From Saturday’s Washington Post, on the “November Surprise” we’ve been trying to shout about for months now.
The lede: “Thousands of voters across the country must reestablish their eligibility in the next three weeks in order for their votes to count on Nov. 4, a result of new state registration systems that are incorrectly rejecting them.”…
…
In Alabama, scores of voters are being labeled as convicted felons on the basis of incorrect lists.
Michigan must restore thousands of names it illegally removed from voter rolls over residency questions, a judge ruled this week.
Tens of thousands of voters could be affected in Wisconsin. Officials there admit that their database is wrong one out of five times when it flags voters, sometimes for data discrepancies as small as a middle initial or a typo in a birth date. When the six members of the state elections board — all retired judges — ran their registrations through the system, four were incorrectly rejected because of mismatches.
Check your registration now! And see below for more recent reports like the above, all of which have been almost completely ignored by both the corporate broadcast media (even as they’ve been reporting wall-to-wall on the GOP’s ACORN “voter fraud” hoax) and both of the major political parties…
- U.S. PIRG, 9/24/08: “Vanishing Voters: Registered Voters Dropped From Rolls in Nineteen States”
- CBS News, 9/30/08: “Red Flag on Purging Voter Rolls”
- Brennan Center for Justice, 9/30/08: “Voter Purges:13 million voters in 39 states”
- New York Times, 10/8/08: “States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal”
- BBC Newsnight, 10/8/08: “Vote rigging and suppression?”
- AlterNet, 10/14/08: “California GOP had Same Voter Registration Problems as ACORN in 2006”
- Rolling Stone, 10/17/08: “Block the Vote: the GOP’s campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots”
- Los Angeles Times, 10/18/08: “Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans”
To me the ONLY question that needs answering is WHEN this election IS stolen just what the hell are we going to do about it?
If the answer is small protest here and there and maybe a legal challenge after it is already too late then don’t waste your time just accept the fact that we now live in a full blown fascist police state that is headed into a massive depression, forget about ever voting again, just do away with voting all together stop pretending it exist and accept the fact we are ruled by Christofascist lunatics and this country no longer exist.
Just what are YOU going to do?
LOL
So, now that it’s affecting the Election Board members, will the news finally break through the Soviet-style media?
Cincinnati’s wingnut Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters (who BTW has a nasty little money-grubbing scandal in his past AND is McCain’s SW Ohio campaign chair) has subpoenaed voter records.
Let me rephrase that: John McCain’s Southwest Ohio Campaign Chairman has subpoenaed voter records.
Couldn’t help but think this morning when I saw that was that in 2006 Ohio elected an aggressive AG… who lost that job in a S-E-X scandal earlier this year…
The shitstorm that was unleashed on him was so over the top that even democrats were lining up to take a swing – never mind signs of a set up – and forced him out faster than you can say Elliot Spitzer. At the time I was thinking, who’d he piss off? Wondering if that wasn’t a little short-sighted…
I’m having problems with links here… try this one
Nunyabiz~ [Ed note: Please see Jeannie’s response to Nunyabiz here. Jeannie, per our rulz, please don’t double post your comments. Thank you. –99]
Hmmm…just brainstorming here…
What about an official coupon with a bar code mailed to each registered voter that the voter hands in when they show up to vote. One per voter, mailed out by the state to all registered voters. No ticket, no vote. If you didn’t get your coupon by October 15, you show up with your official stamped copy of your registration form (that will be provided to all voters when they register, or they can request an official stamped copy or print-out from their Elections Directer) and that is the only verification needed.
Would that stop some of this criminal monkey business and not be too cumbersome?
Probably many or most all of these data base errors have originated with the voter registration office itself rather than being the fault of the voter registrant.
I am a deputized registrar in Hawaii. When I was helping to register voters several weeks ago, I encountered a voter who wanted to fill out the voter registration form simply to try to correct for the umpteenth time an error the Registrar had in the spelling of that voter’s family name. Repeated attempts to get it corrected by sending in the Registrar’s yellow change of address card failed to get the error corrected.
The voter, however, did not complain of being prevented from voting in the past, despite the error. Fortunately, Hawaii is no Ohio.
We definitely need reform…eligible citizens should not have to go through the gauntlet to vote! Some of our eligible voters may be homeless or have moved and that should be taken into account too. AND of course, GET RID OF MACHINES! Educate people,the more that know of the danger of voting machines,can contact their congressmen to change election laws and do as our Canadian neighbors do..paper ballots, pencil, and both parties oversight of counters. They have the results of the election by midnight. Oversight can be selected like jurors.
These retired judges should be the laughing stock of the nation. Maybe there own foolish problems will shake them out of their lethargy. You know it isn’t that difficult to understand that if you start with a faulty information base and then try to use that to bring in new rules you are going to end up with myriad discrepancies and illegalities which are data based and not reality based. you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a judge to figure that out!