Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Saturday, July 22, 2006

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News

All members welcomed and encouraged to participate.



Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.

If you can:
1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.

2. Post stories using the new Spring 2006 Edition of "Election Fraud and Reform News Directory" listed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407240

3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.



Link to yesterday's thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=442037&mesg_id=442037

Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

Election Reform Daily News Thread Needs You!!! Come lend a hand.
Posted by
Melissa G



We have jobs a plenty..And we will pair you with a buddy who will help train you how to do them!

Here is the current list..
Daily thread editor needed for Sunday

Helpers Needed..
Monday and Tuesday to lend autorank a hand..
Wednesday to give kpete a boost
Friday to assist rumpel would be welcome
Sunday may also be useful depending on our new editor

Folks to occasionally back up on an 'as needed' basis are also welcome!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2735139

July 22, 2006
Investigation Into ’01 Race Exonerates Mark Green
By MICHAEL BRICK

Mark Green, the former public advocate who is running for state attorney general, has been cleared of any wrongdoing in an investigation into the finances of his unsuccessful 2001 mayoral campaign, the Brooklyn district attorney said yesterday.

The investigation focused on payments from the Green campaign to a powerful Brooklyn Democratic club, and on the financing of campaign literature with controversial content that changed the tenor of the shortened campaign held in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack.

Shortly before the Democratic primary runoff between Mr. Green and Fernando Ferrer, operatives of the Green campaign sought to rally white voters in Brooklyn by insinuating that Mr. Ferrer was beholden to the Rev. Al Sharpton, in part by distributing fliers with demeaning caricatures of Mr. Sharpton.

Mr. Green won the runoff, but the episode was divisive for the Democratic Party, even though he denounced the fliers and vowed to investigate who had been behind their distribution. The Republican candidate, Michael R. Bloomberg, went on to win the general election.

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/nyregion/22green.html

July 22, 2006
Lieberman’s Challenger Releases Tax Return for Last Year
By JENNIFER MEDINA

MERIDEN, Conn., July 21 — Ned Lamont, the Greenwich multimillionaire who is challenging Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in next month’s Democratic primary, had an adjusted gross income of more than $2.8 million last year, according to the 2005 tax return his campaign released yesterday.

But that money is only a fraction of Mr. Lamont’s wealth, which his advisers estimate at around $200 million. The returns did not include the income of his wife, Annie Lamont, who is a partner at a Westport-based venture capital fund and considered a millionaire in her own right.

The 2005 return did not provide many details about Mr. Lamont’s assets. The founder of a cable company, Mr. Lamont is also the scion of a prominent banking family and is thought to have inherited a significant amount of money.

But the release did offer some new details on how the Lamonts spend their money. One household employee, for instance, received a salary of $45,845. The Lamonts also bought a piece of artwork for $1 million.

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/nyregion/22lamont.html

July 22, 2006
Ruling Has Texans Puzzling Over Districts
By RICK LYMAN

SAN ANTONIO, July 20 — Once upon a time, Congressional district lines were redrawn once a decade, after each federal census. But last month the Supreme Court made it clear that redistricting could occur far more often, and the resulting sense of impermanence was on display this week in a weather-beaten house on this city’s Hispanic, working-class South Side.

A few dozen people clustered around the color-coded maps pinned to the wall, each map showing the jigsaw patterns of how South and West Texas’ Congressional districts might be redrawn in the next few weeks. One keeps this part of southern Bexar County in the 28th Congressional District, another puts it in the 23rd, some split it into both and one plan divides the neighborhood among three districts.

“It’s a mess,” said Jimmie Casias, a military veteran and school board official from nearby Somerset. “And what’s worst about it, the way things are now, if whoever’s running things doesn’t like the way an election turns out, they can come back and change the lines all over again.”

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling said that a 2003 redistricting plan, spearheaded by Tom DeLay, the former leader of the Republican majority in the House, was not an unconstitutional gerrymander even though it resulted in the defeat of four Democratic incumbents. But the court also ruled that one district, the 23rd, stretching for 700 miles from Laredo to the outskirts of El Paso was illegal under the Voting Rights Act and needed 100,000 more Hispanics in it to comply.

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/us/22district.html

Democrats blast proposed redistricting boundaries

In addition, Hispanic group urges court to disregard partisanship

12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, July 22, 2006

By KELLEY SHANNON Associated Press

AUSTIN – Attorneys for the state urged Friday that a federal court keep its focus narrow when fixing Texas' congressional districts to protect minority voting rights.

But Democrats said the Republican-leaning state redistricting proposal, while claiming to make minimal shifts, would move 1.4 million voters into new districts while protecting incumbent members of Congress.

Democratic plaintiffs also argued that the state's proposed map would fail to cure the Voting Rights Act problems cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. Splitting Webb County into two congressional districts diluted Hispanic voting strength, the court ruled.

Opposing sides in Texas' congressional redistricting lawsuit filed written arguments responding to the array of maps proposed last week to solve the problems in the design of a southwest Texas district.

A federal three-judge panel now must determine the voting lines to be used in the November election. The court set a hearing for Aug. 3 in Austin.

>more

http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/DN-redistricting_22tex.ART.State.Edition1.229cfe8.html

Jul 21, 2006 9:52 pm US/Central

Doggett Defends Austin's Right To Its Own District
CBS 42 Web Producer Cody Garrett Reporting

(CBS 42) AUSTIN Congressman Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, told CBS 42 that he is prepared for the toughest fight of his career should a federal district court in Austin choose to redraw District 25 as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court order.

The high court said a district in West Texas violated the Voting Rights Act and must be redrawn, but changes in one set of lines often forces changes in others. A host of proposed new and changed districts are on the table.

Doggett said the map filed by the Texas attorney general on behalf of the state's top three Republicans is an extension of the redistricting efforts by former U.S. Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugarland, to push him and other Texas Democrats out of Congress.

"A totally outrageous map," Doggett said. "They set out to defeat me, were not successful, and now they propose to eliminate me from my current district, my home county, to impose Republican rule on all of Travis County."

>more including video

http://keyetv.com/local/local_story_202221027.html

Steve Freeman, Greg Palast on CSPAN Saturday: Integrity & US Elections!
Posted by
IndyOp

From Steve Freeman: I will be in New York this Saturday, July 22, 2006 at the Harlem Book Fair speaking on a panel on "A Matter of Trust: Integrity and the US Electoral System".

It will be covered LIVE by CSPAN2 Time: 12:45 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ET

Panelists:

John McWhorter, Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America

Paul Robeson, Jr., A Black Way of Seeing: From 'Liberty' to Freedom

Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count

Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats, Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War

Peniel Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America; and moderator Dan Simon, Seven Stories Press.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x442198

Freedom marchers gather to look back, confront new challenges
IOWA VIEW

July 22, 2006

As thousands of bikers begin their annual trek across my home state of Iowa on Sunday, I will take a historic journey myself, back to Chicago to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Chicago Freedom Movement.

By 1966, as a young college graduate living in Chicago and working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I considered myself a dyed-in-the-wool civil-rights worker. I had survived Freedom Summer '64 in Mississippi, where three of my fellow workers had been brutally murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan, and I had marched the final leg of the frightening Selma-to-Montgomery March in 1965.

So by 1966, being a part of the first nonviolent movement in the North seemed exciting and promising, but not nearly as challenging as facing segregationists in the South. How wrong could I be? The problems and especially the racial prejudice were as great in Chicago, if not more so, than in Mississippi.

Using one of the South's nonviolent movement's strategies, leaders held marches in all-white neighborhoods on the southwest side of Chicago to dramatize the blatant discrimination in housing. During an open-housing march on July 31, 1966, in Marquette Park, whites threw bricks and bottles at us as we marched. When we returned to our cars, we saw two of the cars being pushed into a lagoon and at least 10 on fire.

>more

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060722/OPINION04/607220312/1035/OPINION

DuPree, Carroll urge vote delay
By Reuben Mees

A bevy of legal issues, unanswered questions and conflicting opinions from the state attorney general and secretary of state's offices forced city officials to recommend delaying the special election to fill the Ward 4 Hattiesburg City Council seat.

Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree and Council President Carter Carroll said in a joint statement Friday that postponing the election until Aug. 29 would be in the best interest of citizens and better protect the city from a legal challenge to the process.

During a Wednesday morning meeting, the city council accepted the resignation submitted by Red Bailey on Tuesday, declared his seat vacant, then set the election date for Aug. 22.

There were questions Friday over whether the series of actions the council took Wednesday were done according to protocol, Carroll said.

>more

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060722/NEWS01/607220307/1002

Article published July 22, 2006

Why did Bush speak to NAACP now?

By ROSE RUSSELL

SO AS I listened Thursday morning to the President address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, I found myself wanting to root for him.

With the exception of that smirk and those chummy "hey, we're all pals here," gestures, he looked presidential, as expected.

He made the right remarks, some of which drew rounds of applause, others light applause, and some none at all.

The audience was polite, of course, although a couple of hecklers were not happy about Mr. Bush being at the 97th annual convention.

What kept gnawing at me, though, is why Mr. Bush waited five years before he finally accepted the NAACP's invitation.

>more

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060722/COLUMNIST24/607220342/-1/NEWS33

Article published Jul 22, 2006

Renewing Voting Rights Act causes problems for GOP

The Republican Party faced an unexpectedly tumultuous situation as it pushed to renew the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Some Southern GOP members in the House fought the renewal, and at one point forced sponsors to pull the act off the table temporarily. The House eventually approved the renewal. There were some anxious moments, however, for Republican leadership.

The act is considered one of the most important pieces of legislation of the 20th century. Its intent is to make it easier for black people to gain access to the polls and to win elective office.

Southern conservatives object primarily to requirements that there be federal oversight of nine states, intended primarily to ensure that they clear proposed changes in voting procedures with the Justice Department. Louisiana is one of the nine states.

Southern congressmen have complained that the act punishes their states for racist voting histories they say they have long overcome.

Some African Americans understandably fear this is not completely true. The New Orleans Times-Picayune cites a case in Kilmichael, Miss., in 2001 in which an incumbent white mayor and all-white board of aldermen canceled an election when they sensed that they were about to be replaced by black people. Federal officials ruled the cancellation was a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

>more

http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060722/OPINION01/607220318/1014

They Don't Call It the White House for Nothing
By Greg Palast, GregPalast.com
Posted on July 22, 2006, Printed on July 22, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/39320/

God lost this time. I counted: Bush mentioned God only six times in his speech to the NAACP yesterday. The winner was "faith" -- which got seven mentions, though if you count "The Creator" as God, well, then the Lord tied it.

Coming in right behind God and Faith, other big mentions in the First Home Boy's rap included: The Voting Rights Act, his family's "commitment to civil rights," the "death tax," rebuilding New Orleans, "public school choice" and "soft bigotry."

As the philosopher Aretha Franklin once said, "Who's zoomin' who?"

Let's take it one point at a time.

>more

http://www.alternet.org/story/39320/

State gets approval for rehearing in case involving voting equality
Saturday, July 22, 2006

The previous ruling said voters' rights were violated.

COLUMBUS (AP) — A full appeals court agreed Friday to consider whether punch-card ballots, commonly used by voters across the country for decades, violated Ohio voters' rights because counties could not ensure that the ballots were counted.

The state asked the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to consider the case after its three-judge panel upheld a lower-court ruling against the state April 21.

Any further ruling will not have an effect on this year's election because all punch-card voting in the state was replaced for the May 2 primary with electronic touch-screen or optical-scan machines under the federal Help America Vote Act, which Congress approved in 2002 as a response to the 2000 election debacle in Florida.

In the 2-1 ruling on April 21, the majority ruled the rights of voters in punch-card counties were not equal to the rights of voters in counties who cast ballots by other means.

>more

http://www.vindy.com/content/local_regional/329199069997204.php

Those thrilling days of yesteryear

By Jaime O'Neill
Paradise Post

If George W. Bush doesn't embarrass you as an Ameri-can, then I don't know what it would take to make you feel a mite sheepish. That the richest, most powerful and theoretically most democratic nation on the planet would twice elect such a man to its highest office is a rebuke of the very idea of government "of the people, by the people and for the people."

There isn't much this administration has done that serves the interests of the majority from the horrible and misguided war in Iraq to the waste, corruption and incompetence of the Katrina response to the big deficits and tax windfalls for the elite 1 percent who have been the recipients of most of the Bush administration largesse.

But if Bush hasn't been enough to make you squirm, perhaps you might look to our own long-term representative in Congress.

Wally Herger is an embarrassment of major proportions. Less than two weeks ago, he was one of a mere handful of Republican congressmen who voted against extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

>more

http://www.paradisepost.com/columns/ci_4081651

Not really election reform, but interesting enough that I couldn't pass it up.



American Taliban Come to Town
Letter from America

by Lee Roberts

While the rest of the world sizzles, Washington D.C. droops and withers in unrelenting heat, and the air smells so bad one thinks of sewers. The average cost of taking the trash outside these days is five mosquito bites, unless one is plastered with DEET. Gone from the suburbs are the nostalgic aroma of outdoor barbecues and the sound of deck parties that were a mainstay of greater D.C. just a few years ago. Now everyone stays indoors, and the traffic in downtown Washington's continually dug-up streets resembles third-world gridlock. Everyone prays for rain, which comes in abundance or not at all, and everyone prays that there won't be yet another power cut, a regular feature of life in the nation's capital.

And the nation's capital this week was entertained by a display of fundamentalist zeal that would have made the Taliban envious. Putting up his thumb in a victory salute, George Bush did what he promised and vetoed a bill that would have made federal funding available for stem-cell research.

At issue are thousands of frozen embryos that the Senate's most Neanderthal inhabitant, Sam Brownback, calls "young humans," although he, like everyone else, knows they will never have that destiny. The president's thinking on stem cell research is done by multi-million dollar flat-earth organizations like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, where "defending human dignity" is reserved entirely to the unborn.

They remained unmoved by the public pleas of actor Michael J. Fox, stricken by Parkinson's disease, to permit stem cell research to find cures for many terrible afflictions, such as his own. Asked why his boss feels so passionate about the issue, Bush's spokesman, the self-adoring Tony Snow, explained that Bush is opposed to murder, which may surprise the inhabitants of Baghdad, Falluja, or Beirut.

>more commentary on a variety of current events

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=306760&rel_no=1

Cheney Visits Tampa To Raise Money For Bilirakis' Campaign

By CARLOS MONCADA , The Tampa Tribune
Tampa Bay Online
Jul 22, 2006

TAMPA - The second most powerful man in the country came to town Friday to mingle with the faithful and stump for a Republican candidate in a Tampa Bay area congressional race that is taking on national significance.

Vice President Dick Cheney's whirlwind political visit at the Wyndham Westshore-Tampa hotel brought in as much as $230,000 for state Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, running to succeed his father, 24-year incumbent Mike Bilirakis, in Congress.

However, Cheney is a polarizing figure, and the Democratic candidate for U.S. House District 9, Phyllis Busansky, and others used the opportunity to criticize or protest his appearance.

"I'm amazed that amid everything that's going on - increase in the violence in the Mideast, the skyrocketing oil prices - that the vice president has time to come to Tampa," said Busansky, a former Hillsborough County commissioner.

>more

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13979158/

Posted on: Saturday, July 22, 2006

Candidates dodge a bullet

By Johnny Brannon
Advertiser Staff Writer


New requirements meant to ensure voters can quickly see who donated money to hundreds of candidates for state and county offices won't be enforced until after this year's primary and general elections are finished.

The changes — pushed for years by open-government activists — require for the first time that candidates for the state House and Senate, and Office of Hawaiian Affairs, file electronic reports showing how their campaigns are financed, and how they spend their money, if it amounts to $5,000 or more.

Candidates for other offices have had to make the electronic filings for a decade, but lawmakers had steadfastly exempted themselves until last year, when they approved a package of changes to the law.

But the state Campaign Spending Commission says it won't enforce the filing requirement because it didn't have time to train all the affected candidates to use a computer program that records the donations, and is also switching to a different electronic filing system soon.

>snip
(Here's the main difference between electronic and paper disclosures)

There's a difference, however. The electronic reports feed a database that viewers can quickly sort through to determine additional information, such as whether a contributor to one candidate also donated money to others. That information can still be gleaned and compiled from the scanned paper reports, but the process can be arduous for those unfamiliar with it.

"It's not as readily searchable as electronically filed reports," Wong said.

Reviewing donation and expenditure reports can give voters an idea of who a candidate's strongest supporters are, and how that could influence the decisions they make if elected, she said.

>more

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060722/NEWS05/607220342/1001/NEWS

Nice collection of articles to pass along....

When I mentioned that the GOP has been stealing the past few elections with rigged machines and lots of other dirty tricks, he looked at me as if I had antennae and green skin. He asked "How come I haven't seen this in any "normal" media?" I said "Because you didn't want to." I sent him this by e-mail:

_______________________________________________
Here is a tiny sampling of articles from reputable organizations on election problems. At the bottom is the official GAO report confirming some of the problems. I have not even included anything on the crooked secretaries of state such as Blackwell in Ohio (committed numerous offenses to manipulate the 2004 election in which, by the way, he was also the Bush Ohio campaign chair).


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x442125

Did the 'normal' media tell you that Colin Powell's speech to the U.N. on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a one hundred percent pack of lies?

All the Left blogs knew it. The UN weapons inspectors knew it. France knew it. Germany knew it. The whole world knew it. The "normal" American news media didn't investigate it, and didn't report on it. This 100% pack of lies that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell pushed on the American people was frontpaged as true and credible information by the nation's newspaper of record, the New York Times, from whom all the other war profiteering corporate news monopolies took their cue. It was a conspiracy against the truth.

Given their promotion of lies and disinformation about the Iraq war--and many other Bush regime crimes--is it any wonder that they would black-hole the story of 2004 election fraud?

That's Answer #1 to those who are addicted to the corporate news monopolies for their sense of what is true. If they would lie to you about a critical matter like unjust war--and place an "Iron Curtain" over the truth throughout the media--why wouldn't they do the same about election fraud? I think this is so important that I'm interrupting the Election news thread to say it. I cannot let this stand: "How come I haven't seen this in the 'normal' media?" People who are addicted to the corporate-controlled news have no idea how much their sense of reality has been messed with--in order to drag us into a war that nearly 60% of the American people opposed at the time of the invasion (and that over 70% oppose today), and to convince us that our fellow Americans endorsed that war and its perpetrator George Bush in 2004. This is also a very common question among corporate news addict* (why isn't the "normal" media reporting on it?), and those of us who know what went down need to have the answers at our fingertips.

Answer #1: They lied about the war, and they are lying about this.

And here is answer #2: The corporate news monopolies actively colluded in the stolen 2004 election.

These same war profiteering corporate news monopolies formed a cabal to hire one exit pollster for the 2004 election. As the exit polls reported on election day, Kerry was clearly winning, all day long. Then, late in the day, the reporting system went down (a "computer glitch," they said), and when it came back up, somehow Bush had won. Most people remember this--Kerry was winning, then, mysteriously, they said Bush had won. But most people don't know this: What they had done was to DOCTOR their own exit polls--in impossible, ridiculous ways--to force the exit polls (Kerry won) to FIT the "official results" coming from two electronic voting corporations with close ties to the Bush regime, which were using TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code to tabulate all the votes, with virtually no audit/recount controls. These two closely related Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--which had gained control of 80% of the nation's vote tabulation in the 2002-2004 period, produced this entirely non-transparent result, that Bush won. The corporate news monopolies put FALSE exit poll numbers on everybody's TV screens to confirm that non-transparent "official result." Their exit polls STILL said Kerry won. They hid that important evidence of election fraud from the American people.

They had already black-holed the story of who was "counting" all our votes under a veil of corporate secrecy, and how that fraudulent, non-transparent, electronic vote counting system came into being. They now black-holed the story of electronic election fraud that the exit polls told, and further black-holed the outrageous violations of the Voting Rights Act, by Bushite officials in Ohio, against poor, black and other Democratic voters, which stole hundreds of thousands of votes from Kerry and gave the Electoral College count to Bush.

So, the other reason that people haven't seen the election fraud story in the "normal" media--besides the corporate news monopoly conspiracy on the war--is that the corporate news monopolies actively COLLUDED on the stolen 2004 election, and they are covering up their own outrageous crime against our democracy. (See www.TruthIsAll.net for exit poll analysis.)

They lied about the war.
They lied about the exit polls.
They black-holed the story of the Bushite takeover of our election system.
They black-holed the story of the Ohio election theft.
And they are lying to this day when they treat this Diebold President and his Diebold Congress as legitimate representatives of the American people.

----------

*(Another version of this question (why haven't I seen the election fraud story in the "normal" media?) is: "But the Democrats wouldn't let that happen, would they?" Answer: It's not a matter of "WOULD they let it happen?" It's a matter of: They DID let it happen! Complete silence of the Democratic Party leadership about the Bushite corporate takeover of our election system. And we need to ask why. I think the answer is not simple--as simple, say, as: Would the Bushites steal an election if they had set up an electronic capability to do so (one hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace...)? The answer to that is obvious. The Democrats are more complex creatures. It was the Anthrax Congress that did it, and many were fearful. That was part of it, I believe. Some, like Sen. Christopher Dodd (of the Bilderberg group) directly colluded with the biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, in engineering the so-called "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA)--a $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle for Bush's buds at Diebold and ES&S. And some were pro-Iraq war and didn't care if the Bushites destroyed our democracy to perpetrate it. There is evidence in California of strongarm tactics by the Democratic Party leadership in silencing good Democrats on a matter related to Diebold, and there was a blatant nationwide taboo that could have only been imposed from the top on all talk of election fraud in Democratic circles. Collusion, corruption and fear--is the complex answer.)

these bastards and because we are WINNING.

They CANNOT prevent the truth from coming out EVENTUALLY. And the CSPAN panel thread today that Helderheid hosted is a perfect example of that. Our job is to cut into that "eventually" margin.

Former mayor guilty of fraud
Gate City's Charles Dougherty will get 32 days in jail and a $32,000 fine for election cheating.

By Laurence Hammack
981-3239

GATE CITY -- By cheating, Charles Dougherty won the election but lost the trial.

The ex-mayor of Gate City was convicted Friday of 16 counts of vote fraud stemming from his 2004 re-election, which relied on a stealth electorate of absentee voters assembled through lies and deceit.

A Scott County jury that heard the case sentenced Dougherty to 32 days in jail and fined him $32,000.

Eight voters testified that Dougherty approached them in the weeks before the May 4, 2004, town elections with an offer: Vote for him by absentee ballot, and he would make false statements on election records explaining why they couldn't make it to the polls on Election Day.

>more

http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/74847

Opinion

Norman Stockwell: U.S. could take lessons from Mexican voting process
By Norman Stockwell

Last Sunday's rally of up to 1.5 million Mexicans in the main square of the capital city is only the latest stage in a series of lessons in democracy that our neighbors to the south are teaching us here in the United States.

In Mexico, campaigning must cease several days before voting takes place; on election day and the day before, no alcohol can be sold (or used to buy votes); and election day itself is always held on a Sunday so people will be sure to have time off from work to get to the polls. A nationwide electoral law and system of voter IDs guarantees uniformity, and hand-marked paper ballots stuffed into clear boxes give the process a sense of "transparency" fast disappearing in our country.

>snip

But more disturbing to many in Mexico is the fact that although things went pretty smoothly on election day itself (a far cry better than elections in previous decades), it is the events of the days and weeks before that may have had the largest effect on vote totals. A questionable contract with the U.S. data firm ChoicePoint was revealed by one Mexican paper; a spring visit by political consultant Dick Morris was followed by a vicious negative ad campaign spuriously linking Lopez Obrador to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez; and links were exposed by several journalists between Calderon's brother-in-law's data firm and the IFE the supposedly neutral Federal Electoral Commission which counted the votes on July 2.

On election weekend, the PRD's Web page was hacked, then two PRD poll-watchers were gunned down in a scene that brought back bitter memories of the 1988 election, when PRD candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was defeated through a computer failure, followed by the burning of the ballots and the killing of hundreds of PRD activists. The stage was clearly set for a difficult showdown in this visibly close race.

>more

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=91942&ntpid=0

Unions rake in record cash for campaigns

Updated 7/21/2006 3:32 AM ET
By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A year after six unions bolted from the AFL-CIO and formed their own federation, the two camps are raising record amounts of political money and seeking ways to do joint campaign work this fall.

Conflicts over how to expand the union movement led the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Teamsters and four other unions to secede from the AFL-CIO. Along with the Carpenters union, which had already left, they formed a new, 6-million-member federation, Change to Win.

LABOR COMES TOGETHER: Revamped unions rev up activity

Between Jan. 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006, federal reports show, major unions in both groups raised more money than they did for the last non-presidential campaign in 2002:

•The main SEIU political action committee and five local SEIU PACs raised about $15 million to give to candidates, a 62% increase.

>more

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-20-unions-campaigns_x.htm

IRS Should Investigate Texas Church That Gave Donations To GOP, Says Americans United
Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Church-State Watchdog Group Files IRS Complaint Against Calvary Temple Church In Kerrville

A nondenominational church in Texas that has donated $1,500 to the local Republican Party should be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

In a July 19 letter to IRS officials, Americans United asked the federal tax agency to examine the activities of Calvary Temple Church in Kerrville. Records held by the Texas Ethics Commission show that the congregation donated $1,000 to the Kerr County Republican Party on May 12, 2005, and $250 in 2003 and 2004.

Federal tax law bars houses of worship and other 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations from intervening in partisan politics.

“This appears to be a blatant violation of federal law,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “I urge the IRS to act.

“When church-goers place their hard-earned money in the collection plate, they do not expect it to wind up in the hands of politicians,” Lynn added. “That’s an abuse of the people’s trust and a flouting of the law.”

>more

http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8373&news_iv_ctrl=0&abbr=pr

Election chief survives 2-2 party-line vote

Saturday, July 22, 2006

By THOMAS J. SHEERAN ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

CLEVELAND (AP) — The director of the embattled election board in Ohio’s largest county narrowly survived an ouster move Friday as the appointed board split along party lines on how to respond to an outside report critical of the botched primary election.

Cuyahoga County’s May 2 primary was marked by voting machine problems, poorly trained or absent poll workers, a precinct that opened hours late, missing vote memory cards and vote counting that stretched over six days.

The board split 2-2, with Republicans Robert Bennett and Sally Florkiewicz backing Director Michael Vu and Democrats Edward C. Coaxum Jr. and Loree Soggs against, in a vote following the release of a 395-page report on the “nightmare election” in Ohio’s largest county.

Coaxum and Soggs said a new leader was needed to restore confidence in the election system.

Vu, a Democrat, said his fate was in the tie-breaking hands of Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican candidate for governor. Vu said he hopes to stay on the $119,000-a-year job and work toward a smooth Nov. 7 election but deflected a question about his standing with Blackwell.

>more

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=298031&Category=13

The Free Press
Speaking Truth to Power
Departments
Election Issues

How the last presidential election awoke me from an unsound sleep
by Jeanne Norris Weinberg
July 22, 2006

Or ... One average citizen's account of her unsettling experience video-taping on Election Day 2004, attending the public hearings afterward and then serving as an Official Witness for the Ohio Vote Recount.

In 2004, like most of my friends, I was asleep at the wheel, even with questions still lingering following the 2000 election. As an active mother, advocate and writer, I felt entitled to this lethargy. It's all too much was my hidden mantra. If I hadn't been asked to take my outdated family video camera to the polls on Election Day, I might still be able relieve myself of the burden of being awake and aware. But from that day forward, things changed. In late 2004, I added Voter's Rights activism to my list of duties. Nobody in my life saw it coming, least of all me.

Linda Byrket, a filmmaker and the organizer for video-documenting voter issues on the day of our last presidential election, had nabbed me three days before the election, while I was waiting in line for a showing of the film, Unprecedented, at the Drexel Theatre. She assured me that my ineptness with a video camera wouldn't get in the way of making a video record of voters and their stories.

I took film footage at precincts in Franklin County, Ohio, and it changed me, forever. Following that, I also attended two public hearings about election abnormalities and following that, I volunteered to become an official Witness for the Ohio Vote Recount.

On Election Day, 2004, I pulled out the camera, dusted it off, and showed up to precincts where voters were having problems. My job, and that of others who volunteered at the last minute for this project, was simply to document voter issues, complaints, and testimony of injustices. It was assumed there might be problems with Republican challengers. I would have taped happy voters, as well, but in my precincts, they were few and far between.

>much more

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2092

Voters getting registered

By Kantele Franko

Staff Writer

The Clark County Board of Elections has registered nearly 600 new voters since January, and elections officials say they expect registration, voter interest and participation to increase as the mid-term election draws near.

But party divisions do little to predict where voters will stand in November, as 59 percent of the 89,189 registered voters are listed as undeclared. About 20.5 percent are Democrats, 18.5 percent are Republicans and 2 percent are independents, according to the board.

Local officials say huge registration efforts for the 2004 presidential election now show in the longer list of registered voters that carried over to this year. Clark County registered roughly 10,000 new voters that year and had more than 70,000 people vote, said Linda Rosicka, director of the board.

“Some of the attention that Ohio drew in the national election has ... made Ohio residents more aware of how important it is that they do vote,” board Chairman David Ferrell said, adding that interest is higher than in past gubernatorial races.

>more

http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/07/21/sns0722voters.html

Saturday, July 22, 2006
Morehouse gets new electronic voting machines
By Enterprise Staff
Published: Thursday, July 20, 2006 1:05 PM CDT



When Morehouse Parish voters go to the polls this fall, the antiquated mechanical voting machines that have served the state for years will be gone.

Morehouse is among dozens of parishes statewide using the new AVC Advantage electronic voting machines. They will be used Sept. 30 when voters across the parish vote on Morehouse Parish School Board members, a parish-wide tax to support the LSU AgCenter and municipal elections in Bonita, Collinston and Mer Rouge.

>snip

The greatest change, Jones said, will come after the polls close. For years, each precinct had a commissioner in charge and other commissioners who would have to read row after row of tiny figures off mechanical wheels that actually counted the vote totals. With the new machines, the commissioner will close the machine, and a printer enclosed in the rear of the machine will print off four copies of the vote totals for each race and ballot proposition included on the ballot. Each machine also has an electronic storage device that will be removed by the commissioner in charge and brought to the clerk's office. The figures on those storage devices will be plugged into a reading device, and the totals will be uploaded to the Louisiana Secretary of State's Office.

Ouachita Parish was the first in northeastern Louisiana to use the new machines in a parish-wide election held last weekend. Ouachita Clerk of Court W.J. "Bill" Hodge said the new machines "make the entire process much easier."

>more


http://bastrop.townnews.com/articles/2006/07/20/news/news10.txt