First printed here: www.blackboxvoting.org

Despite what you see about who "won" Iowa and who "won" New Hampshire and who "won" South Carolina, that's not the main function of these very early contests. What they are really about is culling down the field, promptly, and this is not really based on who wins. 

New Hampshire, and to a lesser exte
nt Iowa and South Carolina, play a disproportionate role in removing your choice of candidates in the primary. While you watch the horse race in these three states, understand that if you live in any other state, you are going to have fewer candidate choices, or no chance to vote on the candidate of your choice at all. 

IT'S ABOUT EXPECTATIONS, NOT WINNING 

If a candidate "exceeds expectations" built by TV punditry and whichever poll is being quoted at the time, three things happen: 

1. TV pundits start the drumbeat, building public expectations about "inevitability" of the candidate who did "better than expected"; 

2. Donor money reroutes itself, pouring dollars into the newly inevitable candidate; 

3. Media then reports on the candidate's prowess in fund raising, citing this newly found skill as reason to believe the candidate is even more inevitable. 

The reverse (fewer votes than "expected") creates an even more definitive result: 

1. Media speculates repetitively on when the candidate will drop out; 

2. Donor funds for the candidate dry up; 

3. Media cites weaker donations as evidence that the candidate cannot win; 

4. The party begins pushing the candidate to get out of the way; 

5. Articles begin focusing on the cost of primaries in states where people have not yet had an opportunity to vote (underlying message: why do these primaries?); 

6. Pundits begin the new drumbeat: "The longer it takes for candidates to get out of the way, the more damage to the party's prospects of winning the general election in November." 

This is why Iowa and New Hampshire are not really about winning. They are about pushing candidates out of the way citing failure to meet expectations, or surprise in exceeding them. 

South Carolina, usually the third state to hold a primary contest, serves as the clean-up round, so that by Super Tuesday (when lots of big states have primaries) only a few candidate choices remain. Non-frontrunners still in the game get so strapped financially that they can't muster a fight. 

The Green, Libertarian, Socialist, Constitution and Americans Elect Parties are all designated as official parties on the ballot for the 2012 presidential election in Ohio. On October 18, 2011 the Federal District Court in Columbus ordered Secretary of State John Husted to recognize the Libertarian Party, As a result of that order, Husted issued Directive 2011-38 on November 1, 2011 which placed the four other minor parties on the Ohio ballot.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit found Ohio’s minor party election laws unconstitutional in September 2006. In the case Libertarian Party of Ohio v. Blackwell, the court held that both Ohio’s laws involving minor party formation as well as ballot access were unconstitutionally restrictive.

Someday Americans may know the name of King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell like they know Brown v. Board of Education. This case was filed on August 31, 2006 over allegations stemming from vote count irregularities and voter suppression in violation of the 1st, 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution in the presidential election of 2004 in Ohio.

 In an article on Common Dreams on Sunday 11/6/11 Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman ask whether Proposition # 2 will be defeated by the 20 point margin it is leading by or will it be stolen, just like the 2004 election by a 1% intent on crushing working people and stealing huge sums of money.

By Brad Friedman at The Brad Blog 

9/27/2011

The Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) at the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois has managed to hack a Diebold Accuvote touch-screen voting machine described at Brad Friedman's exclusive at Salon as perhaps "one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date."

In the days of Anonymous, Lulzsec, and several other groups that have a similar cause, a new group emerged today. Seemingly inspired by the famous web activism group Anonymous, Wisconsin Legion formed to help bring light to Wisconsin politics. In a message delivered on video they pledge to not stop until elections are fair in the state of Wisconsin. This is something I, personally, can get behind. Wisconsin is ground zero for the fight against the current fascist agenda. Wisconsin Legion is clear to note that they are not at all part of Anonymous but do fight for the same principles fought for by Anonymous, just on a more local level.

See Update to this story here

It was just Saturday, I sat at a table downtown with a group of people who were attending the Democracy Convention with me.  We got to talking about election integrity and little did I know we would unfold a bombshell.  As we were talking about Kevin Kennedy, the director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board who showed up at a conference and was nice enough to allow question and answer.  I, however, was not at this workshop because I was at court contesting a ticket that was issued to me for holding the Constitution silently in the gallery of the Senate.  I was doing my civil duty, fortunately I didn’t have to be.  At some point the conversation veered to Mike Huebsch, Secretary of the Department of Administration, former GOP leader in the state, and former ALEC State Chair.  In fact, we recently released his campaign finance report (released meaning drew attention to, it is public information) where he was paid by ALEC.