Elections"A few days before the November 2004 election, Jimmy Carter was asked what would happen if, instead of flying to Zambia or Venezuela or East Timor, his widely respected international election-monitoring team was invited to turn its attention to the United States. His answer was stunningly blunt. Not only would the voting system be regarded as a failure, he said, but the shortcomings were so egregious the Carter Center would never agree to monitor an election there in the first place...The American political system wouldn't measure up to any sort of international standards, for several reasons." From the first page of "Steal this Vote" by Andrew Gumbel (Winner of the Project Censored Award.) "...election fraud has been a common component of our nation's electoral history, and, in the aggregate, undermines the only check that the people have over their leaders." from Deliver the Vote by Tracy Campbell Without a Quorem, the Federal Election Commission ceases Oversight Activity (4/21/2008) Paper ballot bill goes down in House after the White House intervenes (4/18/2008) The Presidential election CAN be hacked (April 10, 2008) How Republicans Swing Elections (April 15, 2008) How Republicans hacked the Justice Department (from Harper's Magazine: March 2008) The Republican War on Voting (American Prospect April 2008) Voter ID Fraud (January 2008) 50 States face voting rights lawsuit. (Nov 13, 2007) Uncounted (the movie) At least see the trailer. Better yet, buy a copy. Greg Palast's reporting on 'voter caging' The Myth of Fair Elections in America SOS from US Voters: Send International inspectors The Electoral College, Mathematics, and Politics (a video lecture that details the undemocratic nature of US elections by Alexander S Belenky, MIT visiting scholar. About 73 minutes). We should have IRVAren't you disgusted that you have to vote for the candidate most likely to win instead of the one that you like ? A vote for a Presidential candidate is a vote for an agenda, and usually a candidate with an honest agenda is unlikely to have any chance of winning an election. Take Bush for example (please): He was backed by corporations, and he governed FOR corporations. That, by the way, is the definition of Fascism. Our current system is an insult to democracy and it guarantees that we can have only two parties that are pretty much alike. New Mexico had a Senatorial election in which a Green Party candidate ran strong. Although the majority would not have wanted it, the Republican won. This would not happen using Instant Runoff Voting. Using Instant runoff voting (IRV) "voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives an overall majority of first preferences, the candidates with fewest votes are eliminated one by one, and their votes transferred according to their second and third preferences (and so on) and all votes retallied, until one candidate achieves a majority. The term 'instant runoff voting' is used because this process resembles a series of run-off elections." (wikipedia points out a number of places IRV is being used. Anyone paying attention knows that there is often little difference between our two major parties, and that third parties are rarely heard. Until instant runoff voting (IRV) becomes widespread reality, third parties can only be spoilers. Being realistic, we are not allowed third parties. IRV is probably the single best change we could make to our elections: it would make more parties possible, enlarge the dialog, It would be more democratic; it would produce better outcomes. and newer parties would not be spoilers. So why don't we have IRV ? Most likely: our major parties are blocking it. Susan Bysiewicz, the CT Secretary of State, supports a change in the law from settling a tied election with a coin toss, to a runoff election. Although there was such a tied election in the town of Groton last year, it doesn't happen often. It would happen even less with less expense with Instant Runoff Voting. With many candidates in each party primary, if democracy is an American value, we should go to IRV. We should insist on it for elections at every level. Try out IRV at ChoiceRanker or, for your first three choices, Democracy for America Instant Runoff Voting page of fairvote.org Comments are here. See this stern warning also. Election 2008The Buying of the President 2008. Greg Palast on the election (audio) See his website, especially this. Voter ID can reduce voter turnout favoring Republicans. Here's how to rig the California election for Republicans. How to indict Karl Rove (Greg Palast video) Michael Winship writes: "What's the real motive for knocking off those eight, now nine, maybe more, US attorneys - Republican appointees all - apparently replaced for insufficient fealty to the Bushie party line? In part, the truth may be lurking in the upcoming 2008 elections." http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051507D.shtml Election Madness by Howard Zinn Senator Hillary Clinton has been an outspoken critic of the caucus system, saying that the limited time allotted for voting disenfranchises too many workers who are on the job during those hours. It seems though that in Nevada Clinton has had a change of heart. About the NH Primary results Take a close look because the very same LHS has an important role in Connecticut elections. NH will recount the votes. About the NH Primary (01/09/2008) Sign the petition for independent inspection of voting machines in the US. Sign the petition against unsafe computerization of elections and careless purging of voter lists. See here. Election 2004"Machine Politics" has a whole new meaning, with the spread of electronic voting machines that were designed to be capable of being skewed without evidence to throw elections in one direction or another. (Remember: the Chairman of Diebold promised "to deliver the State of Ohio for President Bush" -- when his voting machines were tallying that election. And sure enough, Bush got it.) But whether you're a Republican *or* a Democrat, being able to buy an election ought to appall you.
Notes about the stolen 2004 election. Project Censored wrote about it. How to indict Karl Rove (Greg Palast video) Click this link to see problems with the 2006 midterm election. PDA election notes includes proof the 2004 election was stolen. Election 2000Greg Palast reported extensively on how the 2000 election was rigged in Florida. Precisely how the Bush team stole the Florida election is documented. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida and a close associate of Bush's brother, deliberately blocked careful checking of the list of felons, with the result that thousands of Black people who were not felons and were legally entitled to vote were blocked from voting. An Angolan friend of Joe Wilson (his book the Politics of Truth) remarked: "One candidate loses the popular vote by over 500,000 ballots, but his brother is governor of the one state where the outcome is too close to call. The effort to count the ballots is disrupted by the Washington staffs of elected representatives from the candidate's party, and the court that ultimately adjudicates the outcome is made up largely by people appointed by the candidate's father. Sounds a lot like an election in Africa." pg 281. Recount (the Movie.) About Voting MachinesAlthough IRV would solve some of our election problems,
the
evaluation of CT's new voting machines from the
University
of Connecticut and others is considerably more troubling. According to the
report: the Diebold machines "can be compromised with off-the-shelf
equipment in a matter of minutes even if the machine has its removable memory
card sealed in place. The basic attack can be applied to effect a
variety of results, including entirely neutralizing one candidate so that their
votes are not counted, swapping the votes of two candidates, or biasing the
results by shifting some votes from one candidate to another. Such vote
tabulation corruptions can lay dormant until the election day, thus avoiding
detection through pre-election tests."
So how did it work out in Connecticut last November ? Take a look at this. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) says electronic voting machines cannot be made secure. "It's the Voting Machines, Stupid," by David Cogswell
Clinton Curtis testimony on elections before the Judiciary Committee. A warning. (excerpt follows)
"On May 6, 2007 the House Administration Committee reported out a modified bill called HR 811, also known as the Holt bill. In that bill's markup in committee, it got better and it got worse in various particulars, if you follow the debate. One way in which it got much worse is that instead of source code for the computer that would be given away for any citizen's inspection, they committee put in language that made the source code a government-recognized trade secret, available only to "qualified" experts, and then only if a strict nondisclosure agreement is signed that incorporates trade secrecy laws of the states, which almost always contain harsh punitive damages and attorneys fees clauses for violating the secrecy. Diebold voting machines critically flawed Steven Heller says 'Diebold Cannot be Trusted to Run Elections in America' (from Brad Blog.) Diebold vs North Carolina Board of Elections A short video Voting Technology: Beyond HAVA Open Voting Foundation supports solutions for open voting. These solutions include software using open standard specifications that can be inspected by the public for flaws and even improved by the public. The software must also capture and count votes in ways that the voter can verify individually and would be statistically impossible to tamper with on any significant scale. Black Box Voting (this .Com site is not the same as Bev Harris .Org site of the same name.). League of Women Voters of Connecticut page doesn't talk about it. Diana Urban, State Senator from Stonington, says she is working on it with True Vote Ct. Securing (Or Not) Your Right to VoteElection Machine Problems in Ohio (Dec 15, 2007 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090407L.shtmlSteven Levy | Steven Levy writes for Newsweek: "Vulnerabilities in election machines are so severe that voters have no way of knowing for sure that the choices they enter into the touchscreens and ballots will actually be counted. 'The studies show that these machines are basically poison,' says Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins computer-science professor and voting-security expert."
About Debates
After you see this, if you are not angry about debates, you're not paying attention. LinksAmerican Blackout (a movie you should see.) Raleigh Myers election talking points Campaign Finance Information Center
Campaign Underground 2006 See these Election Reform Reports. http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BAK411B.html Why Election Fraud is NOT in your newspaperhttp://www.wheresthepaper.org/mediaLockdown.htm The Two Party SystemIn the first years of the Bush administration, Republicans controlled all the branches of government (press too really) and Constitutional checks were inoperable. The two-party system short-circuits the Constitution. We need to re-examine the two party system. It wasn't part of the Constitution and It is not beneficial. Without IRV democracy is not an American value. Of course the administration has not appointed acceptable candidates for the Federal Election Commission and that too is dysfunctional. No accident. RealityWe have this strange election system in which we vote for a person, not an agenda. Often the candidates, once elected, do not do what they said they would. The best we can hope for is, when a candidate announces his agenda, he will have the integrity to act on it. The first phase of US elections is an auction to see which candidates click their heels for the highest bidders. US media is interested only in the candidates who raise the most money because, for them, elections are a profit tsunami. Since a large part of campaigning is spent on media advertising, the broadcasters and other news outlets are strongly conflicted to favor the fund raising winner. The candidate(s) with the most dollar votes are the most likely primary winner for the two major parties. Media, covering the election as if it were a horserace, marginalizes candidates who are not raising a lot of money, declare the front runners winners, and pretty much forces out lesser known candidates with very few votes cast. Minor parties are, under the law, spoilers and can only make prospects for their opponents even brighter. Qualifications are irrelevant (Bush is an example.) "Issues, never a strong suit in our politics, are seldom alluded to. Only money - who raised how much and from whom - interested the media, and the politicians." Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation. Conventions accomplish little since the candidate has been selected well in advance. The assumption that two parties are the only legitimate competitors is one of the most effective techniques to assure that the status quo will not be challenged. We have dysfunctional government because neither party wants the other to accomplish anything. That's why IRV is important. It would enable a multi-party competition. The dialog would improve. U.S. media selects the issues to be addressed in the election discussion. It has determined that illegal immigration is the problem, not healthcare, education, media concentration, election fraud, income distribution, dollar decline, falling pay scales, loss of benefits, disappearing pensions, empire building, torture, renditions, or an uncontrolled President that threatens the Constitution. As we saw in Florida and Ohio, partisan bureaucrats can rig elections wholesale by controlling voter registration lists, allocation of election machines, or by fixing the vote totals. If you were hiring for a high office, you would look for someone who speaks well, has traveled widely, has diplomatic expertise, academic excellence, and a distinguished record. (Bush has none of these. Thanks Republicans.) After reviewing many such resumes, you might find an acceptable candidate. That's not how we do it. In a real democracy, our government would support an agenda that is democratically agreed upon. That is NOT the case. That is why torture, renditions, secret detention facilities, secret government, revocation of habeas corpus, empire, war profiteering, are all more important than fixing health care or providing real security for people. No US institutions are democratic. Is it coincidence that terror alerts occur just before elections ? US elections are rigged well before the votes are cast in a variety of ways: party insider dealings, loaded media, suppressed voter registration, large moneyed interests, strange differences in state procedures, plain dirty tricks, rigged voting machines, outright miscounting, or even partisan court decisions... and so on. The person who manages to get 'elected' is the one who gets to set an agenda...whether most of the people agree with him or not. If it wasn't for Bush, would we be in Iraq ? Would there have been an initiative to privatize everything including Social Security, healthcare, utilities, or even the military ? If the US was a democracy and was influenced by its people, since most people favor peace we would not be building an empire, we would not torture, pre-emptive war would be criminal (as it was found at Nuremburg.) and international law would be considered valid. Most people favor health care reform, more equitable income distribution, limits on corporations (like Walmart), US government does not work for the people. Real democracy would allow people to influence the agenda, but the likelihood of our seeing any of these things is so slim as to be non-existent. More at http://www.seconnecticut.com/Reform.htm The US election process needs a complete overhaul.Primary elections are a Rube Goldberg contraption that make the politically weird State of New Hampshire one of the most influential. Iowa caucuses appear to be ideal for arranging the outcome. Candidates selected in the primaries are not the best qualified. See Bush for an example. Candidates, to a large extent, are not really selected in primaries. They are funded by wealthy donors well before the primaries for very high stakes donations. That explains why both parties candidates are from almost identical backgrounds, why they are so dedicated to the corporate interest, and also why the US is more a plutocracy than a democracy. Electing candidates from dynastic families creates massive conflict of interest. Do not underestimate the media's ability to swing elections. Remember how Reagan was characterized as 'teflon man' because in spite of Iran-Contra criminal activities, the mining of harbors in Nicaragua (which the World Court ruled against the US), or the huge waste incurred in the military buildup to counter the Soviet Union, there was never any serious press review. Likewise media was a cheerleader for the war in Iraq and never looked at it critically. This is because Fox News is, for all practical purposes, a branch of the Republican party, CNN uses 'conservative' experts, NBC is owned by war profiteer General Electric, ABC has links to the CIA, and so on. There is no doubt that US news is seriously compromised, the Americans are misinformed on important issues, and voters are not given good information. Worse, public policy is increasingly determined in secret. Concentrated corporate, right-wing media has dumbed down information to trivialized sound bites. Media has become, with FCC assistance, more concentrated. This is no accident. Privatized corporate media, has taken almost all meaningful discourse from public policy discussion. Big media only pays attention to candidates with buckets of money (the real election is up to the fund raisers), discussion of issues is limited because only two similar parties debate, voting machines can be easily hacked, and election apparatus is in the hands of partisans it is no wonder that our democracy seems increasingly weakened. Campaign finance reform appears to be an initiative to channel tax payer dollars to corporate media. Media expense has made serious fundraising a requirement for elections and, as a result there have been many initiatives for campaign finance reform. Campaign ads, like Pharma ads, look a lot like media extortion. It's the price we pay for privatized media. The public media sector is all but non-existent. The two party monopoly on elections effectively suppresses public dialog. Issues discussed often are of little importance: for example Bush's (lack of) military experience, Kerry's war record, illegal immigration, gay marriage, abortion. Presidential debates are run by the two major parties and everyone else is excluded. On major issues, such as the war in Iraq or healthcare, there is little difference between the parties reducing voting to a matter of personalities. People have no say in substantive issues. During the Republican Bush years we have seen that the party that controls all three branches can trump Constitutional checks. Two party dominance is official public policy. If it comes to a choice between parties or the Constitution, the parties need to be checked. For all practical purposes, we are not really allowed to have more than two parties. It is all but impossible for third parties to be other than spoilers. Instant Runoff Voting would be a good starting remedy. Since the Bush administration has made secrecy a value, there is probably not enough reliable information to support real democracy anymore. Even the Congress is incapable of oversight for lack of information. That, alone, can end the republic. One tenth of African Americans are disenfranchised. The US has one of the highest prison populations per capita in the world. Gary Webb reported on CIA complicit drug smuggling into Los Angeles and he was for all practical purposes fired from the San Jose Mercury News for doing it. Not only was this a branch of the Iran-Contra illegal war, but it had the effect of making a large number of the (mostly democratic voting) minorities ineligible to vote. In many states felons can't vote. "In the months leading up to the November (2000) balloting, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his secretary of state, Katherine Harris, ordered local elections supervisors to purge fifty-eight thousand voters from registries on grounds they were felons not entitled to vote in Florida. As it turns out, only a handful of these voters were felons. The voters on this scrub list were, notably, African Americans (about 54 percent), and most of the others wrongly barred from voting were white and Hispanic Democrats." from Greg Palast's essay in "Into the Buzzsaw". Doubts about the Florida election were cleared up by a partisan Supreme Court. Think that's justice ? Remember that the Supreme Court can't tell the difference between speech and money, and they can't tell that there's any difference between people and corporations. Each of these decisions, as well as the one deciding the Bush election, does damage to democracy and favors the corporate agenda. The partisan Supreme Court has no business deciding elections. When election irregularities became obvious, Congress took action and passed the HAVA (Help America Vote Act). Although the HAVA did little to actually address election problems, it likely made them worse Voting machines are uncertified, produce no audit trail, and are made by hard right-wing Republicans. The US is probably the only country in which election infrastructure is in the hands of private partisans. Details are presented on a DVD called 'Invisible Ballots' has excellent people like Dr. David Dill, Dr Rebecca Mercuri, Dr. Avi Rubin and Bev Harris (author of Black Box Voting.) A preview is at www.invisibleballots.com See also http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/17305.html and Black Box Voting. International observers were called for the 2004 election, but were not allowed into key areas such as Ohio. The results in Ohio reflect this insult to democracy. The electoral college is an anachronism, although there is a slim chance for improvement. Iran, not noted for its democracy, has its elections on a holiday. If the US did this working people would have a lot easier time voting. What does it say that we have not done this ? Although Florida was a problem in 2000, no effective action was taken and there were the same problems in Ohio in 2004. It looks like Republicans rigged the California election of 2006 the same way Ohio was in 2004. See Black Box Voting for breaking news. See Tom Hartman's views and http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-38.htm Redistricting has weighted national elections for Republicans. "Democrats would have needed to win 57 percent of the vote nationwide to retake the House in 2004." Craig Aaron Even Kerry now thinks the last Presidential election was stolen. Ohio guts election protection. See None Dare Call it Stolen or breaking news at Free Press.
Hacking Democracy DVD Releasedby Susan Pynchon, Florida Fair Elections Coalition - March 27, 2007
The documentary film "Hacking Democracy", originally broadcast on HBO, is
being released today on DVD. The film takes a nonpartisan, clear-eyed look at
the secrecy, cronyism, and incompetence of elections in present-day America
as it captures a citizen's movement intent on taking back elections--and
democracy itself. The DVD, available at HackingDemocracy.com, contains "extra" segements not included in the original film, including great footage from Riverside California (Michelle Townsend); Cuyahoga County, Ohio; Volusia County, Florida; Glades County, Florida; and more. On the website, you can also see fascinating TV footage of the trial and sentencing of the Ohio election workers in Cuyahoga County. Russ Michaels, one of the directors and producers of "Hacking Democracy," says the website will be adding more footage all the time from their vast store of film segments from elections around the country. Check out these web sites for related information.Crisis Papers on Election Fraud William Rivers Pitt comments. (from http://baylink.pitas.com/)
VerifiedVoting.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization
championing reliable and publicly verifiable elections. Founded by Stanford
University Computer Science Professor David Dill, the organization supports a
requirement for voter-verified paper ballots for elections, allowing voters to
inspect individual permanent records of their ballots and election officials
to conduct meaningful audits and recounts.See this
link
also.
Dr. Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania presents a statistical analysis of the disparity between exit polling data and reported votes in three critical states, including Ohio. He concludes that the odds of these disparities being accounted for by chance is around one in one thousand for each state and around one in two hundred and fifty million for the three states taken as a whole. The impact of this study is that there needs to be an investigation of the possibility of voting fraud in Ohio, and the nation as a whole, in addition to a recount. http://www.ilcaonline.org/freeman.pdf See Myth Breakers: Facts about Electronic Elections
It is public information that the US CIA has rigged elections in many other countries. Since our President is the son of a former CIA director, brother of the Governor of the State of Florida, are you surprised that there is election fraud in the US as well ?
If these were not enough reasons to distrust US
elections, recall the dirty tricks that occurred about the time of
Watergate, or Reagan's October surprise.
2004 COLLECTED VOTE FRAUD STORIES
are at this link:
For anyone paying attention, US liberal leaders also
tend to die more frequently than most under poorly explained circumstances.
Sites to visit and supportBlack Box Voting http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Fair Vote http://www.fairvote.org/ Votergate http://www.votergate.tv ElectionLine.org Verified Voting
http://www.verifiedvoting.org Election Protection
http://www.lawyerscommittee.org/home.html
voteirv.org Instant
Runoff voting is a prerequisite to break the two party monopoly of US
elections. Demos
The People's Email Network http://www.social-informatics.net/evoting.htm Find contact info for all senators, representatives and
Secretaries of State If you are not discouraged by all
this, you can register
to vote here. If you experience problems at the polls this season,
please call the Election Protection hotline for help and information. |