Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News for Saturday 8/26/05

[MelissaB]

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Link to previous Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x391203

All previous daily threads are available here:

http://www.independentmediasource.com/DU_archives/du_2004erd_el_ref_fr_thr_calenders.htm




Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page after several posts have been added.

(I won't be able to work on this thread until later on this afternoon. I thought I would go ahead and put it up in case anybody had something to add. Thanks to all who are contrubuting! :hi: )

[DemReadingDU]

1. I think the date should be Aug 27 for Saturday

[MelissaB]

2. Elections run by the same guys who sell toothpaste

Elections run by the same guys who sell toothpaste

by Noam Choamsky
MinuteMedia.org

If you listened to the presidential debates, you couldn't figure out what they were saying, and that's on purpose.

...snip

In the year 2000, there was a huge fuss afterwards about the stolen election, with the Florida chads and the Supreme Court. But ask yourself who was exercised about it? It was all among a small group of intellectuals. They were the ones who were upset about it. There was never any public resonance for this. In the recent election, it was reiterated. There's a big fuss among intellectuals about the vote in Ohio, how the voting machines didn't work, and other things. But the interesting thing is that nobody cares.

Why don't people care if the election is stolen? The reason is that they don't take the election seriously in the first place. They reacted about the way that people react to television ads. It's a mode of delusion. If the Democrats want to succeed in that game, they're just going to have to figure out better ways of delusion.

But there is an alternative -- which is to try to run a program that's committed to developing a democratic society where people's opinions matter more than public relations.

Noam Chomsky is the author of "Hegemony or Survival" and Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These remarks were presented at the International Relations Center, where he is a board member.


More: http://cjonline.com/stories/082705/opi_chomsky.shtml

[MelissaB]

3. Researchers to look for reliable ways to count ballots

Researchers to look for reliable ways to count ballots

By Mike Himowitz
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Saturday, August 27, 2005


Over the past 20 years, I've spent enough time with computers to conclude that (a) they're really cool and (b) you can't always trust 'em.

I'm particularly leery of asking computers to do anything really important, such as running elections, without adult supervision.

So I was delighted last week when critics of electronic voting systems won a convincing victory in the battle to keep our elections honest and accurate.

The vehicle was a $7.5 million National Science Foundation grant to a group led by Johns Hopkins University researchers who will study electronic voting systems and suggest ways to make them safer and more reliable.


More: http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031784695620&path=!business!article&s=1037645507703

[MelissaB]

4. Ohio may lead us to democracy

Published Saturday, August 27, 2005

Ohio may lead us to democracy

By Derek Cressman
MinutemanMedia.org

Americans are generally pretty forgiving, willing to live and let live unless somebody is really screwing them over. But when public frustration reaches a boiling point, look out. As old King George learned a long time ago, the colonists will revolt if you push them too far.

Voter frustration in Ohio may now be reaching a tipping point after citizens have seen their elected officials sell out the state to shylocks and shysters and rig election districts to favor their own re-election.

The first insult came in last November's elections, when thousands of Ohio voters had to wait in line for hours to cast ballots. While there's scant evidence that the flawed administration of Ohio's elections actually changed the outcome of the presidential race, there is no doubt that the long lines and discredited provisional ballots left many voters feeling as if the state was going out of its way to discourage their voting. Recent Ohio elections have seen ballot shortages, closed polling places, and double counted ballots. That the president of Diebold, the voting machine manufacturer based in Ohio, had promised to deliver the state for President Bush only deepened voter skepticism.

...snip

The final straw for Ohio voters may have come this summer, after a series of political scandals shined a spotlight on a corrupt culture in Columbus. Ohio politicians handed over trust funds for injured workers to a consummate campaign contributor who "invested" the money in gold coins and collectibles. Millions were lost in foolish deals and still other millions are unaccounted for and probably stolen.


more: http://cjonline.com/stories/082705/opi_cressman.shtml

[MelissaB]

5. Taft unlikely to face more ethics charges for undisclosed gift sources

Taft unlikely to face more ethics charges for undisclosed gift sources

By RANDY LUDLOW, The Columbus Dispatch


COLUMBUS – Gov. Bob Taft’s belated revelation that he failed to disclose eight sources of gifts leaves him open to prosecution, but he is unlikely to land in court again on ethics charges.


“As a practical matter,” Taft probably would not face a second round of misdemeanors, said Columbus City Prosecutor Stephen McIntosh, a Democrat.


The Republican governor, convicted last week of four misdemeanor ethics violations, could be criminally liable for failing to report three gifts valued at more than $75 that he received in 1999 or 2000, McIntosh said.


Charges cannot be filed in connection with the other five overlooked gifts received in 2002 to 2004. Prosecutors agreed to not pursue other ethics violations for those years in return for Taft’s “no contest” plea, McIntosh said.

More: http://www.timesreporter.com/left.php?ID=44959&r=1

[MelissaB]

6. 'Patriot pastors' recruited

'Patriot pastors' recruited
Churchgoers will be urged to vote

By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer


KINGS MILLS - The luncheon Thursday at the Kings Island Conference Center could easily have been mistaken for a political party affair, with politicians, speaking over the clank of forks and knives, exhorting the guests to go out and register new voters and make sure they get to the polls.

But the hundreds of people dining at the ballroom tables Thursday were not ward-heelers and precinct captains.

They were, for the most part, men and women of the clergy - evangelicals, Pentecostals, Baptists and a smattering of Catholic clerics and laymen.

They were being recruited for the Ohio Restoration Project, the brainchild of the Rev. Russell Johnson, pastor of a 2,500-member evangelical church in the southeastern Ohio town of Lancaster. He wants to build a force of Christian conservatives - the "values voters'' who oppose abortion, want to protect traditional marriage and oppose higher taxes - to dominate Ohio politics, starting with the 2006 gubernatorial election.


...snip

As a non-profit organization, the Ohio Restoration Project can't endorse candidates, but it was clear at Thursday's luncheon that, for many of the group's faithful, the favorite among the three Republican candidates for governor is Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who was given a long standing ovation after his speech.

Clutching a microphone in one hand and a Bible in the other, Blackwell quoted Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. as he urged Christian conservatives to get involved in the political process.

"We cannot sit back and let the public square be stripped naked of faith, religion and God,'' Blackwell said. "The true warrior in this cultural battle must be willing to serve.''


More: http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050826/NEWS01/508260404/-1/CINCI

[MelissaB]

7. In a related article

Conservatives shower praise on pastors

JOHN McCARTHY

Associated Press


MASON, Ohio - Any feeling of resistance among the 300 pastors who attended the first meeting of the Ohio Restoration Project changed after three notable conservatives took the stage, giving the clergy a pep talk.

Religious conservatives looking to build on the momentum from last November's passage of a gay-marriage ban and President Bush's key Ohio victory took the first step Thursday toward mobilizing forces statewide on issues such as abortion, education choice and taxes.

The meeting of the Ohio Restoration Project, a group of religious conservatives drawn from dozens of local organizations, attracted more than 500 pastors and other conservative leaders to talk about achieving clout on so-called values issues.

...snip

"People think that November 2000 was an accident of history. They deny your will," Blackwell said. "I plead with you to continue to show up, stand up and speak up."


Link: http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/12480081.htm