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US Republicans target ACORN: the great “voter fraud” fraud

2008-10-18T06:01:41Z

US Republicans target ACORN: the great “voter fraud” fraud
By Tom Eley
18 October 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/vote-o18.shtml

A community activist group called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has become a lighting rod for Republican attacks as the US presidential election approaches.

In Wednesday night’s presidential debate, John McCain warned that ACORN “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.” He demanded to “know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship” to this purportedly criminal organization.

In a recent fundraising email, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin warned that “far-left groups in this country will do anything to help the Obama-Biden Democrats win the White House and maintain their majorities in Congress. The left-wing activist group, ACORN, is now under investigation for voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states.... We can’t allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election.”

ACORN is now at the center of a media controversy fueled by Republican accusations. The FBI has announced an investigation, as have a number of states, counties and municipalities.

What is this group that is allegedly responsible for “destroying the fabric of democracy”?

ACORN describes itself as an organization of “low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families” which focuses on such goals as raising the minimum wage and expanding access to affordable housing. It unreservedly supports the Democratic Party and has endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency. In the lead-up to the 2008 election, ACORN has launched a major voter registration campaign to bring poor and minority people—who tend to vote Democratic—to the polls in the upcoming election. It claims to have registered over 1.3 million voters, largely in critical “battleground” states.

There is no evidence that ACORN has committed fraud, a charge that implies intent. As is typical of registration and petition drives, ACORN has hired low-paid workers to carry out registrations. Some of these workers, in an effort to take home more pay, have invented the names of registrants. However, ACORN claims that it examines all registration material and flags forgeries in an attempt to assist state officials in prosecuting cases of fraud. In fact, ACORN claims that Republican officials have used the same registration cards ACORN has flagged for attention as a means of discrediting the group’s operations.

In any event, the Republicans have yet to explain the mechanics of how the supposedly false voting cards would actually result in thousands of false votes. The hue and cry over finding names like “Mickey Mouse” on a registration form begs the question: How could anyone cast a ballot under such a name? If the voters are fictional, as the Republicans claim, presumably they will not show up at the polls.

The Republican charge of “voter fraud” is itself a fraud. Through sensational accusations the Republicans hope to resuscitate their faltering presidential and Congressional campaigns. These charges could also be used to cast doubt over the legitimacy of the electoral outcome.

More fundamentally, however, the aim is to suppress the vote among sections of the working class and youth in an attempt to manipulate the outcome of the election. This is the real “voter fraud”—and there is a history to it.

The current charges against ACORN are only the latest chapter in this right-wing campaign to suppress voting rights. The campaign to restrict the franchise, found its most anti-democratic expression in the US Supreme Court’s intervention in the 2000 presidential election to hand victory to Bush by means of invalidating legally cast ballots, ruling that there was no inherent right among citizens to vote for the president. (Purchase online: “The Crisis of American Democracy: The Presidential Elections of 2000 and 2004”).

Since 2000, the Republican Party has taken steps to impede the vote not seen since the days of the Jim Crow voting restrictions targeting blacks in the South. Republican strategists sense that as the most rapidly growing sections of the electorate—youth, minorities, naturalized immigrants, and workers—punish their candidates at the polls, survival will depend on limiting these groups’ access to the ballot.

On October 9, the New York Times ran an exposé revealing that tens of thousands of voters in the “swing states” that will ultimately decide the presidential election had been purged from the election rolls, perhaps illegally.

In Ohio, the Republican Party sued the secretary of state in an effort to toss out the names of 200,000 legally registered voters for discrepancies—most likely clerical errors—in their registration data. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Republican Party did not have the right to bring the case.

In other states, new restrictions on the right to vote are aimed at those whose homes have been foreclosed and those who lack photo identification, such as drivers’ licenses.

The mainstream media conveniently forgets that the US attorneys scandal that led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales also arose from a Republican attempt to suppress the vote. A number of the attorneys were sacked because they did not comply with Republican pressure to expedite the prosecution of voter fraud cases, so that they would take place before the 2006 elections. For example, the US Department of Justice has found that US Attorney David Iglesias was dismissed for failing to investigate a local ACORN chapter in New Mexico. (See “Special prosecutor appointed to investigate US attorney firings”)

More craven than the Republican attacks on ACORN has been the cowardly response of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. In response to McCain’s attack on ACORN, Obama disowned any relationship to the organization, which has worked feverishly on his behalf for months. Moments earlier he had disowned Bill Ayers, the former radical routinely condemned by Republicans as a terrorist. (See “In defense of Bill Ayers”) Shortly afterward he listed those he considers his true associates. These include the world’s richest man, Warren Buffett, and former Federal Reserve Board head Paul Volcker, whose high interest rate “shock therapy” in 1979 was responsible for devastating many of the communities where ACORN now seeks to register impoverished voters.

The Democrats are not opposed to voter suppression in either principle or practice. They engage in it when it suits their purposes, regularly purging the nominating petitions of left-wing, and especially socialist, opponents. Barack Obama’s benefactors in the Illinois state Democratic Party have twice attempted to invalidate thousands of signatures of registered voters from third party nominating petitions in order to remove Socialist Equality Party legislative candidates from the ballot—Tom Mackaman (in 2004) and Joe Parnarauskis (in 2006). Obama personally came to Danville, Illinois, to campaign against Parnarauskis. (See “Democrats conspire against voters in bid to remove SEP from ballot” and “Judge orders election board to certify Illinois SEP candidate”).

The notion, pedaled by the Republicans—that the great threat to American democracy is that ineligible voters might somehow cast ballots—is absurd. The US is a country where only half of the eligible population votes and where the great majority of the electorate is politically disenfranchised by the two-party duopoly of big business.

In fact, the greatest threat “to the fabric of democracy” is the capitalist class, which cannot maintain democratic norms under conditions of growing social inequality in which the vast majority of the population is increasingly impoverished.

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Homer tries to vote for Obama

2008-10-03T07:16:01Z

Homer tries to vote for Obama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ

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Toward IRV/RCV in Washington state

2008-09-04T10:23:37Z

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008140210_irvop27.html

IRV is also being considered for implementation in King Co. (Washington's largest county, containing the greater Seattle area)

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Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

2008-04-18T21:02:29Z

Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

The Democrats and Republicans are the paid agents of the oil, armament, and insurance industries. Their continued rule of America will assure a future of more imperialist war, a healthcare system that doesn't work, and no meaningful action on global warming (the single biggest threat to the future of humanity and a healthy planet).

The Cool Earth Party is being established on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism. We call for an end to the dictatorial power of the wealthy through the nationalization of major industries and for the establishment of a planned economy run to meet human and environmental needs. This socialist society must be established within the framework of full democratic freedoms and multi-party proportional democracy. To be truly Democratic all parties running in elections will be legally guaranteed equal time in the media, big campaign spending will be outlawed, and electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections) will be eliminated.

Upon taking power the Cool Earth Party will establish a system of socialized medicine for the United States, end all U.S. military occupations of other countries, end U.S. military aid to repressive governments, and nationalize the auto and energy industries to carry out immediate emergency measures to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

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Problems with IRV

2008-01-10T22:09:07Z

I support IRV as a substantial improvement over plurality-takes-all; but IRV is not "perfect" or even the best we could hope for. Here are a few reasons why:

1) IRV does NOT guarantee a majority winner. I don't know why people continually say it does-- it clearly doesn't. Imagine a three-way race like the following, after one round of voting:
Liberal: 10 votes
Moderate Conservative: 9 votes
Radical Conservative: 5 votes
Under IRV, the Radical Conservative is eliminated. Now suppose that 2 of the Radicals chose the Moderate-Conservative as their second choice, but 3 didn't specify a second-choice. That would give the Moderate 11 votes, beating the Liberal, but NOT a majority (11/24 isn't more than 50%). This is NOT at all implausible, and in fact, would be quite likely in a 9-way primary race, particularly with IRV proposals that only allow voters to specify 3 choices.

2) Some proposals of IRV do not allow full expression of voter preference, and thus, encourage "lesser of evil" voting and "spoilers." In Michigan, there is a movement for an "IRV; 1,2,3" voting system under which voters could specify their top 3 choices. I think back to the Democratic primary-- my top three choices were Kucinich, Moseley-Braun, and Sharpton. If I voted for those 3, there is a very good chance that my vote would in fact be "wasted." To stop this from happening, I would have compromised my vote to 1) Kucinich, 2) Mosely-Braun, 3) Dean. Compromising votes is what's wrong with our current system, we shouldn't repeat it in IRV.

3) It doesn't really address the spoiler problem as well as it could. Imagine I really liked Nader, but most Kerry supporters preferred Bush to Nader. Imagine enough people like me ranked Nader ahead of Kerry to make it a 2-way race between Nader-Bush. Now imagine that enough Kerry backers supported Bush over Nader to give Bush the win. If defeating Bush were really my top priority, and I had the foresight to see this might happen, then I just might rank Kerry ahead of Nader afterall, in order to prevent a Bush victory-- which is exactly what people are doing under the current system.

These are 3 serious flaws with IRV. A superior form of ranked-choice voting is known as Condorcet Voting, but the vote counting process is an algorhythm that would require computers, and we all know how dangerous electronic voting can be.

There is a simpler solution than Condorcet that is much better than IRV. It is so simple, in fact, that many people dismiss it without giving it proper consideration. It is called "Approval Voting," by which people can simply vote for as many candidates for a given office as they approve of. There are no promises of a majority winner, but these promises under IRV are false, anyway. What AV does guarantee, though, is that people will never ever be afraid to vote for the candidates they actually prefer, while they may indeed choose to vote for the "lesser of two evils" as well. Instituting AV would be much easier, and would show an instant appreciation in third-party support. Third parties doing well in the polls would cause people to do more research on varying viewpoints, thus saving the world from inevitable destruction.

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Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

2007-06-09T17:14:10Z

Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

By Steven Argue

Every four years the American people are subjected to the farce of bourgeois democracy, a “democracy” where only the candidates chosen by the very wealthy have any chance of being elected. That season of nicely dressed pathological liars and false hopes is now upon us.

Since the corporate media of the United States has long ago abandoned any semblance of reporting on anything of substance about candidates such as voting records and actual political views, it is up to the journalists of the left press and Indy-media to do so.

A front-runner in the race is pro-war Democrat Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has voted for every war the United States has carried out since she came into office in 2000. Those pro-war votes include the Iraq war. She also voted to take away our civil liberties by supporting the “Patriot Act” and its renewal. Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, pounds the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. In addition she voted for the anti-immigrant wall.

In her recent successful run for Senate Hillary Clinton amassed more than 22 million dollars, making her the biggest campaign finance recipient running for Senate in the country. Her money came from such corporate interests as drug and hospital conglomerates, Wall Street finance interests, real estate developers, and rightwing corporate media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.

Barack Obama

Another front-runner and “rising star” of the Democrat Party is Barack Obama. Like Hillary Clinton, Obama has voted for the Patriot Act by voting to renew it in 2006. He also voted for the racist anti-immigrant wall as well as the “guest worker” program that denies immigrants rights, but allows them to come to this country to be exploited and under-paid. Obama also voted for the so-called “Class Action Fairness Act” that makes it harder for the people to sue corporations.

One might think that Obama, as a black man in racist America, might have something to offer on issues dealing with the suffering caused by the racist police state, mass incarceration of the poor, lack of healthcare, and dramatic drop in the standard of living of the multi-racial working class and poor. Instead Barack Obama plays into racist stereotypes, blaming the victims of racist America rather than the corporate criminals, stating:

"Such wisdom might help us move beyond ideological bickering and serve as the basis of a renewed effort to tackle the problem of inner-city poverty. We could begin by acknowledging that perhaps the single biggest thing we could do to reduce such poverty is to encourage teenage girls to finish high school and avoid having children out of wedlock. . ." Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, pps. 255-256

The inner cities of America have, by and large, been abandoned by the same capitalists that got rich off of the jobs they have now exported, just as the victims of hurricane Katrina were left to die by this same racist system. Yet the best thing to do according to Barack Obama is for black girls to stop having children out of wedlock.

In his book Uncle Obama not only lets this racist system off the hook, but he praises one of the worst anti-working class reforms of the Clinton administration stating, "we should also acknowledge that conservatives-and Bill Clinton-were right about welfare as it was previously structured." Bill Clinton’s welfare reform has caused homelessness, hunger, and less access to other basic necessities for the poor in America, but Barack Obama says Bill Clinton and the conservatives were right.

Both Obama and Clinton have voted for war appropriations. The fact that they both decided at the last minute to vote against war appropriations in the most recent vote on supplemental war appropriations is a symptom of the fact that the war has not gone as planned. The war has not gained the desired oil loot for U.S. corporations and has caused a number of growing problems for U.S. imperialism including internal dissent in the United States. And while Clinton and Obama have finally voted against war appropriations this time, their pro-war Democrat Party garnered plenty of other votes to keep the imperialist war going.

In his book, Barack Obama makes clear his support for the billions being squandered on lining the pockets of the military contractors stating, “given the depletion of our [military] forces after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will probably need a somewhat higher [Pentagon] budget in the immediate future just to restore readiness and replace equipment.” (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p 307).

Joe Biden

Another Democrat candidate is Joe Biden. Unlike many Democrat presidential candidates that have tried to distance themselves from the war that they voted for to begin with, in the most recent vote on war appropriations Joe Biden voted with the majority of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate putting billions of dollars towards the continued U.S. imperialist slaughter of the Iraqi people.

John Edwards

Another presidential candidate with a pro-war record is John Edwards. Edwards voted for the war against Iraq and campaigned as a vice presidential candidate on the pro-war John Kerry ticket. At that time both candidates defended their votes for the war. John Edwards has since apologized for his vote for unprovoked military aggression and mass murder (without using that wording and without recognizing that his vote for war was a criminal act).

Yet when Edwards was running for the position of vice president in 2004 this what he had to say on his pro-war vote:

“We need to stick to this [defending their Iraq war votes]. We should stand by our votes, say we would vote that way again. If you admit a mistake, it shows weakness in time of war. That's what the Republicans want us to do.” (John Edwards's changing tune on the Iraq vote, Scot Lehigh, The Globe, April 17, 2007)

Bill Richardson

Another candidate trying to paint himself as an antiwar candidate of the people is presidential candidate and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Richardson doesn’t call for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but instead calls for a slow withdrawal. In the early 1990s he did vote against the U.S. war to reinstate the anti-woman pro-U.S. corporate oil monarchy in Kuwait, but later said he regretted that vote. In addition Richardson is a strong supporter the pro-corporate anti-worker NAFTA, GATT, and WTO.

As U.N. Ambassador under Clinton, Richardson enthusiastically endorsed and continued the brutal sanctions against Iraq. When asked in a recent interview on KUNM (a Santa Fe public radio station) as to whether or not the deaths of half a million Iraqi children due to the sanctions was worth it he answered "yes".

On the death penalty Richardson, like many Democrats, says it is a good thing. Hundreds of inmates in the United States have had their convictions overturned as a result of new DNA evidence being brought to light, with some of these being death penalty cases. Still prosecutors have fought against the use of DNA evidence to overturn old convictions, even when the lives of innocent people are on the line. In racist America, death penalty juries are always more likely to convict because all who oppose the death penalty are excluded from these juries, making them juries that are more biased towards supporting the prosecution. Blacks often face all or mostly white death penalty juries. These are juries likely to contain a number of people who think that all Black people are criminals, making these jurors incapable of weighing the evidence and understanding the concept of reasonable doubt even in those rare circumstances when the evidence is fairly presented.

Why would anybody support the death penalty being carried out by a system that has been proven to make so many mistakes? The answer lies in the fact that the death penalty is an instrument of terror used by the American ruling class against the working class, poor, and people of color. On the one hand when such innocent people are executed it has no importance to the likes of Joe Biden because to them the lives of the poor and people of color are cheap. But for the ruling class, the added bonus of the death penalty is when it is used in political cases to silence dissent such as with the executions of Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, the Haymarket martyrs, and the threatened execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. As governor, the fact that Bill Richardson has no problem with the death penalty means that he already has blood on his hands.

Dennis Kucinich

Likewise Dennis Kucinich is portraying himself as the standard bearer of peace, love, and liberalism, but has voted in favor of the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The resolution Kucinich voted for falsely claims, “Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over Officer Faulkner and shot him in the face, mortally wounding him…” Yet this is not what the eyewitnesses said. For instance eyewitness William Singletary says, "Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't shoot Daniel Faulkner. The passenger in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen [that Faulkner had stopped] got out of the car and shot him. When Mumia came on the scene, we [Singletary and another man] were on the police radio trying to radio for help." ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)

In the last presidential election Dennis Kucinich portrayed himself up as an anti-war candidate of the Democrat Party. Yet on his web site the Kucinich campaign stated that Kucinich, “Supports a strong and efficient military. He believes that the current practice of procuring ever more costly weapons has the effect of weakening military readiness. As the cost of new weapons systems rise, the cost of merely replacing aging weapons with new ones becomes prohibitively expensive. As a result, U.S. military forces shrink, while they become at the same time more expensive to maintain and more prone to failure.”

So Kucinich advocates more frugal and efficient spending on imperialist terror and murder.

This is the same position taken by two U.S. generals waging the war in Iraq. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq General Stanley McCrystal complained, "It was enough for the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results. The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of the defense industry!"

Similarly General Richard Mayers commented on precision-guided munitions, "The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!"

The contradiction here was purely limited to the difference between the pure profiteering of the military industrial complex and the desire for actual cost effective results for imperialist victory on the battlefield.

Dennis Kucinich spoke to a gathering of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action claiming, "We [he and the congress] did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan. We did not authorize the Administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy."

Yet that is exactly what Kucinich and the rest of the congress, with the exception of California Democrat Barbara Lee, agreed to with their votes authorizing Bush’s endless war on the world. The entire Democrat Party in both the Senate and Congress, with only one exception, voted for Bush's war.

Since a different vote was later taken authorizing the US war in Iraq, the most practical application of this vote by Kucinich was to authorize the US war in Afghanistan.

In stark contrast to Kucinich’s vote for war Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote on March 2002:

“When U.S. President George W. Bush spoke about an "endless war," some took it as mere political speech, or rhetoric designed to gain the top spot on the evening network news. I did not. "W" is an agent of his class, the wealthy oil merchants of the land, and his intentions are to press for an ever-wider war in all corners of the earth, to make the world safe for capital exploitation and unbridled commerce. This will eventually become a war that reaches into a slew of countries in the Middle East, on behalf of the rich and powerful elites who rule. Make no mistake: this is a war that has nothing to do with democracy. The U.S. enters the region, armed to the gills, not to defend democracies, but to defend theocracies; to defend kings, princes and sultanates; to defend U.S. access to vast oil resources in the region.” Mumia Abu-Jamal

The U.S. war in Afghanistan has in fact killed tens of thousands of civilians and brought the Afghan nation back to the chaos of fragmented warlord rule last seen after the various U.S. trained and financed Mujahideen forces defeated the Soviet backed PDPA government.

The day after the September 11 attack this author wrote:

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen (from which the Taliban were later formed). With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing woman for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2002

Kucinich, the “peace candidate”, as much as he may now want to deny it, voted for the war in Afghanistan and played his part in making it happen.

On the war in Iraq Kucinich now states, "There is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds." (Rep. Kucinich, The Huffington Report) This position not only ignores the role of the people of the United States, Britain, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere rising up and resisting the war and imperialist occupations, but it is also is being put forward by a politician that voted for the war in Afghanistan, wants a leaner meaner imperialist military, voted for the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and who has worked hard to bring the anti-war movement back into the pro-war Democrat Party.

Some may argue that Kucinich is not perfect, but he’d make a better president than Bush. Yet it is unlikely that Kucinich has any intention of winning the presidency. His role is one of bringing the anti-war movement and others who are breaking from the establishment and the twin parties of war and racism back into the fold of the pro-war Democrat Party. Kucinich makes this point clear when he states, "The Democratic Party created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is to go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come back through my candidacy" (Counter Punch, April 2003).

Yet that tent Kucinich speaks of is one that, despite its name, is not democratic. It is a tent dominated by big capital and the politicians subservient to it. It is under this tent that the ruling class would like to swallow up the legitimate opposition of the people towards war and turn us into the water boys for the “responsible” politicians of the Democrat Party.

It is such "responsible" politicians, including Kucinich, that voted in their vast majority to back the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal. It is outrageous that that the Democrat party would vote in its House majority to condemn a French city for daring to make an issue of this racist legal lynching, while at the same time doing nothing about the liar and killer, Bush. But then again that should be no surprise either since the Democrat Party voted in its majority for the war in Iraq.

Hillary Clinton

In a press conference on August 21, 2006 George Bush Jr. finally admitted what Liberation News has been pointing out since before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Yet Bush had used a supposed connection as a pretext for the U.S.’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq. In addition, Bush Jr. also admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Most of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Hillary Clinton included, supported going to war with Iraq. Today Hillary Clinton has no remorse for that murderous decision stating, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq Vote, CNN.Com

In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush “did not fairly represent intelligence”. Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren’t their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Clinton, however, is worse in not even distancing herself from this “justified invasion” and “weapons of mass destruction” lies.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they might not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for Bush Jr. and Hillary Clinton Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats to try to rethink, or at least distance themselves from, the Bush policies they have supported.

Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade, partially due to the capitalist nature of the Iraqi economy under Saddam Hussein, cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.

Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered well over 655,000 people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq had the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial, and execute him, for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980’s the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise the CIA helped Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba’athists subsequently rounded up and executed.

Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:

“In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein’s capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...

“While defending Iraq against imperialist attack and supporting their right to defend themselves socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal...”

“U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women’s liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.

“The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead.” -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq

What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women’s rights and women’s rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992.

With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn’t completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq’s resources being looted by U.S. corporations.

For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and billions in dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too they left the people of New Orleans.

Yet for the ruling class their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.

The words of Hillary Clinton, an icon of Democratic Party liberalism, makes abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:

“Let us not confuse the leadership’s failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks.” Hillary Clinton

As a result of imperialism’s failure in Iraq some Democrats that voted for the war like John Kerry have called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Yet the Kerry-Feingold plan actually calls for keeping troops in Iraq that are "critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces." The Kerry-Feingold plan also calls for "an over-the-horizon" troop presence in the region that could come to the aid of a failing puppet government in Iraq as well as intervene elsewhere in the so-called war on terror. (Lawmakers begin Bitter Debate on U.S. Troop Withdrawal Plan for Iraq, FOXNews, online report, June 2, 2006)

Hillary Clinton even opposed the Kerry-Feingold plan and voted against it arguing against any withdrawal timeline.

Unlike Hillary Clinton and the leading Democrats, Liberation News sees nothing good that can come from the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now!

Liberation News calls for ending the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for building the socialist movement to end imperialism through socialist revolution.

The Role of Peace Action (Formerly Sane / Freeze)

Hillary Clinton’s record is clearly pro-imperialist war. Yet the group “Peace Action” gives Hillary Clinton the passing grade of voting for peace 89% of the time. Other Democrats are given similar scores by these political hacks.

“Peace Action” is deceiving the anti-war vote. Why? Because Peace Action is a pillar of the status quo that sees no alternative to delivering votes to what they see as the “lesser evil” Democrat Party, even when the Democrats are equally pro-war. This strategy has made “Peace Action” an obstacle to peace and a pillar of the status quo of war.

Every few years the ruling class of the United States parades its selected representatives in front of the American people to give us the chance to vote for their so-called “lesser” and “greater evil” representatives in the Democrat and Republican Parties. The corporate media and liberal pro-war groups like “Peace Action” ignore the real anti-war candidates and back pro-war Democrats by misrepresenting their records to the people.

Liberation News urges all of the super-exploited workers that go door to door raising money for the Peace Action bureaucracy to quit your meaningless jobs and look for better work while looking for ways to hook up with the real anti-war/anti-imperialist movement that is marching in the streets. Likewise we urge all of the liberal and leftist minded people that give money to Peace Action to stop doing so and instead participate in the mass anti-war movement in the streets with your bodies, minds, and your money if you can afford it.

No to the twin parties of war and oppression! Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people!

Obama, Clinton, and Richardson, Supporters of Racist Israel

Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, has pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. The U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid every year and Senator Clinton’s vote backs that money for death. Israel is a racist settler state established in 1949 that has denied the original inhabitants, the Palestinians, many basic rights, often including the basic right to live. Besides denying Palestinians the same rights to travel, jobs, housing, and education as allowed Jews, the racist and religious Zionist State has used massacres and other forms of terror, wars, and torture to drive out the original Palestinian inhabitants.

Likewise Israel is always at war with its Arab neighbors. Israel’s recent attack against Lebanon where their aerial bombardment of the civilian population murdered 1,150 people and destroyed vital infrastructure is only the latest such terrorism by Israel. Yet Hillary Clinton recently told a pro-Israel rally “We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing up for American values as well as Israeli ones.”

She’s got it wrong, the mass murder and racism of Israel are in league with the values of American ruling class, as has been seen in Iraq, but these are not the values of the American people.

Claims of Israel being the victim, bombing and invading Lebanon on the pretext of two Israeli soldiers taken prisoner do not hold water in light of the fact that Israel is holding 2,000 Lebanese prisoners in their torture chamber dungeons from their previous invasion of Lebanon. In addition numerous reports say those two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon, not in Israel. Those reports are from such sources as AP, Hindustan Times, and AFP.

On Israel “anti-war” Richardson shares Hillary Clinton’s views stating, “I am firmly committed to one of the United States' closest and most important allies - the State of Israel. Throughout my career, I've steadfastly supported Israel, obtaining a consistently pro-Israel voting record in Congress and defending Israeli interests as Ambassador to the United Nations.”

Barack Obama also backs racist Israel stating, “The United States and Israel share important interests - promoting a peaceful Middle East, combating terrorism, and encouraging reform in the Arab and Muslim world.” Likewise as a senator he has backed the massive military aid the United States gives Israel every year and says he will continue this policy as president stating he will, “insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel”.

For Socialist Democracy!

Let me be clear on this point, Obama and Clinton, and the rest of the pack will not betray us. They cannot betray us because they were never with us. Under the current politics most Americans would never have heard their names if they were on our side.

A truly democratic society would eliminate corporate control of the elections by nationalizing the corporate media and allowing all candidates equal access to the airwaves, cable, and print. Likewise a truly democratic society would carry out a sweeping “campaign finance reform” through the nationalization of the means of production (using that wealth for human and environmental needs rather than decadence and deception).

Up against the likes of Hillary Clinton, with her millions of dollars in corporate bribes, a sympathetic corporate media, growing police state, and increasing electoral fraud, it will take a socialist revolution to bring democracy to the United States.

How we can all resist:

Tell the truth!

Build the mass movement in the streets!

Strike against arms producers!

Become ungovernable!

Hot cargo war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks!

Build towards a general strike against the war!

Support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war!

Drive military recruiters off campus!

No tolerance or excuses for the pro-war, racist, and capitalist Democrat Party!

Build the socialist movement to end imperialism, racism, environmental destruction, and capitalism!

End U.S. imperialism through socialist revolution!

Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Urgent!!! Please help

2006-04-11T05:49:42Z

I am posting this everywhere I can, Please help us.
There are thousands of good people who could potentially lose their lives very soon.

Since the release of the information on the Sujiatun concentration camp in China, which is reported to do live organ harvesting on Falun Gong practicioners. More people have been stepping forward to reveal information. Recently, a veteran military doctor in the region of Shenyang said that the Sujiatun Concentration camp is just one of 36 such camps. Another camp in Jilin Province referred to as 672-S is said to hold over 120,000 people.

According to the Integrated Committee's announcement, transplant hospitals in China are now telling patients to "come in quickly" to get transplants. Patients are told that matching organs can be found at this time in as short as one or two days. The hospitals are also reported to say that, "it will be difficult after this batch of organs is used up."

We fear that there is going to be a mass execution to “hide the evidence” and get rid of witnesses. PLEASE HELP us, Falun Gong practitioners around the world are requesting an international investigation while there is still time.

This is the US petition, please sign it. It can save someone’s life.
http://www.fofg.org/act/act_petition.php?pid=1

you can also help by going here:
http://publicpetition.unvcc.com/UN/index.php
this is an easy, fill in the blank letter that with a click is automatically
sent to the senators and representatives of your choice
And it would also greatly help us if you would please pass this information on.

Thank you,
Joshua

You can learn more about this at:
The Epoch Times
http://www.theepochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html
Amnesty International
http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/chn-summary-eng
Falun Dafa Information Center
http://www.faluninfo.net/why/index.asp
or, you can ask me any questions you have by sending me a message.

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

"Programmer Built Vote Rigging Prototype at Republican Congressman's Request!"

2006-02-03T03:56:04Z

---EXPLOSIVE STUFF HERE---

WHISTLEBLOWER AFFIDAVIT: Programmer Built Vote Rigging Prototype at Republican Congressman's Request!
CLAIM: Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) Asked Company to Create E-Vote Fraud Software!

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001024.htm

"In stunning revelations set to rock the vote from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill -- and perhaps even a bit further up Pennsylvania Avenue -- a Florida computer programmer has now made remarkable claims in a detailed sworn affidavit, signed this morning and obtained exclusively by The BRAD BLOG!

The programmer claims that he designed and built a 'vote rigging' software program at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida's 24th Congressional District.

Clint Curtis, 46, claims that he built the software for Feeney in 2000 while working at a sofware design and engineering company in Oviedo, Florida (Feeney's home district).

Curtis, in his affidavit, says that as technical advisor and programmer at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) he was present at company meetings where Feeney was present 'on at least a dozen occasions'.

Feeney, who had run in 1994 as Jeb Bush's running-mate in his initial unsuccessful bid for Florida Governor, was serving as both corporate counsel and registered lobbyist for YEI during the period that Curtis worked at the company. Feeney was also concurrently serving as a Florida state congressman while performing those services for YEI. Feeney would eventually become Speaker of the Florida House before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002. He is now a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

At an October 2000 meeting with Feeney, according to the affidavit and BRAD BLOG interviews with Curtis over the past three days, Feeney inquired whether the company could build a 'vote fraud software prototype'.

At least three YEI employees are said to have been present at that meeting; Curtis, company owner, Mrs. Li Woan Yang, and her executive secretary, Mike Cohen. Two other YEI employees may have come in and out at different points of the meeting according to Curtis.

Curtis says that Feeney 'was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program.'

'He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected.'"

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Californians! Don't let Diebold to STEAL Certification this Monday 11/21

2005-11-20T21:43:45Z

Anyone near Sacramento should take the day off of work and attend this protest to block Diebold. Those Californians in other parts of the state can use this link to send a message to the people responsible for this Diebold takeover. And those non-Californians can spread the word to people you know in California.

www.usalone.com/diebold2.htm

The Secretary of State has scheduled a hearing for November 21, 2005 on the question of whether certain Diebold voting systems will should be certified before the end of the year. But "The Secretary of State has disbanded the Voting Systems Panel that's supposed to conduct these hearings and has replaced it with one person, a stenographer, and a tape recorder," said Sherry Healy, a steering committee member of the California Election Protection Network (CEPN), a non-partisan organization of over 25 groups across California who have come together to try and ensure the integrity of California's election systems.

The rally/protest is this Monday in Sacramento, we have ONLY next week to voice our concerns so they go on the record.

Monday Nov. 21, 10 a.m. - May be your last chance to block Diebold
Secretary of State's Office, 1500 11th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
(Downtown Sacramento - 11th and "O" Streets)
CONTACT: Dagmar Zakim (415) 389-0250 (there will be carpools)

WE RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING URGENT APPEAL FROM SHERI MYERS

Believe me, I really don't want to ruin your day. But you need to hear this. This is an URGENT ACTION ALERT.

If you don't read this and take action, you are allowing your vote to be stolen. California will turn red.

If you read this and do nothing, you are giving up your rights as a citizen. Do it for your country. Your children. Our future.

All Californians who care about the sanctity of their vote must let Secretary of State McPherson know that they WILL NOT ALLOW him to certify Diebold machines, that they are OUTRAGED that he is undermining our democracy.

CALL OR FAX:
Bruce McPherson, Secretary of State
916-653-6814 (main menu, press 6, then 3 - starting at 8:00 am Monday)
916-653-3214 (the FAX is on tis weekend)

McPherson was appointed by Schwarzenegger to replace Democrat Kevin Shelley. Folks, if they can't win legally, they WILL steal the votes they need. THAT'S YOUR VOTE.

This is a Republican coup, and they are counting on YOU, and ME to do NOTHING. Is it worth FIVE MINUTES OF YOUR TIME to send a FAX, an email or make a call? PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Help Pass Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act

2005-10-09T22:51:29Z

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/8/14730/7214

<<Earlier this week, hundreds of dedicated activists took the time to contact your Congressional Representatives asking them to support and pass HR 550, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act.

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) has now introduced an alternative bill, HR 3910, that will further muck up our ability to have a verified vote, all the while conveniently allowing for Republican cover for vote tally manipulation, voter disenfranchisement and fraud. HR 3910 is cynical, flawed legislation that will lead to further voter disenfranchisement, and do nothing to increase the accountability of our elections. It has a neat little "RealID" requirement tucked away in it as well. Sweet, huh.

LET'S NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT.>>

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

CA Voting system may be at risk!

2005-09-12T21:17:48Z

Where are all the posts? I just got this from MoveOn's Poticial Action group...

Thx,
Craig

California led the nation in requiring all electronic voting machines to print Voter-Verified Paper Records (VVPRs), allowing you to verify your vote is recorded correctly before leaving the voting booth. But Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is trying to gut the law by allowing county election officials to ignore VVPRs in audits and recounts.

The California state legislature has passed a bill insisting verified votes be used in audits and recounts. Now the governor is deciding whether to sign the bill into law or veto it. A veto would undermine public trust in our elections. But his own secretary of state is pushing him to veto S.B. 370, so he needs to hear from the public today.

Can you call the governor and ask him to support S.B. 370 to keep our elections reliable?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
(916) 445-2841
governor@governor.ca.gov
It's important that we track our impact. Please let us know you're calling, at:

http://www.moveonpac.org/call/?cp_id=94&tg=21&id=5981-1767526-4XMJjZAmycUdUMHlT1QAXg&t=1

S.B. 370 would strip verified voting of its teeth by allowing unverified ballots to be used in audits and recounts. Unverified recounts might be easier and quicker, but the whole point is to safeguard against software glitches or fraud, particularly in close races.

The governor can ensure fair elections by signing S.B. 370. Call him today at:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
(916) 445-2841
governor@governor.ca.gov
Thank you for all you do,

–Noah, James, Matt, Tanya and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Monday, September 12th, 2005

P.S. The San Jose Mercury News endorsed S.B. 370 in a recent editorial:

http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?i%64=6296

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Voter Confidence Movement

2005-04-24T16:24:37Z

Black boxes/DREs: Part of the problem, but not THE problem? Is the problem the voting machines or the voting process? Is the anti-DRE movement really just a diversion from the more fundamental question?

Check out the Voter Confidence Movement:

www.guvwurld.blogspot.com/

The Voter Confidence Committee is a fledgling organization dedicated to educating the public on the pressing importance of election reform; taking action on voting issues while opportunities exist; being a watchdog for local election processes; and encouraging the increased involvement of local individuals and organizations, regardless of their primary missions, in reforming and participating in the voting process above and beyond stepping into the voting booth. Our goal is to help create a voting process that all voters can have complete confidence in. We hope that voters will one day have the freedom to be explicitly clear as to what they want in a future leader without ever worrying that their vote will be wasted, they will spoil an election, their vote won't be counted, or they will be disenfranchised in any other way from participating in American democracy.

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Electile Dysfunction?

2005-01-03T18:48:03Z

Electile Dysfunction got you down? VERIFYGRA is the answer. Tested and proven effective in Ukraine - and now available in the United States.

Ask John Kerry and your Senators to get on Verifygra and stand up
against the inadequate recount in Ohio (and refuse to certify the
election on January 6th).

Tell them, if you can't verify it, don't certify it!

Prescribe to VERIFYGRA with rallies
and press conferences, faxes, phone calls and graphics

http://www.InsaneReagan.com

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

bitchslap the NY times!

2004-12-29T08:45:56Z

they are largely ignoring and dismissing the election fraud issues. please let them know that these are real and very serious and it is bloody well time for the media to cover the glaring problems of the 2004 election.

here is a great article to get them started:

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00000980.htm

editorial@nytimes.com, oped@nytimes.com, public@nytimes.com, letters@nytimes.com, magazine@nytimes.com, QandA@nytimes.com, washington@nytimes.com,

posted in Voting Reform - 1 reply

a link?

2004-12-17T02:47:32Z

http://sanfrancisco.tribe.net/template/pub%2CPhotoAlbum.vm/context/pcard?parentid=7b842300-1ac2-4d77-8e28-bb6e3c26236d&r=10535

posted in Voting Reform - 2 replies

Skepticism spawns Voting Reform

2004-11-30T20:38:28Z

This made the front page of the SF Chronicle today:
(www.sfgate.com)

"Skepticism spawns broad effort to push voting reform"
Sunday, November 28, 2004

The 2004 election -- arguably the most scrutinized ever held in the United States -- has spotlighted problems with the voting process that are decades old and long overlooked.

Voter intimidation, disenfranchisement, fairness, partisanship of election officials and several other issues are getting the most attention in Ohio, where two lawsuits were filed Friday contesting the counting of provisional ballots and the overall results. But it is citizen groups and individual voters rather than political candidates or parties that are demanding that the problems be addressed.

This lack of trust in the voting system, experts say, has spawned a dynamic voting reform movement with citizens inspecting the election process at nearly every level.

"It's an untenable situation in a democracy that people do not have any trust and faith in the system that determines who our elected leaders are," said Tova Wang, a fellow at the Century Foundation, a New York-based organization known until recently as the Twentieth Century Fund.

A recount will take place in the next few weeks because more than 6,000 people made small donations over the Internet to support such an effort, which proponents say is more about the process than the outcome.

Citizens attending public hearings held throughout the state earlier this month testified about long lines, too-few voting machines and other election day shenanigans at polling places.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has been labeled "the new Katherine Harris," the Florida secretary of state during the 2000 election who also faced accusations of election mismanagement. Both those officials were co- chairs of President Bush's election campaigns in their states while in charge of running elections.

All this is in addition to the cottage industry of organizations challenging the trustworthiness of electronic voting machines, a separate but related issue that the Government Accountability Office will investigate, the office announced this week. Federal legislation on the issue is pending in Congress and several states have already addressed the reformers' major concern that machines do not have a paper trail or other process by which the vote can be independently verified.

People for the American Way, an organization that supports progressive causes, filed suit in Ohio on Friday, and the Alliance for Democracy, a populist Massachusetts organization, is expected to do the same early this week. The lawsuits are not expected to change the outcome of the election.

Expert weighs in

One of Ohio's top legal experts said the challenge to the overall results is unlikely to succeed -- or possibly even proceed -- because the suit doesn't provide hard numbers and the Ohio State Supreme Court has in previous rulings on elections set a high bar for those who contest results.

"All of that tells me the courts are going to demand the person bringing the action have the evidence to overturn and are not going to allow the judicial process to be used essentially for a fishing expedition," said Edward Foley, a law professor specializing in elections at Ohio State University in Columbus.

People for the American Way wants a court ruling to ensure that the 8,000 provisional ballots thrown out in Cuyahoga County were not done so on technicalities that violate state law, said Vicky Beasley, deputy national field director of the organization and manager of its Election Protection program.

"We couldn't have very well ended our job on election day," she said.

The other lawsuit seeks to throw out the state's election results because of a laundry list of long-standing poll problems that reform groups are targeting. The source of this general mistrust in voting procedures can be summed up in one word, experts say: Florida.

"Florida (in 2000) was a wakeup call to the nation on voting problems. The vote counting fiasco highlighted inaccuracies in counting procedures," said Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Project.

While those problems had existed previously and drawn the focus of voting rights group, they did not rise to the critical level where the general public might get interested until a presidential election was affected, she said.

Determined to catch problems this time -- before intervention by the Supreme Court -- groups around the country drafted armies of volunteers to watch polls on election day this year.

That effort gave volunteers a good look at how elections operate on the most basic level, and many reported they did not like what they saw.

People for the American Way enlisted 20,000 volunteers nationwide as poll watchers. "I get e-mail from them every day saying, 'This isn't over. What can we do to help?' " said Elliot Mincberg, vice president and legal director for the group.

Voters themselves were encouraged to call a national hot line to report any problems while voting. More than 25,000 "election incident reports" from Nov. 2 have been compiled by a consortium of voting groups, most of which are headquartered in the Bay Area.

Complaints, most of which were made in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, range from long lines to poll workers who took ballots out of envelopes and would not put them in the ballot box.

Many others complained of broken or insufficient numbers of voting machines at certain precincts, some of which had more machines during primary elections than the general election.

Waiting in line to vote

"A working person having to wait in line for five hours to vote is arguably a denial of voting rights," said Wang of the Century Foundation.

In a video from Columbus, Ohio, posted on the Web site
theneighborhoodnetwork.org/
a diabetic woman who waited 2 1/2 hours in line stepped outside the crowded polling place for air. In the short time she was outside, the polls closed, the doors were locked and she was not allowed back inside to vote.

It poured rain on election day in Ohio and the videos show long lines of people waiting outside under umbrellas or pulling garbage bags over their heads like ponchos.

"We're not making accusations (of fault) against individuals, but we're talking about institutional, systemic problems that disproportionately affect poor people and people of color," said Amy Kaplan, a Columbus resident and organizer for the League of Pissed-Off Voters, a New York-based group focusing on younger voters. One of their stated goals is "to build a progressive governing majority in our lifetime."

They, with additional grassroots help, organized public hearings earlier this month. Several hundred people testified at two hearings in Columbus; national organizations followed the model and held similar forums in Cincinnati and Cleveland.

Once the testimony is transcribed and analyzed, election-reform activists will use the information as the basis for lawsuits and as evidence to convince lawmakers to act on these issues, Mincberg said.

Problems in this election were like a series of brushfires, he said, ascompared to the wildfire of 2000.

"But the problems clearly were there and were really quite serious and, in our view, really need to be remedied," Mincberg said.

To that end, the Green and Libertarian presidential candidates are requesting a recount in Ohio. It took just four days for Green candidate David Cobb to raise the $113,000 necessary -- $10 per precinct in the state -- to pay for the endeavor.

"It is very possible the (very) outcome of the election depends on what happens," said Blair Bobier, spokesman for Cobb.

The campaign has raised an additional $120,000 to pay for observation of the recount. An attempt to expedite that recount, so it would finish before the state voted in the Electoral College on Dec. 13, was thwarted by a judge on Tuesday.

Absent from this activity so far are either of the national political parties or John Kerry, though his running mate John Edwards pledged that "we will continue to fight for every vote."

The Democratic National Committee also has pledged to follow the vote counting. Chairman Terry McAuliffe sent a letter to secretaries of state in all 50 states asking them to outline how and when any remaining votes would be counted. The committee has yet to take a major role in Ohio, though the state Democratic Party announced this week that it would support the recount effort.

Jesse Jackson is scheduled to announce his support of the recount at a Columbus church today, according to the Cobb campaign.

Still, the effort has been hobbled by Kerry's reluctance to challenge the results. The judge who denied the recount expedition request justified his decision because no candidate with a chance of winning Ohio -- namely Kerry -- had requested such action.

"It's pretty interesting that they're committed to (counting all the votes) but have made no move to do anything. It seems like they're trying to have it both ways," Bobier said.

Not everyone interested in election reform wants a recount. Ohio State University's Foley said it could distract citizens and sap the public's patience for change.

"There were a lot of problems here in Ohio with the electoral process. It's important not to lose sight of those problems and reform them in the future," he said.

E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

posted in Voting Reform - 3 replies

Recount Funding!!!

2004-11-22T23:25:21Z

ralph is pushing new hampshire and cobb and badnarik need about another 100K for Ohio.

msnbc.msn.com/id/6469559/

please contribute!

www.votenader.org/contribute/index.php

web.greens.org/c/cobb/supporters.cgi

posted in Voting Reform - 5 replies

nevada election "glitches"

2004-11-22T08:45:22Z

this woman needs all the support we can give her!

I am still battling alone here in Nevada...can you assist in any way...I intend to go to court on Monday to ask for a temporary restraining order to stop Nevada State Secretary of State from submitting their 'final' tally to the Nevada Supreme Court to be accepted. Thereafter the results will be forwarded to the US Senate as Nevada's final tally. I have been begging Black Box Vote to help with money or lawyer power...the lawyer power came to late for me to contest the election and their money to file has not been forthcoming. Now the only legal option that I have is to stymie or at the least sully the process and outcome here in Nevada.

Briefly the Nevada Secretary of State has denied me access to all abstracts/voter statements other than the very cursory data which is on their website. I have been met with outright hostility from the Washoe County Registrar Dan Burke, who told me to "behave myself" when I asked him questions about the county process and final tallys. When I insisted upon explanations he threatened to have me thrown out of the office which means that I would have been arrested. His direct words were "shut up and get out or I'll have you thrown out" by police force.

Despite their best efforts to contain me I have obtained a copy of the Washoe County Abstract / Voter Statement and it is very obvious that Washoe and the State of Nevada are playing fast and loose with the vote tally.

There are at least 2400 votes unaccounted for with no under vote indicated on the tally to adjust for missing numbers. There are a number of other mysterious disappearances of vote to include a total category of voters whose vote was not entered into the final tally. The list of wrongdoings is extraordinary here because there is no oversight at all. I'm it.

Please help if you can...I need about$500.00 or at the least $300.00 for filing and service fees. I can do this on Monday pro se. Will you help... can you raise money in any way. PS: Should the Secretary of State provide any documentation they have told me that I shall be charged one dollar per page as punishment for "calling them liars" meaning that I have had the audacity to ask questions. Anyone who asks them questions is labeled liars apparently.

PPS: Despite Black Box Vote inability to help out here in Nevada I bless them for any and all efforts they have made and I sure you do as well. They're doing a brilliant job in Florida and I am sure that if they had resources to spare they would have shared.

PPS: Washoe County Nevada is quite important in the grand scheme of electoral politics. Clark County (Las Vegas et al) and Washoe (Reno et al) together make up about three quarters of the Nevada vote. Clark has gone for Kerry... WE need Washoe and we win Nevada... Please Help... contribute what you can in the name of priceless victory.

paxelrod1675@yahoo.com

posted in Voting Reform - 1 reply

Green victory with IRV!

2004-11-12T21:23:37Z

Ross Mirkarimi, co-founder of the California Green Party, wins local supervisors race in san francisco with IRV aka Ranked Choice Voting!

speech and photos:
http://luxomatic.textamerica.com/?r=1647208

posted in Voting Reform - 1 reply

Moveon's Letter to Your Congressperson--Do It!

2004-11-12T08:04:41Z

http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote//letter.html

posted in Voting Reform - 1 reply

Election Investigation Contacts

2004-11-11T03:05:01Z

A thorough, expedited investigation by the GAO and independent groups is in everyone's interest. At the least, we'll have a more dependable voting system. A thorough investigation must not be limited to addressing isolated complaints and "glitches," but be run precinct by precinct and include all voting rosters, voting machines, vote tabulators, county logs and memos, and voter complaints. It is critical at this time that we support independent audit groups, e.g. blackboxvoting.org and legitgov.org, and demand our representatives back the investigation requested by Reps. Conyers, Nadler, and Wexler (http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11504.pdf).

If you would like to voice your support for a thorough investigation of the 2004 General Election, you might write or call the GAO and the following
congressmen. These congressmen have asked the GAO Comptroller to conduct the investigation. His contact information is provided first.

BlackBoxVoting.org and http://www.legitgov.org/pressrelease_stolen_election_2004_110404.html are trying to make independent investigations.

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ny08_nadler/GAOJud110504.html
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11504.pdf

The Honorable David M. Walker
Comptroller General of the United States
U.S. General Accountability Office
441 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20548
GAO Public Affairs Officer Susan Becker: BeckerS@gao.gov
(202) 512-4800

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax

Rep. Jerrold Nadler
2334 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Tel. 202-225-5635
http://www.house.gov/nadler/contact.shtml
zip: 11224

Hon. Robert Wexler
213 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3001
(202) 225-5874 (fax)
http://www.wexler.house.gov/contact.htm
zip: 33063

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

REPORTS

2004-11-06T09:17:53Z

Let's use this thread for Election Day reports. Look out for long lines, voter suppression and intimidation, and technical irregularities...

Thou Shalt Not Steal Elections!
This Time We're Watching!
www.ttww.org/watch/index.shtml
includes a text message alert signup and guide for what to do in case the election is stolen again!

FAQS: Making Your Vote Count
Davey D and Stephen Hill on Link TV
http://video.csupomona.edu/streaming/worldlink/worldlink_index.html

posted in Voting Reform - 3 replies

i had a chance to vote twice

2004-11-06T05:12:24Z

what if other people had a chance i only voted once of course seems like a glitch in the system to me, what should i do?
i scheduled over at my dads house to vote, and then went with my mother to where she needed to vote and i was there as well!!!!!
i have proof as well this is bad if it is repeated here and there

who should i report this too?

posted in Voting Reform - 4 replies

crosspost in New Orleans tribe

2004-11-04T23:02:01Z

an enforced two-party system is slightly better than an enforced one-party system. but it still isn't free democracy.

200 years ago, a young, hungry US was at the forefront of change and reform. now its one of the oldest fattest creakiest governments in the world.

The framers of our gov't still werent 100% sure democracy would work, so they left in a bunch of wierd little throwbacks to aristocracy - like the electoral college and government-backed parties.

As we speak, younger more confident democracies born in the democratic era, free of these weaknesses, are in the process of forming looser happier unions and surpassing our technology. the 21st century will belong to them if we don't get our shit together soon.

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Unsure?

2004-11-02T16:58:06Z

You can vote Green/Reform/Libertarian AND send W back to his scruffy ranch in Texas: votepair.org

Nader plugged it Oct. 9: http://news.votepair.org/archives/2004/10/ralph_nader_poi.html

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Jimmy Carter Interview on NPR 10/21/04 PST 1:00 p.m

2004-10-21T20:21:06Z

I'm guessing the interview can be streamed on NPR's website. I'd be curious to hear anyones thoughts on the interview.

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Neutralizing Nader via IRV

2004-10-16T14:18:27Z

There is a great article in the Nation explaining the importance of implementing Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) in New Mexico and other "battleground" states in an effort to prevent Nader from spoiling the election.

It is titled, "De-spoiling the Election" and can be viewed here:
http://www.fairvote.org/op_eds/nationdespoiling.htm

The "Nader Effect" provides a great context / opportunity to explain the merits of IRV to people (esp. Dems).

Sometimes I wonder if Nader isn't staying in just to get IRV some exposure.

posted in Voting Reform - 3 replies

trying to change politics in a small town...

2004-10-16T14:15:35Z

hi, tina here in adrian,michigan...it's 22,000, mostly white, republican, kerry's version of "middle-class"... i would be considered poverty...i'm looking to change our current city-wide elections to a ward system...does anyone have any experience with this?? ther's a small group of us (mostly greens but non-partisans too) who want to shake things up here and get some fairer representation on the local level. i hear you have to start making changes locally then grow up to state level, eventually federal...any help would be much appreciated! tina

posted in Voting Reform - 5 replies

LEGISLATION INTRODUCED

2004-10-16T03:26:52Z

Jesse Jackson of all people introducing wonderful election reform legislation into Congress, and he plans to do it in every session until it's passed!

posted in Voting Reform - 3 replies

Attn WA Independents/3rd Party

2004-10-15T22:18:06Z

crossposted from http://InstantRun-Off.tribe.net

www.irvwa.org

Initiative 318 proposes a statewide change in election protocal to instant runoff voting. the time is now! washington state's popular "blanket primary" was deemed unconstitutional, and was replaced this year by the (enormously UNpopular) montana-style party-exclusive primary. take into account the widespread dissatisfaction with an increasingly homogenous two-party system, and the necessary inertia may just be present to make IRV a reality.

200,000 signatures must be submitted by december of THIS YEAR to get this initiative on the ballot. this is a grassroots effort, volunteers are desperately needed to gather signatures and educate the public about this very important election reform. lets strike a blow for the disenfranchised in 2005.

posted in Voting Reform - 2 replies

Election Monitoring

2004-10-15T08:11:06Z

Is anyone doing any election monitoring? I heard of this group called "Election Protection" that is looking for volunteers. I am thinking of going to a polling place and setting up a video camera in a high-risk area. Any one else planning something?

posted in Voting Reform - 3 replies

election reform - accuracy

2004-10-15T08:02:56Z

from www.ReformElections.org - thanx to Benji

The Federal Election Reform Network is the home of the
National Commission on Federal Election Reform,
organized by the Miller Center of Public Affairs and
The Century Foundation to recommend ways to improve
the accuracy and fairness of federal elections.
Honorary
Co-Chairs: President Gerald Ford & President Jimmy
Carter

-=======-

February 15, 2004
How America Doesn't Vote

One outcome of this year's presidential election is
already certain: people will show up to vote and find
they have been wrongly taken off the rolls. The lists
of eligible voters kept by localities around the
country are the gateway to democracy, and they are
also a national scandal. In 2000, the American public
saw, in Katherine Harris's massive purge of eligible
voters in Florida, how easy it is for registered
voters to lose their rights by bureaucratic fiat.
Missouri's voting-list problems received far less
attention, but may have disenfranchised more eligible
voters.

It's hard to judge where voting lists are being
mishandled, since the procedures by which they are
kept and corrected are shrouded in secrecy. That's the
beginning of the problem. The public has a right to
know that the rolls are being properly maintained ?
and to know it before the election. As became clear in
2000, after the fact is too late.

Federal law provides some general guidelines about
keeping voting rolls, but the basic decisions about
who is eligible to vote are largely left to local
officials. City and county election offices are
responsible for adding new registrants to the voting
rolls, and purging voters who die, move away or are
convicted of felonies. If election offices had
adequate resources and precise rules, voting lists
might accurately reflect who is entitled to vote. But
the reality is far more chaotic, and errors abound.

Ms. Harris's 2000 purge in Florida is a classic case.
Before it began, Ms. Harris cast a cloud of suspicion
over the process by signing on as co-chairwoman of
the Florida Bush campaign while she also served as the
state's top election official. The purge itself
required sensitive judgment calls, notably when to
regard a name on a list of convicted felons as a valid
match with a name on the voting rolls. According to
post-election testimony before the United States
Commission on Civil Rights, Ms. Harris's office
overruled the advice of the private firm that compiled
the felon list and called for removing not just names
that were an exact match, but ones that were highly
inexact. Thousands of Florida voters ended up being
wrongly purged.

After a federal lawsuit that followed the infamous
2000 election, Florida restored some voters to the
rolls, and agreed to start using more precise
identification methods. But there is still no reliable
system, and Florida voting rights advocates are
bracing for a rerun of the mistakes of 2000.

In Missouri, St. Louis election officials kept an
"inactive voters list" of people they had been unable
to contact by mail. Voters on the list, which
ballooned to more than 54,000 names in a city where
only 125,230 people voted, had a legal right to cast
their ballots, but election officials put up enormous
barriers. When inactive voters showed up to vote, poll
workers had to confirm their registration with the
board of elections downtown. Phone lines there were
busy all day, and hundreds of voters traveled downtown
in person, spending hours trying to vindicate their
right to vote. The board admitted later that "a
significant number" were not processed before the
polls closed.

After the election, the St. Louis board of elections
settled a lawsuit by promising to have a copy of the
inactive voters list available at every voting
precinct, and to upgrade its phone service. But not
everyone has confidence the reforms will happen. Just
months after the settlement, The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, in an editorial headlined, "Our Motto:
Thimk!," warned, "If there's a way to foul things up,
election officials in the city of St. Louis seem
determined to find it."

Florida- and Missouri-style voting roll disasters
could be looming right now in any state in the nation.
Voters would have no way of knowing, because of the
stunning lack of transparency in election operations.
Officials often do not have written procedures that
explain in any detail how they decide to remove voters
from the rolls. The St. Louis election board
supervisors concede they have no written purge
procedures the public can review. When asked recently
how their purges worked, they gave conflicting
answers. A less-than-helpful spokesman for the New
York State Board of Elections said that if the public
wanted to learn more than the broad guidelines laid
out in the state law, "I'm not sure there is a way."

The sad state of voting rolls may be due to
underfunding and mismanagement, but it can create an
appearance of ulterior motives. The voters wrongly
removed by Ms. Harris's purge were disproportionately
black ? African-Americans make up one of the
strongest Democratic voting groups in the state ? as
were the voters on the St. Louis inactive voters list.
For years, partisan "ballot security" programs in the
South singled out tens of thousands of black voters
for removal from the voting rolls. Just this month,
civil rights groups sued a Texas district attorney who
threatened, in violation of the law, to prosecute
students at Prairie View A&M University, a
predominantly black school, if they register using
their school addresses.

Election officials have a duty to remove voters from
the rolls when they have become ineligible, and to
guard against voter fraud. But it must be done in a
manner that takes great care to avoid preventing
eligible voters from casting a ballot. Officials
cannot allow vague rumors or reckless allegations
about voter fraud to stampede them into overkill. In
Missouri, elected officials have charged for years
that large numbers of St. Louis residents were casting
votes from vacant lots. A study conducted by The
Post-Dispatch in 2001 found that in the vast majority
of cases, the voters lived in homes that had been
wrongly classified by the city.

The Help America Vote Act, passed after the 2000
election, will eventually computerize voting rolls at
the state level. Most of the decisions about who is
eligible to vote, however, will still be made by the
officials who are making them now. The new law also
requires that when there is a dispute about whether
someone is eligible to vote, he or she must be given a
"provisional" ballot, whose status will be determined
later. But the ultimate decision about whether to
count the ballot will remain with local election
officials.

Voting list maintenance cries out for reform. States
and localities can take these three key steps:

Clear standards
Any office that engages in voting roll purges should
have clear, written policies for how they are
conducted, including where the names of voters to be
purged are obtained, and what constitutes an
acceptable match.

Transparency
The public should be able to examine procedures for
voting roll purges, and should be notified when purges
are under way. The use of private companies, as in
Florida, to assist in voter purges should be
announced.

Nonpartisanship
Purges should be done by officials unconnected to
candidates or parties.

No bank would be allowed to withdraw money from a
depositor's account based on the sort of rough name
matches and loose procedures used in voter purges. The
right to vote should be treated with the same respect
as a bank deposit, and guarded as carefully. The 2000
election proved that 537 votes, the official margin in
Florida, can choose a president and change history.
Given that, we must have far greater precision and
professionalism in how we keep our voting rolls.

posted in Voting Reform - 1 reply

Ranked Choice Voting in San Francisco

2004-10-07T17:48:15Z

It's here! Here is a sneak peak at RCV:
http://luxomatic.textamerica.com/?r=1482398

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Tribe Newbie

2004-09-27T00:59:21Z

Sup..Im new..dont know or see much to this..maybe someone can tell me how this all works..Peace.

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

California propositions 60 and 62

2004-09-08T21:30:30Z

Any thoughts here on the two voting reforms proposed for California, Props 60 and 62?

http://ca.lwv.org/lwvc/edfund/elections/2004nov/id/prop60.html

http://www.smartvoter.org/2004/11/02/ca/state/prop/62/

A recent article in the SF Bay Guardian was against 62:
http://www.sfbg.com/38/49/x_oped.html

posted in Voting Reform - 1 reply

Votester- More trees, less Bush.

2004-08-14T01:37:59Z

Click the link below to accept the invitation:
http://www.votesters.org/join.php?aid=1187df734face5de3aaec2ff15f5fe13

A pre-emptive war that is emboldening terrorists. A massive budget deficit. A
complete disregard for our international allies. A struggling economy and a
continual stream of jobs moving overseas...

And amazingly, George W. Bush may still win. But not if VOTEsters can help it.
VOTEsters.org is committed to defeating George W. Bush on November 2nd because
he is wrong for America.

VOTEsters is a social network, like Friendster (TM) or MySpace, that allows
people to "adopt" friends and pledge responsibility for making sure they vote.

By adopting you, I am pledging to do whatever it takes to get you to the polls
on November 2, Election Day. Between now and then, I may forward you helpful
information about your polling place, or send you reminders.

All you have to do is click the link below to accept my invitation:
http://www.votesters.org/join.php?aid=1187df734face5de3aaec2ff15f5fe13

Remember, the 2000 presidential election was decided by only 537 votes in
Florida. If one person there had adopted 10 friends on VOTEsters, and those
friends adopted 10 friends, and their friends adopted 10 more, George Bush would
not be president. It's that simple. This time, let's show George W. Bush that
our friends, in the cities and small towns all across this country, are more
powerful than his friends in the corporate boardrooms, congressional backrooms,
and right-wing courtrooms of America.

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Green Party Convention Debacle

2004-06-27T20:36:32Z

Frontlines
The newspaper of the Left
http//www.sf-frontlines.com
Green Party convention to the real world: Drop Dead!

After two rounds of voting, virtually unknown Green apparatchik David Cobb barely won the Green Party presidential nomination in Milwaukee
By Joaquin Bustelo
The demogreen "realo" faction at the stacked "electoral college" Green Party Convention in Milwaukee has voted to deny Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo its ballot lines by nominating shamefaced Kerry supporter David Cobb for President.

Read more...
http://www.sf-frontlines.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=757&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Other articles about the Green Party Convention:
· Green Party convention to the real world: Drop Dead! (Jun 27, 2004)
· Green National Convention Report: No candidate after the first voting, Cobb and Nader-Camejo leading (Jun 26, 2004)
· Demogreens Checkmated by the Green Party's Left and the Nader-Camejo ticket (Jun 22, 2004)
· Peter Camejo: Greens do not Sign Loyalty Oaths (Jun 08, 2004)
· Green National Convention: A choice of Nader - Camejo formula or Surrender to the Democrats (Jun 02, 2004)
· Greens for Nader Seeks Party Support for Presidential Campaign (May 29, 2004)
Read them at:
http://www.sf-frontlines.com

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies

Open Voting Consortium Demonstration

2004-06-13T19:51:04Z

The Open Voting Consortium is a non-profit non-partisan attempt to transform the voting system from a proprietary, fraud-prone, blackbox unreliable system to one that is technically sound, accurate, secure, inexpensive and uniform.
The project is developing an open source system to implement these ideas, the project is availble for download from source forge. Here is their web site
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
They plan a demonstration on April 1 in Santa Clara, CA.
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ad/ovc-mar22-pressrelease.pdf

posted in Voting Reform - 4 replies

Dick Morris @ vote.com

2004-06-11T20:25:11Z

Hey! Anyone remember Dick Morris over at the Vote.com. During the internet bubble that was one kick ass web site.

Hey... imagine that. They're still there. http://vote.com.

Wasn't he advsor to some president at one point?

posted in Voting Reform - 0 replies