Williamburg, VA, Precinct Berkley is suppose to vote at the Recreation Center; however, according to an Obama supporter, there is a flyer being left on porches with Obama's picture on it that is directing Obama's supporters to go to Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School.
Please help!
silenceiscomplicity AT yahoo.com
A lot of Democrats, like me, are nervous. Our candidate is in great shape. He's run the best, noblest campaign in decades. He's flush with money and is using it like a bludgeon. His opponent is broke. McCain's arguments have lost all credibility, and his running-mate is an embarrassment. While McCain's supporters are filled with dread; Obama's are wildly energized.
We're filled with optimism and anxiety. Because, for two Presidential elections in a row, we know the Presidency has been stolen from us, and we're afraid it will happen again. And let me be clear, if Obama isn't the next President, it will be because it was stolen (in my not-so-humble opinion).
(CA) 7/08 - San Francisco: Grand Jury...
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For as long as this election season has been going on it only seems like it was yesterday when the New Hampshire primary took place, but it happened way back in January. The New Hampshire primary followed a strong win by Obama over Clinton in the Iowa caucus. Polls showed that Obama was about to win Big on the day before an event that Obama now identifies as a succinct warning, "Two Words."
Well, New Hampshire is indeed "Two Words" but if you ask Dennis Kucinich what "Two Words" he would use to describe what happened nine months ago in New Hampshire he might just reply with, "Election Fraud."
I'm not talking about the registration shenanigans that ACORN has been fighting. I am talking about illegally switching votes, stealing votes, flipping votes, caging voters, or any method used to discount or deny a person's vote. Election Fraud.
In the New Hampshire primary Barack Obama did better than Hillary Clinton in the districts where votes were hand-counted, 52 to 47 percent. However, in the districts that used the famous Diebold optical scanners, it was the exact opposite, 52 to 47 percent. Dennis Kucinich was rightfully astounded by the results so much that he demanded a recount! Sadly, since he lost more than 3 points the law required him to pay for a recount.
Edward Felton a Princeton University computer scientist who has a YouTube video showing his study that Diebold's touch screen machines are easily corruptible, said at the time that demographics were to blame for the discrepancy. His explanation was that the rural districts used hand-counting and that rural people supported Obama. He adds that the larger urban cities preferred Clinton and those areas used the optical scanners. This, again was Felton's idea of why Clinton won by a margin that was pretty much the exact opposite of the polls held the day before.
With all that is being discovered and what has already been common knowledge about Election Fraud, could this be a "Two Word" call to all voters, by Obama, to get up, get out, and vote?
See, Obama has issued a letter to the DOJ to investigate all the illegal Election Fraud that is occurring in Ohio and other swing states. He also would like the DOJ to look into a Republican collaboration to feign astonishment for what ACORN has done with voter registration. Anyone who knows about the ACORN case knows that ACORN is clean and have done nothing to fraudulently steal or manipulate VOTES. The only reason ACORN is being made an issue by the Republicans is because when Obama and the Democrats urge investigations for actual Election Fraud, they will have already numbed the public with this over-play and lament, "Oh, now the Democrats are griping about this because they lost, where were they on this issue when they were winning?"
Can't you see that line?
At the same time Barack has an army of lawyers manning swing states for any sign of caging or voter intimidation. Now, with his call for us to not be complacent and to get out the vote, he is essentially flooding the system with voters. Is the answer for another stolen election to be multi-faceted? Yes, and at that, let go of the traditional Democratic response to stolen elections, @!$%#ing.
Now is the time to do our part and contact the DOJ, write letters to newspapers, call your Secretary of State (because they have taken internet access off-line in Ohio. At a time we need them most, they close their doors) and demand that they stop this Election Fraud. We have the numbers.
http://action.aclu.org/protectthevote
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=it_in_government&articleId=9117644&taxonomyId=69&intsrc=kc_top
http://www.scmagazineus.com/Electronic-voting-results-questioned-in-NH-primary/article/104145/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNYA5ggwG84
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/18/6574/3360
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/9/ohio_secretary_of_state_jennifer_brunner
Excerpt of conversation between Bill Moyers and Mark Crispin Miller:
BILL MOYERS: What do you make of the ACORN case? I mean, even as we are talking there's an investigation, the Department of Justice, the FBI, they started investigating ACORN. Fox News has been beating the ACORN issue over and again for the last week or so. John McCain brought it up Wednesday night in his debate with Obama, tried to tie Obama to ACORN. What do you make of the ACORN controversy?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, I make of it what it is a first-class propaganda drive. The entities you've mentioned are all participating in it - Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, John McCain, the McCain campaign, despite the inconvenient fact that John McCain gave the keynote speech at ACORN's annual conference in 2006. We won't talk about that. The fact is that what we're hearing about ACORN is, without exception, false. It is false. ACORN itself flagged the suspicious voter registration forms that caused this whole thing to begin in Las Vegas about ten days ago. It brought those forms to the attention of the secretary of state who then turned around and said, "Ah-ha, evidence that you're conspiring to commit voter fraud."
Well, filling out voter registration forms dishonestly to pick up a couple of bucks, which is what the ACORN volunteers had done, is not voter fraud. What ACORN does is it pays people to register others. So naturally there are people who will turn in funny forms because that's the incentive system, that's a way to make a couple of bucks. And that's why ACORN has been quite scrupulous over the years in going through these forms and then turning in the ones that strike them as suspicious.
BILL MOYERS: And it's done that. I mean, ACORN admits that some of these registration cards are problematic, such as the name "Mickey Mouse." "Mickey Mouse" is registered, and ACORN has pointed that out. The entire Dallas Cowboy football team was registered in Las Vegas, Nevada. So, so that part of the argument is true, right? Some people do fill out bogus registration cards.
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Yeah. And ACORN turned them in. That's the point I'm making. These are infractions by grass-roots volunteers who do the wrong thing. That's not voter fraud, however. Voter fraud would be if somebody showed up to vote and said, "Hi, I'm Mickey Mouse. May I vote now?" That's not going on.
BILL MOYERS: And does that happen very often?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: It never happens. Let's just talk statistically about this, okay? As of 2007 the Department of Justice had prosecuted - are you ready for this? This number? 120 cases of voter fraud.
BILL MOYERS: Over what period?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Over, well, this is, like four years. Okay? 120 cases. And there were 82 convictions. Now, I think the republic will probably withstand that attack, right? We're talking about voter fraud that's being perpetrated in the tens. And I can tell you, moreover, that not one of those cases of fraud actually involved a person showing up to vote improperly. They were other kinds of fraud. You know, election judges breaking the law and so on.
The point I'm making to you here, Bill - and this is the most important thing I'm going to say to you tonight - is that this is a pretext being used by a party, okay, that is itself committing election fraud and vote suppression on an enormous scale. In other words, we have a party that is itself engaged in disenfranchising, actively disenfranchising millions of Americans. It is itself complaining about a group that is supposedly planning to do the same thing but that isn't doing that at all.
BILL MOYERS: What's the evidence that say the Republican Party is disenfranchising millions of people?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, first of all, all of these voter purges, the caging of voters, as I described before.
BILL MOYERS: Well, I mean, the Brennan Center report two weeks ago said perhaps hundreds of thousands of people have been improperly purged from the rolls without even knowing about it. But they didn't talk about millions.
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, I, in the aggregate, it does and could easily add up to millions of voters because we're talking about a very, very broad range of devices, you know, both legal and illegal that will have a dramatic effect and that will add up. If hundreds of thousands of people are disenfranchised nationwide simply through voter purges alone, you see? That is significant. If the caging of voters results in the disenfranchisement of another 200,000, 300,000, we're talking here about numbers that definitely do add up, you see, and that make a difference, are meant to make a difference come Election Day.
BILL MOYERS: This term "caging," what's a simple understanding of that?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: It's really very simple. The Republican Party, in a particular state, will get a list of the names and addresses of Democrats and send them letters that look sort of like junk mail, you know? Often they'll have windows in the envelope, the kind of thing that people are going to be inclined to throw away. And if people don't open those envelopes and take out forms that are in them and fill them out and send them in, their names will be stricken from the voter rolls on that basis. They've also been known to send these kinds of forms to people who are overseas serving in the military. Well, they're not home to check their mail, so if they don't fill out the forms, their names are stricken from the voter roll.
This is not an issue of voter fraud. This is an issue of election fraud. I am certain that the DieBold and other computer voting machines can be hacked, have been hacked, and will be hacked. The codes should not be proprietary, but should be transparent by the company that ownes them. I am more nervous, and unsure that our votes will be counted accurately. Paper ballots measure almost perfectly to electoral votes, versus a out of wack inaccuracy with computer voting results to electoral votes. I am concerned that we no longer have a watchman, we no longer have a voting voice, we no longer have a democracy.
We might as well go all the way with it and become a communist country. Don’t take my opinion, watch ‘Murder Spies & Voting Lies’ exposing FL Congressman Tom Feeney linked to vote-rigging software and Clint Curtis, the computer programmer who designed it.
The following text comes from: http://rfkjrnews.com/2008/09/28/will-your-vote-be-counted-this-november/
Bobby: “There are about 30 scams the republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by democrats and republicans but it was passed by a republican congress with a republican senate and a republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for democrats to register, for democrats to vote and then for democrats to have their vote counted. “One of these requirements under HAVA is called “the perfect match” and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this–just this one scam. And what it does is they use a computer system to compare your registration application to all other government records of you in the state. So they’ll look at your social security records, your motor vehicle records and any time you’ve had any interaction with the government and if there is any information on your voter registration that is different than the information on another government record that they find they remove you from the voting rolls. “For example, if I registered as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and yet my motor vehicle license said Robert Frances Kennedy Jr. I’d be removed from the rolls. If your initial is different, if you leave an initial out, if you leave a “Jr.” out, if you leave a hyphen out in your name. And what they’ve done is a study in New York that said 80% of the errors are errors that were done by state clerks who are taking down this information. And particularly immigrant communities that people tend to vote democratic, people have names…spell Muhammad with an “o” instead of a “u” (crosstalk) Pap: “Are the democrats suing to stop this?” Bobby: “No, the democrats are doing nothing to stop it. In New Jersey, which is a swing state, 300,000 voters in New Jersey were just sent letters saying that they are now ineligible to vote. New jersey is nice enough to actually notify them–most states will not even notify them. And New Jersey intends to send out 870,000 letters so that is three quarters of a million people off the voting rolls in a state that could decide this vote by 50,000 votes. And these are democrats that are being pushed off the rolls. Bobby: “Let me tell you about one other of these scams people should know about. If you’re a newly registered voter–and of course the democrats have done these gigantic registration drives–12 million people on registration–if you’re a new voter you MUST include your license or some other state I.D. when you come to vote. What that means is that if you’re a college kid (and college kids now–they’re sending in absentee ballots–they’re not going to the voting place, they do everything online or they do everything remotely–they don’t dream of going to the precinct house voting on election day and waiting in a long line) so if they send in the absentee ballot and they don’t include a color copy of their license their vote is going to be thrown into a trash can. And none of these people know this because you have had to read the law in order to know it. So there is no notification for when you fill out your registration form, so all of those 12 million people that the democrats have registered: those ballots are going to be just thrown out. Pap: “And if democrats won’t talk about this how the hell’s anybody gonna know about it? I’m involved with this kind of thing every day–I didn’t know that until you just told me. The media is not talking about it. How in the hell is somebody gonna find this out? It’s just incredible. Bobby: “Hopefully–Obama is getting 66 million dollars a month–hopefully somebody in the democratic organization is going to pay some attention to this before election day!”
Here are the most common types of election theft/abuse that you may encounter: * Inadequate number of voting machines. * Broken voting machines. * Lack of provisional ballots or failure to accept them. * Claimed problems with voter registration. * Failure to accept valid ID. * Tampering with voting machines or results. * Long lines that are not moving.To learn more about your rights in your state: http://216.250.243.12/efp/knowrules.cfmTo use our one-point theft reporting system: http://216.250.243.12/efp/reportsystem.cfm
How to Contact the Media About Voter Theft: contact@americasdemocrats.org
****
No more 2000s! No more 2004s!
We can't let Republicans steal the White House again in 2008.
As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. points out: "The Republican Party mounted a coordinated, criminal campaign to steal the 2004 Presidential election -- and it worked. Now, as another election approaches, you and I need to stand together to make absolutely certain it doesn't happen again!"
We don't have to let it happen again.
We need your support raise the funds now to make sure that "no voter is left behind" on Election Day! Some states require the filing of bonds. Every election challenge requires expensive lawyers. We need your help to make sure that Democrats are ready this time to go toe to toe with Republicans in a disputed election. Your support will allow us to assemble an army of volunteers across the nation that can be marshaled and trained to keep elections honest.
The NoVoterLeftBehind Project is dedicated to preventing 2000 and 2004 election abuses from once again keeping a Democrat out of the White House.
The McCain campaign as we have seen in the last weeks have stooped to the lowest level thus far - but the lowest of campaign lows for McCain will be on election day, when he rallies bullies across the Nation to "Be an Election Monitor". https://secure.johnmccain.com/Secure/EdoSignup.aspx
What exactly does this mean? I don't know yet but I have signed up as a "concerned citizen". What the McCain camp doesn't know is that this "concerned citizen" is concerned about the McCain campaign's attempts to bully non-McCain support target groups on election day by providing false information, scare tactics, and lies to people in battleground states.
Because of this election fraud accusation against the Obama campain which is completely untrue, the McCain camp is preparing themselves for fraudulent action themselves, only to turn this fraud card into a "he said she said" argument.
I plan to go through the "election monitor" training offered by the McCain camp and with clear intention to report back on what I hear. I don't trust the McCain camp but I do trust their ability to stoop this low.
If anyone has any more information about this movement to monitor the elections outside the polling booths and essentially influence the votes, please let me know if there's any actions being taken by the Obama campaign to counter this potentially negative and unethical activity.
- A concerned Citizen
The GOP is hammering the organizing group ACORN, in part because it wants to create the imrpession that Sen. Obama is somehow a propagator of manipulations and shady dealings. It is a vital part of the Republican psychological fabric to make sure that somehow, no matter how dishonest or sinister in essence or intent, the Republican zeal must be directed like a lightning strike at something its adherents believe is morally degenerate, irresponsible and against all decency.
They will do anything to be able to tell lies with that sharp tone of condescension in their voices, in order to convince voters that they can vote their bias, vote their ignorance, and take shelter in the fabrications of the Republican party. This may sound exagerrated, but it is a consistent pattern and it is visible in every single election where Republicans feel it will not be an easy win. The ACORN issue is also part of the Republican strategy to accuse voters of defrauding the electoral system, when in fact it is a top-down organizational manipulation that they have been working to carry out in every presidential election since 1968.
We need to take this challenge seriously. They will not relent, and they will become increasingly vicious with every passing day. The more shocking their tactics, the more press they will get. If individuals working with ACORN falsified registration forms, there needs to be transparency, the group needs to take action against those individuals, and the Obama campaign needs to be clear about its absolute opposition to any such tactics.
But, we must also keep in mind that legitimate voter-registration drives are absolutely essential to our campaign, to the message of hope, renewal and change, and to the integrity of our democracy, as such. The Republican party counts in most elections on insuring that fewer citizens vote. That is not democracy, it is voter suppression, it is Bolshevik. We need to make this point and make it stick. Democrats, Barack Obama and community organizing groups that help register voters, want our democracy to work, want everybody to have a voice.
The issue here is ACORN was defrauded by volunteers or paid contractors. Someone for some reason decided to forge registration forms. It is likely that there is a trumped up Justice probe going on (this has been part of several corruption scandals for years, including the firing of US attorneys), and that ACORN is being blamed for individual actions, but we need to separate the wheat from the chaff and tell the truth to the American people. Government officials involved in pursuing false or trumped up prosections should be prosecuted, and now.
But the central note we need to strike is: election fraud of any kind is wrong; we need absolute transparency on all related issues, including the misuse of prosecutorial powers, the intimidation of voters, voter profiling for "challenges" and insecure electronic machines, plus links between the corrupt bosses of certain manufacturers and the GOP. Do with this what's been done on Keating: get the resources together, get the story ready, and if they try to use this to smear Obama or to suppress the vote, get the message out on what is known about these other issues.
AP is reporting that the GOP is filing a complaint against Obama
….alleging the campaign has accepted donations that exceed federal limits as well as illegal contributions from foreigners. The complaint asks the Federal Elections Commission to audit Obama's campaign fund, RNC chief counsel Sean Cairncross said in a conference call with reporters.
Certainly we are going to continue to see such desperate acts. Barack is beating them fair and square and they can’t stand it.
Now …we have to be ready, get your action guide on election fraud today by downloading a copy of the comic guide with some dark facts and serious solutions you can take with you right into the voting booth and including info needed for you to register and walking your vote in, not mailing it in.
Down load it here http://www.stealbackyourvote.com/
Also see, www.bradblog.com
Also see ‘Uncounted,’ ‘Murder, Spies, & Voting Lies – The Clint Curtis Story’
See this podcast beneath the Listen Now tab from the home page:
We've got the rats on the run- keep doing what your doing!
Peter B Collins 10/03/08 H3 Guests: Brad Friedman from Bradblog.com; John Fund of the Wall Street Journal on Stealing Elections: how voter fraud threatens our democracy. Spoonamore and Conner: Ohio '04, 08 risks. To download the podcast, right-click "Listen" and select "Save As" from the menu.
I recently heard about this term while listening to the Thom Hartmann show last week and was dumb-founded to hear about this tactic that was used during the 2004 Election, specifically in Ohio. The Republican Party is determined that they are going to stay in power and will stop at nothing to make sure they do. Please take a few minutes and click the links to the following stories concerning this issue.
http://www.truthout.org/article/nearly-600000-voters-subject-possible-caging-ohio
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
Of course you don't hear about any of this on any network news cycle and only one cable news broadcaster has spoken about it. That of course is the MSNBC champion of democracy, Keith Olbermann! Go Keith! This effort to disenfranchise voters is disgusting and the GOP have made the last two elections a blatant takeover of power and have turned this country down a path toward facism. No wait, maybe it's socialism, no it's fascism. Of for heaven's sake, I wish the administration would make up their mind.
And, on a side note, here is nice little story about the new GOP darling Sarah Palin and her undying love for wolves. NOT!
https://secure.defenders.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=c406_090308palinwolf&JServSessionIdr012=9efh7nked1.app23a
EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ELECTION FRAUD BUT WAS AFRAID TO ASK.
This may be the most important email you get this election. Pay attention. Keep it and read it when you have fifteen minutes. But don't wait too long.
We're going to talk about the white elephant in the room, the fact that a bunch of our votes may not count if we don't act now. If we don't devote attention to this in our volunteer duties, we will lose. Two sentences added to the end of a phonecall or random conversation can win this election.
"Have you checked your voter registration lately?" and "Do you know where your early polling place is?"
Early voting IN PERSON is the key, not absentee. Most cities have polling booths open days ahead of the election in at least one central location. You can show up a few days ahead of time, find your name on the rolls and then cast your vote. If there's a problem you can still make changes to your registration or file a complaint so others know a problem exists BEFORE November 4th.
VOTING ABSENTEE CAN BE DANGEROUS. If your vote was challenged shortly before the election because your house was foreclosed and the GOP challenged your address at the last minute, you will not know you are not on the rolls. Soldiers in Iraq or otherwise overseas vote absentee and their votes often didn't count in 2000 and 2004 because DO NOT FORWARD letters sent to their house in the States on behalf of the GOP, friendly little reminder letters, have been returned to sender and the GOP has used them to challenge the vote of some poor grunt that may take a piece of shrapnel to protect somebody else's freedom to vote.
That grunt may die on a sandy battlefield never knowing his own right to vote was just challenged because he had to vote absentee.
Also, if its a Republican County and there are Republican poll workers sorting the mail there when your ballot comes in absentee, they could very easily toss in the trash anything that looks like its coming from a Democrat. Absentee only works in SAFELY Democratic districts we shouldn't be worrying about anyway.
Have I mentioned how important it is to learn how to become a poll worker?
How does the GOP poll worker that signed up to work the polls while you were watching Seinfeld know who's absentee ballots to toss in the trash?
Duh.
They looked at the name.
If the name sounds like John Smith, they may seig heil it as a good old boy white male Republican and let it through. If its Tanisha Jackson, or Maria Ramirez, Or Fundi Abdul Han, they would figure its a minority leftist insurgent, AKA a Democrat, and throw it out.
In some counties, absentee ballots are even marked on the distinctive envelope "DEMOCRAT".
Way to go slick.
Speaking of dummies, some people are even dumb enough to actually mark their party affiliation on the absentee ballot. I'm sure that will get past the hands of some unbelievably lucky Republican poll worker or mail thief with no scruples and a bone to pick.
I got a lot of this information out of the book "Armed Madhouse" by Greg Palast, a well respected American BBC reporter who is partnered with Robert Kennedy Jr. He's done his homework. You can find "Armed Madhouse" at the library or Borders and its all pretty well documented in those pages.
In his book, Greg suggests as I do that early voting, IN PERSON, is the key. I would suggest getting the word out to as many groups as possible about this. This needs to be distributed in the real world by real people, not just on the internet. PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW WHERE EARLY POLLING PLACES ARE. I'm not writing this to pass notes to my buddies, I'm writing it for the elderly couple in Indiana, the young turks in Ohio, and the middle aged taco vender in New Mexico. I'll let you translate it into something more suitable to get to those areas.
The people affected by this problem probably don't have the internet anyway. For 56 days we have a national organization that can get to them.
If we do nothing, we do it at our peril.
I don't have time to post the information on every group but a few of us could if someone is willing to start devoting time to this. We should also petition the obviously distracted and busy Obama campaign to do the same.
Nothing is more important as an issue, especially if you live in a swing state and especially if you live in an area that trends minority and Democrat, as those are the easiest to target for fraud due to the names.
Make no mistake, the GOP IS cheating. The poll results that have just come out as being skewed Republican in USA Today, Rassmussen and others are a foreshadowing of shady things to come. They're manipulating the polls to influence swing votes who believe mistakenly there's a GOP bandwagon to get on and to set us up for a possible loss. It is not a coincidence that every major election comes down to a few thousand or hundred votes. We are not that perfectly bipolar in our views across the nation.
Want to know more? Keep reading.
Other ways the vote is stolen? The privatized voting companies, who trend Republican because they're corporate, (don't ask me why we privatize our vote, or why one of John McCain's campaign managers tried to by Diebold, the biggest offender that also makes ATMs, just after he go the nomination.)
These private companies will deliver too few or too old manual voting machines (not electronic) to minority neighborhoods. Rickety machines will break early in the day or if there's not enough to begin with they will create long lines. At various times I've voted in Republican districts where I ALWAYS breezed through in twenty minutes. I've also voted in minority neighborhoods where it took me three hours.
Go figure.
People wont want to wait long periods and they'll go home or be forced back to work without voting. I don't know how we do it, but someone should be checking amounts of voting machines and quality of voting machines delivered to heavily minority areas. Really the campaign should be doing this or we should make them. Don't assume I am forwarding this information to the campaign or that they already know. I was shocked by the lack of knowledge on behalf of the Obama campaign when these issues occurred Super Tuesday. The response I got was, "we're going to file a complaint."
Somehow, that didn't work for Gore or Kerry. If we wait for the powers that be to act, we'll be waiting another four years.
The most frustrating and illusive way the vote is stolen is by electronic vote. Although usage of electronic machines is down because of problems that create miscounts that have surfaced publicly, (The new Secretary of State in California just decertified them shortly before the primary) electronic machines still represent 30 percent of the total machines nationwide, which is a huge margin. Most importantly, Ohio is still using them even though they admit that they lost at least 2000 votes in 2004. The real figure is probably in tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds. (The race was won by a Bush margin I believe less than ten thousand votes.)
In 2004, in one precinct in New Mexico, registered voter population 900, entirely Hispanic and heavily Democrat, where the Catholic church did a massive get out the vote drive to transport people to the polls from all over the rural area in school busses, there were 925 votes cast on the Diebold electronic machines. EVERY VOTE was either for BUSH or none of the above. Kerry didn't receive a SINGLE vote.
Can you say "machine error"?
There was no paper trail as these votes were beamed directly to the companies corporate headquarters. So Democrats drove miles in schoolbusses to vote "none of the above" or for Bush... I guess.
I talked to an IT tech. What happens is electronic machines can be "accidentally bumped" to change the touch screen radius, skewing the totals so some people may vote for Bush instead of Kerry because Bush has a touch radius on the screen bigger than Kerry. There's no paper receipt so you'll have no idea if the machine sent in a mistake.
Provisional ballots. Suck. If you get a provisional ballot in a swing State, count on your vote not counting. Sometimes Republican poll workers will stand smiling at the door and ask where people live, to direct them to either the green or orange table where they'll be on the rolls.
Only, in reality, sometimes they'll direct anyone that is minority or who looks bohemian or younger or just plain angry to the wrong table, so you won't find your name on the rolls and you'll be handed a provisional ballot that will not count because the most likely Republican Secretary of that swing State will rule NOT to count provisional ballots almost automatically. They only count provisionals in razor close votes, and if they haven't counted thousands of them yet, perhaps not even realizing the amount there, how will they ever know its close?
They won't. PROVISIONAL BALLOTS DO NOT COUNT!
Switching people to provisional ballots is also the purpose of why so many Democrat voters registrations get switched "magically" to Republican or Independent. I personally know six people this has happened to, and as a poll monitor I witnessed or heard secondhand of at least another 100 minority voters in just TWO precincts in Pasadena that were furious because their registrations had been switched without their knowledge and they were denied the right to vote in the Democratic primary. They were told gladly that they could vote for McCain or Romney... if they wanted.
Why bother changing a Democratic registration to Republican, you may ask?
Why? So that when voters show up on the day of the vote, their registration isn't listed where they think it will be, and again they'll be handed a worthless provisional ballot. Poof. No vote. I guess nobody thought to check under R for Republican.
When I told the Obama campaign about the many lifelong Democrat voters being turned away as being magically Republican in a Democratic primary, they were rightfully furious. Campaign workers said, "Those people should have been handed provisional ballots!"
Uh... did I mention the problem with those yet?
How does the anyone accomplish this amazing magic of registration switching and why does it happen to a few Republicans too? I remember on Super Tuesday night, the news even did a fluff piece on a, heaven forbid, REPUBLICAN, who had her vote registration switched in the primary. Hey, are the Democrats pulling something too?
I don't think so. I'd guess this lady probably is just a whale watcher and she got caught in the same net the Democrats that lost their vote did.
A whale watcher? What do I mean by that?
Well, all these magic flips of registration may have occurred months or years ago and voters were too lazy to check and see if their registration is still what they think it is. Independent groups loyal to the GOP have operatives canvass neighborhoods or hang out on college campuses. Y'know the guys with the petitions to save the whales or approve that new Indian Casino? Next time you sign one, flip to the last page. If there's a faded carbon copy there, it could be a voter registration change form, or transfered to one, and you sign it, they'll send it in and request your registration be changed to Republican or Independent.
The Republican on the news crying about how her registration was switched probably thought that she was saving the whales when she signed that form in the parking lot at Wallmart. Come to think of it, she did LOOK sort of liberal. Well, the result was that the form got sent in somehow to change her to a liberal on paper at least.
You think you're saving the whales and instead you're saving the GOP.
The angry would be whale watchers I met on Super Tuesday that had their registration changed weren't cheated by the DNC or Greenpeace in 2008, they probably didn't even bother to vote in 2004 or 2006 and their vote was stolen a long time ago by Karl Rove or someone else in a local race and we were just feeling the effect in the massive voter turn out caused by Clinton and Obama.
We can assume all those people that were turned away have fixed their registration by now, right?
Hmn. Big assumption. I'll bet money they're still working ten hours and then watching Sienfeld over a pizza instead of stressing about it. We better mention that the next time we make a volunteer call or have a conversation somewhere, huh?
Dealing with forms and government agencies scares people. They won't bother to check. I talked to girl who's registration was switched to Republican years ago and she's never been brave enough to figure out how to switch back so she can vote in a Primary. Some people actually think they'll get in trouble with the IRS if they call. Heck, beurocracy scares me too.
I know in Los Angeles you can check your registration at lavote.net, but for the rest of the country, I don't know. Thats up to you to figure out.
Rule 1 in election fraud; All politics are local. Even in a Democratic state, a Republican district may create election fraud. Why did those Precincts in Pasadena have so much magical registration flipping? Who cares, this is sunny Democrat California, right?
Wrong.
I live in a Republican Distict that has a lot of tight local races. These people were frauded to keep a local hack in office, not to rig a Presidential campaign, but the result is just the same.
When it comes to election fraud, the thing to understand is that its death by a thousand cuts. There is no one grand scheme. Yes, Karl Rove did approve thousands of names on caging lists, (voters to be challenged by first class mail being returned) The email was titled "RE: CAGING LISTS" and sent by Rove's protege Tim Griffin from his Washington office. Little Timmy was under investigation for vote caging until Bush fired the prosecuting US Attorney and gave GRIFFIN the U.S. attorney's job, uh, until Griffin resigned the day Greg Palast outted the story to Rep. John Conyers who swore to investigate (no joke, you can find the actual lists CC'd to Karl Rove in the latest version of "Armed Madhouse" Greg Palast's book.) The lists were sent accidentally to rnc.org instead of rnc.com, or something like that, and thus they were sent to a spoof site instead, who handed the emails to Palast. Oops.
But that was just part of it.
All the GOP in general does is look at any way possible to keep the amount of people voting down as much as possible.
When you add overly improvisational and passionate neocon poll workers to the mix, overly creative neocons working to approve registrations within the local parties, and some whacky new laws like the "VOTER ID" laws in Indiana and other states that will disenfrancise thousands of people simply because they're working two jobs and don't have time to go get a new I.D., or they're too elderly to get out of the house and get an I.D., or they can't pay the fee, if there is one, which amounts to a Jim Crow poll tax, well, that can ad up.
Thats why the Democratic party fought the voter I.D. laws and the GOP screamed to the rooftops about illegal aliens voting twice. (What illegal alien is even going to show up when they're afraid they're gonna be deported anyway?) Y'know how many people were charged with vote fraud in the last eight years, after Bush's task force on it?
Five.
And I'm sure those were probably trumped up. Oh wait, it was six. I almost forgot Anne Coulter.
Bottom line, find out where early polling places have been set up in each district and spread the word locally. Every volunteer at every Obama phonebank to a swing state should be at the end of the call telling voters to check their registrations before they vote with enough time to fix problems, and to vote early, IN PERSON, at early polling places.
I'm no supergenius expert here, I got all the information either by just reading some articles factchecked online or directly out of Greg Palast's book "Armed Madhouse." Its a book I highly recommend everyone get in the next few days and read, at least the chapters on stealing the vote. You can go to gregpalast.com to learn a bit more about the issue.
Dont assume I'm forwarding this information around. I took the time to compile it so you wouldn't have to spend a week reading Greg's book and so you can share it. Please, forward this information to anyone you know who cares about the right to vote, especially if they live in a swing state or Republican district with tight local races. We can short circuit this problem if we inform voters to simply check their registrations, vote early and vote in person at established early polling places.
Voting absentee is not the best solution, and neither is waiting until November 4th to figure out if your vote has been lost six months beforehand.
Make no mistake. This is a war for the future of this country and it will be won in the fine print.
Most importantly, most importantly of all, is DO NOT DESPAIR.
Hopefully you are still reading and not hanging from the rafters by now.
When I first heard all this information, my immediate reaction was to throw up my hands and say, "What?! Why bother to make an effort to vote if there is massive evidence out there of all this fraud."
I read the book "Armed Madhouse" before Barack Obama decided to run for the White House. I went into this effort knowing all the information I just gave you, and yet I have canvassed for Obama in two States, I've made hundreds of phonecalls, and I've made an award winning ad that played nationally for free.
Why? Why did I choose to support Senator Obama and work my ass off, putting my life and career at times on hold, when I knew what I know?
Because the GOP wants us to despair and stay safely on your computer bitching, or at home eating pizza.
Because from the start, from even before the start, I knew that Barack Obama was the only possible candidate that can surpass any effort to cheat the American Electorate. I knew that Barack Obama could do what he has done, that he could motivate the American people, and that there's nothing more dangerous than a motivated electorate. Barack Obama represents our best chance at taking our country back from the criminals that stole it in 2000 and 2004.
And the GOP has known it all along too.
Well, you see, its precisely because of all our efforts that stuff like vote caging isn't going to work. Elections can only be frauded if people aren't paying attention. In a war, you sacrifice some brave troops to the machine guns in order to overwhelm the machine gun nest. Not all the votes have to count, but there needs to be enough of them cast that they overwhelm any effort to cheat.
Why haven't we heard more outrage from our leaders on this issue? Why isn't Obama screaming from the rooftops about it the way that Dennis Kucinich did after New Hampshire in the primary? And hey, whatever happened to Dennis's appeal for a recount in New Hampshire?
Trust me, Obama comes from Chicago. He understands vote rigging. I believe he's on it. Think about it. That's why he's running the tremendous ground game he is. If Obama was to come out and say anything about possible election fraud in a way that was picked up by the main stream press, not only would he look like a fringe candidate, as Kucinich unfortunately but bravely did, he may also actually supress voter turn out. You'd get a lot of people that would say, "what's the use, my vote isn't going to count, why should I bother?"
We don't want to foster that impression, either in our own minds or others. We MUST, MUST, MUST educate ourselves on these matters so that we can fight them. We MUST, MUST, MUST, put enough fear in voters to get them a bit angry and make them check their registrations even if they believe them to be valid, but we MUST NOT cause despair.
The turnout in this election will be historic. Chances are that our months of voter registration drives already are going to overwhelm any chance at election rigging in at least most states. But all it takes is one State like Ohio or Florida, that is why we must concentrate our efforts in those swing States and be careful how its discussed with voters. We don't want to turn them off.
We're simply informing them about how to check their registration just to prevent any unforeseen problems that might be lurking because maybe they haven't ever bothered to check before. If you sound like a conspiracy theorist, they'll ignore you. Be practical when they say, "Oh, I'm not worried, I know my registration. I got my sample ballot." Then you just tell them, "Yes, but its worth a call to check your registration anyway. Last minute errors have been known to cost votes. Better safe than sorry".
Words to live by. Better safe than sorry.
Distribute this far and wide please.
P.S. I'm listening to radio as I type this. The talk radio host on Air America 1150. In Madison Wisconsin, Democrat voters are apparently getting unsolicited absentee ballot applications that are mailers apparently from JOHN McCAIN'S campaign. These mailers misinform voters to send applications to the wrong office in the wrong city to recieve their ballots.
(They're probably not really from the campaign, but they're from an Independent group with enough GOP funding to mess with the absentee vote. Try googling the story as told on Air America radio at 11:10am.)
I will say it one final time. VOTE IN PERSON AND VOTE EARLY. FIND YOUR EARLY POLLING PLACES AND SPREAD THE WORD.
view more of my blogs and spread the word, any links appreciated, athttp://samuraipatriot.blogspot.com/
