James Baker and Ralph Munroe must step down

Andy_Stephenson

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Fri Apr-01-05 01:39 PM
Original message

James Baker and Ralph Munroe must step down

According to Brad Friedman of www.bradblog.com, ACVR American Center for Voting Rights is a group recently created by high-level Bush/Cheney/RNC Officials and is anything but "non-partisan." The
ACVR leadership includes Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, the National Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. and Jim Dyke, the RNC's Communications Director.

ACVR's genesis coincided with the creation of a "bi-partisan" blue-ribbon commission convened to study and recommend solutions for Electoral Problems in 2004. The co-chairs of the Baker/Carter Commission are former President Jimmy Carter, and current-Bush Family loyalist and long-time clean-up man, James A. Baker, III.

The ACVR report was presented to Congress in a U.S. House Administrative Committee hearing on the electoral mess in Ohio by (votehere?). The then-three-day old GOP front group, acting as a
"voting rights" organization, was curiously the only such group called as witnesses in the hearings convened by the committee's Chairman, Rep. Bob Ney R-OH). Bob Ney, by the way, was one of the sponsors
of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and is well known to favor paperless voting.

So, to recap, a GOP front group posing as a voting rights group presented a skewed report to a committee chaired by a known opponent of voter-verified paper ballots that secure the counting of our votes cast on electronic machines. This is an outrage to the goals of election reform.

Baker's position as co-chair of this commission has been denounced by a real voting rights organization, Velvet Revolution. Baker was diligent in his efforts to discount the votes of hundreds if not thousands of Americans in Florida during the 2000 Bush/Gore election debacle. As a consequence, VR is calling for the immediate removal of James Baker from this
commission.

Ralph Munro who is on the board of directors at VoteHere has also been named as a participant; clearly, VoteHere (www.votehere.com ) intends to use these hearings push its "paper-trail" non-solution solution.

Both Mr. Munro and Mr. Baker have obvious conflicts of interest. Mr. Baker is with The Carlyle Group which owns Populex Voting (www.populex.com ). Like VoteHere, Populex advocates a voter-verifiable "paper ballot card". Let's not mince terms here: we the people will accept nothing less than a voter verified paper ballot as the ballot of record. A "paper ballot card" is not a ballot of record and therefore does not secure the vote or the accuracy of a recount.

I am stepping up to the plate to back VR's call for Baker's removal. In addition, Mr. Munro must also be excluded because of his ties to VoteHere. If this Commission is to have any credibility whatsoever, it should replace its GOP clean up crew with members of respected voting rights groups whose aim is, transparently and simply, electoral reform.

Andy Stephenson