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TechnoratiCasting Paper Ballots Is Our First Victory
My daughters and I have cast paper ballots in the opening days of the 2008 presidential election. It was their first time voting in a presidential election.
That they have only voted with an African-American atop the Democratic ticket makes this doubly historic for them. The issue of race remains a great unknown in how things will turn out.
But so does the question of whether everyone who wants to vote can, and whether those votes will be accurately counted (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHiCFe2GBjk).
Four years ago this county tried to deny me the right to cast an absentee ballot. After four phone calls and some serious politicking, I finally did get a paper ballot, which I hand delivered to the election board. But was it counted?
My twins are now 21. On Friday, October 3, 2008, we drove to Veterans Memorial in downtown Columbus to cast our ballots under unique circumstances. For a full week, Ohio voters have been able to register and vote at the same time.
It took the focused efforts of thousands of election protection activists---and a legal defense team---to make happen this and other things suitable to a democracy. Such victories will define whether we get fair participation and a reliable vote count in November, and thus who will be the next president.
Since the stolen election of 2000 the Democratic Party and corporate media have studiously ignored the fact that we have been afflicted with an unelected president. A media-based recount in Florida showed Al Gore was the clear winner there eight years ago.
In violation of federal law, 56 of Ohio's 88 counties have destroyed election-related materials, making a comprehensive 2004 recount impossible. No one has been prosecuted. But those of us who watched first-hand how the 2004 election was conducted here know all too well that it was stolen in a "do everything" campaign that the Democratic Party still doesn't comprehend, and does not seem to want to acknowledge.
Nonetheless, we may be entering the 2008 contest in somewhat better shape. Independent reporting on the internet and some talk radio organizing, plus a few major books and articles in places like Rolling Stone and Harpers, have inspired a new grassroots movement for election protection.
We have won important victories, such as removing Ohio's infamous Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the critical point man for Karl Rove's 2004 hijacking. We are pursuing Michael Connell, a shadowy Bush IT operative who has been accused by a Republican insider of working to rig this and other elections.
In Ohio, as many as a third of Ohio voters are casting their ballots early. By law a quarter of those coming to the polls will be able to get paper ballots (we are working to make them available to ALL who want them). As my cohort Bob Fitrakis puts it, the choice will be between paper or the plastic of voting machines.
But the specter of disenfranchisement and electronic theft still hangs over this election as a twin curse to endemic racism. Millions of Americans are being systematically eliminated from voter rolls in as many as 19 states. Most of these are inner city and other vulnerable voters known to be heavily Democratic. Among them are African-American soldiers stationed overseas.
Some 300,000 Ohioans were deleted from the registration rolls prior to the 2004 vote count. Had they all voted, John Kerry might have been in the White House these past four years. Another 170,000 were eliminated after 2004 in Franklin County (Columbus) alone.
Throughout the US, Republican operatives are working overtime to decimate the Democratic turnout. The Bush Administration has already fired nine federal prosecutors for refusing to conduct a bogus witch hunt against legitimate voters.
But other attacks are proceeding, and could make all the difference. You who claim concern about our electoral process might spend at least some of this next month monitoring election boards and guaranteeing that those who believe they are registered do not show up at the polls November 4 only to find they have been disenfranchised for the "crime" of leaning left.
We must also have zero tolerance for electronic voting machines. There may actually be thousands more of these election theft devices deployed throughout the US this year than ever before. As always, the big vendors are hiding their software from the public, claiming it is "proprietary."
But as registration activists, poll workers, judges, official observers and Video-the-Vote workers (see "Be a Poll Worker and Save American Democracy," http://www.freepress.org/ departments/display/19/2008/3205) you may be in a position to exert critical leverage on access to decisions on software, hardware deployment and vote counting that could save thousands of legitimate ballots thoughout the US.
In our next article, Bob Fitrakis, Sheri Myers and I will write in detail about the history of electronic election theft and its long-time master of disenfranchisement, Karl Rove.
In the meantime, it's crucial to remember that favorable polling numbers will not guarantee a fair election. Carefully manipulated racism, plus mass disenfranchisement, rigging of electronic voting machines and additional Rovian dirty tricks are what brought us eight hellish years of George W. Bush. Without taking drastic grassroots action, they could be used again to tack on four more, from which it is not likely this nation would survive.
The good news is that we have won some victories. My daughters have voted in a safe, secure atmosphere, and there's a reasonable chance their ballots will be counted---along with millions more.
But to guarantee a full voter turnout, and a safe reliable, vote count, YOU must get involved. Visit The Free Press (http://freepress.org) and Poll Workers for Democracy (http://act.credoaction.com/pollworkers/index.html).
This year, there is no excuse. We know what has happened, and we know the consequences of inaction. See you in the army....of election protection workers.
12 Comments so far
Show AllGood article. The oppportunities for chicanery, intimidation and fraud abound in our chaotic voting system.
Time to volunteer for poll watching, especially where the electronic machines are in use. I want them watched like a hawk. The more ordinary people who are involved in watching polls, making sure people get a chance to vote, counting votes and guarding the chain of custody of voting materials, the better it will be. In any group you will find some who are incorruptable. You just need one.
The machines may not be rigged this time around, since the vote does not appear to be so close, but I still feel we need to take exit polls and compare. Those Diebold machines have to go.
All honest politicians and the States' Attorney Generals must commit to enforce the law and promote transparency. Those who are involved in voter fraud must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Joe
fpie [October 8th, 2008 6:39 am], in September, Biden echoed a promise made earlier by Obama that an Obama administration would investigate and prosecute BushCo for illegal imprisonment, but, according to this article, said nothing regarding vote fraud.
Biden Promises Prosecution of Bush Over Terrorist Detainment
WiredPRNews, Sept. 10, 2008
http://www.wiredprnews.com/2008/09/10/biden-promises-prosecution_20080910693.html
However, The Telegraph (UK) quoted Biden as saying this:
"If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president - no one is above the law.'"
-- Toby Harnden, "Barack Obama would consider charging Bush administration over Guantanamo," The Telepgraph, Sept. 5, 2008.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/2680908/Barack-Obama-would-consi...
That statement would seem to broaden the possibilities of prosecutions beyond terrorist suspects, including vote fraud.
From the same Telegraph article:
"In April, Mr Obama struck a similar note when he promised that he would ask his attorney general to review the Bush administration’s decisions to differentiate between "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies".
"If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," he told the Philadelphia Daily News. "You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve."
I would think that the kind of GOP vote fraud practiced in Ohio and other states in 2004 would qualify as prosecutable 'genuine crimes' rather than 'bad policies.'
Paper ballots provide a trail that Republicans don't want followed. It would certainly lead to fraud and dishonesty. Of course most roads in America go there anyway.
Hoa binh
I am confident that Obama will get a large majority of votes. Not so confident that it will matter. The only hope is a landslide that is undeniable. That and a willingness of the Democrats to fight it out in the courts and public oppinion arenas.
So if they get past the goal line then comes the next important step. Mr Wasserman touched on it. Prosecutions. The people who have been in any way complicit in these stated crimes must be made examples of. Election officals must know that they cannot steal our right to a fair election and expect to walk away unharmed. This must be treated as the major crime that it is.
Bush will pardon his near and dear of their crimes (never quite understood how you can pardon someone before they are convicted) but the smallfry will be left unprotected. Vote theft can't happen without many willing hands and they need to be made to confess and name names. The big guys may avoid jail but they must not avoid disgrace.
I would suggest foreign supervision of your polls but with the world standing of your current administration, the supervisors would probably rig it for the Dems.
If I were from overseas and saw what Bush had accomplished, I might too.
I don't think there is any doubt that we need to find some way of protecting our votes and how they are counted. Not smart enough to make suggestions myself about it, but I know we need it.
I don't believe for one minute that race will impact this election very much except for the racist vote of blacks for Obama. Considering we have certainly had racist votes for whites, it seems not only unsurprising, but fair.
Every time I hear one of these pundits say Obama will probably get 90% of the black vote, I want to scream....DUH! If you'd waited this long, you'd do the same.
Good grief.
quickstepper, you are correct that due to the massive fraud at every level in Ohio, it would have been very hard to have a workable honest system and it would be hard to find something that would work.
Another question:
"In violation of federal law, 56 of Ohio's 88 counties have destroyed election-related materials"
Why are these people not in jail? They have violated Federal election laws. They deserve to be in jail much more than the petty theives that are incarcerated there now.
Your idea for audits at the Federal and state level would not have worked in Florida in 2000 or in Ohio in 2004 where the election supervision responsibilities were held by the party that was perpetrating the fraud.
A simpler safeguard would be using several counters in each precinct. Each batch of ballots would have a cover sheet which each counter would sign.
Unfortunately, when the election supervisors commit outright crimes as they did in both of those states and the courts deny a remedy, no set of safeguards will work.
q
Paper ballots are not enough. Currently, the only safeguard against fraud is that two counters working together must be of different parties. It is all too easy for a person "registered" in one party to conspire with the other counter to look the other way or outright miscount their batch of ballots.
Typcially, the ballots are bundled into packets of 50 ballots and only the totals are reported. There are many, many points along the way where fraud can enter into the process.
The Federal Govt and every state needs an independent oversight board with random audits of ballots counted as well as examination of totals sheets. (Oftentimes the totals are impossible - 51 total votes in a batch of 50 ballots, etc.) While there will be errors, whenever an audit turns up discrepancies, all of the ballots counted by those ballot clerks (or precients) should be re-examined. This is currently only done for a recount of close races, and even then, the miscreant ballot clerks are not identified.
If ballot clerks know that they very well might be audited and then publicly identified if incompetent or dishonest, they would have less temptation to cheat and an incentive to count carefully.
The whole process needs transparancy to be legitimate. We have a long way to go.
You cast your paper ballots into a malestrom of hate. The only clear winner in this election will be civil unrest and greater division and hatred between the "groups" that make up the electorate. This is an event which involves competing interest groups seperated by irreconcilable differences. This is a country that doesn't need another election; it needs a divorce.
Hand counting of paper ballots by local citizens in all precincts throughout the US will be the real victory.
"Carefully manipulated racism, plus mass disenfranchisement, rigging of electronic voting machines and additional Rovian dirty tricks are what brought us eight hellish years of George W. Bush."
He forgot to include "inciting mass hysteria through the use of 'shock' tactics."
q