Sunday 1/30 Election Fraud, Reform, & Updates Thread

[MelissaB]

In order to organize and document I thought it would be a good idea to have a daily thread to place items related to the reform, fraud, protests, and other items. This also make it easier to "catch up" when we are away from the computer for a while.

Please help us. If you see something that isn't here post it with a link to the thread and a thanks to the author. Thanks to everyone who is helping with this project.

Link to the thread from yesterday: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x308963

[DemReadingDU]

1. Today is Sunday Jan 30th, n/t

[MelissaB]

2. Changed

Thanks!

[L. Coyote]

3. Election Reform Sweeps the Nation == Nashua Advocate

"
Election Reform Sweeps the Nation, Supported By Democrats and Republicans Alike -- Albeit Disingenuously, and Even Deceptively, By the Latter 1/29/05

The Advocate offers its readership this whirlwind tour of election reform developments the nation over, paying particular attention to the egregious lack of integrity evidenced in the Republican-sponsored bills cited herein, as compared to the pragmatic and positivist approach favored by the more progressive-minded, Democratic bills.
"

Discussion by states with good links to state stories.

http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/01/news-election-reform-sweeps-nation.html

======

from: Election Reform, Fraud, and Irregularity Headlines.

[dzika]

4. Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow

To be published in the next issue of The Nation

Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow

by Danny Glover and Bill Fletcher Jr.


In 2004 the winner-take-all system of US electoral politics again proved an obstacle to genuine democracy. While progressives found little to get excited about in the John Kerry campaign, there were no viable third-party candidates, leaving them without a fully satisfying choice at the ballot box, even if most of us ended up voting for Kerry as a statement against Bush. More important, there was no candidate whose campaign offered progressives the opportunity to develop a real political/electoral base that could move us closer to building power and influence.

The most recent campaign that held that kind of promise was the Rainbow insurgency of the 1980s, including the 1984 and ’88 presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, and the building of the National Rainbow Coalition.

The Rainbow movement and candidacies have much to teach us today. While the Rev. Jesse Jackson was a charismatic leader, the Rainbow Coalition movement and the Jackson presidential campaigns were about far more than Jesse Jackson. The approach that Jackson advanced—building an organization and campaign both inside and outside the Democratic Party—points progressives in the direction we should be moving now. The political emergence of Jackson took place within the context of a larger, black-led electoral upsurge that witnessed campaigns such as the successful Harold Washington run for mayor of Chicago and the unsuccessful but no less inspiring Mel King campaign for mayor of Boston. Those campaigns were not only a reaction to the early years of the Reagan/Bush Administration and its economic attacks on working people and veiled attacks on people of color but an outgrowth of the movement for black political power that emerged in response to the unfulfilled promise of the civil rights victories two decades earlier. Jackson seized the moment to speak nationally on behalf of these movements, but he did something even more important than that. He articulated a political vision that, while based on the African-American experience, did not represent solely a “black candidacy” or “black politics.” Jackson tapped into a growing anger and frustration arising on the US political scene among both historically and newly disenfranchised populations. He spoke to issues of economic injustice without abandoning the question of race, thus avoiding the classic error of white populists who attempt to build unity by addressing economic issues only. Jackson linked these issues. His appearances before white farmers and workers brought forth a response that previously had been unimaginable.

Jackson tapped into three key constituencies in order to build and anchor both the Rainbow and his 1984 and ’88 candidacies: the African-American political establishment, African-American religious institutions (including both Muslim and Christian denominations) and the left. These constituencies had differing, though often overlapping, agendas, which inevitably led to both vibrancy and tensions within the movement. No one expected Jackson to receive the Democratic Party nomination, let alone win the presidency, but the power of the movement and the potential for something longer-lasting signaled the importance of this initiative .


more
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0127-24.htm

[L. Coyote]

5. The Last Man to Concede...

The Last Man to Concede...
by Sheila Samples
"
Kerry assured depressed -- many disenfranchised -- voters that one of his top agenda items in the coming months would be a national proposal to ensure transparency and accountability in the US voting process......

Meanwhile, back in the trenches, Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and most dogged of investigators, continued to do much more than "highlight" issues and "gather" questions. Conyers faced stiff and often illegal opposition from Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who is also an elite Bush donor and co-chair of the Ohio Bush/Cheney '04 campaign.
"

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1135

[dzika]

6. Mysterious WI phantom voters turn out to be some really nice people

Posted: Jan. 29, 2005

Mysterious Wisconsin phantom voters turn out to be some really nice people

I was just chatting with one of those shadowy voters from the fabled land of invalid addresses.

Johann Hauser-Ulrich was the very first name on the list of more than 1,200 Milwaukee voters who may or may not be up to something sinister, like voting for Democrats.

It wasn't hard to find him. I just went to the address listed, 1335 N. King Drive. The place is an aquarium store, which struck me as fishy. But Hauser-Ulrich, 20, has lived upstairs since moving here from Minneapolis in September to attend UWM.

He voted - once - on Nov. 2 after registering at the polls with no problem. It bothers him that people who wish George W. Bush had won Wisconsin are working so hard to convince everyone that fraudulent voting is what sunk their guy
...
The police, district attorney, FBI and the Canadian Mounties - if we need 'em - have mobilized for a full-scale investigation into possible election fraud. And Republicans are licking their chops at the thought of pushing through a requirement for photo IDs for voters.

Although I lack arrest or subpoena power, I launched my own investigation last week that involved tracking down these frauds and realizing what nice, honest people most of them seemed to be.
...
And I'd like to apologize to the people I woke up and otherwise bothered on Friday while trying to find one Robert Burns, who supposedly lives, had lived or will someday live at 3325 W. St. Paul Ave. even though there is no such house number. Give me a call, Robert, and let's keep the FBI off your back.


http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan05/297178.asp

[dzika]

7. Bush Second-Term Plans Look to Undercut Democratic Pillars

Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page A01

Bush Aims To Forge A GOP Legacy
Second-Term Plans Look to Undercut Democratic Pillars

By Thomas B. Edsall and John F. Harris


When President Bush stands before Congress on Wednesday night to deliver his State of the Union address, it is a safe bet that he will not announce that one of his goals is the long-term enfeeblement of the Democratic Party.

But a recurring theme of many items on Bush's second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say.
...

"choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party"

"Social Security can transform a program that has long been identified with the Democrats, creating a generation of new investors who see their interests allied with the Republicans"

"limit the power and membership of public employee unions -- an important Democratic financial artery"

"the White House has expressly tailored its domestic agenda to maximize hazards for Democrats"


more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47559-2005Jan29_2.html

[MelissaB]

8. What the rest of the world watched on Inauguration Day

National Catholic Reporter
The Independent Newsweekly

What the rest of the world watched on Inauguration Day
By Joan Chittister, OSB

Dublin, on U.S. Inauguration Day, didn't seem to notice. Oh, they played a few clips that night of the American president saying, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

But that was not their lead story.

The picture on the front page of The Irish Times was a large four-color picture of a small Iraqi girl. Her little body was a coil of steel. She sat knees up, cowering, screaming madly into the dark night. Her white clothes and spread hands and small tight face were blood-spattered. The blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot through the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she sat beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters in the back seat.

>>>snip

In Iraq, for every dead U.S. soldier, there are 14 other deaths, 93 percent of them are civilian. But those things happen in war, the story says. It's all for a greater good, we have to remember. It's all to free them. It's all being done to spread "liberty."

From where I stand, the only question now is who or what will free us from the 21st century's new definition of bravery. Who will free us from the notion that killing children or their civilian parents takes courage?

Link: http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/

[MelissaB]

9. Democratic Boxer comes out swingin’

Democratic Boxer comes out swingin’

Published Sunday, January 30, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Barbara Boxer has always spoken up, but the California Democrat seems to have gotten a lot louder lately.

Her opposition to Condoleezza Rice’s secretary of state nomination was so combative that it was parodied on Saturday Night Live. That came on the heels of her decision to sign onto a House member’s complaint about Ohio voting problems, forcing Congress to debate them before certifying President George W. Bush’s re-election victory.

>>>snip

"She seems to be assuming the position of being an outspoken voice for, as someone else said, ‘the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,’" says Los Angeles Democratic strategist Darry Sragow, echoing a phrase adopted by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

>>>snip

Barely five feet tall, Boxer must stand on a box - which she sometimes refers to as "the Boxer Box" - to see over the podium at news conferences. Fond of gold jewelry and colorful, occasionally mismatched outfits, she’s energetic and aggressive, given to dressing down government officials at hearings, especially when reporters are within earshot.

That rankles Republicans, who say she’s more show horse than work horse in the Senate. But sometimes, she can make even fellow Democrats squirm.


Link: http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Jan/20050130News029.asp


(I would love post this entire article here. :) )

[dzika]

10. Bush - The First Four Years

The First Four Years

By the Numbers: The U.S. After 4 Years of Bush


Poverty Rate
2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans
2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million Americans

Stock market
Dow Jones Industrial Average
1/19/01: 10,587.59
1/19/05: 10,539.97

NASDAQ
1/19/01: 2,770.38
1/19/05: 2,073.59

S&P 500
1/19/01: 1,342.54
1/19/05: 1,184.63

Value of the Dollar
1/19/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros
1/19/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 Euros

Budget
2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion
2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion
That's a shift of $649 billion and doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war.

Cost of the war in Iraq
$150.8 billion

American Casualties in Iraq
Deaths: 1,369
Wounded: 10,252

The Debt
End of 2000: $5.7 trillion
Today: $7.6 trillion
-That's a 4 year increase of 33%.
(Via Change for America.)


http://DemocraticVictory.net

[MelissaB]

11. A 'stop-Dean' effort arises at DNC forum

A 'stop-Dean' effort arises at DNC forum

Stakes high as party seeks new chairman
By Nina Easton, Globe Staff | January 30, 2005


>>>snip

Yesterday, all seven candidates made their pitch before DNC officials from the East Coast at the Roosevelt Hotel; today a core of state party chairs -- who could control almost a quarter of the 447 votes to be cast Feb. 12 -- will decide whether to endorse a candidate. Key labor endorsements are expected to follow Tuesday

>>>snip

Dean brings the best name recognition to the contest, but also the most baggage. Critics worry that he has a propensity to make provocative comments, typically before consulting allies, and that his positions on national security and social issues are too liberal to make inroads in the Republican-dominated South and Midwest.

"I think everyone likes him. But a vast majority are scared of what a Dean chairmanship would do in states like mine," said the Texas state party chairman, Charles Soechting, who has endorsed a fellow Texan, former US Representative Martin Frost.

>>>snip

At the podium yesterday, barbs among candidates were subtle but often directed at Dean's knack for controversy. As DNC chair, "you must be a spokesman for the party, but not the only spokesman," said Frost, considered by most to be in second place behind Dean.


More: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01/30/a_stop_dean_effort_arises_at_dnc_forum?mode=PF

[MelissaB]

12. Discussion in LBN

here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1196300

[dzika]

13. Bev Harris in Ohio - Calls meeting to litigate 2004 Election 1/30

(Just FYI... I'm not suggesting that anyone attend)

Bev Harris in Ohio - Calls meeting to litigate 2004 Election 1/30

Sunday, Jan. 30, 4 p.m. 3923 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio:

MAP= http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?searchtype=address&country=US&addtohistory=&searchtab=home&address=3923+North+High+Street&city=Columbus+&state=OH&zipcode=

A meeting for citizen action -- Shelter House at the Whetstone Park of Roses
(3923 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio)


BEV HARRIS, founder of BLACK BOX VOTING and the lead plaintiff in the only successful consumer protection lawsuit to date against a voting machine system, will meet with Ohio citizens to discuss concerns and strategies, and will make a brief presentation to frame the problem and recommend models for effective action.


Harris and Black Box Voting board member Jim March developed and presented evidence which contributed to the decision by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to decertify Diebold touch-screens, and filed a false claims lawsuit which resulted in $2.6 million in damages, to be paid by Diebold to the state of California -- the only winning lawsuit so far targeting voting systems, and the largest-ever award for damages from any voting machine company.

LARRY ENGLISH, President of INFORMATION IMPACT International, Inc., will participate in the Jan. 30 meeting for Ohioans, and will make a very important presentation on a model to help create real accountability and transparency in elections.

Attorneys will explain the full range of legal options, recommendations will be made as to which options to choose.

Input from participants in the recent examination of Ohio voting problems will be heard.

In Columbus on Jan. 30, Ohio citizens will draft plans of action and identify citizen leaders to take on aspects of the work that lies ahead.

[dzika]

14. Vo Still Standing: Challenger Should Withdraw

Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 12:55 PM

Vo Still Standing: Challenger Should Withdraw

By Greg Moses, ILCA Associate Member


While it may be another week before the Master of Discovery releases a report on the challenge brought against the election of Texas State Rep. Hubert Vo (D-Houston), informal signs indicate that the challenge will fail.

In fact, given irregularities discovered in voter questionnaires returned by the challenger that have two kinds of ink and two kinds of handwriting, it would seem best if the challenger gracefully withdrew as soon as possible.
By the time that Master of Discovery Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) called the first break on the second day of hearings Friday, it would have been clear to him that the challenge had failed. That was the point at which he had completed his review of voter depositions. While his case-by-case assessment of depositions resulted in a net loss of some 20 votes from Vo's 33-vote election victory, his informal rulings would not have reversed the outcome.

So it is significant that when Hartnett returned from the break on Friday morning, he advised the parties that he was attempting to contact the chair and vice-chair of the special legislative committee in charge of hearing the challenge. Only a few minutes later, Harnett called another quick break.

When Hartnett returned from the second break Friday morning, he announced that he had just taken the second phone call verifying that both the chair and vice-chair of the committee would endorse his intention to rely strictly on deposition testimony and consider only those votes that were improperly cast and where the identity of the candidate was specified.

Hartnett spent the rest of the day collecting information on the total number of illegal votes cast and listening to an argument that the effect of the total illegal ballots could be extrapolated. While he said he would forward those raw materials to his colleagues in the Texas House, the Master of Discovery said he would not put any weight on those matters in formal recommendations that he says will be reported one week from Monday.

Of course, it is possible that Hartnett will change his mind about many things in the coming week as he considers one last round of briefs due by Monday afternoon. And it is possible that when the vote goes to the floor of the legislature, Hartnett's recommendations will not be decisive. But preliminary signs show that after a very close election victory, recount, and legislative challenge, Vo will be allowed to make history as the first Vietnamese immigrant to serve in the Texas legislature and the first Democrat to represent an increase in that party's representation at the statehouse since the 1970s.


more
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1637&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

[MelissaB]

15. (AZ) 27,878 Provisional Votes thrown out

Counties inconsistent in provisional-vote rules

By Tom Beal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
29 January 2005

About 5 percent of Arizona's voters - 101,536 of them, to be exact - had some trouble voting in the 2004 election, and 27,878 of them had their "provisional" votes thrown out.

The No. 1 reason for ballot rejection is that voters went to the wrong polling place.

-snip-

The numbers are still being tabulated, but reports from 39 states, not including Arizona, show so far that 66 percent of all provisional ballots were counted, said Kay Stimson, communications director for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the agency created by Congress to monitor the act.

-snip-

Forcing the state to count those federal votes is the aim of a lawsuit filed after the 2004 election by the League of United Latin American Citizens, which claimed, among other reasons, that the law was not uniformly applied in Arizona.

More: http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=4738

and here (thanks to garybec): http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/59054.php

Thanks to Wilms here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x309956

[L. Coyote]

16. Possibility That the Overall Vote Count Was Substantially Corrupted ...

According to Non-Partisan USCV Study, "The Possibility That the Overall Vote Count Was Substantially Corrupted Must Be Taken Seriously"


"We invite all those who care about democratic processes in this country to join us in fully investigating and explaining what really happened in the 2004 Presidential election."

http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/01/breaking-news-according-to-non.html

[corbett]

17. Observations On Orlando Election Fraud Hearing 1/27

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=310391&mesg_id=310391

[Wilms]

18. Kick n/t

[berniew1]

19. Update to Florida documentation of vote machine fraud & dirty tricks

Widespread vote machine fraud in Touchscreen Countie and widespread dirty tricks and suppression in minority precincts in much of the state.


http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html

[berniew1]

20. Documentation of vote machine fraud & dirty tricks in over 20 states

http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html

[Bill Bored]

21. URGENT ACTION ALERT

Please urge Senators to SUPPORT THIS BILL!
Voter Verified Paper Ballots, VIVA 2005

<http://www.ballotintegrity.org/action.html>