The 51st state, as
American's abroad were called
because of it's swing potential, an estimated 4million civilians
and 500,000 military, of course many in dubious, difficult,
dangerous and DeaDly situations, it's numbers giving it an impact
larger than the 24 smallest states. Participation was cool this
time,
many expressing eager desire to voice their vote. Also though, a
haunting anxiety that the systemic flaws characteristic of
confusing procedures and snafus investigated by the GAO in previous
efforts at smooth and fair election process run by a mosaic of federal
& state agencies would DisCount NOT AcCount accurately the absentee
Vote. Expatriates tend heavily liberal, outnumber military
significantly and the soldiers
especially rank and file were said to be more mixed, varied not so
monolothic, or predictable as usually seen said veterans of multiple
elections. However, the pentagon, which for some reason took over
from the state department, the handling of ballots, was criticized
for registration websites not working, unequal mishandling of the
CivilianVote, absentee ballots mailed late in 8 of 15 swing states,
ballots hard to get, too many hoops to jump through and doubts
whether they would get back in time, count and be honored fairly as
a private firm owned by a republican donor and of the reelection
team, was handling ballots historically counted at local levels.
Typically 8% of absentee votes are discarded, with Bush possibly
winning the popular vote by 2-3%, HOW assured at Legit can we be?
when you also ADD the percents lost of provisionals thrown out, the
undervotes thrown out, unequal distribution of election hardware,
not random in the stunting of turnout toward one of the choices,
including GAINS from unreal certification of results with more
votes than voters, when the long lines were in the democratic
precints!. Registration going up, up, UP Machines going DOWN, down,
down, DOH! What level of fraud is sufficient to BeSmirch
Confidence? Reports below abound of systemic pre-election
suppression and NOW BlackOut and silence of OverSeas results are
Signs of a Sinister Scandal. These OverSeas American's are ambassadors, this
vote should not be treated cavalierly but be traceable, honored and
COUNTED, foreigners, frontlines in someone elses HomeLand, they
REALLY understand Vote or Die. I asked my roomate for a historical
quote which could speak to this unseemly realization, scenario
we've allowed to happen? She said there is NONE, because it has
never happened before. So I say, an UNprecendented, UNheard of,
UNfair, UNacceptable, UNnatural Results can only be Remedied,
Adjudicated, Balanced by SomeThing that hasn't happened before a
NewVote to Ameliorate this WaterShed MoMent! POST AS COMMENTS WHAT
YOU'VE HEARD, FOUND OUT, RESEARCHED ON THE ACCURACY & VALIDITY OF
OVERSEAS VOTE COUNTS. NO SoldiersVote Left Behind.
*****
****
***
**
!
WARNING:
31 It should be clear that more is at stake than the presidency
itself. Use of computerized vote counting
will only increase, as mandated by law. Vote counting is the
bedrock protocol of a democracy and
meaningful reform of a broken counting system is dependent on an
expression of public will ultimately
exercised at the ballot box and fairly, accurately, and honestly
tabulated. If the system has broken down
and is no longer counting accurately and honestly, there is no
effective democratic mechanism to bring
pressure upon a governing majority to reform a vote counting status
quo which is seen to work in its favor.
This is, as may be seen, a potentially crippling catch-22 for a democracy.

*footnotes from statistical proof on examination of vote count data
 http://www.spiral-stairs.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/30/223723/91
explanation of the ease of hackability at end of this post.

Let’s Get Real
By Mark Crispin Miller

 http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1692/

To let ourselves believe that the “election” was legitimate because
this claim or that has been disproved(apparently) is to not honor
reason. On the contrary, a veritable sea of evidence, statistical
as well as anecdotal and circumstantial, supports the claim that
Bush, again, was not elected by the people. "(NOW documentation,
statistical affidavits, concealing records, log books, ducking
inquiries, subpoenas, delaying due-process in court cases,
orchestrated, unprincipled caustic attacks and denials to distort,
distract and divert away from the onus of those in charge
preventing legislation requiring paper trails which increase
transparency and trust) per CJCleveLand."

To nod agreement that this was indeed an honest win is to forget
how Bush was shoehorned into office in the first place; to ignore
the ease with which electronic totals can be changed without a
trace; to suppress the fact that Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S—the
major manufacturers of touch screen voting machines and central
tabulators—are owned and run by Bush Republicans, who have made no
secret of their partisan intentions; to deny the value of the exit
polls, which turn out to have been “mistaken” only in the swing
states; to downplay the weird inflation of the Bush vote in county
after county, where the number of votes for president was somehow
higher than the number of voters who turned out; to ignore the bald
chicanery of the Bush supporters who ran the central polling
station in Ohio’s Warren County and forced out the press and poll
monitors so they could count the vote in secret; to forget the
numerous accounts of vote fraud coast to coast throughout the prior
weeks of early voting; to overlook the fact that every single
“glitch” or “error” that has been reported favors Bush; to ignore
the countless instances of ballots—absentee, provisional—thrown
away or left uncounted; to forget that the civilian vote abroad
(some four million Americans) was being mishandled by the Pentagon
(which had somehow become responsible for doing the State
Department’s job); and to ignore the many dirty tricks reported—the
polling places quickly relocated at the last minute, the fake
voter-registration drives, the thousands of Americans who found
themselves not on the rolls, the police road-blocks, the bullying
pro-Bush poll workers, the machines that kept translating votes for
Kerry into votes for Bush. And so on.

To forget or ignore all this and to accept—on faith—the mere say-so
of Bush & Company (and our compliant media) is to make clear that
you are not a member of what the Busheviks deride as “the
reality-based community.” Those who help discredit false reports
are doing that community, and this erstwhile democracy, a precious
service. But, those who would abort the whole inquiry in the name
of science or journalistic probity and “closure” are putting that
community, and this nation, at grave risk.

 http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1692/

*****

Suppressing the overseas vote

Record numbers of Americans abroad have registered, but
bureaucratic snafus may prevent many from actually voting, writes
Alix Christie

Alix Christie
Monday October 25, 2004


Guardian Unlimited

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0%2C3858%2C5047076-114319%2C00.html

~Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat is pumped. Two weeks ago, sitting in an
internet cafe on Munich's Odeonplatz, the software marketer who
crafted a hugely successful voter registration website, pulls up
numbers that show a remarkable spike in Americans overseas
mobilising to defeat George W Bush. Between her site and another
out of Hong Kong, Democrats have registered 140,000 new voters, 40%
of them from swing states - and that is just the tip of the
iceberg. Americans abroad, roused to a boiling fury by a Bush
doctrine that has smeared America's good name across the globe, are
looking like the "silent swing vote" in several key battleground
states. Overseas registration for both parties is up by 400% over
2000.

~Then the panicked emails start flooding in. Today, less than two
weeks before the tightest presidential race in memory, untold
thousands of overseas voters still have not received their ballots
- and clearly won't be able to get them back in time.

~The Government Accountability Office excoriated the agency for
losing thousands of overseas votes in 2000, but the FVAP insists it
has corrected its problems this year. Frustrated civilian
advocates, however, say the FVAP remains biased and ineffective.
Despite reforms, they attest, it still has not shaken its Pentagon
roots: It spends the bulk of its energy getting out a heavily
Republican vote among half a million service people - but has
failed the far greater numbers of civilians (an estimated 4
million, by most counts) who tend to vote a different way.

~The tsunami of overseas civilian voters this year has only made
the inequity more glaring. The agency was overwhelmed by a flood
that has clogged its fax lines, telephones and email. It has
blocked access to its website to civilian voters abroad, given
military voters access to electronic ballot-request systems that
civilians cannot use, and subcontracted sensitive election work to
a company with strong Republican ties.

~In one pathetic twist, employees of DaimlerChrysler in Stuttgart
had to beg forms from the military at the gate of the base last
week, a voting officer said.

~The overarching problem is the scant resources allotted civilian
voters, who outnumber the military overseas by at least eight to
one. While all applaud the goal of making sure men and women
fighting for our country can exercise their right to vote,
civilians point out that they are Americans, too.

~More worryingly, a pilot email voting system signed on to by
Missouri, Utah and North Dakota, in which soldiers can email
ballots to a contractor that then faxes those ballots to local
jurisdictions, is being operated by Omega Technologies, headed by a
former Republican Party donor, according to the New York Times.
(MORE ABOUT THEM IN DemocracyNow InterView BELOW)

~The Times also reports that earlier this week two Democratic
members of Congress, Henry Waxman of California and Carolyn B
Maloney of New York, asked the Government Accountability Office to
investigate the FVAP. Among their concerns is that the agency's
online ballot-retrieval system is not open to most civilians abroad.

~Which way these hordes of new voters go is, in fact, the big
overseas question - assuming they get to vote. Democrats and
Republicans alike see gold in both the civilian and military camps.
What's undisputed is that the Bush administration has galvanised
overseas voters as never before. "The entire world is against Bush,
and we reflect that view that America has lost all its credibility
abroad," says McQueen of Democrats Abroad. "I was tired of cringing
in the supermarket whenever I spoke English to my kids, knowing how
much we as Americans were hated," says Dzieduszycka-Suinat. Hills,
for her part, reports that many Republicans, angered at what they
see as unjust attacks, are coming out in equal droves to support
the president. On both sides, stories abound of older Americans,
and dual citizens who've kept their American passports, emerging
like Rip Van Winkle to vote for the first time in 30 or 40 years.

~"There's a definite interest in participating," echoes Charles
Keene of Democrats Abroad and the NAACP. "From almost everyone you
heard, it was, 'You better believe I'm going to vote.'"

Despite several recent polls showing staunch support for President
Bush among high-ranking officers, soldiers on base and Pentagon
civilians active in Democratic politics say the mood in the
military is far more mixed. The controversial mission in Iraq has
brought a sea change in political attitudes on base, these
observers report. McQueen, a retired military civil servant, says,
"You're not seeing the kind of pressure to vote Republican you
always had in the past."

The strong pro-Republican culture that emerged in the military in
the wake of Vietnam has begun to splinter, many observers say. A
report in the Washington Monthly last year described rank-and-file
soldiers, who are disproportionately non-white, working-class and
female, as increasingly diverging from an ideologically
conservative officer corps. "For a long time here, Democrats were
in the closet," concurs Trenton Browne, a military security
contractor who works on bases from Heidelberg to Kaiserslautern.
"Now in the lower ranks you hear people speaking openly about their
dissent."

~The survey, however, concentrated on higher-ranking service
people, and is not representative of the rank and file. Along
Heidelberg's main street, off-duty soldiers, some fresh from combat
in Iraq, divided evenly between rejecting Kerry because "he doesn't
support the troops" and supporting him "because a lot of us feel
jerked around". "People think the military is totally Republican,
and that's definitely not true," says one strolling soldier, a
burly 30-year-old from Florida. "There's a lot of different views
within the ranks." Capt Maxwell-Borges, the Stuttgart voting
officer, agrees. "Surprisingly, it's been really mixed," she says.
"A lot of people support Kerry because he's a veteran and says he's
going to increase military spending, and others are the more
traditional pro-Republicans. But I've been on bases in the past
three elections and I have to say that this time [political views]
seem a lot more varied."

~Thousands of lawyers on both sides are renting office space in
battleground states, ready to pounce on illegalities in stateside
balloting and absentee votes. For now, overseas voters groping
their empty mailboxes can only download the write-in ballot, send
it in - in the faith that local election officials will accept it -
and pray.

·Alix Christie is a reporter and former editor of the foreign
service of the San Francisco Chronicle

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0%2C3858%2C5047076-114319%2C00.html

*****

The Pentagon doesn't want you to vote overseas
A Web site maintained by the Department of Defense is blocking
access to non-military Americans. Could it be worried that
expatriates are leaning toward Kerry?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
By Farhad Manjoo

Sept. 21, 2004 |

 http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/09/21/overseas_voting/index_np.html

~"This is a completely partisan thing," one Defense Department
voting official told Salon. The official, who asked to remain
anonymous for fear of being fired, is one of the many people in the
department assigned to help both uniformed military personnel as
well as American civilians register to vote. The offical described
the Pentagon as extremely diligent in its efforts to register
soldiers stationed overseas -- for instance, voting assistance
officers have been told by the department to personally meet with
all of the soldiers in their units in order to help them register.
But the department has ignored its mandate to help overseas
civilians who want to vote, the official said.

Not surprisingly, political pollsters believe that uniformed
military personnel, especially military officers, lean toward
Republicans in their voting habits; American civilians who live
abroad, meanwhile, are particularly progressive. One recent Zogby
survey, for example, showed that voters with passports supported
Kerry over Bush by a margin of 55 to 33 percent.

The official -- a self-described Democrat who adheres to
requirements of non-partisanship as a voting officer -- could see
no explanation other than pure political trickery in the Pentagon's
decision to block the FVAP Web site. "There is no way in hell that
this is not a deliberate partisan attempt to systematically
disenfranchise a large Democratic voting bloc," the official said.

It's easy to see why the Bush administration might be worried about
the prospect of huge numbers of American civilians living abroad
exercising their right to vote. In efforts to register Americans
living overseas, the official has come across a host of people who
say they're signing up specifically to hasten Bush's defeat. "I've
had so many old people coming to register say, 'I haven't voted in
such a long time,' or 'The last time I voted in an election was
when Kennedy ran, but we've got to get rid of this man. This man
makes me ashamed to be an American.'"

 http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/09/21/overseas_voting/index_np.html

*****
FOUND THIS BY ACCIDENT AND MOVED IT TO THE FRONT OF THIS REPORT!

November 08, 2004
Can I still vote? It depends...
A highly unusual email sent from the Pentagon to Voting Information
Officers at US military installations around the world ON ELECTION
DAY contained a very specific reminder that it was not too late to
vote in OHIO, clearly explained why, and encouraged one last bit of
taxpayer-funded GOP GOTV. Is this criminal? It should be. It is
certainly unpatriotic and un-American.

 http://www.aokerry.com/aok/2004/11/can_i_still_vot.html#more

*****

September 29, 2004
ABSENTEE VOTES

Hurdles Remain for American Voters Who Live Overseas
By MICHAEL MOSS

 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/politics/campaign/29military.html?ei=5090&en=bb18d7c4c5718420&ex=1254110400&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=print&position=

~Election officials concede that tens of thousands of Americans
overseas might not get ballots in time to cast votes. Late
primaries and legal wrangling caused election offices in at least 8
of the 15 swing states to fail to mail absentee ballots by Sept.
19, a cutoff date officials say is necessary to ensure that they
can be returned on time, a survey by The New York Times shows. In
Florida in 2000, late-arriving ballots became a divisive issue when
some were counted and others were disqualified.

~Republicans and Democrats are pushing hard to solicit these voters
after some assessments indicating that President Bush's support
among the estimated 500,000 members of the military and their
families overseas may have weakened. There is little direct polling
of soldiers, but Peter D. Feaver, a sociology professor at Duke
University, says surveys have shown that while most officers are
staunchly Republican, the rank and file newest to the military has
been more closely divided between the parties.

"Kerry will do better in this group than Gore did,'' Mr. Feaver
said, "but he will not reverse the Bush advantage."

There is also little polling of the 3.9 million civilians abroad.
But last month, a Zogby poll of Americans who had passports found
that they supported John Kerry over Mr. Bush, 58 percent to 35
percent.

~Of the eight swing states that missed the 45-day mailing mark,
only three will accept ballots that arrive after Election Day.
Overseas voters have until Nov. 10 to send their ballots to
Florida, which experienced problems four years ago that prompted
widespread calls for improvements to overseas balloting.

In 2001, the General Accounting Office examined overseas voting and
found numerous problems, from inadequate public education on the
subject to late ballot mailings. In surveying small counties
throughout the country, for example, the G.A.O., now the Government
Accountability Office, found that 8.1 percent of the overseas votes
had been thrown out mostly because they were late or not properly
completed.

~In recent weeks the federal effort has also been clouded by a
series of missteps that appear to have affected mostly civilian
voters.

~New questions have also arisen about the private contractor hired
by the Pentagon to handle these faxes and unsealed completed
ballots at its offices in Alexandria, Va. The company, Omega
Technologies, was sued last year by Adams National Bank, which
accused it of failing to pay off a loan of more than $500,000. In
court records the bank also said Omega improperly gained access to
a Pentagon computer to reroute payments to the company's new lender.

 http://vote2004.eriposte.com/overseas.htm

*****

Tuesday, October 26th, 2004
Making Votes Count: Is a Theft of the 2004 Election Already Underway?

 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/26/144227


AMY GOODMAN: The military. How does the military vote?

ADAM COHEN: Well, again, it's shocking how little transparency
there is about this. You would think that people who are handling
federal votes in a presidential election would have it all written
down somewhere, and we would all be able to see how it's done and
be sure it's fair. Completely not true. In this year's election,
there was a little bit of a dust-up over the fact that two states
said they would allow the military to e-mail non-confidential
ballots. A bunch of us wrote about that.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, “non-confidential ballots?”

ADAM COHEN: When you e-mail a vote, if you are a soldier and e-mail
your vote, it's not a secret ballot. Your vote is an attachment to
an email that anyone along the way can read. There's controversy
about that, but then it led us to realize, 37 states allow the
military to vote by fax. Also not a secret ballot.

AMY GOODMAN: Where are you faxing to?

ADAM COHEN: You have two choices. You can fax to your local
elections office, but what the Pentagon has done for your
convenience, you soldiers around the world, is they have set up a
hotline that you can fax to, which goes to Washington. So, I called
the Pentagon and I said, could you explain to me where these
non-secret ballots that come in from soldiers go? Do they go into
the Pentagon? How do we know that you're -- they're supposed to
then send these ballots to the correct states, to the correct
county offices. I said, could you please explain how we know that
you're sending them off the way they should be sent? That you're
sending all the votes for both candidates? They said, actually,
these ballots, the faxed ballots from soldiers and the e-mailed
ballots from soldiers don't come to the Pentagon, they go to a
defense contractor called Omega Technologies. Well, I had never
heard of Omega Technologies. It seems that it had been never
described anywhere. It was not in any written materials that I
could find. I talked to Omega Technologies. It turns out it is a
Pentagon contractor. The CEO of it is a contributor to the
Republican Congressional Re-election Committee. In this cycle,
she's given $6,600. She's on a committee of this Republican
Congressional Re-election Committee. She's handling the non-secret
ballots, and there's no oversight of any kind. There's no ability
for the parties or the candidates to go in and make sure that the
ballots are being handled correctly, and that they're all being
transferred to the states. I mean, we don't know that they're not,
say, throwing out the John Kerry ballots. It's just shocking. The
other thing we don't know is how many ballots get handled in this
way. There seem to be no reporting requirements. We have no idea
how many ballots go in, how many come out. One little disturbing
thing that I learned is that this is the process that was used in
2000. Remember when the military ballots came in at the last minute
in Florida and may have changed the outcome of the election? We
don't know how many went through this office. Now, I should say,
many of them went directly to county elections offices, and it may
be that this office only handled a few ballots, but we really don't
know.

AMY GOODMAN: Do they say? Have you talked to the head of Omega Technologies?

ADAM COHEN: I talked to the head of Omega Technologies, and all I
can say is it was very confusing. She said to me that she was very
angry because we had written that she handled the actual ballots
because this was not true. And I said to her, “Well, the Pentagon
says that you are handling them this year and you have in the
past.” When I talked to her again, she admitted that they had
handled actual ballots, but she seemed unaware of that the first
time. They now say that it's a matter of hundreds of ballots an
election. I think they said 300 or so. We have no idea if that's
true. We have no idea if they have taken all of the ballots -- if
they have reported them accurately and transferred them accurately.

AMY GOODMAN: And if these are not secret ballots, what does it mean
if you decide not to vote for your commander in chief?

ADAM COHEN: Well, people who know the military have said to me this
is a huge issue. It could mean a lot. Because it's not only not
secret at the Pentagon level, it may not actually be secret at your
base, wherever you are. You may have to take your ballot into the
commanding officer's office. That might be the only fax machine on
the base. His secretary or he himself may be leaning over the fax
machine. Absolutely, there could be ramifications. It's often said
that the commanders in the military are very Republican, that the
lower-level soldiers less so. It can have a lot of ramifications.
There is no legitimate reason for having this not be a secret
ballot. It's not clear to me that, you know, that isn't one of the
intentions in all of this, is to make sure that, you know, voters
in the military feel they are being watched a little bit.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Adam Cohen, New York Times editorial
writer. What about non-military -- what about civilians overseas?
How do they vote?

ADAM COHEN: This is another problem with the system. The way it was
set up, there's one office, the Federal Voting Assistance Program,
that's supposed to help military and non-military voters overseas.
The office is part of the Pentagon. It's not clear to me why, if
you are in the Peace Corps or spending a year abroad in France, why
the Defense Department should be involved in your voting. Also,
it's not clear that the Pentagon is as interested in other overseas
ballots. They seemed very interested in getting the military to
vote, less so for all these other groups. There was a bit of a
partisan dust-up over this recently, because the military vote is
heavily Republican. The other overseas vote tends to be more
Democratic. It appears that the people in charge of helping
overseas voters vote have made it quite a bit easier for military
voters to vote than non-military voters.

AMY GOODMAN: Pushing soldiers to vote.

ADAM COHEN: Pushing soldiers to vote and making it much harder than
it should be for those people in the Peace Corps or taking that
year abroad in Europe to get their registration materials, to
register, and get absentee ballots, and to vote.

AMY GOODMAN: How does it work on the website? Wasn't there an issue
about where you could vote online?

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, you can’t actually vote on the Internet, but you
can use it to get your voting materials and so forth, and yes, the
military was making it available only to members of the military,
saying it was easier for them to verify the ID of military voters.
But again there should be no discrimination. Any service like that
should not be weighted towards some voters and against other voters.

 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/26/144227

*****

~

NEWS | By Bob Neer - Sunday, 31 October 2004
Republicans Say Kerry Will Win up to 80% of U.S. Voters in Canada
Canada.

The head of Republicans Abroad Canada estimated that up to
80% of the approximately 500,000 U.S. citizens who live in Canada
will vote Democratic, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported. The
paper said Democrats Abroad Canada alone have distributed over
40,000 absentee ballots to their supporters in the country.[+]
Battleground States. Reuters reported large numbers of expatriates
are returning to volunteer for the final days of the U.S. election
campaign.[+] The Washington Post said most volunteers of this kind
appear to support Kerry.[point] Japan. U.S. troops in Japan were voting
in record numbers.[+] The Chicago Sun-Times, however, reported on
widespread concern that many military ballots will not be
counted.[+] Singapore. Channel News Asia reported on the race for
U.S. votes in Singapore.[+] Munich. The Munich chapter of Americans
Overseas for Kerry (AOK) completed their last Run Against Bush on
the sunniest day of October.[+] Draft. The satirical website
Enjoythedraft.com presented a blistering critique of the Bush
administration's military policies.[+]

[point]=Bush sued to stop any recounting of the votes, and, on
Tuesday, December 12th, the United States Supreme Court gave him
what he wanted. Bush v. Gore was so shoddily reasoned and
transparently partisan that the five justices who endorsed the
decision declined to put their names on it, while the four
dissenters did not bother to conceal their disgust. There are rules
for settling electoral disputes of this kind, in federal and state
law and in the Constitution itself. By ignoring them—by cutting off
the process and installing Bush by fiat—the Court made a mockery
not only of popular democracy but also of constitutional
republicanism.

A result so inimical to both majority rule and individual civic
equality was bound to inflict damage on the fabric of comity. But
the damage would have been far less severe if the new President had
made some effort to take account of the special circumstances of
his election—in the composition of his Cabinet, in the way that he
pursued his policy goals, perhaps even in the goals themselves. He
made no such effort. According to Bob Woodward in “Plan of Attack,”
Vice-President Dick Cheney put it this way: “From the very day we
walked in the building, a notion of sort of a restrained presidency
because it was such a close election, that lasted maybe thirty
seconds. It was not contemplated for any length of time. We had an
agenda, we ran on that agenda, we won the election—full speed
ahead.”

 http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?041101ta_talk_editors


October 31, 2004 in NEWS | Comments (1)

Conservative Newspapers Endorse Kerry
An unprecedented collection of right-wing periodicals and leading
conservatives have turned away from George W. Bush's reckless
economic policies and religious fundamentalism to endorse John
Kerry as the conservative choice for America in the coming
election. Kerry is supported by among others the Editor of The
American Conservative, The Orlando Sentinel (its first Democratic
endorsement since 1964), John Eisenhower, son of the former
Republican President, and The Economist. For an exhaustive
collection of Republicans who have abandoned Bush and switched to
Kerry visit RepublicanSwitchers.com. Other periodicals that have
endorsed Kerry include The New Yorker, Bush's hometown newspaper
the Crawford Texas Lone Star Iconoclast, and The Yale Daily News.
For a catalog of 2004 presidential endorsements by periodicals,
including a list of those that endorsed Bush in 2000 but now favor
Kerry, visit Editor & Publisher magazine.

October 31, 2004 in NEWS | Comments (0)

Group Urges Bush to Re-open GeorgeWBush.com
THE HAGUE, LONDON, NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO, SEATTLE, STOCKHOLM,
TORONTO— This week the Bush campaign decided to block its web site
to visitors from outside the USA. The World Speaks
(www.theworldspeaks.net) urges them to change their policy. Kajsa
Klein of The World Speaks says: “It’s a fine example of world
leadership; what kind of signal does this send to the rest of the
world – not to mention the millions of US Citizens with voting
rights living abroad? It’s not only an aggressive and undiplomatic
gesture, it makes America look like a closed undemocratic country.”

Solana Larsen of The World Speaks says: “It’s blocking our efforts
to encourage understanding. Thousands of people have visited our
web sites and we know they are thirsty for information and dialogue
about the election. Why would the Bush administration purposefully
stand in the way of international dialogue with concerned world
citizens?”

The World Speaks’ pre-election message: “Without dialogue there is
no understanding. Americans need to hear the concerns of non-U.S.
citizens as much as non-Americans need to understand the decision
of American voters, regardless of who is elected. World peace
depends on it. The United States isn’t alone on the planet.”

 http://www.usabroad.org/2004/10/

*****

The Silent Vote
As Election Day approaches, Americans abroad are determined to make
their voices heard. Will their ballots make a difference?


Courtesy Donkeys in the Desert
'Donkeys in the Desert': Kerry supporters show their colors in Baghdad


The overseas Web site peaked in mid-September with 5,000
registrations in one 24-hour period. Privately sponsored Web sites
are proving a valuable alternative for both sides: the government’s
Federal Voting Assistance Program’s site was blocked in
mid-September to Internet service providers in at least 25
countries, in what the Pentagon initially said was an effort to
deter hackers.

 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6257852/site/newsweek/

*****

NEWS | By Bob Neer - Wednesday, 20 October 2004

Democrats Barred from U.S. Korea Bases

The Los Angeles Times reports today that Democratic voter
registration workers have been barred from U.S. military bases in
South Korea -- but Republicans were allowed on to the bases. "In
South Korea, the Democrats have been barred from U.S. military
bases, while Republicans have been allowed in to set up booths and
tents. "We're there on a nonpartisan basis…. I cannot tell them who
to vote for," said John Lee, chairman of the Korea chapter of
Republicans Abroad. But his booths have small "Republicans Abroad"
signs on them, he acknowledged. "Whoever comes to our tent, most of
them are Republicans."

*****

United States
The Global Battleground
Americans abroad are registering in record numbers, and their votes
could swing the U.S. election
BY BRYAN WALSH | HONG KONG

 http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501041025-725177,00.html

~The last time Chris Shannon voted for a President, it was for a
Republican, Ronald Reagan, and the year was 1980. This time, the
42-year-old former U.S. special-forces soldier, who has lived in
Japan for the past seven years, will be casting his ballot for
Democrat John Kerry. Shannon is eager to vote because he thinks
President George W. Bush has mishandled the Iraq war. But Shannon
is doing much more than exercising his own civil rights: he's also
helped register some 200 other Tokyo-based Americans and is leading
a group of them to Florida, the state that narrowly gave Bush
victory over Al Gore in 2000, to canvass and "do whatever they need
us to do to make sure Kerry wins."

~ Casting a vote from overseas can be "really complicated," says
Jeffrey Wilson of AmDems in Shanghai. "In the U.S. it's simple: you
just register and walk down to the polling place. But here you have
to jump through a bunch of hoops."

Those complications, however, haven't stopped the political
sparring overseas. Last Thursday the Democrats and Republicans
Abroad held a debate in Hong Kong's Ritz-Carlton hotel attended by
a spirited audience more than double the size that showed up in
previous election years. One spectator was Tom Goetz, a former
member of Republicans Abroad whose anger over Iraq, where his son
is a U.S. intelligence officer, has prompted him to support Kerry.
"I never saw this much interest and conflict among the two sides,"
he says, looking around the crowded ballroom. For Americans in
2004, political passion doesn't stop at the water's edge.

—With reporting by Chaim Estulin/Hong Kong


From the Oct. 25, 2004 issue of TIME Asia Magazine

 http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501041025-725177,00.html

*****

September 23, 2004

(Dis)Counting Overseas Votes
We're continually being told that every vote counts, but if you're
an American overseas, don't count on the U.S. government to protect
your right to vote.

 http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2004/09/09_522.html

~Following an uproar among Democrats, the Pentagon issued a rapid
reversal of the Internet blockade on Wednesday. This was
remarkable, not least because the block seems to have been in place
for months, if not years. However, the Pentagon continues to refuse
to explain why the blockade was in place in to begin with, and now
claims it had been left in effect "inadvertently."

~Given that the civilian overseas vote is predicted to go in
Senator John Kerry's favor, Democrats were quick to cry foul,
questioning the Defense Department's motives. It is estimated that
there are around 6 million American civilians and 500,000 military
troops overseas. According to a recent Zogby poll, Americans who
hold a passport favor Kerry 58 percent compared to 35 percent who
favor Bush, and requests for overseas ballot are way up this
election.

~In fact, however, the Democrats have high hopes for picking up
more than their usual share of the Republican-leaning military
vote. The non-existent WMDs, continuing violence in Iraq and
Afghanistan, extended tours of duty, the calling up of the National
Guard troops and retirees, and scrutiny of Bush's Guard days, may
all mean gains for Kerry with this constituency.

 http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2004/09/09_522.html

*****

The Pentagon's Troubling Role

by Editorials/Op-Ed, story here
September 3rd, 2004


Article available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/31/opinion/31tues1.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Pentagon's Troubling Role

Published: August 31, 2004

~The Missouri and North Dakota announcements call attention to the
larger issue of why the Pentagon is directly handling so many
presidential ballots. The Federal Voting Assistance Program, a unit
of the Defense Department, is charged with helping not only
military voters, but all eligible voters overseas, a total of about
six million people. But it is a fundamental aspect of the American
election system that handling and counting of votes is supposed to
occur at the local level. The Defense Department should stop
handling actual ballots, and instead help military and other
overseas voters send them directly to local elections officials.

In the 1960 election, there was widespread skepticism when Mayor
Richard Daley waited until hours after the polls closed to release
the Chicago vote, and it turned out to be almost precisely what was
needed to put Illinois in the Democratic column. [It invites
cynicism about our democracy to operate a system in which employees
who answer to the secretary of defense could control the margin of
victory in a close presidential election.]

 http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=2668

*****

Overseas military votes could sway outcome, but will they be counted?

The Associated Press
October 30, 2004

~Hills and other election watchers say that failing to count
military ballots in this election is even more unforgivable than in
2000 because the votes now represent Americans risking their lives
in battle.

~More than a dozen states -- including those too close to call --
missed the recommended deadline to mail ballots overseas. One of
the reasons: legal arguments over whether independent candidate
Ralph Nader should be listed on ballots.

~Nearly 30 percent of registered military voters did not get a
ballot 2000, or got it too late. This year, Wright estimates
between 20 percent and 40 percent of servicemembers will not have
their vote counted because of slow mail and differing state rules.

 http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories2004/election/20041029233826.shtml

*****

October 26, 2004
The military vote
I just got an email from my brother, a specialist in the 1st
Armored Division, who as I've mentioned here before is disgusted
with both sides of The Most Important Election Ever (boom, boom,
ba-boom, boom!).

Anyhoo, I had assumed his vote for the voice of Kit was an
abberration among the military absentees, usually a stalwart GOP
bloc, but among the mechanized grunts in the 1st Armored Division,
at least, it's fairly typical:

{D}on't fret about the absentee military vote. It won't be nearly
as Republican as usual. It's hard to find anyone who spent 15
months in Iraq who is voting Bush. There's a machine-gunner down
the hall with a t-shirt picturing our Commander in Chief, bearing
the inscription "Operation Enduring Stupidity."
Can't say how true this holds for the military as a whole. (If any
bunch of soldiers has a good reason to hate Bush, it's the 1st
Armored: their Iraq tour was extended at the last minute by 90
days, a move that had some transport planes turning around
mid-flight and some other soldiers enjoying a few hours of false
relief on the ground in Germany before they were told they had to
go back. I'd be bitter, too.) But I thought I'd pass it on.

Posted by Danimal at October 26, 2004 12:53 PM
 http://www.oregoncommentator.com/archives/000358.html
*****
OverseasVote.com Predicts Huge Overseas Turnout
OverseasVote.com yesterday predicted an unprecedented turnout of
approximately two million overseas voters. The website estimates
there are five million overseas Americans and that 80% are of
voting age: four million potential voters. Most observers estimate
that 22% of overseas Americans voted in 2000: about 880,000 votes.
This year, according to OverseasVote.com, turnout will be at least
50%, which implies 104,000 votes from abroad in Florida, 85,000 in
Pennsylvania, and 52,500 in Ohio, based on registration patterns
observed at the site. "Our calculations indicate that Kerry easily
wins the overseas vote with 60% to 65% of Americans abroad. This
includes the military vote which, even with a 90% turnout, accounts
for just 23% o f the overseas vote. More than 40% of the overseas
votes are in swing states," said the site's Brett Rierson. Kerry's
overseas voting edge will be about 599,900 votes, Rierson added.
Voters have until 10 November to send their ballots to officials in
Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Click here to visit the
USAbroad.org Last Minute Overseas Voting Information Center.

 http://www.usabroad.org/news/index.html

*****

I found a link during this research to report problems with
OverSeas Voting, when you go to check out what happened , THIS PAGE
SHOWS UP!


Error 403: Access Forbidden
You do not appear to have permission to access this part of the site.

You should be able to easily find all of the publically available
information on the site by starting at the main page. If you have
problems or believe that you should have permission to access this
page please contact webmaster (at) democratsabroad.org.

 http://www.democratsabroad.org/problems/

*****

November 09, 2004
From the Desk of Diana Kerry:

Dear Overseas Voter:

But I want you to know that as disappointed as I am about the
election’s outcome, I am downright angry about the way US citizens
living abroad have been treated by those charged with helping them
exercise their right to vote. Despite millions of dollars in
taxpayer funding, the Pentagon’s Federal Voter Assistance Program
defaulted on their obligation to serve two important groups:
civilian overseas voters and local election officials.

Poor customer service, inaccurate, conflicting and outdated
information, blocked websites, last minute rules changes and all
the rest: it was an unmitigated disaster. As a result, many voters
saw their absentee ballot requests wrongly denied, and a large
number of duly registered voters did not receive ballots from their
States in time, or at all. Based on preliminary results reported by
local election officials, perhaps as many as 30% of registered
overseas voters did not return their ballots in time to have them
count. A great many of you have been effectively disenfranchised
during this election, either deliberately or through blunders,
bureaucratic negligence, and worse. Whatever the reason, depriving
you of your vote, never mind how you intended to cast it, is wrong.

 http://www.aokerry.com/aok/2004/11/from_the_desk_o.html#more

*****

November 08, 2004
Can I still vote? It depends...
A highly unusual email sent from the Pentagon to Voting Information
Officers at US military installations around the world ON ELECTION
DAY contained a very specific reminder that it was not too late to
vote in OHIO, clearly explained why, and encouraged one last bit of
taxpayer-funded GOP GOTV. Is this criminal? It should be. It is
certainly unpatriotic and un-American.

 http://www.aokerry.com/aok/2004/11/can_i_still_vot.html#more

*****

UOCAVA Horror Stories: Chapter 1
We learned a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of the UOCAVA
voting system this past year. Despite all the talk and money
lavished on the topic of "Uniformed and Civilian Overseas Voting"
since the 2000 election we still have a system that is scandalously
inept, and maddeningly inefficient. Almost makes you think there
are people who don't want US civilians living overseas to vote.
Here's a story from Foster's Online written by Marc Fortier,
pictured here with his NH ballot, which reached him in Turkey so
late he couldn't get it back in time for it to be counted. It was
sent with insufficient postage the first time. And it seems that
no one in his local election office ever thought to tell him about
his UOCAVA rights, including the emergency "Federal Write-in
Absentee Ballot." AOK and OverseasVote will be compiling a report
of voting problems and calling for reforms in the process, so if
you have a story to share, please send to Jim (at) AOKerry.com. Thanks.

November 7, 2004 at 10:27 AM |

Missing the election by an absentee ballot

Editor’s note: Newmarket resident Marc Fortier is spending a year
in Turkey with his wife, his 1-year-old daughter, and his in-laws.
Fortier, 31, wrote for Foster’s from 1995 to 1998. His column
appears monthly in Foster’s Sunday Citizen.

 http://www.fosters.com/november_2004/11.07.04/news/home_11.07.04b.asp

*****

Soldiers overseas hope ballots will count
Massive effort under way on U.S. bases to get out the vote
By Andy Eckardt
Producer
 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5697049/

~The military asks its active duty members not to openly display or
voice their political opinion while in uniform. Yet, many soldiers
and airmen still exercise their right to freedom of speech these
days.
"Even though active duty members tend to be nervous about open
political involvement, I have seen people wearing VOTE KERRY
T-shirts on base," Ronald Schlundt, the chairman of “Democrats
Abroad,” who lives near Ramstein Air Base.

*****

In the military, out of the ballot loop

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

If a man or woman is willing to take a bullet for the country, his
or her vote ought to count.

Period.

 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/205686_robert29.html

~Every ghost in the political machine becomes a screaming banshee.

But the broader issue here is one worth visiting.

Regardless of party affiliation, it is only fair that a fighting
chance be given to ballots belonging to the men and women we
readily send off to war.

*****


American Legion Commander Says


On the eve of his 11-day Far East trip, which will include
Thanksgiving supper with U.S. troops in the Korean demilitarized
zone, American Legion National Commander Ray G. Smith issued the
following statement in regard to the discounting of more than 1,400
absentee ballots from U.S. military personnel assigned overseas.
Smith, a U.S. Air Force veteran of the Korean War, was in Florida
for a weekend gathering of The American Legion Department of
Florida. The 2.8-million member American Legion is the nation's
largest veterans organization.

ORLANDO (SUNDAY, Nov. 19, 2000) - "It is un-American to deny the
protectors of democracy their constitutional right to participate
in the electoral process. I therefore urge Florida election
officials to reverse the wholesale invalidation of more than 1,400
absentee ballots submitted by U.S. military personnel stationed
abroad. Further, I urge members of Congress to look into this
shameful situation.

"The men and women whose votes have been disqualified are part of
the tradition of the American citizen-soldier whose sacrifices
preserve the right to vote for all of us. There is nothing partisan
about counting the votes of these citizens who took an oath 'to
support and defend the Constitution of the United States against
all enemies'...

"Unless an absentee ballot is so mutilated that the choices cannot
be determined, the ballot should count. Soldiers, sailors, airmen,
Marines and Coast Guardsman must not be penalized because the
system that delivered those ballots was protracted. American troops
are deployed to more than 130 different countries and on ships on
the high seas around the world.

"I am especially sensitive to the patriotism of the troops serving
abroad as I plan to spend Thanksgiving thanking our troops between
the two Koreas for their service. I cannot look those troops in
their eyes and turn my back on the invalidation of their votes."

Stars and Stripes
Letters to the editor

Investigate election results

With widespread election irregularities, how can we as a nation try
and impose democracy around the world when our own democracy is in
shambles? There must be an investigation into the election results
in Florida and Ohio and other states to instill integrity into our
elections. We as a nation used to joke about this type of stuff in
elections in Communist Russia and Third World countries. This does
not happen in my country.

Gabriel Rodriguez
Yokohama, Japan

Jesus was a liberal

Some conservatives think they have a monopoly on Christianity. They
have even turned “liberal” into a dirty word. Liberals were against
slavery, segregation and child labor, and for equal rights
regardless of gender and race. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert
Kennedy were liberal. Strom Thurmond and George Wallace were
conservative. If you had to choose a side, which one would you be
on?

I consider myself a centrist, but my favorite liberal is Jesus. No
matter how hard you thump your Bible, Jesus wasn’t orthodox or
liberal. He wasn’t a hard-liner, hawk or warmonger. Jesus believed
in peace, love and the Golden Rule. He didn’t support pre-emptive
war, the death penalty or tax breaks for the rich.

Jesus was liberal. What’s wrong with that?

Chuck Mann
Greensboro, N.C.

Wounded are forgotten

I was so glad to read “Disabled vets get red tape, not ticker tape” (Oct. 20).

The soldier, Tyson Johnson III, was wounded in the same attack that
got another from my unit killed. Over the year since it has
happened, the soldier that was killed has been made into virtually
a saint; his family has been showered with blessings and flown here
to attend a prominent building dedication ceremony to him; he’s
been used as a model soldier in formation speeches, and things like
soldiers wearing his name on memorial bracelets.

However, other soldiers, like Johnson, who were wounded to the
point of being disabled for life, are all forgotten and never
mentioned. Many soldiers don’t even know who they are (and it’s not
like this unit had many wounded, either). Even worse, just a day
after the article was printed, a senior enlisted noncommissioned
officer who knew him actually decried Johnson’s situation like he
had nothing to be complaining about. What does that say and what
message does that send?

The movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” pointed out this very thing, regardless
of what may be thought of the film itself — that while the dead are
counted, the wounded are done so almost secretly. It breaks the
heart when confronted with the reality of it.

Sgt. Samuel Provance
Heidelberg, Germany

Fight for America goes on

The re-election of President Bush brings a sad and fearful morning
to America. His words of unity and conciliation ring hollow. As the
Bush administration continues its arrogant agenda of isolation and
ignorance, freedom-loving Americans who oppose those attempts to
further limit civil liberties and who fight an administration
grounded in fear and intolerance will find themselves labeled as
uncooperative and unpatriotic. It is and old and scary game, one
that the Bush machine plays masterfully.

As Sen. John Edwards said on Wednesday, the fight to save America
has only just begun.

Laurel Samson
Ramstein Air Base, Germany

Stripes is nonpartisan

 http://cf.rrstar.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=14&threadid=4293

*****

Did every vote count?
Many overseas Americans did not receive absentee ballots even
though they applied well in advance. This is the story of one US
citizen's bum rush against a disenfranchising bureaucracy to become
one of 116 million opinions
Trista di Genova

~They checked our bags, and made Jennie drink some of her water "to
test it." For some unknown reason, a Taiwanese lady guard
suggested, "Why don't you come back tomorrow?"
"No. Today is election day," I said. "Tomorrow will be too late."

A white security official in civilian clothes, presumably in the
foreign service came out and interviewed me. Who do you work for? I
told him I was a freelance journalist, covering issues of voting -
and voter intimidation. Who do you sell your work to? I said
"anyone that wants to buy it." Information is free, right?

They took away my bag with the camera, and the security tool took
us aside and took down all our passport information - very, very
slowly. It was 3:15pm, and it seemed he was trying to delay us. I
told Jennie to go ahead. He said "You're not going anywhere until
I'm finished with you."

"What's your name?" I asked. When he didn't say anything, I tried
to turn over his badge to see it. He wouldn't let me.

~Then they all closed in around me. I moved away and held my hands
behind my back when they tried to take my arm in passive
resistance. The white tool tried to twist my arm behind my back,
but as Jennie noted later, "he wasn't very good at it, and didn't
know how to do it right." She said he was shaking and was
intimidated, but I didn't notice, because these people were trying
to drag and force me out the door. I got out of his lame grip, then
he tried to hurt my left hand. He broke one of my prayer bracelets
in the struggle, and my hair band came off. As I was being forced
out the door toward the stairwell, I noticed a young black guy in
civilian suit standing in the doorway, watching. I was saying, "I
want to vote. I want her to vote."

They took me into the stairwell, and just held me there, standing.
I started to cry, and the Taiwanese lady guard patted my back. They
all stood holding on to me, keeping me still. But I was already
still, sobbing, with shock and grief. Why? The trauma of being
forcibly removed by a gang of people, maybe. But it was more than
that. It was grief about the things to come, for all of us.

~my own case was alarming. I had received two ballots, one from
heavily Democratic Washington, DC and another from my home state of
Arizona - a swing-state. I managed to send the Arizona ballot back
in order to arrive Nov. 1. It was tempting to vote twice, but the
prospect of a US$10,000 fine was daunting, ultimately. So I voted
once last week, and crossed my fingers it would be counted. And
wondered - don't they cross-check voter registrations between
states? Can anybody vote several times?

~Trista di Genova is a writer in Taipei: trista2000 (at) yahoo.com. You
can see video of Jennie's Election Day at www.rentacrowd.com.

*****

June 08, 2004
Donkeys In The Desert
by Gary Farber of Amygdala at June 8, 2004 12:09 AM

(Gary Farber's home blog is Amygdala.)

As The New Yorker notes, not everyone in Iraq working for the CPA
or to help Iraqis is a Republican.

"In late April, a group of Americans serving in Iraq sent a letter
to John Kerry, appealing to the candidate as both an ex-soldier and
a peace seeker. It read, in part, “Put bluntly: we believe you need
to get over here, suck in some sand and sweat a bit in the desert
heat while talking to, among others, U.S. soldiers, Iraqi
technocrats, Coalition officials, private sector reconstruction
contractors, and tribal leaders. Perhaps only then will you begin
to get a real sense of the real Iraq, for Iraq cannot be understood
from the halls of Washington or via briefing papers alone.” The
letter concluded, “As our next Commander-in-Chief, the sooner you
get over here, the better,” and it was signed, “Donkeys in the
Desert.”

The Donkeys in the Desert are a small but increasingly vocal
minority of Democrats working under the auspices of the Coalition
Provisional Authority. They now number about two dozen, up from an
original eight, last fall, and most of them are based in Baghdad,
although satellite members can be found on the front lines in
places like Baqubah and Ramadi. Roughly a third of the Donkeys are
soldiers (from sergeants to colonels), and the rest are civilians
working in various C.P.A. divisions—force protection, trade,
foreign affairs—through private contractors or assorted government
agencies.
The group meets weekly, on Monday nights at eight o’clock, at an
old Republican Guard swimming pool within Baghdad’s comfort area,
the Green Zone. They eat pizza, drink beer, and discuss voter
education and outreach.
[...]

Stratcom, the Coalition press office, is staffed by a number of
former Bush campaign workers. One Donkey reports chafing at a
colleague’s remark, “I’m not here for the Iraqis, I’m here for
George W. Bush.”

“A lot of Republicans walk around talking Republican stuff,” Weston
said. “We call them Palace Pachyderms.”

The Donkeys kept a low profile last fall and winter, during primary
season, but lately, as the violence has increased, and as morale
has sunk, the group has been emboldened, advertising its meetings
with flyers taped up around the palace. In recent weeks, several of
the flyers have been torn down or defaced—in one instance, with a
derogatory reference to Al Gore. Continued bombings, meanwhile,
have made the meetings’ prime attraction—good grub—harder to come
by; the group’s pizzeria of choice is an Iraqi-owned establishment
situated in the treacherous Red Zone.
[...]

“There’s a misperception that if you’re in the military you’re
going to vote Republican,” Weston went on. “But in the Army there
are a lot of rinos: Republicans in Name Only. I think there’s
frustration from a lot of reservists, whose terms of service keep
being extended.” (One reservist, Specialist Kevin Fisher, a New
Yorker stationed in Baqubah with the 415th Civil Affairs Battalion,
e-mailed last week to express his frustration with, among other
things, the adoption of the term A.I.F., for Anti-Iraqi Forces:
“Kind of a funny term in my opinion since I would guess that they
are increasingly made up of Iraqis who have grown tired of the
Americans being in their country.”) It is from the ranks of these
reservists that the Donkeys hope to recruit many new members.
Political leanings within the Donkeys range from “very left” to
ex-rino, but a hasty retreat from Iraq does not fall within the
group’s agenda. “I think we’re pretty happy that Kerry has at least
demonstrated that it is a complicated situation in Iraq, and not
just a case of ‘Get out tomorrow,’” Weston said.

Remember when politics was supposed to stop at the edge of the
border? There are things people in both parties, and no party, can
agree upon, such as the need to help the Iraqi people

*****

Videos of voter suppression in Ohio
 http://shadowbox.i8.com/Suppression/ohio/ohiomachines.htm

House Committee Appendices: Eyewitness Accounts, Linda Byrket
Documentary, and Blackwell letter
In submitting their preliminary report, the House Judiciary
Democrats submitted three additional appendices :

A list of excerpts from affidavits of eyewitnesses to the Ohio
disenfranchisement.
 http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohioquotes.pdf

A copy of Blackwell's illegal fundraising letter on Secretary of
State stationery:
 http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/blackwellfundraisingltr.pdf
and

Lynda Byrket's landmark film, Video the Vote.
 http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/video%20the%20vote.mov

Videotape of January 3rd Columbus, Ohio, Jesse Jackson Rally Now
Available on the Web
I have completed my videos of the Jan 3 Jesse Jackson Rally at the
Capitol Theatre available for download on my website
www.madogmusic.com.

Speakers include Jesse Jackson, David Cobb, Stephanie Tubbs Jones,
Teresa Fedor, Tim Carpenter of PDA, Dagmar Celeste, Bob Fitrakis,
Susan Truitt, Cliff Arnebeck and others.

And I have posted Linda Byrket's powerful documentary "The Vote"
about election day vote supression in Columbus, OH.

Enjoy.
Gary Polvinale
www.madogmusic.com

*****
UPDATE: Though I nor the above paper make any statements about how
this election was
stolen, many have expressed a belief that it would require an
implausably widespread
conspiracy. For many, this is a fundamental barrier.

No Conspiracy Required

Since so many votes are cast on DREs (touchscreens), or counted on
central tabulators, by
so few companies, it would literally require only one person to rig
an election. For those who
know little about computers, let me explain.

All these machines run software to perform their task. In this
software is thousands of lines
of code. Instructions so to speak. All that is required to alter
those instructions, say, to
add an extra 20 votes for Bush for every 100 votes counted, is just
another few lines of code.

Since there is no public oversight of this software and no access
to the privately owned,
proprietary code, no one would be the wiser.

And since so many machines, all running the same software, are
used, only 20 votes is all
they would need to add.

For example, Ohio has 11,360 precincts. Lets say your company
counts 5000 of them. That's
about the range of Diebold. So lets say you write a program that
gives Bush 20 measly votes
in every precinct and you gain 100,000 votes. Have your little code
add 20 for Bush and subtract
20 from Kerry, 200,000 net.

Steve Gibson of Gibson Research, a highly respected programmer who
discovered the Netscape
spyware scandal, describes how his website was attacked by a
teenager. This kid had written
a virus that spread around to hundreds, if not thousands of
computers. With a key command,
he could control all these computers (bots, as their called) and
had them all attack Gibson's
website with denial of service attacks. He did this presumably from
his mom's house.

There's a reason so many computer geeks are against computer voting
and vote counting.
Because they know a teenager could have stolen this election.

Not only does it not require a conspiracy, but it doesn't require
even the Bush campaign to
know about it. Imagine if you worked for Diebold and you knew that
you could undetectibly
secure Kerry's victory with a few simple lines of code. Tell me you
wouldn't think about it.

It is possible that Bush really thinks he won this election fair
and square and some guy named
Bob is sitting back right now knowing that he changed history. It
would be funny if it weren't
so horrifyingly possible.

PLUTOCRATS DID NOT GIVE THEIR MOM'S THE RIGHT TO VOTE TILL 1920