A blast from the past...Anybody remember Fredda?

Seems that she & Bev Harris were having a hair-pulling contest back when we were all on Bev's side.

Not to support Fredda or anything, but I found the following piece while googling around & thought it might be worth pulling out into the light of December 2004. Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Fredda..

www.wordsunltd.com/voting_machine_fiasco.htm
LEST WE FORGET:

THE BUSH PUSH IN 2004: the spectacular debut of computerized voting in Florida 2000 and 2002 anticipates the HAV sweep (the “Help America Vote” act that will require computerized voting machines across the country)



By Fredda Weinberg (profiled in Words July 2003) and edited with too many “asides” by Marta Steele




Reactionary forces quietly at work, reversing civil rights and privacy precedents, have become more than participants in the election system.<1> They now own it.

In retrospect, it’s easy to trace the first steps to the mid seventies, when an ambitious, obscure political operative first started taking over the levers from unsuspecting citizens. came out in the early seventies –ed.] Where “our kind” of votes count – because “we” decide whose get counted. But this is years before the notorious Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris got her reward for fixing George W’s victory … and she was only following her predecessor’s plan.

Sandra B Mortham should go down in history as the architect of the greatest election fraud since Rutherford B. Hayes. But she’s done well for herself since disenfranchising thousands of African Americans and positioning Governor Jeb Bush’s brother to seize the White House in 2000.

((Snip))

And Then Came the 2002 Elections …



On primary election day 2002, 200 of those 5,040 machines in Broward malfunctioned, or maybe the poll workers didn’t insert the activating card correctly. The polls workers were certainly a factor in the chaos, keeping locations closed in some places until all the machines were started, neglecting to offer some voters a paper ballot. (Remember who considers a manually counted ballot a problem). 300 out of 3,000 trained workers failed to show up altogether. At the end of the day, workers failed to properly harvest votes from some machines. Some refused to stay late after Bush extended voting hours, saying they wanted more money. Out of 110, 24 polling places opened late and 35 failed to stay open until 9 p.m. Maybe Supervisor Miriam Oliphant should have apologized for her affirmative action efforts, recruiting all those Republican poll workers?



Even a Congresswoman Was Turned Away …



No such apologies in Miami Dade. U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek couldn’t vote early, and poll workers didn’t follow procedures spelled out in a new Miami-Dade training manual, which instructs them to contact the main elections office in the case of a computer glitch; poll workers told her and the others to leave. The reason: The lone elections department laptop containing voter information had malfunctioned, preventing poll workers from verifying which voters were eligible or what type of ballot they should get.

((Snip))

And If You Think That Was Bad …



The worst was seen at Precinct 507 in Liberty City's Thena C. Crowder Elementary, where the voting machines sputtered to a start in the morning, then crashed until mid-afternoon. There are 1,200 registered voters in the precinct, which is 90 percent Democrat and 95 percent black. Many walked away angry and suspicious after their first attempt to vote failed.


((Snip))

are not many left here on DU who might be willing to be vocal about those very "early" days...but they may still lurk.

For myself and maybe others...the whole Harris thing is so upsetting that we need a break from the bashing...deserved or whatever.

But, yes...I remember Fredda...I assume she may still post here...under a different name.

Glad to see you "Jackpine" since you kept your original name...and have a history. Some of us kept our names.. for whatever reason..so I enjoy seeing the folks who were here "long ago..."

Peace! (and, it's good to re-visit DU history..hopefully some will remember. :D) Without History how do we Calculate where we go...?

I got here in (I think) the spring of '01, found my way here from Democrats.com or maybe Buzzflash. Lots of us have moved on, I guess. For some reason TigerLily springs to mind. Khephra already had 6 or 7 million posts. The big deal was watching Bush sag in the polls in the days before 9-11. There were maybe 11 or 12k total posters here. Yeah. History. Jeez--almost 4 years of this wacko-world so far, like one long, bad drug trip.

Now let's hope Kerry's got some magic to spring on Ohio & get us all back into reality. I was having so much trouble believing that the guy who busted BCCI & Iran-Contra could be so goddamn naive about the people he's facing.

the Byrd testimony during Iraq War Build Up as the Height of DU commeraderie. Mid-Terms...etc...
Going back further..."Media Consortium Recount of the Votes which proved Gore won...and then events intervened...
Keph, Will, Tiger, So Cal and many others during 9/11 when we were all here trying to comfort and console and get info when the Towers went down.

It seems like forever...so many changes...when posts would stay for days with a few comments for the 10 to 15 posters...Crewleader, SSFreeways, Coralreef ...there are the others...

Never ever in my life did I think I would be here through another National Election...starting this whole Election Fraud all over again...NEVER!!! (I'm definitely nuts...or overly idealistic...)