 |
 |
||
|
|
|
 Election ProtectionPosted on Oct 29, 2008By Amy Goodman Election Day approaches, and with it a test of our election system’s integrity. Who will be allowed to vote; who will be barred? Who will get paper ballots; who will use electronic voting machines? Will polls be open long enough to accommodate what is expected to be a historic turnout? Veteran activist Harvey Wasserman has co-written four books on elections and voter rights. He says John Kerry won Ohio in 2004. Why look back? Wasserman is concerned about the attempt by the Ohio Republican Party, with help from the Bush White House, to challenge the registration of new Ohio voters: “The GOP is trying to disenfranchise these 200,000 people by challenging their right to vote, asking the secretary of state here, Jennifer Brunner, to let the counties investigate and knock off the voter rolls, if they choose to, people who have minor discrepancies in their Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers. And the secretary of state has rightfully showed that many of these mistakes come from typographical errors when the numbers are entered in at the agencies.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only the U.S. Department of Justice can purge these new registrants from the voter rolls. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio, and President Bush urged U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to take action, potentially purging these 200,000 people. Advocates feared the homeless in Ohio would be disenfranchised because they lack a traditional address or identification (Wasserman notes that many of them may be veterans). U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus ruled that Ohio counties must allow voters who list their addresses as park benches or other non-building locations. Wasserman’s two main concerns about the integrity of the election are mass disenfranchisement through computerized purging and the failures of electronic voting machines, which can skew vote tallies and cause impossibly long lines at polling places (as can the provision of too few voting machines, whether they work well or not). These issues are both coming to a head in Colorado. There, Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican who is also running for Congress, has been sued by Common Cause, Mi Familia Vota and the Service Employees International Union for purging 30,000 voters within a 90-day window before an election. Six thousand seven hundred new registrants were purged for failing to check a box on the voter-registration form. Colorado has seen enthusiastic participation in early voting (some estimates nationally put the number of early voters at an astounding 10 million, with days to go), and also has seen many voters opt for mail-in ballots. However, more than 11,000 voters in Denver did not receive their mail-in ballots because of a mistake made by Sequoia Voting Systems, the company that was supposed to have delivered 21,000 ballots to a Denver mail-processing facility on Oct. 16. Election officials promise the ballots will be delivered. Advertisement In response to video of Georgia early voters waiting eight hours, Friedman blogged: “Thank you to those voters who were willing to hang in there! Shame on you to those officials who set up this system that can’t even accommodate the limited numbers of early voters! God save us all next Tuesday. Stay strong and brave people!” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has sued Virginia’s Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, on the grounds that he is unprepared to deal with a massive onslaught of voters there Nov. 4. Virginia is not among the 31 states with early voting. Thousands of lawyers and citizen-activists will be monitoring the polling places on Election Day. People are posting videos of election problems at videothevote.org. When you go to cast your vote, take a friend or neighbor, take your ID and take a camera as well. Election protection is everyone’s job. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She has been awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and will receive the award in the Swedish Parliament in December. © 2008 Amy Goodman Distributed by King Features Syndicate Previous item: Bracing for the Ballot Battle Next item: Virtual JFK: The 44th President's Foreign Policy Challenge Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment
|
HOME|Digs|Reports|Arts & Culture|Uncovered|Ear to the Ground|A/V Booth|Cartoons
Tags|Bazaar|Podcast|About Us|Contact Us|User Agreement|Privacy Policy|FAQ: Comments and Moderation 
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved. |
How the Anti-Semites of Hezbollah Have Sent Anne Frank Back Into Hiding
Email
Print
Share
Digg
Facebook
TwitThis
StumbleUpon
Reddit
YahooBuzz
Email
BlinkList
del.icio.us
Fark
Furl
Google
LinkedIn
Mixx
MyShare
NewsVine
Propeller
SphereIt
Technorati
YahooMyWeb
By Mohammed AL-Saedi, November 4, 2008 at 11:12 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
First of all, I personally relized that the most of the educated people are resorting to the truthful media websites and are making their decently contribution. Therefor, I would love to mention a few points thats regardless of the election results. The first point is that the election result already was manufactured in advance, even before the election itself. And there were no more than two candidates to which resticting the options of the free people to vote for the third party or third candidate.
Report thisThe second point is that, the two candidates were talking about change in the United States of America but what kind of change they really want ? why would a manufactured ,person, labelled a president imposing none truth called change on the entire society whose population are up to 400,000,000 such as in the USA ? and in what basis will be the promised change ?
The third point is that, if the United States of America to be well- being and in the prosperity then the entire world will be in prosperity and well being. And therefor, the president of the united states of america must possess decent qualities that are essential for presidency’s post. What are the qualities of those two candidates ?
The fourth point is that, will one of those candidates going to address the real problems in the USA as well as world wide ? or they will just go for more corruptions and much more premeditated deterioration in the international relations ?
What does make this election process legitimate on the first place ?
Finally, there will be very long times for the free people to struggle for the liberty and there will be hard times that are awaited for free and truthful people to restore the already lost liberty. But remember that the victory will be always with and for the truthful people. So, be prepared for long time struggle and the only struggle will restore the liberty and will free the entire humanity.
By cyrena, October 31, 2008 at 10:10 pm #
By smrstrauss, October 29 at 10:39 pm
“I like that part about the right to vote being a fundamental right, which is preservative of all other rights in a democracy. It has a kind of “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” ring to it.”
~~
Thanks for the post smrstrauss. I like it too! I happen to remember it well myself, for that very reason. But, I wouldn’t necessarily expect even most American’s to be aware of this, and that’s the part that has to change. My sense is that this election is historical for the fact that it shows how many Americans are FINALLY coming out of a near half-century slumber.
The right to vote can’t be anything LESS than a fundamental right, and there are not ‘requirements’ for fundamental rights of human beings.
What I’m finding/sensing from all of this truly historical stuff, is that ‘we the people’ seem to have finally shed the apathy and disengagement from the past 40 plus years, and not an iota of a second too soon!!! For a huge conglomeration of reasons, (including the fact that we are at the break point) the involvement and inclusion is this election will be the largest ever, and will hopefully signal what we’ve been saying for a long time now, which is that we need to CHANGE the direction we’ve been (collectively) moving in; especially for the past 8 years. That’s precisely what is taking place as we speak/read/listen/observe/blog.
This is very exciting, (at least for me) because it IS hopeful. So, while the concepts of ‘change’ and ‘hope’ have been ridiculed by many of Obama’s detractor’s and opponents, the bottom line is that it’s been more than talk. It’s what jumped this election to the historical landmark that it has already become. The CHANGE is happening before our eyes, in nearly everything that is associated, on so many levels. When has any US election ever been this closely under scrutiny and monitored so well in advance? Never, because we had to live through 8 years of the worst political administration ever to be visited upon us. Now enough people are finally terrorized into action. Or, (and I would hope this would be more correct) many of us have been feeling the terror, (and well aware of the source) for 8 years now, but it’s only been in the last few, that anyone worth hiring to help us fix/change it back, has become available.
That makes it far more than just about Obama, which is of course the point. As thinking Americans, we’ve managed to bring about all of these court decisions based on fighting back against the thugs that high jacked us in Dec 2000. TWO stolen elections and 8 miserable years of an authoritarian state and millions of dead/dying people all over the planet later, this is what we FINALLY have happening on a massive level. THIS is the “Change” in action. THIS is about ‘we the people’.
Like I said, not a moment too soon. It’s like one of those thriller movies. Never mind…nobody could actually make this up.
Report thisBy cann4ing, October 31, 2008 at 11:19 am #
Long term there is no question but that Congress will need to intervene, repealing HAVA (the so-called Help America Vote Act which should more aptly be described as HAVRA—the Help America Vote Republican Act). Paperless touch screen DREs must be banned, and the entire means of purging voters through the use of imperfect identity matches in collateral data bases should be barred in all elections to federal office.
In the short term, Amy Goodman, herself, provided some favorable news yesterday which ameliorated some of the concerns raised by Brad Friedman on her show the day before.
“In elections news, voter rights activists in Pennsylvania have won a major court victory to safeguard against faulty electronic voting machines. A federal judge has ordered state election officials to provide emergency paper ballots if half or more electronic voting machines become inoperable at any polling site in the state. The lawsuit was filed after Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State ordered counties to provide emergency paper ballots only if every electronic voting machine breaks down. In his ruling, Judge Harvey Bartle said he saw “a real danger…a significant number of machines will malfunction.” The plaintiffs include the NAACP, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and Voter Action.”
Amy also reported:
“Some 16 million people have already took part in early voting. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 59 percent of early voters say they voted for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/30/headlines
Report thisBy smrstrauss, October 30, 2008 at 2:39 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
It is strange that the matter of a homeless person’s right to vote makes news in 2008, and it is strange that a case was even necessary because the matter has been ruled on before and the finding was just as in this case, that all citizens have the right to vote regardless of whether they have homes.
The case was in 1984 in a federal district court in New York, in which Judge Mary Lowe ordered the Board of Elections of the City of New York to begin registering all potential voters regardless of whether they have homes or not. It actually referred to a park bench in that case too.
I assume, and hope, that New York City has been registering homeless people since then, but why other cities and rural areas have not, I do not know. District Court rulings are not necessarily binding outside the area, but you would think that this case at least would have been known about, and the principle that all citizens have the right to vote accepted.
In any case, here is a letter to the editor which I found in the database of the New York Times that confirms the 1984 case and explains a bit more about it.
New York Times letter to the editor Dec. 4, 1990:
“To the Editor:
I would like to correct two minor errors in your Nov. 17 article about the constitutional rights of a formerly homeless Connecticut convict. You state that last year “a Federal judge in New York ruled that for the purposes of voter registration, a park bench was a home.”
Judge Mary Lowe ordered the New York City Board of Elections to enroll homeless voters in October 1984. Homeless New Yorkers thus have been registering and voting, in increasing numbers, for six full election cycles. (A resident of the Fort Washington men’s shelter, Tyler Trice, even qualified as an independent candidate for State Assembly on the primary election ballot this fall.)
Further, rather than calling a park bench a home, Judge Lowe ruled that a home, as traditionally conceived, could not be made a prerequisite of the right to vote, which she called a “fundamental right, which is preservative of all other rights in a democracy.” To paraphrase, she said, “You don’t need a home to vote,” which became our motto. WILL DANIEL Director, Homeless Voter ‘90 New York, Nov. 17, 1990.”
I like that part about the right to vote being a fundamental right, which is preservative of all other rights in a democracy. It has a kind of “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” ring to it.
Report this