, W.Va. -- Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.
This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for “Barack Obama” kept flipping to “John McCain”.
In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing elections. Both county clerks said the problem is isolated.
They also blamed voters for not being more careful.
“People make mistakes more than machines,” said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.
Shelba Ketchum, a 69-year-old nurse retired from Thomas Memorial Hospital, described what happened Friday at the Putnam County Courthouse in Winfield.
“I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican,” she said. “I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.
“I asked them for a printout of my votes,” Ketchum said. “But they said it was in the machine and I could not get it. I did not feel right when I left the courthouse. My son felt the same way.
“I heard from some other people they also had trouble. But no one in there knew how to fix it,” said Ketchum, who is not related to Menis Ketchum, a Democratic Supreme Court candidate.
Ketchum’s son, Chris, said he had the same problem. And Bobbi Oates of Scott Depot said her vote for incumbent Democratic Sen. John D. Rockefeller was switched to GOP opponent Jay Wolfe.
“I touched the one I wanted, Rockefeller, and the machine put a checkmark on the Republican instead,” Oates said of her experience Thursday.
She said she caught the mistake, called over a worker in the county clerk’s office and was able to correct her vote. But she worries other voters may not catch such a mistake.
When asked if she is sure she touched the box for Rockefeller, she said, “I’m absolutely positive.”
Putnam County Clerk Brian Wood said on Saturday that he is upset there are “so many negative stories out there and not enough positive ones. We want people to vote. People need to know the facts.
“But we haven’t had any major issues. We try to explain to voters how the machines work then they come in,” Wood said.
In Putnam County, early voters have the option of asking for either touch-screen machines or optical scan ballots -- paper ballots on which people mark in their election choices.
Wood said some voters might not realize that touch-screen voting machines may take a few seconds to record their choices.
“The reaction time [on the machines] may be different. And when you hit the screen a second time, it cancels your vote,” Wood said. “When you get in a hurry, if you go to fast and hit it again, you can cancel what you just did.
“The main thing people need to remember is that when you are done voting, make sure everybody you wanted to vote for has a check mark beside them,” Wood said.
Ketchum said, “I am educated person. I know what I wanted. I am anxious to see who wins.
“My son Chris said, ‘Mom, I didn’t vote for the people who came up on that machine. I wanted to go back and vote again. I called the lady at the polls and she said it was my fault because of the way I was punching the buttons.’
“I want a paper ballot. I think it was very bad when they did away with paper ballots. I wish you had something in your hand that is a record of how you voted.
“I never felt that way before. It was early voting, so we went over there to get it over with. We won’t do that again,” Ketchum said.
Last week, three Jackson County residents said they experienced similar problems when they cast early ballots at the county courthouse in Ripley.
Virginia Matheney, one of those voters, said Friday, “When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain.”
Retired factory worker Calvin Thomas of Ripley said he 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.
“After I finished, my daughter voted. When she pushed Obama, it went to McCain. It happened to her the same way it happened to me,” Thomas said.
Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright, a Republican, said 400 other people voted without reporting any problems.
Wood said he and Waybright are both very careful to guarantee people’s votes are recorded properly.
Wood said, “Voting machines are very reliable. I hate the fact that stories like this are printed. It makes everybody get scared.
“That is not good for anybody. Where the fault is, I don’t know and the voter doesn’t know. There needs to be good communication between the voters and the poll workers.”
Wood offered this advice to voters: “The best way to solve this whole problem is that before you leave the voting booth, make sure on the review screen that everybody you want to vote for is checked.”
More than 1,000 voters from 48 local precincts in Putnam County cast early ballots in the past three days, Wood said. Putnam County has 36,000 registered voters.
http://www.sundaygazettemail.com/News/200810180251 |
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