These are serious times, we have a corrupt election system +

[mod mom]

we need to get this message out before the mid term elections or the will of the people will not be served! All the GOTV in the world by the Dems will not allow them to win with the current election system. I am serving the Democratic Party by fighting for transparent + verifiable elections. If they won't SCREAM the issue (in all fairness they have their hands full) THEN WE MUST. WE HAVE LESS THAN A YEAR TO MAKE THE PUBLIC UNDERSTAND THIS!

When you click on "About DU" it states:

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<snip>
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But now I am told this doesn't include me. I am a lifelong Dem who worked full time on the Kerry campaign from April '04 to election day. After Kerry conceded, I moved over to work on election reform and the Ohio investigation. I and many others worked on the investigation, some of us directly with the House Judiciary Dem Staff in compiling info that turned into Rep Conyers' very important report: "Preserving Democracy, What Went Wrong In Ohio". I still communicate with legal aides from his office. I am a Democrat, but in my state of Ohio, the party has let me down. The Chair of my county Demcrats says the Ohio election was fair and those who say otherwise is a Conspiracy Theorist. So that makes me + others who have witnessed the evidence, including the honorable Rep Conyer , and believe as I do that the OHIO ELECTION WAS NOT FAIR, a conspiracy theorist.

While I uphold the same progressive values as the majority of the people who post on this forum, I must go outside my state party to do the right thing: EXPOSE THE ELECTION SYSTEM. This is our only hope for winning in Ohio. Would someone please explain how we complain that the Republican march lockstep choosing party loyalty over values, but it is ok that when the Dems do it?

:shrug:

[texpatriot2004]

1. Yes we do have a corrupt system and we don't have a

Democracy.

[tx_dem41]

2. What evdence have you witnessed? n/t

[mod mom]

3. I witnessed the short lines in my affluent white neighborhood while

a short distance from my home, in low income African American neighborhoods there were 3-5 hour waits to vote. This is a fair election? I called around the BOE and SOS office until I found someone to send me how the machines were allocated. This internal info showed disparity in how machines were allocated. This is what brought me into the election reform movement.

I spent a good chunk of the past year investigating Lucas County election results. I foucsed on this county because I fell it is our best opportunity to prove fraud, especially after Blackwell's Investigation Report acknowledged severe problems.

[Peace Patriot]

6. tx_dem41, with regard to your question, "what evidence have you...

...witnessed?", I would like to ask you a question: If you voted on an electronic voting machine, or if you voted with a paper ballot that was scanned into a computer and your voting data sent to an electronic central tabulator, have you reviewed, or have you had an expert review, the programming code by which your vote was tabulated?

If you have, then you are unique in America, for I know of no voter in the country who has the right to review such code, or to hire an expert to do so, or who even has the right to have an authorized election official review such code on his/her behalf. The code by which your vote is tabulated in a "trade secret," proprietary matter, and the property of a private company who alone holds the secret of how your vote and others' votes were tabulated.

You ask, "what evidence have you witnessed"? But I think the question should be, "where IS the evidence TO witness?". The election system is non-transparent. Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny.

You may be in the third of the country that has no paper trail at all, so there is no means whatsoever for you to check electronic returns vs. paper backup (actual votes). And if you are in the 2/3 of the country with a real paper ballot backup (rare), or a "paper trail" (which may or may not take precedence over machine "results" in recounts), or mere paper printouts (repetitions) of machine "results," you will still have a nearly impossible task to match votes with electronic "results" because of the major obstacles placed in your path to obtain any kind of recount (let alone an adequate recount), and because the other items in this list, except a real paper ballot, are nearly worthless as an auditing tool. And even where there are real paper ballots, automatic recounts are, at best, 1% of the vote--completely inadequate, given the speed and invisibility with which electronic results can be changed, and the insecurity and hackability of electronic voting systems, and also given the ease with which dishonest, partisan election officials can pre-select precincts, or tweak machines, after the fact, to hide a mis-match.

It is a daunting task, and, in some ways, plainly impossible to produce "evidence" of election fraud, when the system has been designed to conceal the "evidence." This is, in fact, the very definition of a fraudulent election--one in which private parties control the vote counting and conceal their methods from the voters.

In the case of elections, lack of tangible evidence of the vote, and of how results were arrived at, IS fraud.

The 2004 election was egregiously fraudulent before any vote--or group of electrons--was "tabulated." Add to this the mountain of external and inferential evidence of a wrong outcome, all of which I have personally reviewed, and, really, the only conclusion that one can come to is that we have been had.

[mod mom]

4. I'm not trying to be difficult, just want clarification

This candidate that I cannot mention was good enough to meet with the Congressional Progressive Caucus in DC and meet privately with 3 Dem members of congress. His articles frequently make it to the Greatest Page on DU. I would like to know why I (and others) cannot publicly endorse him on DU.:


Friday, December 9, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact

XXXXX Testifies in Washington
Clean Elections Advocate Briefs U.S. Lawmakers on Problems and Remedies

Columbus, OH — This week, Ohio gubernatorial candidate XXXXXX accepted an invitation from the Congressional Progressive Caucus to come to Washington, D.C. to brief federal lawmakers on the electoral injustices that took place in Ohio during the 2004 campaign season. He and fellow electoral reform expert Harvey Wasserman addressed both the many ways Ohio's votes were compromised and the ways that these problems could be fixed through legislative remedies.

XXXXXX also met separately with three Members of Congress in preparation for a documentary that he is producing on electoral reform issues.

[OnTheOtherHand]

5. hi, I come in peace

I don't think there is any candidate whom one cannot mention.

The detailed rules (http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules_detailed.html) do say in part:

You are not permitted to use this message board to work for the defeat of the Democratic Party nominee for any political office. If you wish to work for the defeat of any Democratic candidate in any General Election, then you are welcome to use someone else's bandwidth on some other website.

Democratic Underground may not be used for political, partisan, or advocacy activity by supporters of any political party or candidate other than the Democratic Party or Democratic candidates. Supporters of certain other political parties may use Democratic Underground for limited partisan activities in political races where there is no Democratic Party candidate.

Presumably that rule imposes some limits in how far one can go in favoring a Green Party candidate for Ohio governor, given that there is a Democratic candidate. I don't think the purpose of the rule is to keep angry Democrats -- even angry Dems for Fitrakis -- from posting. I have mixed feelings about the rule, but if I ran a board called Democratic Underground, I would probably have a similar rule. And anyway, it's not my board. Can we find a way to live together with the rule?

I want you to know that in my opinion and to the best of my knowledge, Bill Anthony -- the Franklin County Dem Party chair -- said very clearly that the Ohio election was not fair. Please see http://www.elitestv.com/pub/2004/Dec/EEN41c754d14d6d9.html: "'A lot of the problems and allegations could have been avoided if the Secretary of State hadn't made the rulings he did in the last few days leading up to the election.... People are blaming us at the local level, but the real blame should be placed on Blackwell, HAVA and the Republican state legislature.'" Whether or not one agrees, he wasn't saying that the election was fair. As I read it, his comment about conspiracy theorists was directed toward people who see him as part of an effort to disenfranchise Franklin County blacks; apparently he does not believe he was part of such an effort.

[mod mom]

8. Mr Anthony stated at a House Administration Hearing held in Columbus Oh on

March 23rd 2005, under the chairmanship of Rep Bob Ney, the quote regarding the conspiracy theorist. I was present at that hearing as were many other election reform advocates. He made this statement at a public hearing, not off the cuff in private.

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. do you mean these remarks?

(By the way, I'm pleased to exchange ideas about this as a former Ohio Democrat, but I'm not intending to hijack your thread on a somewhat different topic for the purpose of discussing Bill Anthony.)

http://cha.house.gov/hearings/Testimony.aspx?TID=477

As I wrap-up my testimony, Mr. Chairman, I would like to address two situations in Franklin County that have been taken up by the conspiracy-theorists and internet-bloggers alike as quote-unquote evidence of fraud and their reason why Franklin County’s and Ohio’s election results cannot be trusted. Regrettably, even Ohio’s Secretary of State and some of our fellow elections officials have joined their lot in wrongly blaming the statewide recount on these events in Franklin County. These two situations are, of course, the long-lines at voting locations allegedly due to the intentional misallocation of voting machines and the misreported, unofficial election night results from one of our county’s precincts.(...)

So, Anthony said that the voting machines in Franklin County weren't intentionally misallocated, and said that the Gahanna problem wasn't due to fraud. And he defended the Board's actions (rightly or wrongly). He also criticized Blackwell, and testified about "a clearly non-governmental flyer purporting to be from the Franklin County Board of Elections that was distributed in primarily Democratic precincts misinforming voters that because of heavy turnout, Republicans were to vote on Tuesday and Democrats on Wednesday," and reported that he had seen long lines throughout the county.

You may see things in this testimony that you disagree with, or even know to be wrong. But I don't think Anthony came anywhere near saying that anyone who thought the Ohio election was unfair was a conspiracy theorist.

[Peace Patriot]

7. I would like to suggest a strategy that might be acceptable.

Post threads for a discussion of the Dem candidate for the nomination for Gov of Ohio vs. Fitrakis.

Post it in a neutral fashion, and invite any supporters of the Dem candidate to argue for him (her?). Ask them especially to address the matter of election reform, and their candidates's positions and/or activities on the issue. I think it would be fair for you to say that it is your priority #1 issue. And perhaps state your case that you feel that Ohio is a special situation, a virtual tyranny by extremely corrupt Bushite Republicans, that their method of control is fraudulent elections, and that you feel strongly that the Dems have no chance in Ohio without a platform calling for swift, immediate, thorough election reform, and action on that platform*. Say that you are a lifelong Dem and would be eager to support a Dem candidate who grasps this problem and will tackle it vigorously. Say that, in your opinion, the Fitrakis campaign will SAVE the Dem Party in Ohio, in the end. And see what response you get.

I think this is a good case for exception to this DU rule. You've earned your creds in the Dem Party, and you have a right to say this: that the Dem Party itself is in great peril in Ohio, and seems to be committing suicide, and if it doesn't begin to fight for its members' right to vote, both the party and democracy will die in your state. Sometimes shock therapy is needed. This is one of those times.

-----

*(One very positive step the Dems could take is funding independent exit polls, to gather evidence, and to be able to challenge election results. Another would be "parallel elections." These steps could be taken right now, independent of the gov and legislature.)

[mod mom]

9. As usual, PP, wise words. I posted for clarification from Skinner after

5{g a response I made to him privately. If anyone doubts the seriouness of Ohio's system, just check out HB 3 that the Repugs are trying (and most likely will) get through. There is no better way to get these issues covered than by running a candidate who has no fear of rocking the boat and will force the important issues to be raised. Perhaps if the Dem Candidate were to bring up the election system, ask the hard questions, some of us could go back to our lives.

Democracy is worth fighting for. Elections must be free of corruption. They must be fair, transparent and verifiable. Aren't we all on the same page on this?

We didn't abandon the Democrats in Ohio, they abandoned their disenfranchised Democratic voters. We fight for all voters.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Moderator]

12. Locking

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