Cindy's blog

First, Indiana was included in the list of 17 states at HIGH risk of compromised elections in the Common Cause report: "Malfunction & Malfeasance. Now Indiana makes a new list: Salon's Shameful Six How bad do things have to get before citizens take decisive action?

There was Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Here are the six states where vote suppression could cost voters their voice -- and Democrats the election -- in 2006.

Democracy Crisis: A Briefing for Democrats - Will All Votes Count?

The One-Two Punch: Disenfranchise Voters & Miscount the Votes

A. Disenfranchisement: Suppress the Vote!

Over 3 million votes were cast but never counted in the 2004 presidential election. Millions more were lost because voters were prevented from casting their ballots including those illegally denied registration or wrongly purged from the registries.

Provisional Ballots Rejected: About 1.1 million. Provisional ballots are given if there are problems with the voter's registration or ID, if there is an error in the voter rolls or if they are "challenged" by GOP. Provisional ballots should be counted unless there is evidence the voter was lying about their home address - which is extremely rare.

2 state lawmakers drop out of election

By Mary Beth Schneider

Two veteran Republican legislators have withdrawn from November's general election.

State Rep. Ralph Ayres of Chesterton, who has served in the House since 1980, and Rep. Andy Thomas of Brazil, who is finishing his second two-year term in the House, both pulled their names from the ballot before today's noon deadline.

The withdrawals could potentially play a role in whether the Republicans hold on to their slim 52-48 majority over the Democrats in the upcoming election.

Dean, activists target e-voting honesty in California

“We need honesty and openness back in American government …and that means we do not need election workers taking voting machines home,” Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean said at the 3rd annual DemocracyFest at San Diego State University on Saturday, July 15th.

His remarks were met by applause and cheers from the crowd in San Diego State University’s open air theater. “I am tired of electronic voting machines we can’t trust,” added Dean, who also called for equal distribution of voting equipment in African-American districts and other improvements to protect citizens’ voting rights. “All I’m asking the Republicans to do is count every vote!”

DNC Voting Rights Institute on CA-50 Special Election

For several weeks since the June 6th Special Election in California’s 50th Congressional District there have been reports of election irregularities. The DNC Voting Rights Institute (“VRI”) has been monitoring the developments since Election Day and has raised a number of concerns regarding new and disturbing information.

First and foremost is the fact that any election where there are allegations of machine tampering, break downs in chain of custody, security breaches and other such irregularities must be taken seriously. There are several facts in this race that raise very deep concerns.

Lou Dobbs, Catherine Crier, and the Votergate Team have brought information you need to know about e-voting to video! Enjoy and please share the link with friends. ;-)

CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight - Democracy for Sale - 10 Part Series

Catherine Crier - CourtTV News - Defending Our Democracy I

As Lopez Obrador calls for a ballot-by-ballot recount, it appears that supports of PAN, Calderon's right-wing party (supported by the Bush Administration) may be staying busy covering up for their electronic vote fraud by destroyng some ballots and stuffing ballot boxes in other locations...

Mexico's Election Fraud Caught on Videotapes taken in different cities!

....Also on Monday, candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador released a video in which an election official in Salamanca, Guanajuato (the PAN-dominated state that Narco News has compared to Florida in U.S. post-electoral conflicts due to the high concentration of documented irregularities and outright frauds carried out by election officials there) is caught stuffing many ballots into a ballot box. Captured on video, he sports a blue-and-white shirt (PAN’s campaign and logo colors) and has quite the guilty look on his face as he stuffs one ballot after another into the box.

Mexico and Florida have more in common than heat

Greg Palast
Saturday July 8, 2006
The Guardian

There's something rotten in Mexico. And it smells like Florida. The ruling party, the Washington-friendly National Action Party (Pan), proclaimed yesterday their victory in the presidential race, albeit tortilla thin, was Mexico's first "clean" election. But that requires we close our eyes to some very dodgy doings in the vote count that are far too reminiscent of the games played in Florida in 2000 by the Bush family. And indeed, evidence suggests that Team Bush had a hand in what may be another presidential election heist.

When will the Oversight Hearings Begin?
by Congressman John Conyers, Jr.

Many of us came into election day 2002 confident Democrats would certainly hold if not expand their majority in the Senate. One of the key Senate races was New Hampshire, where a highly popular Democratic Governor -- Jeannie Shaheen -- was running for an open Senate seat in an increasingly Democratic state. One of the shocking losses that evening was Shaheen's loss to then Rep. Sununu.

Later we learned that a prime contributor to Shaheen's upset loss was that their get out the vote operations - the lifeblood of any election day operation -- were effectively stymied by a sophisticated phone jamming operations. Years later legal prosecutions followed, the RNC paid for millions of dollars in legal fees -- apparently out of the goodness of their hearts. We also learned of numerous calls from NH Republican operatives responsible for the illegal jamming to, surprise, surprise, the White House on election day. Finally yesterday, we learned one of the defendants has told us that yes indeed, the instructions to do the jamming came on high from the White House. See the NH Union Leader Article.

I saw this a few days ago and I've just heard the same information live on the Thom Hartmann Radio Show and Thom is a trustworthy source, so...

Predominantly liberal voting rights activists have been raising alarms about electronic voting machines for several years now. Come November, when many activists expect to see massive irregularities in precincts with electronic voting systems, they may find themselves in some suprising company.

Republicans are always quick to trot out accusations of voter fraud in close elections, usually targeting turnout-related illegalities such as registration of non-citizens or the always popular graveyard vote, and usually with little evidence in hand. This year is no exception: Republicans are doing their best to suppress voter turnout among minority voters and the poor, and they can be expected to challenge votes on every conceivable basis.

Kennedy report ignites controversy...

Kennedy, meanwhile, is preparing to up the ante on those he believes abetted the GOP's electoral theft. In July, the outspoken attorney plans to file "whistle-blower" lawsuits against two leading manufacturers of electronic voting machines. According to Kennedy, company insiders are prepared to testify that the firms knowingly made false claims when they sold their voting systems to the government -- misrepresenting the accuracy, reliability and security of machines that will be used by 72 million voters this November.

The 2004 Election: Kennedy report ignites controversy

Anyone wondering where America's next electoral meltdown will take place--and it can only be a matter of time--might do well to turn back to the scene of the last one. Ohio was, of course, ground zero of the 2004 presidential election, and now it's the battleground of one of the most hotly contested governor's races in the country. The Republican candidate this November is none other than Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State, a man vilified by voting rights activists for a string of baffling and, to all appearances, nakedly partisan rulings in the 2004 presidential race, when he also doubled as co-chair of George Bush's state re-election campaign. Now he's at it again--issuing draconian guidelines on voter registration that carry the threat of felony prosecutions against grassroots get-out-the-vote groups, especially in Democratic-leaning urban areas, for even the slightest procedural irregularity. Despite denials from Blackwell's office of any malicious political intent, the guidelines have had an immediate chilling effect on groups like the activist community organization ACORN, which has suspended registration efforts pending urgent consultations with its lawyers. Several leading Democrats have urged Blackwell to step aside from all election-supervising responsibilities, a proposal his staff has greeted with near-derision.

Electronic Systems' Weaknesses May Be Countered With Audits, Report Suggests

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, June 28, 2006; Page A07

To determine what it would take to hack a U.S. election, a team of cybersecurity experts turned to a fictional battleground state called Pennasota and a fictional gubernatorial race between Tom Jefferson and Johnny Adams. It's the year 2007, and the state uses electronic voting machines.

Jefferson was forecast to win the race by about 80,000 votes, or 2.3 percent of the vote. Adams's conspirators thought, "How easily can we manipulate the election results?"

Defying the odds and the will of the American people, a small, but vocal group in the House of Representatives managed to stage a revolt within the Republican Party and have the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization (H.R. 9) pulled from the House floor.

We cannot let this small band of ultra-conservative House Republicans succeed in holding up reauthorization of this landmark civil rights legislation. That's why People For the American Way has launched an emergency petition to tell House Leadership to pass the bill immediately.

Please sign the petition now to tell Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner to stand up to the right wing's stalling tactics and let the VRA bill pass before the Fourth of July holiday recess!

"An Inconvenient Truth" is playing NOW in Bloomington at Showplace East! Please GO SEE THIS MOVIE and take your friends! This movie will help DFMC elect progressive candidates.

AIT Website: http://www.climatecrisis.net

A smattering of reviews:

"It's a mind-boggling disaster epic that draws its special power from the fact that we are both the villains and victims of the story."

"It's probably best to ignore the film's political subtext and simply concentrate on the message: global warming is real, we're responsible for it, and we can do something about it without ruining the U.S. economy. But we're running out of time."

Listen to me, Democrats! Never defend. Never explain. Attack, attack, attack!

When a right-winger accuses you of something, back up, reframe, ignore the charges, just ATTACK. How hard can this be? Ann Coulter doesn’t waste her time defending herself against our accusations. Neither does Rush Limbaugh. They launch their attacks and the terms of the debate are set from there, and once again, as liberals, we are bringing knives to a gun fight.

To whit:

A Republican says, "All you liberals are cut-and-run traitors! You don’t support the troops!"

Instead of frantically beginning to tap dance and show that you’re not a traitor and that you do support the troops, you fire back, "Why are you Republicans such cowards? Your leaders are all draft-dodgers who’ve never fired a shot at anything but a bunch of canned quails and old lawyers. You’re using the troops as human shields against the midterm elections! Do you like seeing our brave men and women in uniform slaughtered and killed? Or are you just too much of a coward to face the consequences of your failed policies in Iraq? Which is it? Do you just hate the soldiers or do you hate your constituents?