http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1021-25.htm
Published on Saturday, October 21, 2006 by Yes! Magazine 
 
by Greg Palast
 
A nasty little secret of American democracy is that, in every national election, ballots cast are simply thrown in the garbage. Most are called "spoiled," supposedly unreadable, damaged, invalid. They just don’t get counted. This “spoilage” has occurred for decades, but it reached unprecedented heights in the last two presidential elections. In the 2004 election, for example, more than three million ballots were never counted.Almost as deep a secret is that people are doing something about it. In New Mexico, citizen activists, disgusted by systematic vote disappearance, demanded change — and got it.In Ohio, during the 2004 Presidential election, 153,237 ballots were simply thrown away — more than the Bush “victory” margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was five times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush’s triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. The official number is bad enough — 1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, according to the federal government’s Elections Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count.Correcting for that under-reporting, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. Why doesn’t your government tell you this?Hey, they do. It’s right there in black and white in a U.S. Census Bureau announcement released seven months after the election — in a footnote. The Census tabulation of voters voting in the 2004 presidential race "differs," it reads, from ballots tallied by the Clerk of the House of Representatives by 3.4 million votes.This is the hidden presidential count, which, with the exception of the Census’s whispered footnote, has not been reported. In the voting biz, most of these lost votes are called "spoilage." Spoilage, not the voters, picked our President for us. Unfortunately, that’s not all. In addition to the three million ballots uncounted due to technical "glitches," millions more were lost because the voters were prevented from casting their ballots in the first place. This group of un-votes includes voters illegally denied registration or wrongly purged from the registries.Joe Stalin, the story goes, said, “It’s not the people who vote that count; it’s the people who count the votes.” That may have been true in the old Soviet Union, but in the USA, the game is much, much subtler: He who makes sure votes don’t get counted decides our winners.In the lead-up to the 2004 race, millions of Americans were, not unreasonably, panicked about computer voting machines. Images abounded of an evil hacker-genius in Dick Cheney’s bunker rewriting code and zapping the totals. But that’s not how it went down.The computer scare was the McGuffin, the fake detail used by magicians to keep your eye off their hands. The principal means of the election heist — voiding ballots — went unexposed, unreported and most importantly, uncorrected and ready to roll out on a grander scale next time.Like a forensic crime scene investigation unit, we can perform a post mortem starting with the exhumation of more than three million uncounted votes:Provisional Ballots Rejected. An entirely new species of ballot debuted nationwide in 2004: the "provisional ballot." These were crucial to the Bush victory. Not because Republicans won this "provisional" vote. They won by rejecting provisional ballots that were cast overwhelmingly in Democratic precincts. The sum of "the uncounted" is astonishing: 675,676 ballots lost in the counties reporting to the federal government. Add in the missing jurisdictions and the un-vote climbs to over a million: 1,090,729 provisional ballots tossed out.

The First Maryland Voting FUBAR Story

www.myDD.com

by Matt Stoller, Wed Sep 13, 2006 at 03:28:27 PM EST

The first email is on the flip. I want to first address the 'oh this wasn't stolen it was incompetence' line.  If you steal an election, you first figure out how to make it look like incompetence so that you don't go to jail.  If possible, you design incompetence into the operation so that there's no way to tell who would have won had the voting operation gone off smoothly.

www.debrabowen.com
 
 
Dear Friend,
 
I wanted to write to you about a critical election this fall: the election for California Secretary of State.
 
Debra Bowen is running for two reasons: Florida and Ohio, two states where we saw inaccuracies in the vote counts and deliberate attempts to disenfranchise voters in recent elections. Today 52% of Americans do not have confidence that their votes will be counted accurately.

Estimated 2.4 MILLION in Mexico City Protest Demand Recount http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/30/154743/581Sun Jul 30, 2006 at 12:47:43 PM PDTIn an absolutely astounding development for the defense of democracy everywhere, Mexico's liberal coalition has led a presidential-vote-recount protest today centered around Mexico City's downtown central plaza (the "Zocalo") and has apparently bested the previous record for the largest demonstration ever in Mexico by a million people.A bit more under the fold, obviously a still developing story. :: :: An estimated 2.4 million people turned out in downtown Mexico City from across the nation.  The last biggest demonstration was when the liberal presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (or "AMLO" for short) brought an estimated 1.5 million out to fight a federal government's weak charges to prevent the former Mexico City mayor from running for President.Beat the last demo by a MILLION people.  A MILLION MORE PEOPLE THAN THE LAST PROTEST 2 WEEKS AGO.  (Mexico's population is about 106,000,000, so for a simple comparison's sake, if this were a sample of the entire nation, then the liberals just brought about 2.3% of the entire nation's population to Mexico City's downtown for a Sunday peaceful protest. Probably the majority of attendees are from Mexico City and nearby, however states farther away are reported to have mobilized tens of thousands as well.)The two posts linked below explore the protest's goals and justifications in more detail, but basically in Mexico there is a Constitutionally-empowered electoral tribunal (court), the TEPJF by its Spanish acronym, which has the authority to investigate elections and order a fairly wide range of solutions if it so decides, from certifying the election (which is not due until 06 September), to annulling the election and ordering another, or perhaps anything in between.2.4 MILLION PEOPLE.

CA: Proposition 89 - clean money

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=61710

EXCERPT:

The California Nurses Association sponsored Proposition 89 and collected enough signatures to get it placed on the November ballot. The “clean money” proposition proposes public election funds be distributed to candidates who reject private contributions. Multiple unions are teaming up to build a broad coalition for the proposition.

The CNA hopes the proposition will end big money events such as yesterday’s Hillsborough gathering.

 http://www.countthevote.org/pollwatching.htm

Data compiled by CountTheVote.org, technical writing and design by Ellen Theisen of VotersUnite.org

Guide to Establishing a Poll Watching Group This is a step-by-step guide to establishing a group to observe elections held on Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting machines. It was designed for poll watching in Georgia, which uses Diebold TS machines. Use it and distribute it freely, but be aware that details may be slightly different for other DRE voting machines. Research the State Laws and Specific Voting Machines

Observers need to know which actions are within the law and which ones aren't, so the legal information should be included in the training packet.

www.bradblog.comBLOGGED BY Brad ON 7/13/2006 11:15AM FIRST RFK JR. VOTING MACHINE WHISTLEBLOWER LAWSUIT NOW FILED IN FEDERAL COURT! NEW DETAILS!Attorney Papantonio on Mike Malloy Show: 'We're gonna shut down some of these companies'!Excoriates 'Indolent Democrats' and 'Lazy Media' for Not Taking Action; Lauds BRAD BLOG for Putting Issue on 'Radar Screen'…The first of several federal whistleblower qui tam (fraud) suits have now been filed against one of America's major electronic voting machine companies, The BRAD BLOG can now report.Florida attorney Mike Papantonio who, along with Robert F.