Labels: 2012 election, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Republican men, sexism, vote suppression

Maureen Russo was born in Akron, Ohio. For the last 40 years she’s operated a dog boarding and grooming business — Bobbi’s World Kennels — with her husband in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Maureen is 60 years old and has been a registered voter in the state for the last four decades. She regularly votes at the church around the corner from her home.

Two weeks ago she received a letter from the State of Florida informing her that they had received information that she was not born in this country and, therefore, was ineligible to vote.

She was given an option to request “an administrative hearing to present evidence” disputing the determination of the State of Florida that she was ineligible to vote. Unless Maureen returned a form requesting such a hearing within 30 days, she was told, it would result in “the removal of your name from the voter registration rolls.”

She immediately sent off a registered letter to the State with a copy of her passport. She hasn’t heard anything back.

Labels: 2012 election, dirty tricks, election shenanigans, election theft, vote suppression

despite onerous polling place Photo ID requirements now passed into law in about a dozen states where the GOP controls both the legislative and executive branches, voters will be able to cast their ballot in next Tuesday's "First-in-the-Nation" Republican Iowa Caucuses without bothering to show a Photo ID --- even though the Republican Party itself sets their own rules for voting there.

Unlike most primary elections where an official state election board or agency sets the rules and runs the registration and balloting processes, the Iowa Republican Party runs its own state caucuses, determines the rules, tabulates all the votes and announces the results to the public and media themselves. They have complete control over the entire process, and yet they don't bother to ask their own voters to show a state-issued Photo ID before casting their ballot.

I wonder why that would be?

Actually, I don't. I know exactly why that's the case. Polling place photo ID laws, passed in states where Republicans took control in the wave election of 2010, are instituted for one purpose and one purpose only: to suppress the votes of voters such as the elderly, minorities and students, all of whom have a dastardly tendency to vote for Democratic candidates rather than Republicans. Since only Republicans are on the IA Republican Caucus ballot, unlike general elections, the GOP has no interest in disenfranchising their own voters.

While the GOP likes to claim they're attempting to institute these laws to curb "voter fraud", they're unable to show evidence of virtually any polling place impersonation that would supposedly be prevented by such laws. For example, in rejecting the South Carolina GOP's new Photo ID restriction last Friday, finding that that the state's own statistics showed the law would be racially discriminatory, the U.S. Dept. of Justice noted [PDF] that the state failed to point to "any evidence or instance of either in-person voter impersonation or any other type of fraud that is not already addressed by the state's existing voter identification requirement and that arguably could be deterred by requiring voters to present only photo identification at the polls."

That, even as independent study after study have documented how hundreds of thousands of perfectly legal voters are likely to be disenfranchised by such laws.

Of course, if "voter fraud" was truly a concern of the Republican Party, surely they would require that Iowa caucus goers present a Photo ID before casting their vote. But, because such laws have never been about "voter fraud", once again this year, the Party will not bother to require Iowa Republicans to present any such ID before voting in the all-important caucuses next week.

[snip]

It's almost as if they realize that risking disenfranchisement of any of their own voters in their own caucus would be monumentally stupid --- not to mention potentially illegal and/or unconstitutional to boot, though that has yet to stop them from doing the same in general elections where Democrats may be on the ballot.

Go figure.

Labels: 2012 election, disenfranchisement, GOP, Republican brownshirts, vote suppression

There is almost no voting fraud in America. And none of the lawmakers who claim there is have ever been able to document any but the most isolated cases. The only reason Republicans are passing these laws is to give themselves a political edge by suppressing Democratic votes.

The most widespread hurdle has been the demand for photo identification at the polls, a departure from the longstanding practice of using voters’ signatures or household identification like a utility bill. Seven states this year have passed laws requiring strict photo ID to vote, and similar measures were introduced in 27 other states. More than 21 million citizens — 11 percent of the population — do not have government ID cards. Many of them are poor, or elderly, or black and Hispanic and could have a hard time navigating the bureaucracy to get a card.

In Kansas, the secretary of state, Kris Kobach (who also wrote Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law), pushed for an ID law on the basis of a list of 221 reported instances of voter fraud in Kansas since 1997. Even if that were true, it would be an infinitesimal percentage of the votes cast during that period, but it is not true.

When The Wichita Eagle looked into the local cases on the list, the newspaper found that almost all were honest mistakes: a parent trying to vote for a student away at college, or signatures on mail-in ballots that didn’t precisely match those on file. In one case of supposed “fraud,” a confused non-citizen was asked at the motor vehicles bureau whether she wanted to fill out a voter registration form, and did so not realizing she was ineligible to vote.

Some of the desperate Republican attempts to keep college students from voting are almost comical in their transparent partisanship. No college ID card in Wisconsin meets the state’s new stringent requirements (as lawmakers knew full well), so the elections board proposed that colleges add stickers to the cards with expiration dates and signatures. Republican lawmakers protested that the stickers would lead to — yes, voter fraud.

Other states are beginning to require documentary proof of citizenship to vote, or are finding other ways to make it harder to register. Some are cutting back on programs allowing early voting, or imposing new restrictions on absentee ballots, alarmed that early voting was popular among black voters supporting Barack Obama in 2008. In all cases, they are abusing the trust placed in them by twisting democracy’s machinery to partisan ends.

Labels: 2012 election, corruption, disenfranchisement, vote suppression

Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania are pushing a scheme that, if GOPers in other states follow their lead, could cause President Barack Obama to lose the 2012 election—not because of the vote count, but because of new rules. That's not all: There's no legal way for Democrats to stop them.

The problem for Obama, and the opportunity for Republicans, is the electoral college. Every political junkie knows that the presidential election isn't a truly national contest; it's a state-by-state fight, and each state is worth a number of electoral votes equal to the size of the state's congressional delegation. (The District of Columbia also gets three votes.) There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs; win 270, and you're the president.

Here's the rub, though: Each state gets to determine how its electoral votes are allocated. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan—which has been endorsed by top GOPers in both houses of the state Legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett—Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote. (Two electoral votes—one for each of the state's two senators—would go to the statewide winner.)

This could cost Obama dearly. The GOP controls both houses of the state Legislature plus the governor's mansion—the so-called "redistricting trifecta"—in Pennsylvania. Congressional district maps are adjusted after every census, and the last one just finished up. That means Pennsylvania Republicans get to draw the boundaries of the state's congressional districts without any input from Democrats. Some of the early maps have leaked to the press, and Democrats expect that the Pennsylvania congressional map for the 2012 elections will have 12 safe GOP seats compared to just 6 safe Democratic seats.

Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight—six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state's two senators) for winning the state. Since Obama would lose 12 electoral votes relative to the winner-take-all baseline, this would have an effect equivalent to flipping a medium-size winner-take-all state—say, Washington, which has 12 electoral votes—from blue to red.* And Republicans wouldn't even have to do any extra campaigning or spend any extra advertising dollars to do it.

Labels: 2012 election, election shenanigans, vote suppression

"There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today," Clinton said in a speech at a Campus Progress conference in Washington.

He specifically called out Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) for trying to reverse past precedent and prevent convicted felons from voting even after they've completed their sentence.

"Why should we disenfranchise people forever once they've paid their price?" Clinton said. "Because most of them in Florida were African Americans and Hispanics who tended to vote for Democrats. That's why."

Labels: Bill Clinton, vote suppression

A sweeping overhaul of Ohio's election laws passed the Senate on a party-line vote yesterday, and a bill requiring Ohio voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot is now on track to move next week.

After a day filled with heated rhetoric and shifting plans, majority Republicans pushed through House Bill 194, which moves the 2012 presidential primary from March to May.

The bill, which the House is likely to send to Gov. John Kasich next week after approving Senate changes, would let Ohioans register to vote or change their addresses online and reduce early voting from 35 days before an election to 21 days by mail and 17 in person - which eliminates the so-called "golden week" when people could register and vote on the same day.

Under the direction of GOP Governor John Kasich---himself the beneficiary of a dubious vote count in 2010---the Ohio Republicans are clearly determined to make it as difficult as possible for traditional Democrats to register, vote or get their votes counted in future elections.

Since 2000, the Republicans have eliminated more than a 1.5 million voters from the Buckeye state voter rolls. The purges have been centered on urban voters. Moreover, in 2004 hundreds of thousands of additional Ohio voters were disenfranchised by orchestrated bottlenecks at polling places that forced people to wait seven hours and more in line. The lines were most evident in the heavily Democratic urban areas of Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

But in 2008, because the Democrats controlled the legislature and state house, voters were allowed to cast their ballots up to 35 days before election day. The lines disappeared. Polling places were voter-friendly, with election workers giving voters clear directions on how to proceed.

Now the GOP is intent on ending all that. Ohio HB 194 slashes the timeframe for early in-person voting from 35 days to 16. The new law also prohibits Ohio’s 88 counties from mailing absentee ballots to all voters, or to pay the return postage. (In 2004, thousands of absentee ballots never made it to the county boards of elections because they had a pre-printed space for one stamp when they actually required two, and most voters only put on one stamp).

The HB 194 law also prohibits local board of elections officials from designing systems that best meet the needs of their community. For example, it forbids the county boards of elections from setting up off-site early voting locations. Banning voter-friendly practices such as pre-paid postage for absentee ballots and convenient places for citizens to vote, the law mandates practices design to lower turnouts as much as possible.

In perhaps the Bill’s most shocking provision, pollworkers are prohibited from helping voters find the right precinct line at the polling site. They are actually barred from answering questions or providing directions to voters.

In the 2004 election, then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, directed that any voter in the right polling place but in the wrong precinct, could not have his or her vote counted. Prior to Blackwell, Ohioans would have had all of their votes counted in that case, except for the rare precinct-level vote which would usually be about alcohol sales.

Now the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio has written the legislature to ask: “Why else would we expend scarce taxpayer dollars on training and paying pollworkers? Ohio should not pass legislation that tells pollworkers not to do their job.”

HB 194 also overrides an the existing law---passed after the 2004 debacle---that required pollworkers to direct voters to the correct precinct. As the ACLU puts it: “Pollworkers will not be allowed to direct voters to the correct precinct or help them fill out forms correctly, both of which are required for a ballot to be counted. This will lead to more ballots that are not counted, and likely more lawsuits.”

The ACLU adds that HB 194 “…shifts responsibility for fair elections off of taxpayer-paid election officials whose job it is to administer elections, and on to the voters, who have a constitutional right to vote.”

The intent of Governor Kasich and the Republican-dominated legislature in Ohio is clear. Whatever minor detail they can find will be used to prevent Ohioans from voting. As the ACLU puts it, voters are "guilty until proven innocent, by assuming that all errors are voters' errors.”

In a separate bill---House Bill 159 (see Free Press Article) the Republicans will disenfranchise an estimated 900,000 Ohio voters, primarily Democrats, by requiring a photo ID to vote. Under the bill, an Ohio voter must produce either an Ohio driver's license, or an Ohio state ID card, military ID, or U.S. passport. IDs with photos and address provided by Ohio colleges or universities are prohibited as well as any ID provided by a county board of elections.

In a courageous move, Republican Secretary of State John Husted has come out against HB 159. In a speech to the League of Women Voters of Ohio, Husted said “I believe if you have a government-issued check, a utility bill in your name with your address on it, that no one made that up, they didn’t call AEP and establish utilities in their name to commit voter fraud. Let’s be clear about this. There are some other forms that are legitimate.”

The League of Women Voters, the American Association of Retired People of Ohio (AARP), Project Vote, and the ACLU all join Husted in opposing House Bill 159. But its passage seems all but assured.

And taken in tandem with HB 194 and the rest of the GOP assault on the ability of working Ohioans to vote, the day when Democrats had any chance of carrying any or all of swing state Ohio may be long gone.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Republican brownshirts, vote suppression

Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday signed a controversial overhaul of the election laws that Republicans say is needed to prevent voter fraud and Democrats call a cynical act of partisanship to improve GOP chances in Florida next year.

Critics assailed him for endorsing “voter suppression” tactics aimed at making it tougher for President Barack Obama to capture Florida’s prized 29 electoral votes in 2012.

“I want people to vote, but I also want to make sure there’s no fraud involved in elections,” Scott said. “All of us as individuals that vote want to make sure that our elections are fair and honest.”

But some supervisors who run elections in Florida say the state’s voter registration database is highly reliable. A statement from their statewide association warns Scott that the changes could cause chaos and confusion at the polls next year.

The League of Women Voters says it will suspend voter-registration activity because the bill requires such groups’ volunteers to register with the state and face fines of up to $1,000 for not submitting voting forms within 48 hours.

The bill also cuts early voting days from 15 to eight and requires some voters who have moved to cast provisional ballots, a change most likely to affect college students.

The bill wipes out policy in place for four decades in Florida that allowed voters to update their legal addresses when they voted.

Republicans call that an invitation to fraud, so the new law allows only voters who have moved within the same county to update their addresses at the polls.

None of the bill’s most controversial provisions was pushed by Scott’s chief elections expert, Secretary of State Kurt Browning. He broke weeks of silence Thursday about an hour after his boss, Scott, signed the legislation.

“I know bad election law when I see it,” Browning said. “I don’t think this bill is bad for Florida. … It doesn’t negatively impact Florida voters.”

The law takes effect immediately, which means its first test will be in Miami-Dade, the state’s largest county, which is electing a new county mayor and other officials Tuesday. Supervisor of Elections Lester Sola will end early voting Saturday — three days before Election Day, as the new law requires — a decision candidate Marcelo Llorente is fighting in court.

But in five counties it won’t go into effect until the federal government approves. Any change in state election laws that affects those counties — Hillsborough, Collier, Monroe, Hendry and Hardee — requires approval by the Justice Department in a process known as “pre-clearance.”

The legislation generated far more public opposition than any other bill of the 2011 session. Some was engineered by the League of Women Voters, which has thousands of members in Florida.

Scott’s office reported 14,000 calls and e-mails in opposition; nearly 1,300 in favor. A notation by Scott’s staff said:

“Majority oppose. Urging Governor to veto these bills because they change our voting laws, making it more difficult for some voters to cast their vote.”

Labels: 2012 election, Teabag America, vote suppression, We Are So Screwed

Spreading fear of a nonexistent flood of voter fraud, they are demanding that citizens be required to show a government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. Republicans have been pushing these changes for years, but now more than two-thirds of the states have adopted or are considering such laws. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights lawyers, correctly describes the push as “the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.”

Anyone who has stood on the long lines at a motor vehicle office knows that it isn’t easy to get such documents. For working people, it could mean giving up a day’s wages.

A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that 11 percent of citizens, 21 million people, do not have a current photo ID. That fraction increases to 15 percent of low-income voting-age citizens, 18 percent of young eligible voters and 25 percent of black eligible voters. Those demographic groups tend to vote Democratic, and Republicans are imposing requirements that they know many will be unable to meet.

Kansas’ new law was drafted by its secretary of state, Kris Kobach, who also wrote Arizona’s anti-immigrant law. Voters will be required to show a photo ID at the polls. Before they can register, Kansans will have to produce a proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate.

Tough luck if you don’t happen to have one in your pocket when you’re at the county fair and you pass the voter registration booth. Or when the League of Women Voters brings its High School Registration Project to your school cafeteria. Or when you show up at your dorm at the University of Kansas without your birth certificate. Sorry, you won’t be voting in Lawrence, and probably not at all.

That’s fine with Gov. Sam Brownback, who said he signed the bill because it’s necessary to “ensure the sanctity of the vote.” Actually, Kansas has had only one prosecution for voter fraud in the last six years. But because of that vast threat to Kansas democracy, an estimated 620,000 Kansas residents who lack a government ID now stand to lose their right to vote.

Eight states already had photo ID laws. Now more than 30 other states are joining the bandwagon of disenfranchisement, as Republicans outdo each other to propose bills with new voting barriers. The Wisconsin bill refuses to recognize college photo ID cards, even if they are issued by a state university, thus cutting off many students at the University of Wisconsin and other campuses. The Texas bill, so vital that Gov. Rick Perry declared it emergency legislation, would also reject student IDs, but would allow anyone with a handgun license to vote.

A Florida bill would curtail early voting periods, which have proved popular and brought in new voters, and would limit address changes at the polls. “I’m going to call this bill for what it is, good-old-fashioned voter suppression,” Ben Wilcox of the League of Women Voters told The Florida Times-Union.

Labels: Teabag America, vote suppression

As per our story published a few hours ago on the still-unexplained anomalies found in past Waukesha County, WI elections, it looks like the state's Government Accountability Board (the body which oversees elections in the state) can't understand County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' explanations for the anomalous 2006 results either, where some 20,000 more votes were tallied than "ballots cast", according to her own reports.

Just in tonight from the Wisconsin State Journal: "State investigating vote irregularities in Waukesha County going back 5 years"

Our report from earlier this evening offers a great deal more detail on the anomalies in question, and includes explanation (of a sort) and comment from Nickolaus who, the Journal reports, "was unavailable for comment Wednesday and Thursday." She did, for whatever reason, manage to offer The BRAD BLOG comment on these concerns both yesterday and today, terse as it was. FWIW.

Labels: election theft, electronic voting machines, Republican brownshirts, vote suppression

There's a Mike Huckabee mystery that won't go away.

Send a public records request seeking documents from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, as Mother Jones did recently, and an eyebrow-raising reply will come back: The records are unavailable, and the computer hard drives that once contained them were erased and physically destroyed by the Huckabee administration as the governor prepared to leave office and launch a presidential bid.

In 2007, during Huckabee's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, the issue of the eradicated hard drives surfaced briefly, but it was never fully examined, and key questions remain. Why had Huckabee gone to such great lengths to wipe out his own records? What ever happened to a backup collection that was provided to a Huckabee aide?

Huckabee is now considering another presidential run, and if he does enter the race, he would do so as a frontrunner. Which would make the case of the missing records all the more significant. These records would shed light on Huckabee's governorship—and could provide insight into how a President Huckabee might run the country. Meanwhile, observers of Arkansas' political scene—including one of Huckabee's former GOP allies—say the episode is characteristic of a politician who was distrustful and secretive by nature.

In February, Mother Jones wrote to the office of Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe seeking access to a variety of records concerning his predecessor's tenure, including Huckabee's travel records, calendars, call logs, and emails. Beebe's chief legal counsel, Tim Gauger, replied in a letter that "former Governor Huckabee did not leave behind any hard-copies of the types of documents you seek. Moreover, at that time, all of the computers used by former Governor Huckabee and his staff had already been removed from the office and, as we understand it, the hard-drives in those computers had already been 'cleaned' and physically destroyed."

He added, "In short, our office does not possess, does not have access to, and is not the custodian of any of the records you seek."

"Huckabee just absolutely doesn’t trust anybody," says one former high-ranking Arkansas Republican. "In my experience, if you don't trust people, it's because you're not trustworthy."

According to data from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, at least 27 state-level voter ID bills -- from Alaska and Arizona to Wisconsin and West Virginia -- have been proposed in recent months.

"It's unbelievable, probably half the states in the country have bills in play and more than a dozen are seriously in the pipeline," Tova Wang of the left-leaning think tank Demos told TPM in an interview. "It's really unprecedented in terms of geographic scope. I've never seen anything like it certainly since I've been working on voting rights issues that voter suppression bills would be introduced in so many places at the same time."

"Definitely students are a target here. It's totally clear to me that you saw in 2008 this unprecedented historic turnout among African-Americans, Latinos and young people -- and those happen to be the exact groups of people that are being targeted by these laws to disenfranchise them, and that's really sad," Wang said.

Wang said the most restrictive bills are in Ohio and Wisconsin, which Wang said require identification issued by the DMV. "Perhaps most interestingly, it doesn't even include student ID even from schools that are public universities," she said.

"This apparently concerted effort on the part of Republicans in state legislatures nationwide to effectively suppress voting is as disturbing as it is un-democratic," said Carolyn Fiddler, spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, an arm of the Democratic Party charged with boosting the number of Democrats in state governments. "Additionally, these restrictive measures are often costly and do nothing to balance state budgets and create jobs, which are the top priorities in statehouses across the country right now."

Labels: corruption, It's OK if You're a Republican, Mike Huckabee, Republican brownshirts, vote suppression

We can now add another illustrious name to the list of absentee voters whose ballots in the NY-20 special election have been challenged by the campaign of GOP candidate Jim Tedisco: Sam Seder, the liberal talk-radio host with Air America!

Sam posted a message on Twitter yesterday: "NY20th race Tedisco challenged my absentee ballot. 4 days before the election I was jury foreman for a trial in NY20th. Challenge Fail."

The Tedisco camp had previously challenged U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's ballot -- the person that Tedisco is seeking to replace in Congress -- and now Sam is on the list, too.

The jury had served on March 26 and March 27, and Election Day was March 31. Since this past October, Sam has maintained a second place in New York City for his radio job, and voted absentee because he would be at work on Election Day. Other than the need to be in New York City for work, he has been living full-time in Columbia County.

In fact, I was able to confirm with Columbia County Democratic election commissioner Virginia Martin that Sam's ballot has indeed been challenged by the Tedisco campaign -- on the grounds that he does not legitimately live in the district. Martin overruled the challenge, while the Republican deputy commissioner sustained it, keeping the vote out of the count until further notice.

Sam told me that he found out through a friend of his who had contacted the county for the list of challenged ballots. "He was sending out e-mails to people saying, check on this list to see if your name was on it," Sam said. And he was quite surprised to find his name on the list: "I thought there was no way that my ballot was gonna be challenged."

Sam was none too impressed when I told him that the Tedisco campaign alleged that he wasn't a resident of the district. "Jerks," he said. "I mean, I could tell you I've attended far more Livingston town meetings than Jim Tedisco has."

He added: "I just think it's ironic that this guy doesn't live in the 20th, and he's challenging my residency."

And Sam's service on a jury should be proof enough that he's a resident. Columbia County commissioner of jurors Loretta Salvesvold could not confirm for me the circumstances of any individual juror, but she could explain to me the general law that eligibility for jury service is dependent on a person's primary residence being in that area -- that this is where the person spends most of their time.

An e-mail for comment to the Tedisco campaign has not been returned.

Labels: epic fail, Republican id-driven two-year-olds, Sam Seder, vote suppression

Labels: Republican id-driven two-year-olds, vote suppression

The Virginia Pilot reports today that a phony Virginia Board of Elections flier is being distributed in Hamption Roads, VA telling Democrats that they are now scheduled to vote on November 5. The flier falsely claims that “an emergency session of the General Assembly” adopted a new voting schedule to “ease the load” at polling places on election day:

As the Pilot explains, “no emergency action has been take by the General Assembly, which isn’t in session, and furthermore, doesn’t have the authority to change the date of a federal election.” Along with the rest of the nation, Virginians in all parties vote on November 4

Labels: vote suppression

The following report, of another Obama vote lost, comes from Nashville (Davidson County, TN), as did the similar one last week. ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines failing again, harming Democrats each time. The same machines are failing in one county and state after another, are still in use, haven't been impounded, and voters still do not get to vote on paper ballots.

The "thousands of attorneys" from Obama and the DNC are still completely AWOL.

From the Tennessean...

Tracey Hudson's voting attempt at the Edmondson Pike Library ended with her in tears. The machine malfunctioned and didn't let her see the ballot, but a poll worker told [her] she had voted.

"I was robbed," Hudson said Friday.

...

"I hit the button to go to the ballot and there was a flash," she said, adding that the screen went blank, then returned to the main menu. "I didn't see the ballot to actually choose anything."

She asked a poll worker for help, but the person insisted she had voted and told her to "move on." Hudson said she had been looking forward to voting for Barack Obama.

Have we mentioned that the "thousands of attorneys" from Obama and the DNC are still completely AWOL?

Quick links to our previous coverage, of similar incidents, in at least three other states, follows --- along with a quick list from experts about what you need to do (since Obama and the DNC apparently won't) when/if you have a similar problem with a touch-screen voting machine...

Labels: electronic voting machines, vote suppression

President Bush is asking the Justice Department to look into whether 200,000 Buckeye State poll-goers must use provisional ballots on Election Day because their names do not match state databases.

White House spokesman Carlton Carroll confirmed Friday that the president will forward a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), requesting that the Justice Department look into whether the state’s voter rolls comply with the Help America Vote Act.

In a letter dated on Friday, the House GOP leader wrote that with Election Day “less than two weeks away, immediate action by the Department is not only warranted, but also crucial.”

“I respectfully request that you use your authority to direct Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate these actions and direct the appropriate authorities in each state to comply with the Section 303 requirements of HAVA,” Boehner wrote.

“Unless action is taken by the Department immediately, thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands, of names whose information has not been verified through the HAVA procedures mandated by Congress will remain on voter rolls during the November 4, 2008 election; and there is a significant risk — if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted.”

Labels: 2008 election, Bush Administration, vote suppression, wingnuttia

Sure, Ted Ravelo likes Barack Obama. But two hours is a long time to stand in line to vote, especially considering that it's still October. "This has to be remedied," Ravelo, 72, said Wednesday morning, shaking his head, as he gave up on voting early -- at least that day -- at the North Miami Public Library, where a couple of dozen voting machines and their operators were struggling in vain to keep pace with a flood of citizens. "Something has to be done." A line stretched two blocks from the building, as other voters doggedly stood -- or sat on the folding chairs many of them had brought along -- for up to two hours while waiting to cast their ballots.

It may have been a bit too much for Ravelo. He said he'd probably have to give it another shot on Election Day, and that his daughters -- who have to work on Nov. 4, and who sent him to scout out the wait time -- might not get to vote at all. But compared to Monday here, when early voting opened, two hours on Wednesday was a breeze; on the first day, officials and community activists said, the wait was three times that long.

A visit to Florida in the waning days of the 2008 presidential campaign threatens to evoke a certain sense of déjà vu for another late October eight years ago. Once again, polls show the state is deadlocked -- and once again, there's a very real possibility that a lot of people who support the Democratic candidate could have trouble voting.

[snip]

The night before, Tasha Thomas, 26, who works at the University of Miami's veterinary school, had told me she'd been besieged by weird, panicky questions from supporters since she started volunteering at the Obama field office in her Miami neighborhood. People thought they couldn't vote if their voter registration card was starting to fade, or thought they had to go back to the state where they were born to vote, even if they lived in Florida now. "It was eye-opening, how much wrong information so many people have," she said.

Labels: vote suppression

Labels: Fox News, liars, vote suppression

Mark Anthony Jacoby, who owns the firm known as Young Political Majors (YPM), was arrested after allegedly registering himself to vote, once in 2006 and again in 2007, at an address where did not live. An investigation by the Secretary of State’s Election Fraud Investigation Unit revealed that Jacoby twice registered to vote at the address of a childhood home in Los Angeles although he no longer lived there.

The Secretary of State’s fraud unit and the Ontario Police Department arrested Jacoby near an Ontario hotel just before midnight Saturday. An arraignment date has not been scheduled yet.

“Voter registration fraud is a serious issue, which is why I vigorously investigate all allegations of elections fraud,” said Secretary Bowen, California’s chief elections officer. “Where there’s a case to be made, I will forward it to law enforcement for criminal prosecution.”

For his business, Jacoby traveled California and a number of other states collecting petition signatures and registering voters. Under state law, signature-gatherers must sign a declaration stating that they are either registered to vote in California or that they are eligible to do so. Jacoby allegedly registered to vote at his childhood address to meet this legal requirement.

Under California law, it is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison to register yourself when you are not entitled to vote and it is perjury to provide false information on a voter registration card.

On October 3, the Public Integrity Unit of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office charged Jacoby with four felonies: two counts of voter registration fraud and two counts of perjury. A warrant was issued for his arrest and bail was set at $50,000.

Labels: disenfranchisement, Republicans, vote suppression

The FBI, after years spent focusing on national security, is struggling to find agents and resources to investigate wrongdoing tied to the country's economic crisis, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing current and former FBI officials, the Times said cutbacks in its criminal investigative workforce following the September 11 attacks left the FBI weaker in areas like white collar crime.

The cutbacks were the result of a shift in focus to terrorism and intelligence matters. More than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all those in criminal programs, moved into those areas, the Times said.

"Clearly, we have felt the effects of moving resources from criminal investigations to national security," the newspaper quoted FBI Assistant Director John Miller as saying. "In white collar crime, while we initiated fewer cases over all, we targeted the areas where we could have the biggest impact. We focused on multimillion-dollar corporate fraud, where we could make arrests but also recover money for the fraud victims."

While the FBI plans to double the number of agents working on financial crimes, people within and outside the Justice Department question where the agents will come from and whether that will suffice, the Times said.

Records and interviews show that FBI officials have warned of a looming mortgage threat since 2004, and asked the Bush administration to fund such nonterrorism investigations, but the requests were denied and no new agents were approved for financial criminal investigation work, the newspaper said.

Internal FBI data shows the cutbacks were especially sharp in areas of white collar crime like mortgage fraud, with more than 600 agents lost, or more than one-third of 2001 levels.

According to Justice Department data, fraud prosecutions directed at financial institutions dropped by nearly one-half from 2000 to 2007, insurance fraud cases fell 75 percent and securities fraud decreased by 17 percent, the Times said.

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