The problems other states are having
could be our problems next year!

Act now! Keep electronic voting out of NYC!

TRAINING SESSIONS
Get active in NYC — prepare for public hearings!
Each organization or group should try to send at least one delegate
to learn what is going on here, and what we need to do!

Location: Gallery at Community Church of New York
28 East 35th Street (between Madison and Park Avenues), NYC

For information or to RSVP, call Connie Dondore at 212-777-5533
or email at cdondore@msn.com

Two Demonstrations of New Voting Machines

1. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 15, at 5:00 p.m.
Little theatre, LaGuardia Community College
310 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City
718-482-7200
Directions from Manhattan:
–Take 7 train to 33rd Street Station. Walk 2 blocks westbound to Thomson Avenue and Van Dam Street.
–Or, take the Q32 bus along Madison Avenue and across 59th Street bridge to the intersection of Queens Boulevard and Skillman Avenue and walk one block to the intersection of Thomson Avenue and Van Dam Street.
–Additional directions: www.lagcc.cuny.edu/visit/

2. FRIDAY, NOV. 17, at 5:00 p.m.
Savoy Multipurpose room, Hostos Community College
120 Walton Avenue, Bronx
718-518-4444
Directions:
–Take the 2, 4, or 5 trains to 149th Street (Eugenio Maria de Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse.
–Or take the BX1 or cross-town BX19 to 149th Street (Eugenio Maria de Hostos Boulevard) and Grand Concourse.
–Additional directions:www.hostos.cuny.edu

Public Hearing before the NYC Board of Elections

TUESDAY, NOV. 21, at 4 p.m. (date and time of hearing may change)
New York City Board of Elections
42 Broadway (near Exchange Place), 6th floor
New York, NY
212-487-5300
Directions:
4 or 5 subway to Wall Street stop, or
M1 or M6 bus down Broadway to Exchange Place stop.
R or W subway to Rector Street. Walk one block to Broadway and one block south on Broadway.

Remarks will probably be limited to two minutes. Information will be posted as we get it at
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/ny.html#Announce

ELECTIONS
Glitches cited in early voting

Early voters are urged to cast their ballots with care following scattered reports of problems with heavily used machines.

BY CHARLES RABIN AND DARRAN SIMON

After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors — and a caution against the careless casting of ballots.

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen — the final voting step.

Election officials say they aren’t aware of any serious voting issues. But in Broward County, for example, they don’t know how widespread the machine problems are because there’s no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues and no central database of machine problems.

In Miami-Dade, incidents are logged and reported daily and recorded in a central database. Problem machines are shut down.

Read more.

Tuesday, 31 October 2006, 7:19 pm
Opinion: Michael Collins

PROTECTING THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE 2:
Prospects for a 34 Seat House Pick Up Look Good
Election Fraud and Digital Disruption Take on More Importance

Michael Collins and TruthIsAll
“Scoop” Independent News
Washington, D.C.

The Dixie Chicks Ad NBC Doesn’t Want You To See

NBC is refusing to air an ad for the new Dixie Chicks documentary, “Shut Up & Sing.” Variety reports, “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.”

Harvey Weinstein, who is distributing the movie, issued the following statement:

It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America. The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American.

ThinkProgress has obtained the ad NBC doesn’t want you to see.

Watch it.

Although this e-mail mentions only voting problems in Ohio, Cynthia tells me that they’re also looking for examples of impediments to voting nationwide, as they’ll expand their efforts if they find suffient evidence.

MCM

From Cynthia Butler:

Please distribute by email and post to blogs as soon and as much as possible!

Dear folks concerned about potential Election Day chaos -

The lawyers managing the lawsuit challenging the Ohio Voter ID law – Subodh Chandra, Caroline Gentry & Ritchey Hollenbaugh – are trying to quickly gather even more evidence that will help with the suit. We need this information as soon as possible.

If you think you might have first-hand information about the different ways this law is being interpreted and applied across Ohio, we ask you to send an email to: VotingProblems@gmail.com. The information to be included in your email is set out below.

We are particularly looking for individuals who fit into any of the following categories:

1) On or after October 3, when you went to your local Board of Elections to vote:

a) you were not allowed to vote until you showed some sort of ID, or

b) you were permitted to vote after showing a military ID, or

c) even if you were ultimately allowed to vote, you were told that there was some kind of problem with an ID you wanted to use to vote. This might include an attempt to use a utility bill, paycheck, bank statement, government check, other government document, photo ID, or any other kind of identifying document you used or hoped to use

2) You sent in an absentee ballot through the mail and:

a) on the front of the envelope containing your ballot you checked the box in front of “My Ohio Drivers License number is:” and then filled in the blank with the number above your photo in the upper right hand corner of your license, or

b) you enclosed with your ballot some kind of identifying document rather than providing a Drivers License Number or Social Security Number on the front of the envelope containing your ballot.

3) You are planning to vote at your polling place on November 7, but you don’t have any of the following forms of identification with your name and address: a drivers license, photo ID, military ID, utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document.

4) Your absentee ballot application was returned to you by your Board of Elections

If you fit any of the above categories, or you experienced any other problem concerning your effort to cast an early vote associated with the November 7 Ohio election, we’d like to hear from you. Please send an email to VotingProblems@gmail.com. In that email, please tell us:

a) Your name

b) A phone number where we can call you to talk about the problem you had (or if you’d prefer that we communicate with you by email, we’ll try to work that way)

c) Which of the categories above you fit in and/or a little bit of information about the problem you had

We may not be able to get back to everyone who sends us an email, but we thank you, in advance, for your help.

Rove’s Math: Could it have something to do with secret vote counting??

Last week Karl Rove was interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR Radio. Siegel asked him about the polls and how virtually every one shows the Democrats taking over Congress on November 7th.

Rove’s response was to become agitated. He said Siegel was only looking at the national polls, and not the individual polls, and got angry when Siegel explained he was in fact looking at the same polls Rove was.

Then Rove gets more aggravated and says “you’re entitled to your math, I’m entitled to THE math.”Rove’s statement about “THE” math has sparked a lot of speculation that he knows something that we don’t.

Read more.

A few updates now to our previous coverage of the Stephanie Miller Death Threat letter including audio of the phone call this morning, link to the video of the Fox “News” interview which started it all, and the revelation of more letters from the prolific and insidious “Sock”! All here: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3693

As to further troubling news today now below… — Brad

——————————————————————————–

MIAMI HERALD: Touch-Screen Votes Hopping from Democrats to Republicans in South Florida!
ES&S iVotronic Machine Same as Those Reportedly Flipping Votes in Missouri Senate Race in St. Louis County
[UPDATED: Yet Another Report, from Tampa Bay Tribune, of Votes Hopping from Democratic Candidates to Republicans!]

ED NOTE: Bring video cameras with you to the polls when voting! Especially on touch-screen systems!

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3692

——————————————————————————–

San Diego County Registrar Sends Pre-Programmed, Election-Ready, Hackable Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machines Home With Pollworkers on ‘Sleepovers’ More Than Three Weeks Prior to Election!
One of the Country’s Worst Places to Votes, Led By One of the Country’s Worst Election Administrators, Mikel Haas, Instructs Poll Workers to NOT Tell Voters They May Vote on Paper Ballots if They Wish
An EXCLUSIVE First-Hand Account and Photos of Delusional Election Director’s Irresponsible Scheme

More than 10,000 pre-programmed election-ready Diebold touch-screen voting machines, to be used for the first time across the entirety of San Diego County this November 7th, are now in the cars, garages, homes and hands of poll workers and lord knows who else across one of Southern California’s largest voting regions.

As well, Registrar Haas appears set to defy the California Secretary of State by not counting paper ballots as “normal ballots” on Election Night!…

COMPLETE COVERAGE, EXCLUSIVE ACCOUNTS, PHOTOS FROM POLL WORKER TRAINING:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3685

——————————————————————————–

OHIO MELTDOWN ’06: New Last-Minute Reversal in Buckeye State’s Voter ID Laws Plunges State of Elections Into Chaos!
Would You Expect Anything Less?

Chaos is now reigning down on the voters of Ohio. Anyone surprised?

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=36

Crackdown in Oaxaca

Jo Tuckman in Oaxaca
Monday October 30, 2006
The Guardian

Riot police look on as a protester waves a national
flag during demonstrations in the Mexican city of
Oaxaca yesterday Riot police look on as a protester
waves a national flag during demonstrations in the
Mexican city of Oaxaca yesterday.

Thousands of federal riot police backed by armoured
trucks and helicopters pushed into the Mexican city of
Oaxaca yesterday as a protest that began over teachers’
pay spiralled into a major confrontation.

Police wearing body armour and carrying riot shields
and submachine guns were accompanied by water cannon
and helicopters as they moved from the outskirts of the
city towards the central plaza that has been occupied
by a leftwing movement for months.

Read more.

From Robert Glenn Plotner:

Despite David Kuo’s recent book “Tempting Faith” that exposes the Bush Administration’s and RNC’s disingenuous, contemptuous exploitation of evangelicals, the same foul church-state smoothie is being blended in churches ahead of the 2006 elections. An overlooked story as America goes to the polls for a hard self-examination over the next week is the Rove-Mehlman strategy to target not only close battleground races with their theocratic believers but also to employ them to pick off vulnerable Democratic or gerrymandered districts in their own stomping ground, the Bible Belt. In Georgia and Alabama, for instance, where local polls run contrary to the rest of the country in support of Bush and the Iraq War, the focus is to balance House losses in other areas with gains against Democratic incumbents in rural districts. Indeed, while Bush is shunned by all but the most desperate Republicans running for office nationwide, he has made several stops on behalf of rural Republican candidates in the South. The target audience — the evangelical flock.

Ahead of this background strategy there has been an interesting development with the RNC’s favorite bed mate, the Christian Coalition. In a settlement reached with the IRS last year over the group’s tax-exempt status, the Christian Coalition was required to allow all candidates to write up to 25 words to explain their views on issues in the comparative voter guides with which the Coalition floods churches the Sunday before elections. Frustrated that they would have to allow Democratic candidates equal space in their “guides”, several state chapters have broken ties with the national Coalition to form renamed organizations as a way of explicitly thwarting the IRS ruling. What states? The battleground states of Iowa and Ohio and the Bible Belt Buckle states of Georgia and Alabama.

Also cited by Sadie Fields, chairman of the splinter Georgia group, as reason for the break with the national Coalition was the national Christian Coalition’s “liberal drift.” What does that mean? According to an article that appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in September, Fields was upset that the national Christian Coalition had taken up “such issues as global warming, an increase in the minimum wage, and control of the internet.” The solution to these unacceptable moral inroads of doing something about planetary destruction and battling poverty? Withdraw and rename the state organization, the “Georgia Christian Alliance.” It is as brazen an admission as it gets. The great reformation of the Christian Coalition has nothing to do with religion, but it has everything to do with a Republican political machine that seeks to feed what they believe are precast evangelical votes into the system. The address and phone number of the newly created “Georgia Christian Alliance” is identical, by the way, to the Christian Coalition of Georgia (http://www.vote-smart.org/issue_rating_detail.php?sig_id=001772M).

This past Sunday, October 29th, one million or so “2006 Georgia General Election Voter Guides” from the “Georgia Christian Alliance” in association with the “Georgia Conservative Coalition Education Fund, Inc.” began to infect churches across the state. I assume similar initiatives are under way in Alabama, Iowa, and Ohio. The flier lists the statewide races and the respective candidates under which are listed four or five issues presumably important to Christians. All Democratic candidates are listed as “no response,” unless the authors of the guide have deemed it important to answer for them. All Republican candidates have stated responses in accordance with the particular wedge they are exploiting. Included is a judicial race for the Georgia Supreme Court in which Carol Hunstein is given an asterisk to her “no response” while Mike Wiggins heartily agrees with all their tailored views on Roe v. Wade, school vouchers, etc. Hunstein’s asterisk is a response letter posted to their website in which she reserves her judicial responsibility of impartiality on issues that might come before her. But of course this is not what they want to hear — that is, unless it suits their purposes for a favored Supreme Court nominee to use it in congressional hearings.

It is the specific issues themselves, in their wording and in their very selection, that give away the pure political gamesmanship. Issues are excluded where the Democrat might agree with their view on a moral issue. Every Democratic position must read “No Response” or “Oppose.” Other obvious straw issues are raised in races meaningless to the issue such as “Prohibit abortion except in cases where the life of the mother is endangered” as an issue for Labor Commissioner. It allows them to mark down the Republican as “Supporting” the statement while the Democrat is marked as “No Response.” No issue appears regarding poverty, global warming, genocide in Darfur, anything that in any way might be misconstrued as a Christian wanting to help the unfortunate or downtrodden or to take seriously the role of Earth’s caretaker, seemingly defining Christian issues.

But what is most telling about the Voter Guide (in pdf at http://www.gachristianalliance.org/) is the unmitigated pandering to racial fear in the South. This is clearly an organization that understands the racial divide in evangelical churches and plays to it as a cynical wedge issue. They are courting white voters based on race over issues that have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with religion. “Affirmative action programs that provide preference to minorities in hiring and promotion” appears as an issue beneath six races, all (R) Oppose (D) No response. GA’s photo ID bill that would require a state issued photo ID in order to vote and has already been struck down in the courts as discriminatory towards minorities receives prominence in three races, all with Republicans supporting it and Democrats either marked as “No response” or “Oppose.” The issue of in-state tuition and scholarships for the children of illegal aliens also apparently gets their moral goat. There is absolutely no reason for these and other similar issues to be pushed as moral issues to white churches except that the Republican lackeys know that they are white and are courting them based not on morality but on immoral prejudice.

Also of note are two (and only two) special guides directed at churches in specific districts, Georgia’s 12th and 8th, the two districts recently given the royal visit by Bush to stump for Republican House candidates. Indeed, from the specifically targeted house races alone, it’s laughable to read “The Voter Guide is provided for educational purposes only and is not to be construed as an endorsement of any candidate or political party.” It is so explicitly an *absolute* propagandistic endorsement of and by a crafted cog in the Rovian machine that I’m certain when the next ruling is handed down against them, they’ll simply perpetually rename themselves and continue their unholy alliance under a new “Christian” brand name. Where is the simple counter strategy to produce a progressive and fair Christian guide with an emphasis on poverty issues? It might have gone a long way to balancing Rove’s math. In Georgia, subtract two from any potential Democratic gains and add two for the strange bedfellows as they continue their unholy alliance.

RGP

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

A Way to Restore Confidence in Elections
By Steven F. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss
October 30, 2006

Widespread concern over recent reports from Princeton University on Diebold machine susceptibility to tampering, and from New York University on e-voting more generally, confirm what computer scientists have long known and contended: There is little reason for confidence in election results obtained from electronic voting machines.

Yet voters in the United States are denied the one powerful technique that might restore confidence in election results — an independent exit poll.

In next week’s midterm elections, 90 percent of Americans will vote on electronic touch-screen voting machines or optical-scan systems. According to a 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office, these systems have inherent flaws that “could allow unauthorized personnel to disrupt operations or modify data and programs that are critical to the integrity of the voting process.”

Read more.