NO PLAN FOR CONTINUITY OF CONGRESS?? Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News, Tuesday 09/12/07

[kpete]

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News, Tuesday 09/12/07

"A Roll Call for Democracy Needed"

Six years ago today, terrorists failed in their attempt to fly an airplane into the Capitol. Despite that scare, lawmakers have yet to fully plan for the legislative branch's survival in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic attack on their Membership. http://rollcall.com/issues/53_24/news/19915-1.html

QUESTIONS FOR ROLL CALL: Do corporations have a "plan for continuity" in the event of a union strike? While some modest level of planning surely exists, the "plan" is basically to either live with the strike, or perhaps to hire strikebreakers or scabs and break the strike. But either way the corporation is just going to get employees back.

There's a parallel to our public servant representative employees that live in the Washington DC area and work in Congress. If a terrorist strike of some sort takes out a large number in Congress, we ALREADY HAVE a contingency plan for continuity of representative government: They are called SPECIAL ELECTIONS. It happens every time a representative dies, as one from the Midwest did last week.

The attempt to have "continuity plans" is an attempt to use statutory legislation to subvert or effectively amend by supplementing the Constitution, and naturally terrorizes the Congress into active contemplation of their own mass deaths, which hardly serves the deliberative process of wise legislation.

But there's fundamentally no reason we can't have elections within a very few months, and no reason why NEW laws would be either absolutely necessary or unable to be produced by any remaining quorum of members. The one pressing need, a possible declaration of war, is a power the Congress has to take back from the Presidency but has in recent history abdicated to the executive branch.

We need a ROLL CALL magazine for democracy, not one that plays into the implicit assumption that maximizing some sort of extra-democratic response will be desirable and necessary, and does this without very much of a national discussion as to why elections couldn't happen on an accelerated basis.

While some sort of planning may be needed, it's not the crisis that Roll Call suggests, and the most important part of any such contingency is the special elections.

Stories like Roll Call's send the implicit message that, just like many stories did after 9-11, that "everything's changed" after some relatively isolated, yet dramatic and lethal, attack on America. But the thing is, the Constitution is supposed to last forever, it contemplates war and other emergencies, and we even had presidential elections in the midst of the Civil War in which 620,000 Americans ultimately died.


America will live on so long as we don't kill off her ideas, principles and procedures in some sort of special "continuity" planning process. While special elections are not completely absent from these "continuity discussions" it's becoming more and more apparent that we need to have a ROLL CALL FOR DEMOCRACY, checking in regularly to see who does, and who does not, believe in democracy. And that includes Roll Call magazine itself.
--Land Shark


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[whistle]

1. By March 2008 Bush and Cheney will have dissolved Congress

...Afterall, they are following PNAC which was based on the Nazi takeover of Germany

[AndyTiedye]

2. There Won't Be Any More Congress After the "Continuity Plans" Go Into Effect

Just Cheney issuing decrees from his undisclosed location forever.

[sonias]

3. (AL) Justice Department wants court hearing on Alabama voting system

Alabama.com article

Justice Department wants court hearing on Alabama voting system
9/11/2007
By PHILLIP RAWLS
The Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge Tuesday to hold a hearing on Gov. Bob Riley's request for more time to develop a statewide computerized voter registration system that was due Aug. 31.

Justice Department attorneys filed court papers saying a hearing is necessary to understand the nature and causes of the delay and "to convince all concerned that full compliance will be achieved" within the extra two months requested by Riley.

Jeff Emerson, Riley's communications director, said the governor was fine with the request for a court hearing. "We'll make sure the appropriate people are there," he said.

U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins has not yet scheduled the hearing.

Sonia

[sonias]

4. (TX) County Clerk Found Along Highway Died of Heart Failure

WOAI news 9/11
Officials Believe County Clerk Found Along Highway Died of Heart Failure

The Fayette County Sheriff's Department announced that the body of the Atascosa County Clerk was found along a highway in Fayette County Monday.

The body of 55-year-old Laquita Hayden, who lived in Pleasanton, was found Monday evening in a ditch near Highway 95, north of Flatonia, which is east of San Antonio. Sources close to the investigation said Hayden's husband was with her.

An autopsy was rushed, and investigators said it appears Hayden, who was wearing a pacemaker, died of heart failure. However, many people still want to know how her body ended up in a ditch more than 100 miles away from her home.

Weird news.

Sonia

[sonias]

5. (NC) Voting Machine Debate Could Cost NC Taxpayers $4.5 Mil

WGHP Fox8 News 9/11/07
Voting Machine Debate Could Cost NC Taxpayers $4.5 Mil

AP
By CHAD TUCKER
FOX8 News

GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) – North Carolina mandated electronic voting machines for all county board of elections in 2005. The cost to Guilford County taxpayers was $4.5 million.

The iVotronics machines produce back up documentation on paper used to verify ballots. A bill before Congress calls for a different type of information.

Guilford County Board of Elections director George Gilbert testified before Congress earlier this year, saying HR 811 does not make sense.

Sonia

[sonias]

6. (GA) NAACP Upset About New Voter Identification Law

WTOC11 News 09/11/07

NAACP Upset About New Voter Identification Law

Election day is less than two months away. Do you have identification?

Today, the NAACP began their push to get voters to the polls and get a voter ID. Dr. Prince Jackson and other community leaders claim the new voter ID laws discriminate against minorities, despite allowing for absentee ballots to be cast without identification. He is hoping to get the word out about the changes before turn-out in November suffers.

"The intent of this law was mean spirited," Dr. Jackson told WTOC. "When this law passed, they knew it would effect minority voting more so than others. It will effect some white people too, but at same time it will have a devastating impact on the black community and the people who passed this law realize that."

Sonia

[sonias]

7. (CA) Make Every Vote Count Legislation Goes to Governor

California Chronicle 9/11/07
Make Every Vote Count Legislation Goes to Governor

California Political Desk
September 11, 2007

Sacramento- AB 1167, authored by Assemblymember Pedro Nava, overwhelmingly passed the State Assembly today on a bipartisan vote and now goes to the governor for consideration.

“Making every vote count is the bedrock of our democracy and absentee balloting is growing in importance. We need to keep it as easy as possible for all voters when returning these ballots,” said Nava. “My legislation will make sure that all eligible ballots are returned and counted.”

The measure makes it mandatory that absentee ballots be delivered to the county elections offices even if they have insufficient postage. By mandating delivery of these ballots, the bill shifts from counties to the state the financial burden to ensure all mailed absentee ballots are delivered to election officials.

Sonia

[sonias]

8. (AZ) Surprise voting tops last mayoral election

AZ Central 9/11/07
Surprise voting tops last mayoral election

Tony Lombardo
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 11, 2007 02:47 PM

Surprise voter turnout has well surpassed that of the last mayoral election, the City Clerk's office reported this afternoon.

About 40 percent of the near 40,000 ballots mailed out have been returned to Maricopa County Elections. Ballots were still being received though, so that number is expected to grow.

This is the first mayoral election using vote-by-mail since Surprise City Council adopted the procedure in 2004. The thought was that voter turnout would increase if every registered voter received a ballot in the mail.

And I thought they were surprised by the voting - it's the name of the city too!

Sonia

[sonias]

9. (TN) Council, Commission Usher in New Voting Technology

Memphis Daily News 9/12/07
Council, Commission Usher in New Voting Technology

BILL DRIES | The Daily News

The two big plywood boxes with lights in City Council chambers that have shown council votes for nearly 20 years are gone. The "tote boards" have been replaced by flat screens that show and announce the council votes as they are recorded automatically in council records.

And council members now have a certain glow about them in chambers when the television lights aren't on. The glow comes from computer terminals at each person's place.

The council and its staff were still working the bugs out of the new document management and voting systems this month. And the County Commission Monday approved $344,935 in contracts with the two companies being used at City Hall - a $247,400 contract for document management with SIRE Technologies of Salt Lake City, Utah, and a $97,465 contract for a voting system with Granicus Inc. of San Francisco.

"It involves the ability for them to electronically now submit all of the items countywide into an agenda-type system that will organize it and submit it electronically," said Craig Peterson of SIRE. The same types of systems are used by the local government in Louisville, Ky.

So are they getting verified voting with that system?

Sonia

[sonias]

10. (NC) Who Needs Hackers?

BlueRidgeNow.com 9/12/07
Who Needs Hackers?
NOTHING was moving. International travelers flying into Los Angeles International Airport — more than 17,000 of them — were stuck on planes for hours one day in mid-August after computers for the United States Customs and Border Protection agency went down and stayed down for nine hours.

(snip)
Aviel D. Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said that glitches could be an enormous problem in high-tech voting machines. “Maybe we have focused too much on hackers and not on the possibility of something going wrong,” he said. “Sometimes the worst problems happen by accident.”

Dr. Rubin, who is director of the Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections, a group financed by the National Science Foundation to study voting issues, noted that glitches had already shown up in many elections using the new generation of voting machines sold to states in the wake of the Florida election crisis in 2000, when the fate of the national election came down to issues like hanging chads on punch-card ballots.

Sonia

[sonias]

11. (OH) State Controlling Board delays Brunner's plan to test voting machines

The Plain Dealer 9/11/07
State Controlling Board delays Brunner's plan to test voting machines

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Mark Rollenhagen
Plain Dealer Bureau Chief

Columbus- A state spending panel put the brakes on Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's plan to test Ohio's voting machines, saying more information was needed.

The four Republican legislators on the State Controlling Board outvoted the three Democrats and pushed Brunner's request off to Sept. 24 after Brunner, a Democrat, refused House Speaker Jon Husted's request that she voluntarily withdraw it.

Husted, a Republican, said in a letter to Brunner before the meeting that "too many outstanding questions remain regarding the scope of the request and the intent of the study - issues I believe can be properly addressed by allowing time for a more thoughtful and deliberative review of the request."

Sonia

[sonias]

12. (MD) Disillusion with City Hall has many voting by not voting

Baltimore Sun 9/12/07
Disillusion with City Hall has many voting by not voting
September 12, 2007

Howard Hamlin wouldn't cross the street to vote yesterday. Literally.

Well, he would have had to cross more than one street and round a couple of corners, but the 49-year-old Govans resident was just a short walk from his polling place yesterday when I came across him. The polls were open and there probably wouldn't have been a wait for a ballot booth, but, nope, Hamlin had no plans of voting.

"I've given up because of so many disappointments," Hamlin said. "They say one thing and do another."

I guess you could say Hamlin, a tractor-trailer driver, voted by not voting. Most of the city, in fact, voted against voting yesterday, with election officials reporting one of the lowest turnouts for a mayoral contest in years - about 28 percent, or close to 83,000 voters.

Sonia

[sonias]

13. (DC) A Vote the District Deserves

Washington Post OpEd 9/12/07
A Vote the District Deserves

By Orrin G. Hatch, Joe Lieberman, Tom Davis and Eleanor Holmes Norton
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; Page A19

The four of us serve in different houses of Congress and are members of different parties. We do not always share political goals or co-sponsor the same legislation. We have, however, worked hard on a historic bill to ensure that the nearly 600,000 Americans in the District of Columbia and the residents of Utah are properly represented in Congress.

Under our legislation, the District would get a House vote for the first time in 206 years, and Utah would get the seat it was denied because of counting irregularities in the 2000 Census. We are proud that ours is a bipartisan bill, which passed the House in April and now has clear majority support from Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.

In spite of this Senate majority, we are now seeking 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. Filibusters of equal-rights bills have long been discredited by history. Democrats were wrong to filibuster voting rights bills in the 1960s, and Republicans would be wrong to filibuster our voting rights bill today. A Post poll earlier this year showed that 61 percent of adult Americans support a House vote for the District. This is not surprising, since District residents have fought in every American war and rank second in per capita income taxes paid to support our government.

Sonia

[sonias]

14. (OH) Clerk's race widens in Cuyahoga Falls

Ohio.com 9/11/07

Clerk's race widens in Cuyahoga Falls
Seven independents joining Zeno Carano, Widowfield on ballot

By Connie Bloom
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Tuesday, Sep 11, 2007

The partisan races for Clerk of Cuyahoga Falls Municipal Court have heated up with the addition of seven independents who filed by Monday's deadline and will appear on the ballot in the November elections.

All seven will run against state Rep. John Widowfield, who won the Republican nod in Tuesday's election and Democratic incumbent Lisa Zeno Carano, who also won easily.

Widowfield, 43, a known commodity with three terms representing the 42nd District, edged out Keith Snock, 45, a resident aide at Hattie Larlham.

Widowfield was appointed to his legislative seat in 2001 and won a third term last fall, but can't run for re-election because of term limits.

In the Democratic primary, incumbent Zeno Carano, 44, of Tallmadge shut out 23-year-old University of Akron nursing student Christopher Hamad II of Cuyahoga Falls. Zeno Carano was appointed to fill the vacancy in April.

Sonia

[sonias]

15. (VA) Amherst County seeks voting rights exemption

NewEraProgress.com 9/11/07
Amherst County seeks voting rights exemption

By Mike Morell
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Amherst County is seeking to join 11 other Virginia municipalities and counties in being granted an exemption from some federal oversight under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

By a 5-0 vote, the Amherst County Board of Supervisors has directed County Attorney Tom Shrader to proceed with seeking bailout or exemption for the county. That vote came at a meeting of the board last month.

In June, Shrader informed supervisors that the county might be eligible for exemption from the law’s pre-clearance provisions. The pre-clearance provisions require the county to get federal permission for such actions as changes made due to redistricting and moving polling places.

The board asked Shrader to research the process and report back.

(snip)
While this exemption is being allowed after judicial review by the federal government, there are some residents of central Virginia who think it is too soon.

“Over the years, the Commonwealth of Virginia has gone to extremes to oppose any federal intervention in voting rights,” said L. Garnel Stamps Sr., life member of the NAACP and Field Director for the National Action Network. “The entire state should still be under the Voting Rights Act with no exemptions.”

Sonia

[sonias]

16. (CO) Snowmass Villager files affidavit with DA

Aspen Daily News 9/12/07
Snowmass Villager files affidavit with DA

A Snowmass Village bus driver is seeking justice for what he considers a stacked election more than two-and-a-half years ago, and is angry that a challenge to some votes at that time was not addressed.

Johnny Boyd, a driver for the Village Shuttle and a Snowmass Sun columnist, has filed an affidavit asking the district attorney's office to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the Base Village referendum of February 2005.

That election, which saw a record turnout of 1,151 voters in a town of about 1,800 permanent residents, gave the final go-ahead to the 1 million-square-foot mixed-use project now under construction, but by a relatively narrow margin. There were about 120 more yes votes than no votes in the popular referendum brought forward by opponents of the Base Village project, which had been approved by the Snowmass Village Town Council the previous fall.

Boyd believes that as many as 85 second-home owners fraudulently registered to vote just for that election, listing Snowmass Village as their primary residence when they had no intention of keeping it as such. In Colorado, citizens are only allowed to vote in the district that contains their sole legal place of residence.

"It doesn't matter to me whether they voted yes or no -- that they were there improperly voting, that's what matters," said Boyd. "If we were cheated, then that matters. Whenever elections are contested, it's not the winners who will investigate."

Was Karl Rove helping out the Base Village project?

Sonia

[Melissa G]

17. Thank You, Sonia!

:applause:

[Wilms]

18. H.R. 811: House Puts Off Voting Bill, Most Other Business Next Week

House Puts Off Voting Bill, Most Other Business Next Week

Sep. 07, 2007

By Kathleen Hunter and Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff

House leaders have scrapped plans to bring to the floor next week legislation requiring a paper record for every vote cast nationwide, beginning in 2008.

Leadership aides said Friday that consideration of the measure (HR 811), which was planned for Monday, now has been delayed until the week of Sept. 17 at the earliest.

Local officials, who have strongly opposed the bill, touted the move as a temporary victory that could ultimately signal the bill’s demise.

“I’m grinning from ear to ear,” said Alysoun McLaughlin, a lobbyist for the National Association of Counties, adding, “People have realized that the bill is a mess.”

snip

Aides for both parties said the bill has to be reworked because Congressional Budget Office examination of the measure found it would cost $8.4 billion over 10 years. House leaders are looking at adding potential offsets or other revisions to the measure to cover the cost of the bill.

snip

In an effort to address concerns from New York election officials, Rules Chairwoman Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., said Thursday that language was being developed that would carve an exception for her home state, which the federal government sued for failing to meet a 2006 deadline set in the 2002 elections law (PL 107-252) to replace its lever voting machines.

snip

Holt, who engaged in an intense but hushed discussion about the legislation with Slaughter in the Speaker’s Lobby Friday, said afterward that he still did not know whether the New York waiver would be written into the bill, adding that he was unaware of any similar requests for other states to be exempted.

snip

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have made clear that they intend to seek additional changes — even those who describe themselves as supporters.

snip

http://www.cqpolitics.com/2007/09/house_puts_off_voting_bill_mos.html

Discussion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x482585

[Land Shark]

19. anything more current than this?