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Voting by Absentee Ballot is the ONLY guarantee that you will be able to cast a ballot in this election. If the voting machines "break down" (which they often do), and there are no paper ballots available at your polling station--or if only "provisional" ballots are available--you don't get to vote.
Bradblog has been touting a recent (10/3/06 ) memo from Diebold's California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson and his ass't Susan Lapsley as a victory for paper ballots. It is not. It is a scam. Here is Lapsley's poison pill...
"You (election officials) may also use paper PROVISIONAL ballots to satisfy voters wishing to vote on paper...." --Diebold shill Susan Lapsley (the 10/3/06 memo) (EMPHASIS ADDED)
Much as I love and respect Brad, we need to understand that this memo opens the way for corrupt county election officials to force voters to use "provisional" ballots, which are easily tossable. The memo was clearly designed to do this. A "provisional" ballot is no ballot at all--as we learned in Ohio.
Brad has pointed out the flaws and loopholes in this Diebold shill written memo--and criticisms of it by (good) Calif Sec of State candidate DEBRA BOWEN, and election reform attorney Paul Lehto ("Landshark" at DU)--but none of them mention THIS ONE--that they can simply substitute a "provisional" ballot for a real paper ballot.
Brad has been responding to the pandemic in voting machine "breakdowns"--for one thing with a proposed Congressional bill to require that emergency paper ballots be made available --although I don't know how anyone could have expected a Congress that was created by Diebold/ES&S to want to help people to vote. The bill does have good educational value, though--and for that, and for AWESOME AND HEROIC WORK ON ELECTION REFORM, I salute Brad!
But California voters and others have got to understand that ABSENTEE BALLOT voting is the ONLY guarantee that you will be able to cast a vote in this election. These crapass, insecure, extremely insider hackable, Bushite-controlled electronic voting machines frequently break down--by accident or by design. The polling place may have NO REAL PAPER BALLOTS to vote on! "Provisional" ballots were created by the Anthrax Congress SO THAT THEY CAN BE TOSSED. That's what happened in Ohio in '04. That's what kept Bush in the White House (--or rather, that was the capper, after a whole lot of electronic voting fraud and other vote suppression all over the country). We have also had reports of election officials' abuse by "provisional" ballots--and failure to provide a real ballot--in California, particularly in the counties with corrupt election officials who opposed Kevin Shelley's reforms.
In California, we've had the right to request a real paper ballot since Kevin Shelly was Sec of State. It is nothing new. But what McPherson and Lapsley appear to have done is to greatly WEAKEN that right, and in this particularly sneaky way--slipping in permission to substitute "provisional" ballots. This needs to be looked into legally. They may have broken California law. (I'm not sure if Shelley codified it--it may have been done by some special power of the Sec of State. I remember that it was something of an emergency measure--associated with his suing Diebold and decertifying their touchscreens, prior to the 2004 election, and I remember also that the corrupt county officials fought him on it.)
After they "swiftboated" Kevin Shelly out of office (on entirely bogus corruption charges) in Feb. '05, they installed Diebold shill Bruce McPherson as Sec of State, by appointment of Schwarzenegger. McPherson then ILLEGALLY re-certified Diebold touchscreens, and is undoing all of Shelley's reforms. He is now facing election--VOTE FOR DEBRA BOWEN FOR SEC OF STATE!--and, like Kenneth Blackwell, has acted to insure an easy Diebold/ES&S rigging of his own election and that of other Republicans including Schwarzenegger. He is also likely trying to head off an overwhelming VOTER REVOLT OF ABSENTEE BALLOT VOTING, by assuring people that they will have a paper ballot to vote on at their polling place.
DON'T COUNT ON IT!
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**Get your Absentee Ballot NOW! The deadline for requesting an Absentee Ballot in California is OCTOBER 31, plenty of time. (The deadline for registering to vote is Oct. 23, a week earlier.) (For other states, check local rules.)**
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Fill it out carefully -ballot and envelope. 1st class mail is acceptable, but I recommend mailing it certified/return receipt requested (it's cheap), or Fed Ex (not cheap)--to insure that it gets there. Photocopy everything before you mail it. Or hand-deliver it to your registrar before the election (best), or to your polling station on election day (okay, but I don't recommend it--because those votes are counted last, sometimes days later).
If you don't get an Absentee Ballot ahead of time, and are stuck on election day--the machines "break down," or you don't want to vote on the machines--demand an Absentee Ballot or other REAL paper ballot to vote on. And raise as much stink about it as you feel capable of. DO NOT vote on any ballot that is marked "provisional" if you can help it.
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THE ABSENTEE BALLOT PROTEST
But this is not my main reason for pushing Absentee Ballot voting. There are reports from all over of a dramatic increase in Absentee Ballot voting. And I believe that it is an indigenous citizen PROTEST AGAINST THE MACHINES. They DON'T TRUST the machines. They want a PAPER BALLOT, HAND-COUNTED. It's already up to 50% to 60% of the vote in some places. That is already a huge VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE in the electronic voting system.
So let's go with it! As with Rosa Parks on that segregated Montgomery bus, ORDINARY PEOPLE are pointing the way.
If NOBODY WILL VOTE ON THESE MACHINES, how can local election officials defend this expensive, riggable electronic voting system?
This is the way to get rid of it. BOYCOTT THE MACHINES! DON'T VOTE on the machines! DON'T COOPERATE with your own oppression! Let these riggable voting machines gather dust and rot!
It won't likely get us accurate vote counts this fall--nothing can--but it WILL create BADLY NEEDED pressure and momentum for reform AT THE LOCAL LEVEL--which I believe is the only level at which election reform is possible. And, if we are successful, we may thus save the '08 primaries and general election from TRADE SECRET vote "counting" by Bushite corporations.
If ordinary people are trying to do something--and I think they are--we MUST support them. They want hand-counted paper ballots. Let's get it for them!
USE THIS PROTEST! Get on top of it! LEAD it! Force the media to acknowledge the REASON for it!
I just saw the first corporate rag "talking point" on this. Sacramento Bee-Dan Walters, yesterday. Not one word about it being a voter REVOLT. He says people are voting AB for "convenience." I don't believe it. It's ALWAYS been "convenient" and it's NEVER been this high. Doubled and trebled over the years since the onset of the electronic voting scam and Bushites inexplicably "winning" elections. Now it's HALF and more of the voters in many places--with dramatic leaps in the numbers of AB voters recently.
It's A PROTEST! The People are SPEAKING! Let's help amplify their voices! Instead of doubting, and worrying, and thinking up all sorts of reasons they SHOULDN'T vote by AB, and SHOULD vote on Bushite-controlled voting machines (helping to pour billions of taxpayer dollars into Bushite pockets), let's go with what IS happening: An existing, in-progress voter rebellion!
Spread the word--for the sake of those who still have time to request an AB! And get on this protest PUBLIC RELATIONS! The corporate media are going to act all mystified (they're already doing it) as to why voters are voting by AB. We have got to counter this--and get the public's message out there.
We may not have much time. This election may be IT. A Diebold II Congress may take away our local power over choice of voting systems, or enact any number of fascist edicts that make reform impossible. So we've got to act now. The people have provided the strategy. Let's HELP them, for godssakes!
Bust the Machines--Vote by Absentee Ballot!
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