An elderly black woman in Tennessee can’t vote because she can’t produce her marriage certificate. Threatening letters blanket black neighborhoods warning that creditors and police officers will check would-be voters at the polls, or that elections are taking place on the wrong day. Thirty-eight states have instituted new rules prohibiting same-day registration and early voting on Sundays. All of this is happening as part of an effort to eradicate a problem that is statistically rarer than heavy-metal bands with exploding drummers: vote fraud.
NH Secretary of State: "Citizen Election Observers Threaten Election Integrity"
Nancy Tobi is best known as a national leader in the voting rights movement for her seminal work exposing the dangers and fallacies in various election reform efforts past, present and future. Links to her works can be found at nancytobi.com.
Nancy is co-founder, former Chair, and former website editor for Democracy for New Hampshire, and founder and Chair of the NH Fair Elections Committee. Nancy works with New Hampshire citizens actively engaged in restoring NH's public elections. Their work can be found on the Facebook Protect the Count NH page. Nancy serves on the Board of Black Box Voting, and is Adviser to Election Defense Alliance and the Election Transparency Coalition. Her books "Weary Grace: The Life and Times of an MS-Endowed Democracy Warrior,"Hands-on Elections: An Information Handbook for Running Real Elections, Using Real Paper Ballots, Counted by Real People" can be purchased at her website nancytobi.com or at Amazon.com. Her manual "We're Counting the Votes and You Can Too" can be downloaded at DemocracyForNewHampshire.com. Nancy's article about election reform fallacies is included in the April 2008 book "Loser Take All" edited by Mark Crispin Miller. Nancy's Youtube videos can be seen at www.youtube.com/handsonelections.
This Article was originally printed at OpEd news
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Prior to the 2010 midterm elections New Hampshire citizens, concerned that the optical scanning machines used in their towns concealed the vote countfrom the public, asked their local election officials to instead conduct public hand counts.
It is perfectly legal in New Hampshire to do public hand counts of ballots instead of running them through the concealed computerized count. After all, the NHConstitution clearly states that votes shall be sorted and counted in open meeting, in public.
The local election officials turned to the New Hampshire Secretary of State for guidance in how to respond to the request made by voters in their community.
Referring to NH citizens as "special interest groups", the Secretary of State said in a memo to local election officials: "where special interest groups are maneuvering to pressure moderators into conducting hand counts, caution should be used." The memo indicated that ceding to citizen requests for public vote counts could cause "the loss of the integrity of the election itself." The full memo is appended below.
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Election Integrity's Victoria Collier Speaks Up - Interview with Joan Brunwasser
My guest today is Victoria Collier. Welcome to OpEdNews, Victoria. You're the daughter and niece of James and Kenneth Collier, authors of the book Votescam: The Stealing of America , a chronicle of their 25-year investigation into how elections are rigged by computerized voting machines. Victoria is the editor of www.votescam.org. I've run across a number of your most recent op ed pieces including What To Do When They "Let" Us Win Elections and Why Americans Viciously Protect Their Hub Caps But Not Their Ballots: A Thoughtful Exploration of Modern Democracy. I guess you're not too happy with the state of our nation these days. Weren't the most recent elections nationwide a gain for the 99%?
There were some victories, yes. In Ohio, Mississippi, and Arizona, ballot initiatives and recalls were successful in slowing some of the more aggressive metastasizing of the extreme-right agenda; in these cases, union busting and the war against women's right to choose.
However, many far-right incumbents stayed in office, a fact that got lost in the hoopla over the rare progressive victories.
The problem is that our computerized elections system is still fundamentally insecure -- open to centralized manipulation and outside hacking. So, small "wins" like we saw last week are, sadly and ironically, a setback to the Election Integrity movement, because we now have to fight harder to call attention to the fact that our electoral system is still out of our control.
However, many far-right incumbents stayed in office, a fact that got lost in the hoopla over the rare progressive victories.
The problem is that our computerized elections system is still fundamentally insecure -- open to centralized manipulation and outside hacking. So, small "wins" like we saw last week are, sadly and ironically, a setback to the Election Integrity movement, because we now have to fight harder to call attention to the fact that our electoral system is still out of our control.
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The Occupy Movement, Rigged Elections, and the Bastille Line
Original article posted at the Election Defense Alliance website.
All revolutions, even peaceful ones, require a point of attack capable of breaking through the Wall erected by the Powers-That-Be. The Occupy movement, such a welcome and important revival of democracy, has great potential to “rattle the walls” and change our times. There’s great heat out in the winter cold all over America (and across much of the globe). Focusing all that Heat like an acetylene torch on restoring observable vote counting and honest elections may well be the best, if not the only, chance the Occupy movement has to break the chokehold of the 1%.
Although the historical evidence is that Marie Antoinette never actually said “Let them eat grass,” the phrase has become inextricably linked with the callousness and cruel inequalities that led directly and inexorably to the storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution. Now we have Newt Gingrich, among others, saying, to wild right-wing applause, that the Occupiers should “go get a job right after you take a bath.” The mockery is at or above the “Let them eat grass” level; the question is: Must revolution inexorably follow?
Every society has its Bastille Line, the point at which the provocation—the inequalities, naked unfairness, exploitation, derision—becomes so great and affects so many, and the prospects of redress through normal political processes grow so dim, that the cork blows and revolution is sprung. All the lies told, bones thrown, and Prozac prescribed can push the Bastille Line back somewhat, but it is still there when there is no other way. Even in America, where the Occupy movement, which continues to attract more and more to its ranks and to its consciousness, is the first stirring in a very long time, the first looking out of windows at the weather, the first test of the power structure’s response.
It’s becoming pretty clear, with the help of Michael Bloomberg and Newt Gingrich, what that response will be. In fact the “Let them eat grass” response is probably inevitable because America has become that broken, that polarized, that unfair, that cruel, that close to the gang rape that was pre-Revolutionary France. The Occupy movement is preparing for a long siege. They know there are no quick fixes to the mess that is America today. As they wisely expected, the Powers-That-Be are not going to change their ways, let alone yield control, to anything short of a Revolution. The question is “Why?”
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Recommended #OWS Demand: Let ALL Citizens 18 and Older Vote, On Paper Ballots, Count Them in Public
Original Post from the Brad Blog
The great patriots comprising Occupy Wall Street demonstrations across the nation hardly need my input on the "demands" they continue to try and narrow down and achieve consensus on. I'm quite sure they've got more than enough folks out there making their case for all manner of "demands" given the past 30 years (or more) of utter neglect, corruption and abuse the good citizens of this nation have otherwise been forced --- up until now --- to accept as "politics as usual."
Nonetheless, I've been meaning to ring in on this (and did so recently in a brief comment), so perhaps I should do so quickly here, where it's likely to catch a few more Occupied eyeballs.
I offer the following simple "demand" for consideration by OWS, as this one likely underscores almost every other. Or, at least, without it, all other demands may ultimately be rendered moot.
Here it is. One demand that seems simple enough --- and is as non-partisan as can --- for your consideration:
Every U.S. citizen 18 years of age or older who wishes to vote, gets to vote. Period. Those votes, on hand-marked paper ballots, will be counted publicly, by hand, on Election Night, at the precinct, in front of all observers and video cameras.
Please help spread this to the Occupiers if you agree its important. For example, Tweet it (or a link to this article) like mad (with #ows in the text), and/or spread it via Facebook and/or print it out and take it to a General Assembly at an Occupation near you!
Thanks!
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Will the 1% Steal Ohio's Labor Rights Referendum?
This article was first published at freepress.org.
Tuesday’s most important vote is the repeal of Ohio’s vicious anti-labor Issue 2.
Polls show the repeal winning by 20% or more. But will it---like the 2004 presidential election---be stolen by a 1% intent on crushing working people and stealing huge sums of money?
Like Wisconsin’s millionaire assault on the bargaining rights of public unions, the thoroughly bought Ohio legislature has passed a draconian law aimed at crippling the organizing ability of working people.
The attack has the loud, persistent support of Wall Street’s hand-picked Governor John Kasich, who made millions as a Foxist commentator and Lehman bond dealer. Among other things, Kasich helped pawn $400 million in Lehman’s junk bonds onto the Ohio teacher’s pension fund, making him a multi-millionaire. Control of that money would be directly affected by the outcome of this referendum.
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A Fraudulent Case: The ugly parallels between Jim Crow and modern vote-suppression laws.
Many commentators have remarked on the unavoidable historical memories these images provoke: They are so clearly reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. So why shouldn’t the proponents of draconian new voting laws have to answer for their ugly history?
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Occupy Elections: A Call for the Second American Revolution in 2012
Victoria Collier, Editor, www.votescam.org
Ronnie Cummins, National Director, Organic Consumers Association
Start organizing on Facebook now:
A great battle is coming. The 2012 elections are our chance to turn the tide back toward real democracy, but we must begin immediately. Only by organizing for a democratic revolution now, can we break the hold of corporate criminals over our elections and take real power in 2012, legitimately and non-violently.
Thanks to Occupy Wall Street and the 99% movement, millions of Americans are finally shaking off the depression and torpor of the past decade, heeding the mass-consciousness call to reclaim power from corporatist forces that have hijacked our country, our planet, and our future. We may not all have taken to the streets yet, but we will. Or we’ll contribute in other creative, personally liberating ways, pitching in with prison-break fervor to unblock the channels of revolutionary energy.
Despite the jeering of the corporate media, the Occupy movement is not going to fade away, burn out, or be crushed like the radical movements of the 60s and 70s. The Occupy Movement is going to change the world, because the world itself has arrived at a momentous crossroads where change is inevitable. Occupy is part of an unstoppable transformation – the contractions of a new world desperate to be born, based on a renewal of community, tolerance, justice, and deep respect for all life. A sane, resilient world capable of withstanding the ecological, climatic, and economic upheavals we can no longer avoid.
Now is the time to prepare, in this newly awakened, pre-revolutionary phase, for Occupy Elections 2012. Because the closer we get to democratically taking power – when candidates emerge who support the positions and demands of the 99% -- the more certain we can be that our elections will be rigged.
Anarchists and many younger activists today reject representative democracy as unviable. They are rightly disgusted with the macabre, corporate-sponsored, electoral charade we endure every two years like a recurring nightmare. The Occupy movement has already birthed a powerful new form of roots-down direct democracy, where learning to communicate and really hearing each other is the first step toward rebuilding our shattered and alienated communities.
So, do elections matter anymore? Is representative democracy for the People even possible?
Wherever you are on the revolutionary road, whoever you are in your mind and soul, we ask you to please listen to the message we’re conveying today, and consider how it impacts your activism in the coming year.
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The Iceberg Cometh: Retaking USA Titanic Before the 2012 Elections
In the wake of a super-nova of exploded hope in President Obama, a power vacuum is now spinning in our political universe. A desperate need to fill the void (lest it someday be filled with a babbling Bachmann or weeping Boehner) has led to a frenzy of organizing among Democrats and Progressives.Some, like the Van Jones/Move On “Rebuilding the Dream” coalition, are attempting to rekindle that Obama flame by pointing the blame finger at “evil corporations,” without drawing a direct line from corporate headquarters (like those of Goldman Sachs, GE, and Monsanto) to the White House. Others, like the New Progressive Alliance (NPA), led by activists such as Cindy Sheehan and Cornel West, are taking a more radical position, calling out the Democratic Party leadership as sold-out corporate shills, unworthy of further support. So the power vacuum of the Left has a deeper split within — a black hole that threatens to pull all of us into oblivion between now and November, 2012.
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