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Published on Thursday, October 23, 2008 by American News Project
Voters Sue Pennsylvania, Election Official Scoffs
PHILADELPHIA, PA - Earlier this week, ANP reported that, come November, Pennsylvania
voters could face substantial delays at the polls. We spoke with the
man running the election in Philadelphia, who scoffed at long lines and
tales of lost votes. Now, voters are suing the state of Pennsylvania.
With the help of Voter Action and the NAACP, they filed a complaint
this morning in Philadelphia federal court, specifically citing an
interview between the American News Project and Philadelphia Deputy
City Commissioner Fred Voigt. Here's an update and more of our
interview with Philly's deputy commissioner, Fred Voigt.
Click here to view our original story.
Click here to view the Voter Action complaint and plaintiffs' memorandum.
© 2008 American News Project
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8 Comments so far
Show AllThis clown just doesn't want to do his job. Where I vote in Wisconsin we mark dots on an optical scan sheet and put them in the scanner. If the scanner got messed up they could just collect the ballots and hand count or wait to run them through the machine when it was fixed.
No waiting, no lines and no phony machines. If there are people who can't fill dots a touchscreen could be set up to print an opscan sheet that could be fed into the system. Right now people who have trouble can bring a friend to assist.
We have voted this way for over 10 years and there is never a problem.
Throw out Voigt and his boss. How is this position filled? Was he hired based on ability or experience? He is a dud, not a problem solver. We need energetic and competent people in positions that are critical to democracy.
Machines have to be checked in advance. If he cannot understand how hourly wage workers and older or disabled people can be disenfranchised by long waits, he does not understand the process he is paid to manage. He could have more poll workers or even train volunteers to take a late shift.
That being said, I hope Obama, independents and local candidates devote time and effort to challenge any questionable voting scenarios and results wherever they occur. I hope that Nader and McKinney (who have less money for lawyers, etc.) will give moral support to challenges. Kerry's immediate capitulation in the face of massive evidence of electoral was dismaying and incomprehensible. Acceptance of practices that lead to disenfranchisement bodes poorly for any efforts at progressive change in the future.
Joe
I'm a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvanian. A son of a large working class family of trade unioinists, of die hard Dems. For my parents, it was the Kennedy election of 1960 - a first time Catholic president, and Irish ethnic like us, and young at 44 years old, the youngest president to take office. Kennedy won by a narrow margin. When hid administration embarked on the Voting Rights Act of 1963 and civil rights legislation most from my adult Democrat party-AFL-CIO neighbors and coworkers were in opposition to Black emancipation in the voting booth, affirmative action at the job sight.
Today in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, a big majority, having supported Hillary, will vote Obama. My generation and younger voters are muck less blatently racist. Change is slow to come. Change does come for those who dig in for the long run. That's why I see a future for a third party in my region.
While Philadelphia gets most of the attention in Pennsylvania politics, throughout this election Pittsburgh and its surrounding Allegheny County has been a Dem stronghold for 80 years largely due to our working class demography, our rust belt devastation initially caused in the Reagan era, and subsequent inattention of Democrat administrations. Fact: In the 1984 elections, Walter Mondale garnered the lowest vote tally in the history of the Dem party. He carried only 2 counties - his own in Minnesota, and hey Yins, us in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County. In the 1972 elections, "Peace" Candidate (Dem) George McGovern was silently abandoned by our Dem party machine from the date McGovern won the nomination. So yeah, we know well, political life under Dem leadership, local and national.
Pittsburgh voters were early on with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition of the mid-eighties. Pittsburgh disenchanted Dems and leftists launched Green party ballots a decade ago and are active this year, though their efforts failed to enroll enough numbers to put the Greens on the Pennsylvania ballot.
Our region is a case study for the national dilemma - " Vote Democrat or you aid the Republicans". Our third party activists remain stubbornly committed to the dream of Green, of multiparty democracy. In a Dem stronghold like ours we have seen for decades experienced weak and empty Dem leadership. Of course in this election count on an overwhelming turnout for Obama. Count on the Green party ballot in 20012.
Moe Seager
Happy to hear this Moe. My mother was from a Russian immigrant mining family in Washington County and had illiterate parents, yet somehow she knew what was right and wrong about race (and many other things). Perhaps the death of her father in a mining accident made her think more deeply, or perhaps it was union organizers or reading books. When she moved to NY and became a factory worker, she ended up joining the NAACP. She was friends with everyone, and set an example through neighborly behavior in the fifties and sixties. I have always felt that stereotypes against working people are just that - stereotypes that erase complexity and possibility.
Joe
"Get use to it!!!!"
I live in Spain and helped with voter registration from abroad I have also been asked to talk to adult English Classes about the elction.
The Cal Poly Tech/MIT Study of the 2000 Election showed that over 4 million electronic votes were lost.....Election Data Service 2004 statistics showed that 121.8 million people went to vote and only 113.9 electronic presidential votes were counted.
The Democratic National Committee has been aware of the problem for seven years. They have done nothing to protect the vote. Why?
A simple solution a paper ballot as well as the electronic. Count both and any disparity, the paper counts.
In DuPage County, Illnois, the electronic machines were found to be counting backwards in the local elections this past spring.
Each and every person has the right to have their vote counted
Maybe if the U.S. Department of War and Devastation (DWD) produced one less laser guided BOMB per year (for the DWD's little mass murder campaign in Iraq) we could earmark those resources to the modernization of Pennsylvania's voting systems. Again, such modernization would require only the value equivalent of one DWD weapon of mass destruction.
Sounds rational to me. But, seriously, this country is not worth "saving", so just keep manufacturing those laser guided weapons of mass destruction, continue with the little mass muder campaign and the hell with the voters.
Can someone at Common Dreams explain why / how certain articles, such as this one, are completely pulled from the archives? I found this one only by Googling "Pennsylvania".
Joe
Earlier this week, ANP reported that, come November, Pennsylvania voters could face substantial delays at the polls. We spoke with the man running the election in Philadelphia, who scoffed at long lines and tales of lost votes. Now, voters are suing the state of Pennsylvania. With the help of Voter Action and the NAACP, they filed a complaint this morning in Philadelphia federal court, specifically citing an interview between the American News Project and Philadelphia Deputy City Commissioner Fred Voigt. Here's an update and more of our interview with Voigt.
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Thomson
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