Michael Moore to tackle voting rights issues in Florida

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/gen/ap/FL_CVN_Moore_Florida.html

July 05, 2004

Moore, the director of "Fahrenheit 9/11," said Wednesday he would make stops throughout Florida in October to focus attention on voting rights issues and try to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election debacle.

"I am going to be in Florida," Moore said to cheers at a delegation breakfast, "and together ? together, we will guarantee to every Floridian that their vote will be counted this year.

"I will have my cameras. We will put a huge spotlight on them. They will not get away with it this time."

(snip)

He promised to donate money to bring "an army of lawyers" who will serve as poll watchers in November.

"The second anyone tries to prevent a voter from voting, we will go down to the courthouse, we will get the judge immediately and we will stop it at that moment," Moore said.

Only this type of unbelievable and unbelievably expensive diligence can help defeat these bastards!

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

..any idea when Michael plans to be in Orlando?

God Bless Michael Moore

Thanks, again, Michael Moore!

The actual article has today's date. I wouldn't want anything to think this is old news!

Thanks for the good news!

I was just a bit tired and blurry eyed when I posted it last night.

I can't believe he's willing to do this. And knowing Michael Moore, he will do it, too.

Watch Jeb sweat as the pandemonium begins. The sweat stains under his arms will get bigger as the day progresses.

What a circus this promises to be!!!!!

in every other state where Bev has identified BBV problems or there have been other types of fraud.

I was at a film on the 2000 (s)election this evening, sponsored by my local savedemocracy safe voting group, and nobody knew who poll watchers were supposed to contact or what would be done. We need the same sort of organization that Moore is doing in every precinct where there might be a problem--all across the country.

We need poll watchers in places that traditionally vote Democrat, as they are at risk of undercounting, and also in places that traditionally vote puke, to see that they don't overcount. And we need lawyers (yeah, like the chimp got in 2000) at the ready who can get to the courts and know what to do if the courts don't respond.

MICHAEL MOORE, GREG PALAST, REPS. BROWN AND DEUTSCH:
"DON'T LET THEM STEAL FLORIDA AGAIN!"

(Boston) Author-filmmakers Michael Moore and Greg Palast joined with Representatives Corrine Brown (D-Jacksonville) and Peter Deutsch (D-Ft. Lauderdale) to demand steps, as Palast said, "To prevent Republican hacks in Florida swiping the election of 2004 as they did four years ago."

At a press conference Wednesday morning before the Florida delegation to the Democratic Convention in Boston, Moore endorsed a bill introduced by Brown to make it easier for Congress to challenge an election tainted by apparent fraud.

"Don't let them steal Florida again," said Palast, the investigative reporter who in 2000 first uncovered for BBC Television that Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush had wrongly removed tens of thousand of Black citizens from voter rolls. Palast's reports on the theft of the elections are featured in Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Palast has discovered that current lists of 47,000 "felon" voters which Florida has targeted for removal is at least 90% wrong. "

"These so-called criminals' only crime," said Palast, "is VWD - voting while Democratic." The "purge" list contains four Democrats for every Republican.

Palast pointed out such names on the lists as Thomas Cooper whose date of conviction is entered as January 30, 2007, "a criminal of the future."

Earlier this month, after Palast testified before the US Civil Rights Commission in Washington, the CRC voted to ask the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation of the State of Florida's handling of voter rolls.

Palast's exposé of the "fake felon purge" for Harper's Magazine was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2002.

For interviews with Palast, contact Ilene Proctor at 301-721-2336 or media@gregpalast.com. For more information, see www.GregPalast.com.

Photo available at www.GregPalast.com Video available on request.

~~~~~~~~

Do they have a crystal ball or is God talking to Jeb too?

"Palast pointed out such names on the lists as Thomas Cooper whose date of conviction is entered as January 30, 2007, "a criminal of the future."

>Earlier this month, after Palast testified before the US Civil Rights Commission in Washington, the CRC voted to ask the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation of the State of Florida's handling of voter rolls.<
-----

Florida Elections: Voter List May Get Federal Inquiry

>The rights commission has a contentious history with Florida leaders, especially former Secretary of State Katherine Harris. After the 2000 presidential election, commissioners released a draft assessment of the election in Florida that called Harris and Bush "grossly derelict in fulfilling their responsibilities."
>snip<

"The whole reason why we're having these proceedings is to keep alerting the country to the fact that there are problems, and to try to put people's feet to the fire to make sure they try to solve the problems," Berry said. "So far what we have from Ms. Hood is just a sliding away from the problems."

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Hood, said the secretary of state was "disappointed with the partisan tone" of the commission meeting. Hood sent a letter to the commission detailing the state's decision on the felon list but did not attend.
>snip<

Although the list now won't be implemented before the November election, civil rights commissioners said they're concerned that the state has now left it to individual election supervisors to create their own system of removing ineligible voters.
http://www.constitutioncenter.org/explore/ConstitutionNewswire/9070.shtml
-----

Accenture

Jul 28, 5:47 AM EDT

Audit: State should renegotiate contracts worth $325 million

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- The State Technology Office should renegotiate contracts worth $325 million because it didn't justify the need for outsourcing the work and might not have competitively bid the contracts, a state audit shows.

The contracts were awarded to two politically connected firms - Accenture and BearingPoint - for services including help-desk operations, e-mail support, data storage and management of a multitude of government Web sites.
>snip<

Accenture, a New York-based conglomerate, was involved in creating a flawed database of potential felons voters was scrapped earlier this month by state officials. The company has hired a team of formerly high-ranking Republican officials with close ties to Gov. Jeb Bush to lobby for business with the state, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_TECHNOLOGY_CONTRACTS_FLOL-?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=STATE&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

What a mess this is. Almost four years and here we are again.

rather than after the election.

However, because of folks like Jeb and Glenda Hood, who don't want a fair and free election, things may actually be worse now, than they were in 2000. Thanks to all those nice new paperless, touchscreen systems, that they rushed out to buy, we have the making of another fiasco on election day.

However, this is what Bu$hCo is relying on. They want things to be a mess, so that way the election will be decided in the courts again. However, unlike Al Gore, who didn't fight back, supposedly for the good of the country, Bu$h is going to drag this out in court for as long as possible. Then even when Kerry still wins, they will have thrown so much doubt into the process, that they will scream for the next four years about how Kerry stole the election.

Who is going to watch the e-voting machines to make sure the data
cassettes don't get switched before arrival at election headquarters?

poll watchers won't do much good with paperless machines.

However, in 2000 the voters were blindsided by a cabal that was prepared to do whatever it had to, to steal the election. This time around we are all a lot older and wiser. This time we are ready to fight back. Besides it doesn't hurt having two lawyers running for pres and vp. They will not roll over and take it for the sake of the country like Gore did.

brave, good, decent people like Moore, Bev, Skinner, etc.

thank you for your efforts.

This is so important.

Of course the _Bushes could utilize any number of hired buttheads to create confusion and mayhem and destroy all possible attempts to keep them honest, but with so many people of conscience watching them, it's going to be a damned sight harder this time.

Greg Palast working with Michael Moore? What could be more worthwhile?

Always hope for Michael Moore's ability to live a long, accident-, obvious murder-, and mysterious disease-free life. He's got enemies now, and justice would have him survive them.

Posted on Thu, Jul. 29, 2004




FLORIDA ELECTION


Democrats want voting machines audited

Florida Democrats said independent auditing of electronic machines is a must, but state officials say it's not necessary.

BY FRANK DAVIES

fdavies@herald.com


BOSTON - Fired up by filmmaker Michael Moore and angered by new revelations of voting malfunctions, Florida Democrats said Wednesday that they will push for independent monitoring of the electronic machines used by half of the state's voters.

''If we are going to have confidence in our voting this year, that's the minimum we would accept -- an independent assessment,'' said Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Palm Beach. ``And it's not going to happen without some pressure.''

Moore, whose documentary Fahrenheit 911 has broken box-office records, told Florida delegates that he would come to Florida before the Nov. 2 election ''to put a huge spotlight'' on the way the state is preparing to conduct voting in the presidential election.

This week, Miami-Dade officials confirmed that nearly all electronic records for the 2002 gubernatorial primary, one of the first uses of electronic voting, were lost after two computer crashes last year. A new backup system will prevent such data being lost in the future, officials said.

Other malfunctions and glitches have affected elections in Miami-Dade, Broward and some of the 13 other counties that use touch-screen systems. Surveys show a higher error rate -- a lack of a recorded vote -- on touch-screen systems compared to optical scanners, used in 52 counties, where voters make a pencil mark on a ballot.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/9268002.htm
(Free registration required)

bless this as well

to anyone like they did in 2002. We also need Audit Teams in CA, TX, NY, FL, OH,TN,GA and any other state where they are suspected to easily fix the outcomes from the top down or the computer from the inside out.

}(

I'm pissed and I'm not gonna take it anymore. Meet me outside Katherine's office, Mike. We'll hand her her pink slip together, with the thousands other democrats here who are royally p-i-s-s-e-d!