Steal Back Your Vote!

[babsbunny]

http://www.gregpalast.com/steal-back-your-vote-2/

alast: One out of five Colorado voters purged from voter registration
Outcome of 2008 election likely to be skewed by unethical tactics

RealVail.com

By David O. Williams

August 27, 2008 — Robert Kennedy Jr. had a pretty good excuse for skipping his scheduled appearance with investigative journalist Greg Palast to promote their latest project, “Steal Back Your Vote” — a report on voting irregularities and fraud in the 2008 election.

Palast, speaking at the Progressive Democrats of America gathering at a downtown Denver church during the DNC Tuesday, excused Kennedy’s absence to be with his uncle, Monday’s inspirational surprise speaker Sen. Ted Kennedy, and introduced a surprise replacement of his own, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.
Progressive investigative journalist Goodman asked a delegate to hold up a goody bag with sponsor logo from AT&T on one side and decried the influence of big corporate money on the modern American political process.

She talked about trying to get into a delegate gathering at Mile High Stadium Monday and being denied access by towering security guards. Goodman said delegates at a corporate party are in training for just how skewed by campaign contributions politics in America have become, and added that there can be no good reasons to keep the press out, only bad ones.

[midnight]

1. What does the Democratic Party have to say about this?

Donetta Davidson, who had been secretary of state in the state of Colorado, removed 19.4 percent — one out of five voters in the state of Colorado, she removed their names. And what happens to Davidson as a result of this? The answer is George Bush made her head of the brand new Election Assistance Commission, where she can train all 50 secretaries of state in her purging ways. In fact, President Bush, instead of calling her chairwoman of the EAC, was going to call her the Purging General.” I can't understand why the dems keep pouring more money down a hole.

[stillcool]

2. I saw Al Sharpton the other night..

and he said they were doing a voter registration drive, but urging people to check their registrations shortly before the election, and urging long term registered voters to check theirs as well. Something about a window of time prior to the election when the rolls can no longer be purged. Regardless it's going to be a cluster-fuck. But then there's this...I would hope that we all write letters to the editor, our state government officials, and our Senators and Representatives, and implore them to legislate standard recounts after each election. It can't hurt, and it's just a few minutes of your time.



http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.php
Holt Introduces Emergency Election Audit Bill for 2008 Elections
Legislation Would Reimburse States for Conducting Audits


Representative Rush Holt
Contact: Zach Goldberg - 202-225-5801
August 1st, 2008

Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Rep Rush Holt (NJ-12) today introduced legislation to encourage states to conduct hand-counted audits for the 2008 elections. The bill is a version of emergency legislation that Holt offered earlier this year, but that House Republicans blocked from passage.

“Electronic voting notoriously can lead to disputes and uncertainties. While many states have set in place requirements for a paper ballot or record for every vote cast, we need to do more. We also need to give states the resources to conduct audits to insure that vote totals and paper ballots match,” Holt said.

The bill would authorize funding for states that conduct audits that meet basic minimum requirements, including the use of a random selection, the requirement that audits be conducted with independence, at least a 2 percent audit sample, and public observation. All ballots must be included in the audit and they must begin within 48 hours and be completed prior to certification of the result. Only about a dozen states currently conduct audits.

According to a 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, “he widespread adoption of voter-verifiable paper records does not . . . resolve the security, reliability, and verifiability issues with electronic voting . . . .Paper records will not prevent programming errors, software bugs or the introduction of malicious software into voting systems. If paper is to have any real security value, it must be used to check, or ‘audit,’ the voting system’s electronic records.”


The New York Times, citing that report, recently editorialized that “States…need strong audit laws to ensure that machine totals are vigilantly checked against the paper records. That is the only way that voters will be able to trust electronic voting.”

http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6605
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.php