Electoral Reform / Election Protection

Source: The American Dream
 

Do you know who is going to be counting the votes on Election Day 2012?  Most Americans never even think about this.  Most Americans just assume that their votes will count and that the government will ensure that the counting process is done honestly and fairly.  But is this really the case?  Sadly, the vast majority of people never take the time to “look behind the curtain” to see how things really work.  If they did, they might find themselves extremely upset about what they would find.  The integrity of our voting process is of the utmost importance.  If we do not have the ballot box, then what avenues for changing our government do we have left?  Unfortunately, the integrity of our elections has been called into question quite a few times in recent years, and now a Spanish company known as Scytl will be involved in reporting election results for hundreds of jurisdictions across the United States this upcoming election day.  Will those election results be accurate?

Internet Voting In California?
By Jim Soper
Voting Rights Task Force

Election integrity advocates recently launched a campaign to block a bill, SB908, that would have introduced email voting for Californians living overseas. We fought it for several reasons.

First, paperless voting itself is dangerous because there is no independent way to check the results claimed by the machines, and no way to recover when something goes wrong, and it will. Voting across the Internet is worse, because it opens up the voting system to several more types of attack, from anywhere in the world, all of them dangerous. Voting by email attachment is even worse, because no attempt is made to encrypt the ballot as it travels from computer to computer across the globe on the way to its destination.

David Callahan, David Cay Johnston & Arianna Huffington are interviewed by Francesca Rheannon. They discuss how the economic elites fight for control of the political elites.

Source: David Callahan, David Cay Johnston & Arianna Huffington: Rich liberals, Corporate Politics and Third World America.

Matt Taibbi is interviewed by Tavis Smiley

The Rolling Stones editor explains the inner workings of Wall Street and criticizes the U.S. bank bail out.
Source: November 11, 2010, Matt Taibbi interviewed by Tavis Smiley

Timothy McBain talks to Andrew Bacevich about Military-Industrial Complex Cutbacks

Will the proposed defense cuts reduce the total national security budget?
Source: Tuesday, January 25, 2011. Military-Industrial Cutbacks?

Why democracy only works when people are in charge.

Big Success Again! Protect Our Elections And Public Citizen File Complaint Against Rove’s American Crossroads GPS For Campaign Finance Violations
Rove Group Operates As a Political Committee But Is Not Registered As One

Our ProtectOurElections campaign yesterday filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Crossroads Grassroots Political Strategies, an organization created by Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie to influence the midterm elections with huge expenditures of money.

The complaint provides ample reason to believe that Crossroads GPS, which is registered as a nonprofit 501c(4) organization, is in fact a political committee and should be subject to the restrictions and disclosure rules for political committees.

Read the complaint HERE

Crossroads GPS, formed in July 2010 by Rove and Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, shares offices and employees with American Crossroads, a registered political committee created this year that also is the brainchild of Rove and Gillespie.

Rove has boasted on Fox News that American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS were avenues for donors who have “maxed out” contributions to federal Republican political committees to funnel money into the 2010 elections.

Howie Hawkins has got a lot of strong things to say about the smokescreen kabuki going on between Cuomo and Palidino. As quoted by Celeste Katz of Daily News:

[Hawkins] "Both want to cut public spending and services in order to keep tax breaks for the wealthy. All that's left to argue about is 'who's the bigger man?' -- and the media's falling for it. Given the chance to debate, I can provide New Yorkers with a competing vision, my prosperity plan vs. their austerity plan."

Hawkins is calling for a "Green New Deal" with a WPA-style green jobs program to put the state's 800,000 unemployed back to work. The plan, according to Hawkins, could be financed with the yearly $16 billion in Stock Transfer Tax funds that are currently rebated right back to Wall Street.

"Cuomo and Paladino whine about the so-called 'budget crisis' but won't even mention the Stock Transfer Tax. Andy and Carl's hot tub reconciliation will come after Election Day, when they're toasting champagne glasses with Wall Street banksters."

I like what Hawkins is asserting these days. Like when he floats the question as to whether the janitor of Trump Towers is paying a higher rate of taxes than Trump himself. Hawkins is the political hero I have been holding out for! THE ALTERNATIVE now that I have pledged to vote "none of the above" (NOTA) to Legacy Democratic Party candidates!

Of course, the media and political machines won't give him air time. But isn't it time to stop holding our noses while voting? Time to stop voting for a hopped-up media/ad-created faux-personality and endorse and enable a real candidate of the people, grounded in principle and integrity?

Alan Singer at Huffpo writes:

Target Ain't People

The retail company Target just gave over $150,000 to buy ads supporting a far-right Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota.

That's bad enough. But the stakes are much higher than one candidate and one company. If we don't push back hard, this will just be the tip of the iceberg. Other corporations will learn that they can pour money into elections to buy the outcome they want. So we're sending a message to Target's CEO that we won't shop there if Target continues spending money on elections.

This blog by john.halle grabbed my attention at Corrente. Hope this visualization goes viral!

http://www.correntewire.com/richard_trumka_accepts_labor_party_nod

Thu, 07/22/2010 - 12:03pm — john.halle

Could it happen here? The latest in a series.

Comments/discussion welcomed.

Trumka Nominated

Chicago-To the cheers of thousands of rank and file activists, AFL CIO head Richard Trumka accepted the nomination of the newly formed US Labor Party for the Presidency of the United States. Trumka will make his run as the standard bearer of a party fielding a full slate of candidates from the local and state to federal levels, running with the support of all major national and international unions, many peace and environmental organizations, and millions of economically and politically disenfranchised Americans.

Addressing a packed convention center a stone's throw from Chicago's haymarket, Trumka's remarks evoked labor's fallen heros and rekindled themes of radical trade unionism long thought vanquished after generations of hostility to organized labor fomented by right wing think tanks, mainstream media outlets and an army of pro-business lobbyists in Washington.

BREAKING: Clay County, KY Election Officials Found Guilty of Election Fraud, Vote Buying

Convicted high-ranking officials include a circuit court judge, county clerk and school superintendent

Each face up to 20 years in broad conspiracy that included manipulation of electronic voting machines...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 25th March 2010 @ 15:24
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7765

All eight defendants in Clay County, Kentucky's election fraud trial have been found guilty today by a federal jury. Six of those eight were high-ranking election officials, including the county clerk, a circuit judge and the school superintendent. The conspirators were charged with having manipulated federal elections in 2002, 2004 and 2006 by buying and selling votes and manipulating electronic voting machines.