— Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG
We’ve been reporting for the past week on what we see as the dismal failure of the DNC/Obama’s much-vaunted team of “thousands of attorneys” ready to pounce on any reported problems in the electoral system around the country. In one article after another, we’ve reported here on votes being flipped on completely unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machines from Democratic candidates over to Republicans and others. We’ve so far reported on that occurring in 4 different states, and have since received reports from at least two more on different DRE systems doing the same thing, which we’re trying to confirm and/or report here as soon as possible.
We’ve had to report on Democrats in PA being sued by the NAACP, because neither the DNC nor the Obama campaign was willing to stand up for voters to demand that emergency paper ballots be made available to voters in PA before every machine in a precinct breaks down, as decreed a month ago from PA’s Democratic Sec. of the Commonwealth.
We haven’t even had time to report that the Republicans have attempted to intervene in the case, to take the side of the PA Democrats to keep paper ballots from being given to voters. (Republicans’ Motion to Intervene here [PDF] Note: it’s incorrectly labeled as a “motion to intervene on behalf of plaintiffs,” but it’s actually a “motion to intervene on behalf of defendants,” the Democrats.) How far are the state Dems off the mark, when Republicans agree with them on a matter like this? And yet, Obama and the DNC have done nothing over the past month to fight on behalf of the voters who, as we saw during the Primary mess in PA earlier this year, will surely find themselves unable to cast votes at all, in thousands of cases, due to machines that simply do not work.
We’ve taken no joy in any of that criticism, or in our assertion that the effort appears to be a slightly beefed-up version of John Kerry’s 2004 effort. But as an independent election integrity advocate and journalist, supporting the voters rather than any of the Presidential candidates, we’ve had little choice.
But now, it seems, the Obama/DNC has finally come out of hiding to share what they are doing. Unfortunately, they just can’t tell us what that is…
Just Like Votes on a Touch-Screen Machine
My colleague Steven Rosenfeld, over at AlterNet, who, after previously reporting the DNC’s limp efforts at dealing with concerns about electronic vote counts some weeks ago, today offers an explanation from the DNC as to what they claim they are doing to protect your vote.
Turns out, they’re doing plenty, if you believe the DNC. They’re just doing it in complete secrecy “behind the scenes,” offering no evidence for it, while all of the actual available evidence to the contrary that we can see with our own eyes is to be completely ignored, apparently.
As those I’ve spoken with in the DNC and Obama camps know, I’ll be more than happy to report on what they are doing on these counts, but we don’t take people’s words for it around here anymore than we ask people to take ours. We offer evidence. If you have any, I’ll be happy to share it with readers here, but I’ve yet to find any and none was given — beyond words — in Steve’s article.
So, please go read Steve’s article, which quotes some of my criticism of the DNC/Obama efforts from past articles here.
Then come back and read my response below as, unfortunately, Steve didn’t initially offer me the opportunity to respond directly to the assertions made by the DNC as posted in the article. He’s said he’d tack on my response to the end of his AlterNet piece shortly. But in either case, my response, in full, follows below…
“Democrats Describe Efforts to Limit Voting Machines Problems”
While there is evidence to back up the claims of some of the limited efforts made to stop some of the GOP voter suppression efforts in MI and MT, for example, there is absolutely no evidence offered to substantiate the claim Levitt makes that the DNC or the Obama campaign is “responding in real-time” to the many issues of voting machine failures now being reported in a number of states, including WV, TN, TX, MO, NV and elsewhere.
He claims, in the report, that Obama/DNC attorneys are “often behind the scenes, but always active.” That assertion mirrors similar ones I’ve received from other higher-ups in the DNC election protection hierarchy. But with each such claim, I continue to ask for evidence to back up that “behind the scenes” work and have, to date, been given none. To the contrary, all evidence that I have been able to gather demonstrates that precisely nothing is being done, at least when it comes to the concerns about the wholly unverifiable electronic voting machines being used to count approximately one third of the votes that will be cast this year.
The NAACP has even been forced to go to court to sue the Democratic Secretary of the Commonwealth in PA, after he decreed that paper ballots only need be given out if every machine in a precinct breaks down. The Obama/DNC team did nothing for more than a month, until the NAACP finally had to sue last week, and the Republicans joined the Democratic state officials in fighting the suit to require paper ballots if just a majority of machines break down (as so many did during PA’s primary, disenfranchising countless thousands).
I’m pleased to see that the DNC has created a database of jurisdictions, equipment used, security procedures and laws in each of the thousands of counties, cities and townships in the country, as I had recommended when addressing their lead attorneys on these very issues at the DNC’s 2006 summer meeting in Chicago.
I have little doubt that their efforts, and their “thousands of attorneys”, are an improvement over similarly lacking efforts by John Kerry and the DNC in 2004. Nonetheless, until actual evidence is offered — any evidence — to back up the claims of the super-secret, behind-the-scenes effort in what should be a 100% transparent democracy, you’ll pardon me if I remain not just exceedingly skeptical, but downright furious at the party’s brazen willingness to allow millions of votes to go either uncounted, incorrectly recorded, or recorded in such a way that is 100% unverifiable by any human being.
Rosenfeld quotes from a DNC memo which asserts, among other things, that “We’ve been monitoring voting machines to ensure that they record the vote accurately.”
Well, that’s swell, but I’d love to know how they are able to monitor that even a single vote, ever cast on any Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machine is being “accurately” recorded. I would love a single piece of evidence to prove that any vote, ever cast on such a device — with or without a so-called “paper trail” sometimes attached to it — has ever been recorded accurately during any election, for any candidate or initiative on the ballot. As I’m sure Levitt knows, no such evidence exists. To suggest otherwise is an insult to their voters, and to all voters.
To make matters worse, those same 100% unverifiable voting machines are now losing votes entirely and flipping untold others from Democratic candidates to Republican candidates and others in state after state. (Just a few examples can be found here, here, here, here, and here. I have many more that I’ve not yet been able to report due to time constraints.)
Those failed machines have not been removed from use, are still dangerously imperiling the accurate votes of millions, and ultimately, even if they worked as they are supposed to work, could never be verified as having accurately recorded even a single voters’ intent as they desired.
The voters of this country — Democratic, Republican, independent and everything else — deserve far better from both major parties. But to suggest that we, the people, would be impressed, if only we were allowed to know the secret efforts being taken on our behalf by the Democratic Party, is an insult not only to Democrats, but to every American voter.
Got evidence of the work being done to ensure electronic vote counts are accurate, and that every voter matters this year? Please share it with us. Believe me, I’d be delighted to report that evidence at The BRAD BLOG, as I take no joy in being as critical as I have been forced to be about the Obama/DNC’s lacking efforts on election protection, particularly given the out-and-out brazen efforts at all-out voter suppression by the GOP.
But until any such evidence is actually forthcoming, and while I’ve been receiving reports from some of those “thousands of attorneys” in the Obama/DNC attorney corps telling me what little efforts are being done, and until the claims that “we are on it” stop being countered by actual reported evidence on the ground, such claims are no more impressive or believable than George W. Bush’s assertions over the last 6 years that “the War in Iraq is a great success,” or that Brownie was doing “a heckuva job” down in New Orleans.
The DNC owes me nothing. If they don’t wish to share the evidence with me, they don’t have to. But they do owe their voters and supporters something more than smoke and mirrors. And, so far, the evidence for the claims made in the article above remain nowhere to be found — just like the DNC attorneys and action on behalf of voters in counties where votes continue to flip or are being lost entirely.
===
Brad Friedman is a nationally recognized journalistic expert on issues of election integrity, and the creator and editor of The BRAD BLOG (www.BradBlog.com). He also writes on these issues at the UK’s Guardian, ComputerWorld, AlterNet and elsewhere, and has been invited to testify to the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) and to other election officials and body around the country. More bio info here.
Give ’em hell, Brad. I don’t care if they have every lawyer in the country lined up, we all know that Election Day is too late to do anything.
In the meantime……….
http://www.writeslikeshetalks.c...ional-ballots/
Why isn’t the mainstream media reporting this voter fraud that’s happening now.
Also: Watch the Documentary “Uncounted” they show how the election was stolen for Bush in 2004 against Kerry.
We cannot allow this to happen.
https://bradblog.com/?cat=166
McCain made a statement today saying that he “Guarantee” you he’s going to win this election and he don’t believe the polls. He said that because the exit polls numbers, he know they are rigging this election for him.
He also said the count will go on over into the night. How does he know already the vote count will go into the night. This is the same thing that happened in the Documentary “Uncounted” they kept saying the race was too close to call and the exit polls numbers were totally different from the machine count and they didn’t know why. McCain keep saying the race is closer than we think. America we can’t keep letting them rig these elections. Where is the Democracy in all this. The Diebold voting machines are owned by the Republican party. Let’s put a stop to this right now.
A friend of mine went to early vote the other day, she was using the Diebold machine, she voted for Obama, when she pressed the VOTE button John McCain’s name came up on the screen. This is FRAUD and something should be done about it now.
Brad,
I have been reading your blog, the velvet revolution site , the wiki site , and others. But I didn’t think that this sort of thing would actually happen to someone I know. My sister called me yesterday to tell me that she registered to vote in Nevada but her name is not on the rolls. I gave her the phone number to the Election Protection Center and we sent a complaint to Obamas website. She plans to make a phone call to Election Protection Monday. If anyone on this blog has any suggestions or advice it would be appreciated. Thanks.
TiaL –
In addition to notifying and sending written complaints to the folks you mention, be sure to do same with the NV SoS, the county registrar, 866-MYVOTE1, 866-OUR-VOTE and as many local media folks as you can contact!
That is a ridiculous statement. Since that part of the strategy isn’t secret, they should be able to tell us everything about how they are “monitoring” the machines. The people whose job it is to test the machines don’t even do that.
It’s an insulting statement.
Just got my copy of “Murder Spies and Voting Lies.” Very nice! Interestingly put together and very gutsy! Edward Murrow gutsy!
What is wrong with them. Why are they being so dense?! Twilight Zone dense.
In 2004, my daughter in Georgia voted for Kerry and the machine told her she voted for Bush. She cancelled it, and another flip. Twice. She is NOT one to take this sort of thing tamely. She left the cubicle and confronted the officials in charge. LOUDLY. They tried to “Shush” her, but she doesn’t “Shush.” Finally, they agreed to take the offending machine off line and allow her to vote on a different machine, which did, indeed, apparently register the vote as she cast it. After it was all over, she asked me, “How do I know that they did take the crooked machine off line, and how do I know that my vote was actually cast the way I wanted?” I replied, “You don’t. The odds are that your suspicions are well-grounded; it was Georgia, after all!”
Brad, I’m hoping that this is a ‘hand in the cookie jar’ moment this round as they haven’t quite figured out how they’re doing it yet for certain and don’t want to reduce turnout with everyone thinking its already a foregone conclusion who has won…no?
#8…When my 84 year old Mother was dying of cancer in the hosp…the Dr. and nurses really did not care if she had adequate pain meds. I am a nurse myself so knew it was simply laziness. I got results when I started screaming and cursing. If I had it to do over…I would scream and curse from the gitgo. It goes against my nature…I’m a big fan of the Buddha.Some things are too important to quietly stand by and watch.I’ve noticed in taking on “those” people …they can not stand attn. brought to them.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but maybe the DNC does not want to reveal their monitoring tactics for fear that the republicans might circumvent it and steal the election. Never let the enemy know what you are going to do and keep them guessing. I hope that the DNC does have a sound strategy to ensure every vote is counted correctly and there will be no come-from-behind miracle surprise victories for McCain on election day in all of those swing states including Pennsylvania, which has Obama up in the polls by double digits. If McCain does win, which goes against all of the polling data, including Nate Silver’s 538.com’s 10,000 computer simulations, my fear is that the “Bradley Effect” will be used to explain the disparity between the tracking polls, exit polls, and the actual vote count. At that point, I can only hope all of the electronic voting machines will be impounded and forensic computer experts will be able to see if any of the machines were rigged to flip votes from democrat to republican.
The first hour of On Point this morning, from 10:00 to 11:00 Eastern time, will be about election integrity and voter suppression. It might even get into the real issues, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is one of the guests, along with extreme Brad fan John Fund and Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Columbia Law School who is (supposedly; I have no idea myself) an expert on election law.
On Point is a call-in talk show that originates at one of my local NPR stations, WBUR. The website is http://www.onpointradio.com . There are already comments posted, so feel free to go over there and get your two cents in before the show starts. You can listen online at http://www.wbur.org/listen/ and call in at (800) 423-TALK. It would delightful to hear from 6 or 7 of you.
Hey Brad!
You’re wrong about the Repug motive in their motion to intervene.
They are not attempting to help voters here.
What they’re in fact doing is attempting to piggyback themselves into the suit brought by the NAACP/Dems that challenges voter suprression tactics (crappy e-vote machines, i.e.) and trying to gum it up by improperly inserting specious claims of voter fraud.
Go back and read their motion. Also discuss it with an attorney, and then pleae make updates to your post. I don’t think you understood understood what you were reading, and because of your misunderstanding, your blog readers are currently misinformed.
The only way someone can legitimate sue and not be booted from court is if the party has “standing” and suffered “actual harm” The Dems and NAACP can prove that their voters have suffered harm and that voters are being harmed by the crappy equipment, etc.
The repugs can’t prove or show instances of actual voter fraud because it isn’t there. So they’re looking for any available avenue to cast doubt on the election.
I’ve been thinking about this touchscreen mess and the obvious visual evidence that votes are being flipped. As a neophite computer tinkerer, the only thing I can equate this to is when you remove or replace hardware such as a video card. If you don’t remove all of the old drivers a conflict occurs with unpredictable results. In this case I believe it’s a failure to fully remove the legitimate code when installing the malicious code over it. In other words, this is just an example of poor installation of the theft program. It would seem that when the installation is performed correctly, you wouldn’t see your vote flip at all, and that it’s likely that is the majority of the cases. If so, this is the tip of the iceberg.
ECS –
I’ll take the blame for, perhaps, wording it sloppily in my article above (as usual right around now, working really quickly on too many things at once.)
But I did not say that Republicans “attempting to help voters here.” I said the opposite. Or at least tried to. In other words, I agree with you that the Repubs are trying to block voters ability to cast a vote. Unfortunately, they are on the side of state Dems in this matter. While Obama and the DNC did nothing to oppose the state Dems and finally the NAACP had to come in with a (fairly tame) lawsuit to oppose state Dems.
For an attempt at clarity:
+ A month ago, the PA SoS (a Dem) issued a directive saying no paper ballots need to be given out unless all machines in a precinct break down.
+ Obama/DNC did nothing to oppose.
+ Finally, NAACP and a local Election Protection coalition filed suit to demand paper ballots be given out if a “majority” of machines break down (that, even though state law allows paper ballots to be given out if just one machine in a precinct breaks down! Nonetheless, at least some action was taken by somebody.)
+ The Republicans filed to intervene, essentially taking the side of the state Dems against the NAACP, to say paper ballots should not be given out.
Hope that clarifies what I was trying to write in the original article 🙂
# 4 TiaL and # 5 Brad
My son lives in Las Vegas and sent in a registration to vote. He later checked on line to make sure he was registered. He was not listed. He called the elections office and was told that his registration was invalid because there were more than three days between the date on his application [which he admits sat on his desk for a week] and the post mark date! My son then asked for a provisional ballot and was told that they would have to see if he was entitled to one. They have never gotten back to him. Yes, he’s a Democrat.
I couldn’t believe there was such a law – or, if there is such a law, it is yet another voter suppression “gotcha” slipped into the Nevada Law. After reviewing the law, I concluded that the elections clerk interpreted the law improperly (see below).
The statute – NRS 293.5235 – says:
This is the analysis of the statute that I made and which my husband agreed with (we are both Oregon lawyers):
I will pass on the other contact information to my son provided by Brad. He will definitely follow up. It is one thing to pass on these “anecdotes” and say there is a real problem, and it is a whole other thing to be the voter trying to register and trying to vote and being told you can’t. This is where your constitutional right to vote is tested. Is it worth fighting for? Damn right!
TO ANYONE WHO thought they were registered and are told they are not.
Go to your county registrar or board of elections.
Demand to see your voter file and the original voter registration card. Get copies. Tell them you will sue them for violating NVRA and have illegally disenfranchised you.
Don’t believe them if they tell you to vote provisionally. They don’t have to count your provisional application.
#11,
I’m probably dreaming, but I’m hoping that the Dems are doing a “keep the powder dry” maneuver, watching and staying prepared to do their own flipping, if need be, when they see the Pubs trying to flip to a win.
Howard Dean knows about the flips and rigs of ’04 and ’06. Surely many other Dems in places of power know this, too. Obama has been seen hanging around with Pub Senator Chuck Hagel, he of questionable election fame, as Hagel was an owner of the voting machine company that counted votes for his own “miracle upset” election. See:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0301/S00166.htm
If Hagel is an Obama man, maybe he’s giving advice on counter-rigs, which of course would have to be kept secret in order to be activated at the last minute to win…
Either way, it’s insane, and Dem flipping and hacking and rigging would be just as terrible as Pub hacking and flipping and rigging. Our hackers vs. your hackers… Our riggers vs. your riggers…
Democracy down for the count…
shw
THANK YOU BRAD. IS there ANYTHING any of US can DO to help???
Yes Brad! What can we do to help out????
Go Brad!
Thank you Brad, Sandy, & Anonymous. I will pass that information on to my sister.
I suspect that Kerry took a dive (boxing term). During the time between the convention and the general election, Kerry ran a miserable campaign, while raising millions of dollars for legal challenges after the election AND promissing that he wouldn’t give up like Gore (“until all the votes are counted”). BUT after the election, he immediately CAVED. No legal challenge, no support for the Green Party recount or the Cong. K. recount. Where the hell did the millions of dollars he raised for legal challenges go? I’d like to know.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but I smell a big black rat named OBama. I sure haven’t seen him do anything about voter suppression and at this point in time, I have no confidence in the DNC.
Everyone is scratching their heads wondering why McCain is pulling resources from Red states and moving them into Pennsylvania. Well, I have a one-word explanation: DRE(s). Doesn’t most of PA use DRE(s) with no paper audit trail? Computer generated voting that cannot be “recounted”???
If McCain wins a suprise vicory in PA and NC (I think NC also uses DRE Machines), Every MSN outlet will proclaim: “BRADLEY EFFECT!” “BRADLEY EFFECT!” “All those white racist votes in PA and NC lied to the pollsters, they just couldn’t stomach a black man in the White House.”
What do we do if this scenario plays out and Obama pulls another Kerry?
What do we do then???
Just curious, is there a list of which states use unverifiable voting machines?
It is not out of bounds to suggest Democrats taking a fall. They’ve been doing it repeatedly in almost every skirmish with Bush since taking Congress. And Obama’s “transition team” is headed up by bankers. I don’t see any change so far. Just the biggest heist in history, likely to continue rolling along, signed sealed and delivered by the Democratic leadership.
It sounds like they are being just as serious and diligent about ensuring every vote gets cast as Kerry was 4 years ago. Just like Kerry, they talk loud about the importance of ensuring every vote gets counted. Except when the media announced Kerry lost, despite TONS of voting machine problems, voter disenfranchisement, not to mention problems and corruption in Ohio…Kerry set a record time for folding and then did NOTHING.
I just saw this:
“CNN: 50,000 purged from voter rolls in Georgia” RAW STORY W/video:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/C...olls_1027.html
Where is the DNC?
Adam Fulford: “What is wrong with them. Why are they being so dense?! Twilight Zone dense”
I have a hateful and cynical theory about that.
Who benefits if the status quo is maintained? Who benefits now? Is there a doubt that the DNC is not controlled by entrenched special interests and IMO as terrified of ‘transformational change’ as the RNC? What does it matter to a political power structure who the President is as long as they have enough votes in Congress to benefit their own interest’s which may well be different than the interest’s of the voter? In what substantive way have the Democrats distinguished themselves from the Republicans over the last two years? Do we have one party or two in America?
I believe that the Democrats came into the majority in 2006 with a plan. In a negotiation (And all of politics is a negotiation for power, current and future power to advance a political faction’s aims, whatever they may be.) any basic book on the topic will tell you that the most risky, potentially damaging (to your side) and potentially effective tactic is to work against both your own and your opposers best interest.
I think that the Democrats made a decision that the country’s voters needed to suffer more as a spur to vote for Democrats in 2008. The aim was for a Democratic majority in Congress and with luck a Democratic President. They set about facilitating the Republican agenda to achieve just that end. All they had to do was hold a lot of hearings and stay in the news as the party of reform while the Republicans brought the country to its knees. It looks to me to have been a successful position to take. It worked.
Here’s the problem: Barack Obama, while hardly a liberal, is the contemporary Jimmy Carter. Voters were so desperate to exorcise the Nixon/Republican demon that they voted for a virtually unknown Governor in response. Carter ran a masterful two year campaign energizing the working class (Obama’s campaign has been/is very similar.) and once he got in office he was such an outsider the Democrats wouldn’t work with him. He couldn’t get any domestic legislation he wanted passed.
Obama is not the Party choice, he is the peoples choice. The Party would have been ecstatic with Clinton as the nominee; a long-time pol that knows where the bodies are buried and how the job get done but that’s not who they have as their presidential nominee. An outsider on the wrong side of the class line (or he gives that appearance anyway)is who they have. If the major political thrust of the last 28 years is class warfare with the wealth and power of the nation moving upward and being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands a ‘reformer’ that pledges to halt or reverse that trend is the last person either political party wants to see.
How does the party eat its cake and have it too: Make the race close. Even if their guy wins there would be no clear mandate. Inaction on election fraud could do that and all the Republicans have left is election fraud at this point, they won’t win on merit. This puts Obama in the same position Carter was in when he took office but with less of a popular majority. With a Democratic majority in Congress (and there will be a lot of Republicans that cozy up to them) that can withstand a Republican filibuster or a President’s veto the PARTY retains power and can maintain whatever level of the status quo that benefits them.
Even if Obama were to lose there will in all likelihood still be a Democratic majority in Congress. The same ends could be achieved. I think the Democrats have been learning from the Republicans. This is a way to allow the Republicans to, in essence, ‘steal’ the election for the Democratic PARTY (and ownership class) which allows the Democratic Party to become the more powerful faction of what has become essentially the same political party.
I am totally cynical (downright nihilistic in fact) when it comes to politics in America but not even I believe the Democrats are so stupid and inept as to let a Presidential election be stolen THREE times using the same tactics without being in on it. This race isn’t being stolen, it’s been fixed.
I sure hope I’m just plain foolish and wrong.
It’s really pretty simple (at least to me). When the probabilities are high that you (meaning Obama and the Dems)will win the elections, why would you want to call into question the very machines that elected you?
Cynical? I don’t think so as the problems with these machines have been known for quite awhile but NO national figure has called for replacement.
Sorta like saying ‘I haven’t seen any evidence of illegal actions by the Bush Administration'(quoting Obama and Pelosi).
bruce sims
You are more wise and reasonable than even Brad on this one.
We need to WIN the election and Barack’s attoney’s are not there to FIX a broken system nor are they dumb enough to spend resources on vote problems in a solidly red state.
Casting doubts about the system could be exactly what the RW’s wish for at this point in time because they know their arse is being handed to them.
Furthermore – When Barack wins is that suppose to mean the election wasn’t fixed? As if an Obama win could mean – all voting problems have been addressed? That is an additional risk for the perceptions of LIV’s and RW’s.
Maybe it’s just me.
Former programmer. Comment:
Any coder writing vote stealing code should not be so stupid – utterly incompetent – as to not make sure the screen displayed the voter’s choice, even tho the recorded vote be opposite. Ditto paper.
I think what you see with the flipping is just really bad programming, which is perhaps even worse than cheating.
The problem with viewing a gross error such as what is happening now as cheating is this: when they fix the glitch, everyone will consider the voting machines “fixed”. The machines cannot be fixed, cannot be trusted, as one never knows what code actually runs from microsecond to microsecond. We can’t have a meme start that equates a lack of screen errors = problem solved.
I do deduce that real cheating is going to happen, esp. in close congressional races that they simply cannot afford to lose, else the Demos will have supermajority. The cheating, I think, will be in certain locations in specific districts that they need to win, as they did in Ohio in 2004.
Bruce and Capt,
The probabilites appear to be high that Obama will win. I surely hope so. They may not be, however, due to the great number of dirty trick the Repubs are certain to pull. And, to my mind, keeping quiet about likely disenfranchisement and fraud because you think you are gonna win by shutting up about it is nearly as bad as the neocon dirty tricks. It’s an insult to all voters, and really arrogantly stupid, IMO.
Catbeller,
Maybe it’s bad cheating 😉
I was on a conference call concerning election protection with one of these “election protection” attorneys yesterday. She improperly informed the activists who were being asked to gather news reports from the polls that they had to stay beyond the 100 foot boundary which Florida and many states have established. However, that boundary has been held to violate freedom of the press which even citizen journalists enjoy. See the letter to the election officers that Project Vote Count used in Ohio and Texas and the injunction in the CBS case.
Of course, the “election protection” attorney also refused to answer a question which I asked twice and which drew laughs from many on the call who follow my work and know the truth. This unanswerable question was “is it unconstitutional to count votes in secret?” The answer is YES!!! See, for examples Virginia’s Elections Are UNCONSTITUTIONAL?!?! and South Carolina Elections Are UNCONSTITUTIONAL!?!
Apparently, if you are working on “election protection” for one of those big well funded organizations, you are really just trying to help keep people in the dark. How better to do that than operate in secret.
I think I know why the dems are not going after this. It’s not that they don’t want to win elections. They do. But they do not want to win in a landslide. This may be even more important than winning. A landslide victory would mean that Nader like contenders have a chance of being competitive with the repugs and that washes away excuses to keep them out of the debates and media discussions. This would be a threat to the ruling class which is comprised of both dems and repugs, just as Nader says. The ruling class strategy is always divide and conquer, and now they have it down to 1 supreme court vote in 2000 and a few stolen votes in Ohio in ’04. Statistically very unlikely. The dems risk losing the election but they keep the the big money coming in from bankers, big oil, and multinationals. Unpopular repugs need all the help they can get. Ultimately the puppeteers of this vote rigging is not just the Republican party, it’s the ruling class. The dem’s strategy is to win, just barely.
I am a lawyer and I have handled some election fraud issues. How can I help?
The Democrat’s strategy for protecting your vote HAS to be super-secret, dummies, or else the GOP will move to counteract them on election day. There’s no doubt that Obama is a great General, he has an army of enthusiastic young people, ready & waiting to be deployed. You want the whole battle strategy to be made public, you silly whining bunch of gits??? Yeah I’ll bet you do. That’s why YOU aren’t a General of any army.
A Jefferson County Colorado Democratic Party volunteer activist gave me the following information when I observed that the Democratic Party appeared to be rolling over and playing dead, instead of vigorously litigating against electronic election fraud:
Thye certainly should be worried about Arapahoe County voting on Seqouia Advantage DRE machines, which were not certified by the Colorado Secretary of State. The Seqouia Advantage machine is in litigation in New Jersey and sworn testimony by computer security experts states it is very vulnerable to hacking and viruses, thru the audio voting feature. Since it does not produce a paper trail, all the “trained” Democratic Party “watchers” will be able to count are the mail in paper ballots, which hopefully at least half of Arapahoe County voters were smart emough to apply for. The time for attorneys to become involved was when litigation could have stopped deployment of these unreliable, easily corrupted and hacked touchscreen DREs.
My neighbor noted his dog could “watch” a polling place. His dog might actually be more effective than the trained Democratic Party Election watchers.
We have already seen election fraud litigation, after the stolen 2004 Peresidential Election dragging out for four years, while the nation suffers from the Unelected Bush/Cheney dictatorship.