Count Every Vote in Minnesota

Great video from the Al Franken campaign:

In the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, every vote should be counted fairly.

But there are Minnesotans who had their votes thrown out, even though they did nothing wrong.

They voted absentee, but their ballots were improperly rejected because of someone elses mistake.

And in the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, their votes remain uncounted.

Election Protection News, October 24, 2008

Good:

Indiana judge rejects Republican party lawsuit seeking to shut down early voting in Lake County, Indiana (Indiana's second-largest county).

Wisconsin judge rejects state Attorney General von Hollen's lawsuit trying to have all new registrations checked against flawed state databases. (No coincidence, von Hollen is a Republican and co-chair in Wisconsin for John McCain's presidential campaign.)

In Ohio, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has issued two directives: (1) election officials cannot challenge voters on Election Day or reject absentee ballots based solely on discrepancies from verifying new voter registrations, and (2) county election workers cannot uses mismatches as the basis for not counting an absentee ballot.

The Nevada Secretary of State has ruled against a Republican Party motion to have voter registrations invalidated for typos.

Bad:

Military ballots are thrown out in Fairfax County, Virginia because while they comply with federal law, they don't comply with a Virginia law requiring the voter's current address be on an absentee ballot.

Election Protection News, October 20, 2008

Brad Friedman breaks the story on the arrest of Republican vote suppressor in California, live on Fox yesterday.

A new article in Rolling Stone by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Greg Palast about the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots.

In California, the head of the firm the Republican Party hired to register voters -- that has been charged with fraudulently getting voters to change their registration from Democratic to Republican -- has himself been charged with voter registration fraud.

Touchscreens in West Virginia switching Democratic votes for Obama to votes for McCain.

Ballot confusion in North Carolina. You vote for President at the top of the ballot, then your next choice is to vote a "straight Democratic ticket". Problem? You must vote separately for President. This trouble was caused by a racist 1967 law that was intended to prevent North Carolina Democrats from voting for a liberal Presidential candidate (like Kennedy, Johnson, or Humphrey) while voting for Democrats in local races.

To counter all this, Obama is assembling a team of thousands of lawyers (I'm one of them!) to monitor the election in every state.

6th Circuit Strikes a Blow for Vote Suppression

MSNBC: Ohio must set up a way to verify all new voters
Federal appeals court rules the system must be in place before Friday

Tuesday's order directs [Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer] Brunner to verify new registrations by comparing that information with data from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.

The 6th Circuit is one of the most conservative, Bush-Bush-Reagan laden federal courts in the country. Not surprising that a decision which could disenfranchise tens of thousands of new voters comes from such a conservative circuit.

Somewhere tonight, Hans von Vote Suppressor is smiling.

Republican Zombie Lies Debunked - Part I

Obama, ACORN and "voter fraud" - dispelling the myths

Republican Zombie Lie #1: ACORN is going to steal the election through voter fraud.

Ridiculous. ACORN is an anti-poverty organization. They advocate for affordable housing (including a campaign against foreclosures by predatory lenders), better schools, a living wage, reform of immigration laws, health care, and paid sick days, among others. Here's a video that describes the work ACORN does. As part of their work they have launched a voter registration project along with Project Vote, another 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

States and the federal government all require that voter registration be non-partisan. In most states, it is required that if you register voters, BY LAW you must turn in every registration form. (That's to keep a group from registering voters and then only turning in the registration forms for people they think will vote for their candidate, or the way they want them to.)

ACORN pays people to do voter registration, often people who are unemployed and have a hard time getting jobs otherwise. (Again, that's part of their mission, ending poverty. One way to do that is to give an unemployed person a job.) And sometimes, not often but sometimes, those people cheat and turn in forms with the entire roster of the Dallas Cowboys on them, or some other fakery. By law ACORN is required to turn in those registration forms, even if it knows they are fake.

And that's the only fraud involved here, voter registration fraud. The Dallas Cowboys do not show up to vote. Poor people are not going to the polls and pretending to be Tony Romo and Terrell Owens. The fraud is perpetrated by the paid help who cheat ACORN. ACORN actually flags bogus registrations when they turn them in to the states to alert them that there is a problem. Therefore, as this Cincinnati Enquirer column points out, bogus registrations are a pain, not a problem.

There are almost no cases of actual voter fraud where a voter voted frauduently. The Bush Administrations's push to crack down on (nonexistant) voter fraud has only resulted in 120 prosecutions -- and only 86 convictions -- in the past five years. That's not .00001 percent of the voting electorate. Infinitesimally small.

And the current Republican obsession with ACORN? It's a made up issue. John McCain has supported ACORN over the years, including his appearance at an ACORN-sponsored event in March of 2006:

John McCain, in March of 2006, sitting beside Florida Rep. Kendrick Meek at an event ACORN co-sponsored in Florida.

That's right, John McCain was for ACORN before he was against it.

And here's John McCain extolling the virtues of ACORN in his address to the group. Remember, this is March of 2006, 2 1/2 years ago, John McCain was "telling immigration rights activists at a rally in Miami that they "are what makes America special."



Don't let the Republicans defraud you into believing that ACORN is going to steal the election, or that ACORN is a bad or scary group. They're just using this as an excuse to attack Obama, because they have no plan to fix the economy, and no other way to win the election other than lies and deception.

Election Protection News

A coalition of civil rights and voting rights groups has filed a motion to intervene in the Wisconsin Attorney General's suit against Wisconsin election officials. AG Van Hollen sued to force election officials to purge voter rolls if the election list does not match exactly with other databases, like those for driver's licenses and social security numbers.

The AG's suit would force election officials to remove someone from the list for typographical errors or minor differences like middle initials or titles.

For extra credit, guess the political party of Wisconsin Attorney General van Hollen? (First two guesses don't count; of course, he is a Republican!)

Alternet: Wisconsin Attorney General Sued To Stop Voter Purge

PDF: Amicus Brief, Van Hollen v. Government Accountability Board, et al., Case No. 08-CV-4085

The Campaign Legal Center

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Macomb County, Michigan Republican Party Chairman James Carabelli:
"We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses."

Time.com: Obama Team Files Suit Over Alleged Voter Suppression Plan

On afternoon conference call, Obama and Michigan Democratic officials say they are seeking an injunction to block alleged “caging” by the state GOP– using home foreclosure lists to seek to block residents from voting.

Obama counsel Bob Bauer: “It is an absolute attack on their right to vote” and a “completely false and completely illegal basis” to challenge votes.

“This is a standard operating procedure within the Republican party that’s been under legal challenge.”

A Democrat with a spine! Glory be.

Action Alert: Don't Let The Fascists Steal The Election Again

dailykos: Call to Action: Voter Rolls in several States purged!!!

In swing-state Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State conducted the biggest purge of voters in history, dumping a fifth of all registrations. Guess their color.

In swing-state Florida, the state is refusing to accept about 85,000 new registrations from voter drives – overwhelming Black voters.

In swing state New Mexico, HALF of the Democrats of Mora, a dirt poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, found their registrations disappeared this year, courtesy of a Republican voting contractor.

In swing states Ohio and Nevada, new federal law is knocking out tens of thousands of voters who lost their homes to foreclosure.

Robert F. Kennedy and investigative journalist Greg Palast are teaming up to get this information out into the public eye. They're fundraising here; you can get copies of Palast's DVDs and books for certain levels of giving.

If giving money is not your thing, isn't this the perfect topic for your weekly letter to the editor of your local paper?

Republicans Hate Democracy

Sheep or Sleep
When your base is small in numbers (rich people, the deluded) the fewer people vote, the better for your party. That's the Republican way.

Alternet: House GOPers Defeat Back-up Paper Ballot Bill

A bill that would have reimbursed local governments for printing back-up paper ballots for the 2008 presidential election died in the House Tuesday, when Republicans blocked suspending the rules to bring up the legislation.

The bill, which would have provided $75 million to pay for the ballots, was sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D‑CA). It required a two-thirds vote to pass. The vote of 248-170 fell short of that.

The measure was an attempt to reimburse localities that pre-printed paper ballots in case electronic voting machines failed on Election Day. The White House opposed the bill.

A Wee Bit O' Good News

Orlando Sun-Sentinal: Voter registrations in Florida show 'huge swing' toward Democrats

An escalating number of voters registering as Democrats is providing evidence that the 2008 election could produce a wave of support for Barack Obama — and trigger a decades-long shift of party allegiance that could affect elections for a generation.

The numbers are ominous for Republicans: Through May, Democratic voter registration in Broward County was up 6.7 percent. Republican registrations grew just 3 percent while independents rose 2.8 percent.

Democrats have posted even greater gains statewide, up 106,508 voters from January through May, compared with 16,686 for the Republicans.

More Delegates for Obama?

Michael Nagle/European Pressphoto Agency

A sign supporting Senator Barack Obama on Primary Day in Harlem. Some districts reported that no one had voted for him.
NYTimes: Unofficial Tallies in City Understated Obama Vote

[A] review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.