Excerpt from Kerry video message due out today

This is a passage from a message by Kerry due out today. The excerpt was posted on Atrios:

"And we must fight not only against George Bush's extreme policies -- we must also uphold our own values. This is why on the first day Congress is in session next year, I will introduce a bill to provide every child in America with health insurance. And, with your help, that legislation will be accompanied by the support of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

There are more than eight million uninsured children in our nation.

That's eight million reasons for us to stay together and fight for a new direction. It is a disgrace that in the wealthiest nation on earth, eight million children go without health insurance.

Normally, a member of the Senate will first approach other senators and ask them to co-sponsor a bill before it is introduced -- instead, I am turning to you. Imagine the power of a bill co-sponsored by hundreds of thousands of Americans being presented on the floor of the United States Senate. You can make it happen. Sign our "Every Child Protected" pledge today and forward it to your family, friends, and neighbors..."

(from http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/11/kerry-statementvideo... )

Also see http://www.daoureport.com for more info on the message from Kerry due out today. (He does mention standardizing the voting system.)

-wildflower

Government in Exile, appeal directly to the people, fight fight fight

after reading this 2003 article on truthout.com . . .

http://www.truthout.com/docs_03/102503C.shtml

I'm convinced that the sole purpose of these touchscreen machines it to make election fraud easier and untraceable . . . we need to return to the simplest, most straightforward system available -- paper ballots marked with pencils and hand counted . . . until that happens, who wins what elections is entirely under the control of private corporations with strong ties to BushCo and absolutely no accountability to the American public . . . this is where we should be putting all of our efforts in the next two years, or longer if necessary . . .

it seems that the reason the Democrats are unwilling to take on this issue is that they're part and parcel of the system that benefits from it . . . if that's the case, it will be entirely up to us -- individual citizens like you, like me, like Bev Harris -- to make this happen . . . because if we don't do it, no one else will . . .

I don't trust the feds to get voting "reform" correct. We need to take this into our own hands via state ballot initiatives!

With the GOP in charge of Congress, any national voting "reform" will likely be a band-aid approach that leaves room for future fraud. Machines with paper trails, for instance, might still be useless if an election isn't close enough to meet a state's recount requirements.

Why doesn't Bev Harris get together with other progressive experts on voting fraud and draft language for state ballot initiatives that would mandate real voting reform? Among other things, the intiatives should require a ban on all touch-screen and optical scan voting machines. They should outlaw outsourcing of vote-counting to partisans and mandate a minimum number of polling booths and poll workers for every 100 people in a precinct. Require anyone registering voters to submit not only their signature as a witness, but their complete name, address, phone number, and a driver's license number or other ID to discourage the trashing of registration forms. Initiatives could also allow individual voters or groups to file suits when fraud is suspected, instead of leaving this matter up to local DAs.

many, perhaps most, don't . . . in those cases, you'd have to go through the state legislatures, where you'd run into the same problems you'd run into with Congress . . .

Bravo to Kerry. I can't wait to see their reaction to his bill. Hopefully he will use us for his fight. And keep doing it like this. I love it.:bounce: