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
“When you exclude third parties from the election process, third parties that the vast majority of Americans would like to see in the presidential debates, you’re not only denying those people the right to choose who they want to run for president and who they want to vote for, but you’re denying the very fundamental and critical issues that, in a generative democracy, we need to have aired in from of tens of millions of voters.” —George Farah
The Handful of White People Who Choose Your Presidential Candidates (1/1/2012)
Effort
to Remove Money From Politics (10/26/2011)
The GOP War On Voting (9/1/2011)
The Myth of Fair Elections in America
A Short History of Conservative Vote Suppression
Links
League of Women Voters SE Connecticut
American Blackout (a movie you should see.)
Raleigh Myers election talking points
Campaign Finance Information Center
Ct Citizens for Ballot Initiative
Campaign Underground 2006
Campaign Underground Tips and Tricks
See these Election Reform Reports.
Why Election
Fraud is NOT in your newspaper
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/mediaLockdown.htm
Reality
We 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 worst case is increasingly likely: we will get a strong man head of state who is above the law and capable of destroying us all.
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. Since media conglomerates have been better served by Republicans, their bias is obviously to Republicans.
U.S. media selects the issues to be addressed in the election discussion. Often the news is concentrated on the certifiably trivial. 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.
"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. Better voting techniques would enable multi-party competition. The dialog would improve. Minor parties are, right now, spoilers and can only make prospects for their opponents even brighter. Qualifications are irrelevant (Bush is an example.)
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 had none of these. Thanks Republicans.) After reviewing many such resumes, you might find an acceptable candidate. That's not how we do it.
As we saw in Florida and Ohio, partisan bureaucrats can rig elections wholesale by controlling voter registration lists, dirty tricks, manipulating media, allocation of election machines, hacking machines to fix vote totals, and, as Republicans are doing in many States, making it harder to vote.
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, primaries where special interests can dominate, 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. Priorities expressed in the US budget are the opposite of those of 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
Voting Machines
...over the past twenty years, we have let corporations into our polling places, locations so sacred to democracy that in many states even international election monitors and reporters are banned. With the implementation of "black box voting" (the use of electronic voting machines), these corporations are recording our votes, compiling and tabulating them, and then telling us the total numbers - and doing it all using "proprietary" hardware and software that we cannot observe, cannot audit, and cannot control. If the vote-counting corporation says candidate X or candidate Y won the vote, we have no means of rebutting that, and they have no way of proving it. We're asked simply to trust them. From Thom Hartman's book Threshold pg 210.
Election
2008: Vanishing Votes, Disappearing Democracy, and Media Misdirection
Welcome to the Banana Republic of the USA where we still have Enron style elections (6/7/2010)
Diebold has a "Delete" button for erasing audit logs (3/3/2009)
BlackBoxVoting to File Anti-Trust Complaint against ES&S/Diebold merger
Sign the petition for independent inspection of voting machines in the US.
See more about voting machines.
Money in Elections
Stunning Statistics of the Week: (from Public Citizen)
- Amount the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent on lobbying in 2009: $120 million
- Amount Chamber spent daily to defeat health care reform in the weeks before its passage: $800,000
- Amount Chamber plans to spend to influence the fall congressional elections: $50 million
US Democracy's End of the Road (1/23/2010)
Connecticut Senate Votes to Remove Rell's Power to Appoint a U.S. Senator (5/29/2009)
Lessig Levels the Citizens United Decision (2/11/2010)
Still Broken (New York Times editorial 3/17/2009)
4 to 5 million voters disenfranchised in 2008 according to MIT study (3/11/2009)
Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in research done for Rolling Stone magazine, have found that states have purged 10 million names from their voter rolls since the last presidential election and more than 2.7 million have had their registrations rejected under new procedures signed into law by George W. Bush. (From The Progressive Populist.)
How Republicans Win (8/29/2008)
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Republicans suppress minority, student, and poor votes. (10/24/2008)
How Republicans hacked the Justice Department (from Harper's Magazine: March 2008)
The Republican War on Voting (American Prospect April 2008)
A google search for Republican Dirty Tricks turns up 131,000 results. Underhanded behavior has been standard operating procedure since Nixon, and his protégés have used it extensively. See this.
How Republicans Swing Elections (April 15, 2008)
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Ohio Election Stolen Again ? (8/13/2008)
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)
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'
SOS from US Voters: Send International inspectors
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. The Manchester Union Leader is one of the most conservative newspapers in the US.
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 remove candidates from consideration and 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, voters are not given good information, and Americans are misinformed, distracted, and misled on important issues, .
Worse, public policy is increasingly determined in secret. Since the Bush administration 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.
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.
Party Conventions Are Free-For-All for Influence Peddling
Even though it is clear that better voting procedures could be used, they are not even up for discussion. Probably because they would interfere with the two party monopoly. 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. We could change that by implementing range voting.
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.
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.
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 ?
The electoral college is an anachronism, although there is a slim chance for improvement.
If those are not enough to rig an election, there's always redistricting or, as a more or less routine procedure now, dirty tricks.
The Stolen Presidential Elections
Election 2008
Election Machines will NOT be fixed for the November Election (8/18/2008)
The 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.
"Yes, all times are bad but some times are worse than others. This is one for our country. A Michigan congressman, John Conyers, minority - that is, Democrat - leader of the House Judiciary Committee, went to Ohio with several other members of Congress and a number of staffers to determine whether on not in the late presidential election of 2004 the overexuberant local Republican Party had stolen the election for George W. Bush. The result was a report by Conyers which a Chicago firm published with a preface by me. Yes, Virginia, the election was well and truly stolen and the Conyers team spells it all out in considerable detail. Since the Republican Congress will not allow hearings on what went wrong, Conyers had no recourse other than a book describing in detail how the theft was effected with collusion among high officials and shadowy executives of electronic voting machine companies." Gore Vidal: Point to Point navigation. pg 159.
Notes about the stolen 2004 election. Project Censored wrote about it.
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.
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.
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 2000
"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
Greg 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.)
Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (video 49 minutes.)
The Party's Over: Philip Seymour Hoffman (video you can watch online.)