Ginny's blog

January 30, 2008
By Mark Crispin Miller
Op Ed News: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mark_cri_080130_a_12_step_program_to.htm

Certainly the outlook for democracy seems pretty bleak-and how could it be otherwise? The surest way to make a problem worse is to pretend it isn't there, which is exactly what our press and politicians have been doing; and the rest is, unfortunately, history.

But history can be changed, as We the People have continually learned, from our refusal of colonial subjection, to our (partial) establishment as a democratic republic, to the abolition of slavery, to the enfranchisement of women, to the end of formal segregation and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

After that, our progress seemed to stop, and it must now resume: for history can be changed, and for the better, but only through our own unbreakable commitment to, and action for, enlightened policies for the renewal of our democracy. Based squarely on America's first principles, such policies would not be wholly new, however revolutionary they must sound in these bad, backward times. As it was certain policies that got us into this horrific situation, certain other policies can get us out.

The fact is that We the People are in lousy shape, and must get straight as soon as possible. For we are all addicted to the horse race-and we can't win, because it's fixed. And so, before we end up losing everything, we need to pull ourselves together, face the music, and then take all necessary steps to change the tune.

A 12-Step Program to Save US Democracy

1. Repeal the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
This step will inevitably follow an in-depth investigation of how HAVA came to be.

2. Replace all electronic voting with hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB).
Although politicians and the press dismiss this idea as utopian, the people would support it just as overwhelmingly as national health care, strong environmental measures, US withdrawal from Iraq, and other sane ideas.

3. Get rid of computerized voter rolls.
It isn't just the e-voting machines that are obstructing our self-government. According to USA Today, thousands of Americans have had their names mysteriously purged from the electronic databases now used nationwide as records of our registration.

4. Keep all private vendors out of our elections.
With their commercial interests, trade secrets and unaccountable proceedings, private companies should have no role in the essential process of republican self-government.

5. Make it illegal for the TV networks to declare who won before the vote-count is complete.
Certainly the corporate press will scream about its First Amendment Rights, but they don't have the right to interfere with our elections. When they declare a winner when we don't yet even know if the election was legitimate, they delegitimize all audits, recounts and even first counts of the vote as the mere desperate measures of "sore losers."

6. Set up an exit polling system, publicly supported, to keep the vote-counts honest.
Only in America are exit poll results not meant to help us gauge the accuracy of the official count. Here they are meant only to allow the media to make its calls.

Interview with David Earnhardt, Director of Uncounted
BuzzFlash 1/28/2008

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

For me, it's quite simple. I was appalled at what I'd seen in the 2004 election ... David Earnhardt

First of all, BuzzFlash wants to commend all those Americans who are working to ensure that every citizen can vote -- and that every vote is properly counted.

Since the debacle of the Florida vote in 2000, there has been a growing movement to ensure voting rights. It involves the unacceptable role of proprietary electronic voting machines (owned in large part by Republican affiliated corporations); the suppression of voting rights (think "Jim Crow" voter "identification cards"); and equal access to voting precincts, among other issues.

It's a complicated and long-term challenge to ensure that the legal right of "one person/one vote" is enforced -- and that a vote count accurately reflects the votes cast. Given the large number of issues involved, the voter advocacy community has, at times, disagreed about some of the potential solutions, particularly when it comes to electronic voting machines.

As for BuzzFlash, we believe that if there is not a count of paper ballots to audit any electronic total, then there is no possibility of ensuring an accurate vote count. We also believe that no private corporations should own any proprietary software that is not completely transparent. Unless one can count paper ballot "receipts," there is always room for monkey business. (In fact, having publicly owned electronic voting machines that produce printed ballots that can be reviewed and checked for accuracy by the voter allows for cross-matching totals to ensure a correct count. Remember that paper ballots alone can also be abused. That's how the term "stuffing the ballot box" came into being.)

All of this leads us into recommending Uncounted, an excellent, informative documentary about the broad range of voter integrity issues that confront us as a nation. Uncounted distills the most important problems confronting advocates for allowing every eligible voter to cast a ballot -- and then making sure that the ballots are accurately counted.

We were delighted to interview David Earnhardt, who produced, directed and wrote Uncounted.

BuzzFlash: We've seen your film, Uncounted, The New Math of American Elections. Your film is exceptional in how it presents a narrative about what is really quite a complex issue to follow. What motivated you to undertake a film like this on the voting issue, let alone distribute it on your own, show it around the country on your own?

David Earnhardt: For me, it's quite simple. I was appalled at what I'd seen in the 2004 election, and then, coupled that with, after the election was over and after Kerry conceded, watching the media just go away. From a mainstream media standpoint, there was no looking into many of the problems that had been observed on Election Day.

There was lots of great work going on on the Internet. There was great investigating going on in Ohio and New Mexico, from the legal standpoint, from the alternative journalistic standpoint. But in terms of the mainstream media, it did not exist. I was just naïve enough to be shocked. I just could not believe it. I thought we'd sort of fallen into a parallel universe.

And for me, like a lot of people, the 2004 election felt like a very important election. It felt like the stakes were very high. We closed down our office that day. Many of us wanted to go out and get involved, door to door, to encourage people to vote. My wife and I did that kind of thing for the first time. And I was struck by several interactions I had in a neighborhood that we were in.

It was a fairly low economic neighborhood. When I knocked on the door -- and this happened on three or four different occasions -- I would encourage people to get out and vote. The sentiment was something to the effect -- different forms of this - look, I'm not going to vote. This is not for me. This is not anything that has to do with me. They've already decided who's going to win. It's that kind of language. I'm saying, no, no, no, that's what they want you to do -- not go out and vote. You've got to get out there. You've got to. It was that kind of interaction.

I realized later that I was the naïve one. There was a certain truth in there that I was missing, and it upset me. I thought: my gosh, we really don't take this right very seriously. So I went to work. I went to work immediately and started studying everything I could. I decided, I'm going to find everything I can, and at least consider doing a documentary. Eventually I had enough material to where we could pull the trigger and say let's keep going. Let's do something on this. Let's try to get this issue out there.

From: David Earnhardt, "Uncounted" filmmaker

As the 2008 election approaches, I am excited to announce that UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections will begin its national tour with two theatrical screenings in Sacramento on January 15, and then in Oakland on January 17. Those screenings will be followed by theatrical screenings in Minneapolis on January 30 and Denver on January 31.

The Sacramento Film & Music Festival honored our film with an Official Gold Circle Screening - and will present UNCOUNTED as part of its off-season screening series at the historic Crest Theatre. We also just learned that UNCOUNTED has been selected for the prestigious Durango Film Festival in Colorado, where we will have two screenings on February 28 & 29.

I will be appearing at all of these screenings to introduce the film and to participate in post-film discussions. Brad Friedman of BradBlog will join me for the screenings in Sacramento and Oakland. Brad has been a huge supporter of our efforts to reach as many people as possible with our film.

After the first leg of our national tour in January, we will return to Nashville for an encore engagement at the historic Belcourt Theatre in Nashville with two screenings on February 4 - the night before Super Tuesday, when 24 states hold their presidential primaries. Our theatrical premiere in Nashville last November attracted a sellout crowd, with many turned away at the door.

People are continuing to order DVD copies of UNCOUNTED at a brisk rate - representing 40 states and 14 countries - all in two short months since its release. If you haven't ordered your own copy, you can do so here.

I can't think of a better time to begin our national tour of UNCOUNTED, as the vast majority of Americans cast their votes in the 2008 presidential primaries during the next few weeks. The disenfranchisement of voters has only intensified in recent elections making 2008 a critical year for us all to be certain that every vote is accurately counted. We hope our film will help bring a heightened focus and awareness to this threat to the very core of our democracy - perhaps in time to make a difference for the 2008 election.

For more details about our upcoming national tour and to learn how you can host a screening in your community, please visit the Screenings page of our website.

David Earnhardt
Producer, director & writer, UNCOUNTED

A bill which will require mandatory verification of machine tallied election results has been introduced in the Oregon Legislature. Representative Mitch Greenlick has introduced HB 3270 and it has been scheduled for a public hearing on Monday, March 19th, at 8:30AM in Salem. Co-sponsors include Representatives Phil Barnhart, Peter Buckley, Ben Cannon, Brian Clem, Paul Holvey, Jeff Merkley, and Chuck Riley.

Oregon ballots are counted on optical scan machines and the votes are tabulated using trade secret, proprietary computer software provided by private companies. HB 3270 requires mandatory random sample hand counts to verify the accuracy of election results.

Please support this important bill by taking the following actions:

1. Attend the Hearing and Testify

A hearing for HB 3270 has been scheduled for Monday, March 19th at 8:30 am in Hearing Room E at the Capitol building in Salem.

Other methods - Some states ponder alternate balloting after recent election-day glitches
Monday, October 23, 2006 / JEFF KOSSEFF / The Oregonian

Oregon's pioneering vote-by-mail system is gradually spreading across the country.

Oregon remains the only state where every county offers only mail-in ballots, but more than 20 other states allow residents to cast absentee ballots without providing an excuse. In Washington, all but five counties use vote-by-mail. And in Arizona, voters will decide this year whether to move to mail-in balloting statewide.

Amid concerns of the election-day glitches that plagued Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, and Maryland during last month's primaries, elections officials are searching for a different way of receiving votes.

"We're seeing an enormous surge of interest from elected officials and elections officials," said Adam Smith, executive director of the Vote by Mail Project, a Portland-based group aiming to spread Oregon's system nationally. "This year, the lights seemed to go on all over the country."

To capitalize on the interest, last month Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced a bill to provide as much as $110 million in grants for states to switch to mail elections.

"The federal government keeps wasting money, as well as the states and localities, on systems that don't work as well as Oregon's vote-by-mail," Wyden said.

But mail-in balloting has critics nationally who say it robs from the election-day experience and could allow fraud, so there's no guarantee that it ever will fully replace the voting booth.

"Vote-by-mail is a bad idea," said Curtis Gans, director of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate. "It doesn't help turnout. It can lead to fraud."

Nonsense, said Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, the state's top elections official.

"With vote-by-mail, every signature is checked against a voter's original voter registration form prior to their vote being counted," Bradbury said. "That process makes vote-by-mail the most fraud-free election system available today."

Now is a critical time for civil rights in our nation: Congress is poised to reauthorize the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA). Leaders in the House have indicated that they intend to hold a vote on the bill to reauthorize the VRA, H.R. 9, the week of June 19. This bill must pass as drafted to ensure the continued protection of the voting rights of all Americans!

Monday, June 19 is the National Call-In Day to Renew the Voting Rights Act! Join other civil rights activists around the country in calls to Congress and make your voice heard!

Key provisions of the Voting Rights Act will expire in 2007 unless they are renewed by Congress. These essential provisions protect minority voters from discrimination, assist citizens who are not native English speakers in casting informed ballots, and provide for federal election observers. A bipartisan, bicameral bill has been introduced that would reauthorize the expiring temporary provisions of the VRA -- "The Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006" (H.R. 9 and S. 2703). There is bipartisan support to
pass this legislation this year, but your Representative in Congress needs to hear from you!

By Steven F. Freeman / Salon / Jun. 12, 2006
Go to original.

Because Robert F Kennedy Jr. based much of the discussion in his Rolling Stone article on interviews with me and on a close reading of my new book, coauthored with Joel Bleifuss, "Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count," and because Kennedy cites in his thorough footnotes many of the same key sources we worked from, I feel compelled to address directly several statements that Farhad Manjoo makes about the exit polls, both in his original Salon article and in his response to Kennedy's response to that article -- statements that are either incorrect or based on misunderstandings about exit polls and the 2004 results.

We regret that Manjoo did not request an advance copy of our book before writing his article. Had he done so, I'm confident that many of the basic errors he made could have been avoided.

Are exit polls usually accurate?

Yes, they are. On Nov. 2, 2004, Manjoo's source Mark Blumenthal, the Mystery Pollster, had this to say: "I have always been a fan of exit polls. Despite the occasional controversies, exit polls remain among the most sophisticated and reliable political surveys available." Properly done exit polls are highly accurate. Given the large sample size in U.S. exit polls, they ought to be accurate within 1 to 2 percentage points of the official count.

The 2004 Election Day exit poll was a well-funded effort conducted by the most experienced pollsters in the business, and it represented a broad spectrum of media interests, from Fox to CBS. The sample included 114,559 respondents in the 50 state exit polls, conducted at 1,480 precincts throughout the nation. A subsample of these was selected to provide a sample representative of the U.S. electorate for the national exit poll: 11,719 Election Day voters and 500 absentee and early voters. The National Election Pool, NEP, a consortium of six news organizations (ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC) pooled resources to conduct a thorough survey of each state and the nation. NEP in turn contracted two respected firms, Joe Lenski's Edison Media research and Warren Mitofsky's Mitofsky International, to conduct the polls.

By Kenneth Bunting / Seattle Post-Intellgencer / June 9, 2006
Go to original.

The blogosphere has been abuzz. But in the days since Rolling Stone magazine published a long piece that accused Republicans of widespread and intentional cheating that affected the outcome of the last presidential election, the silence in America's establishment media has been deafening.

In terms of bad news judgment, this could turn out to be the 2006 equivalent of the infamous "Downing Street memo," the London Times story that was initially greeted by the U.S. media with a collective yawn.

Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Rolling Stone mega-essay is titled "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" It focuses on widespread voting irregularities, questionable tallies and disenfranchising practices, particularly in Ohio, which President Bush won by more than 100,000 votes.

Singling out Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell for much of the blame, Kennedy writes persuasively that enough was awry in that state alone to raise serious questions as to whether Bush really defeated John Kerry in 2004. Blackwell, now a Republican candidate for governor, headed Bush's state re-election campaign at the same time he was constitutionally in charge of the state's voting machinery.

While Kennedy's article perhaps gives far too much weight to suspicious discrepancies between exit polls and the final election outcome, it meticulously asserts and documents questionable methods of purging voter rolls, intentionally created long lines at Democratic polling places, court-defying practices regarding registrations and provisional ballots, a phony terrorist alert on Election Day and final tallies in some counties and precincts that, to Kennedy's way of seeing it, simply don't make sense. Already, it notes, three Cleveland-area election officials have been indicted for illegally rigging the recount.

Kennedy's 11,000-word article was Rolling Stone's cover story, published on Thursday of last week.

But if you were looking in the five or six days afterward for follow-up stories, investigations or even a mention in the P-I, its cross-town competitor or just about any other major U.S. newspaper, you were almost certainly disappointed.

To his credit, CNN's Wolf Blitzer aired a brief and not-very-illuminating interview with Kennedy late the next day after the Rolling Stone issue hit the newsstands. There was a brief mention on the Lou Dobbs report later that same evening and MSNBC got around to mentioning the article's assertions several days later.

But for the most part, national and regional newspapers, the major networks and news services have behaved as if the article was never published, that it broke no new ground and there was nothing of interest or significance in it.

Associated Press / June 9, 2006
Go to original.

COLUMBUS (AP) -- Forty-nine of the 85 people who this year have given Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell the maximum $10,000 allowed an individual donor have done so since May 2. Members of Cincinnati financier Carl Lindner's family led the way by combining for $90,000. The maximum-donor list also includes Mitch Given, who is a registered lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems, one of the vendors of voting machines for election boards in Ohio.
Blackwell's office approved Diebold's selection as a vendor and negotiated the price for the machines, although the counties chose the machines.

Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo said the May 15 contribution came well after Diebold signed a contract with the state to provide the machines in February 2004 after bids were submitted by the vendors. LoParo also pointed out that Given lobbies for other companies and is a frequent contributor to GOP campaigns. Given also donated $10,000 to Betty Montgomery's campaign a week after she dropped out of the governor's race to run for attorney general.
"It's important to note that he did not contribute to Secretary Blackwell during the bidding process," LoParo said.