VA5

VA, Charlottesville: Daybreak Book Signing & Discussion With Author David Swanson

Chip — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:33:18 -0400

Start: 09/03/2009 - 6:30pm

Timezone: Etc/GMT-4

David Swanson discussing and signing his new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."

A LEADING PROGRESSIVE VOICE AND COFOUNDER OF THE ANTIWAR AFTER DOWNING STREET COALITION, BLOGGER AND ACTIVIST DAVID SWANSON FOCUSES his tireless efforts to unveil the wrongs of the past eight years in this citizen’s guide to removing power from the hands of one person, placing it in a body of representatives, and (here’s the hard part) making that body truly representative of the American people. Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union makes clear that the imperial presidency, which advanced so dramatically during the Bush-Cheney era, will not be stopped merely by electing better presidents. Major structural changes are needed to rein in runaway executive power and make America a true leader in democratic principles.

Only through the active efforts of citizens, Swanson argues, can we restore our rights, and expand our conception of political rights to meet new challenges. Daybreak offers a shocking and inspirational breakdown of all that we have lost, and all that we have to gain.

September 3, 2009

6:30 p.m.

Barnes and Noble at Barack's Road Shopping Center

1035 Emmet St Suite A
Charlottesville, VA 22903
(434) 984-0461

Congressman Perriello Proposes Green Energy

davidswanson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:02:07 -0400

Unveiling a blueprint for the VA-5th to lead the nation in clean energy economy: http://tinyurl.com/ldmtvd

Van Jones and Nancy Sutley visit energy-improved house in Charlottesville, Va., June 23, 2009

davidswanson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:27:48 -0400

Creating Clean Energy Jobs: Helping People Helping the Environment

Tuesday, June 23, 2009, 11:00 a.m.

Congressman Tom Perriello
Homeowner Ingrid Feggans
Homeowner Chad Thorne
Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris
Albemarle County Supervisor Ann Mallek
Worker Michael Stewart
Chair of White House Council on Environmental Quality Nancy Sutley
Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality Van Jones (hovering but not speaking)

Backstory: Admirable, if insufficient, as this event was, there is an unpleasant context. The week before this event, Congressman Tom Perriello voted for $100 billion for wars (which he was happy to do) combined with $100 billion in loans to eastern European banksters through the International Monetary Fund (which he will likely be hammered for in television ads a year from now, and which he claims to have opposed even while voting for). The White House and Democratic Party leaders made a lot of promises and threats to pass the bill in a very close vote. The day before this event House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer came to Charlottesville for an event with Perriello. Now Van Jones and Nancy Sutley came. Who will be next? My money is on a south district event with a military big whig. You read it here first.

OPEN FOR VIDEOS

1 Tom Perriello:

2 Ingrid Feggans:

3 Chad Thorne:

4 Dave Norris:

5 Ann Mallek:

6 Michael Stewart:

7 Nancy Sutley:

8 Tom Perriello Conclusion:

What Is a Populist Caucus?

davidswanson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:28:27 -0500

By David Swanson

The largest caucus in Congress with 75 members is the Progressive Caucus. It even has one member in that bastion of regressivism, the United States Senate. The progressive caucus uniquely supports majority positions (majority outside of Capitol Hill, I mean) on domestic and foreign issues, on trade and the environment, peace and diplomacy, education and healthcare, speaking up for the poor, the powerless, and all the rest of us. Its positions are not perfect and often appear constrained by a desire not to stray too far from the Democratic leadership. But it's the best we've got, as far as caucuses go.

However, the Progressive Caucus has rarely if ever stood for something and fought for it. It takes positions as a caucus, it even gets its members to all sign onto a position, and then when push comes to shove, usually about four of its members stand on principle and refuse to vote the way they swore they wouldn't. A prime example of this occurred when 90 Congress members, most of them in the Progressive Caucus, signed a letter to President Bush (why Bush and not Pelosi, I don't know) announcing that they would not vote for any more money to extend the occupation of Iraq, and then almost all proceeded to do just that. But examples are available all the time. The Progressive Caucus never blocks cloture votes (procedural votes on whether to have a vote), but is satisfied to vote for the losing side and allow measures it opposes to pass.

Once upon a time you could expect fairly progressive positions from the Black Caucus, but its membership consists of any member (41 of them) who is considered black, regardless of their policy positions or performance, and not all black members can be considered progressive -- far from it. Steve Cohen tried to join because he represents a majority black district, and was turned away for being white. But Artur Davis is a member in good standing. The Black Caucus Foundation is a corporate money hole. (The Progressive Caucus' foundation is brand new and its future unknown.)

The New Democrat Coalition with 57 members is militaristic and corporate and suffers from a hard case of voodoo economics. Meanwhile the Blue Dog Coalition, with 47 members, advocates against spending money, except on war and weaponry. These coalitions, the Blue Dogs especially, have been known to challenge the Democratic leadership and fight tooth and nail for their positions -- as they should. Another minority caucus that fights for its positions is, of course, the Republican Caucus.

Now along comes a new caucus of Democrats called the Populist Caucus, which has at least 23 members thus far, including my own Congress member, Tom Perriello. This appears to be a caucus for somewhat progressive members who want to say "middle class" a lot but not necessarily mention the poor or the working class, and who may or may not love weapons and wars. The caucus is "devoted solely to addressing middle class economic issues." If that's true, and it neither supports nor opposes militarism, but takes a populist and progressive stand on economic issues -- perhaps even in alliance with the Progressive Caucus -- and really fights for its positions, this could be very good news. And it is good news for my district, whose representative had publicly considered becoming a Blue Dog. He still could, as these caucuses all have overlapping memberships. In fact, 11 of the 23 populists are also members of the Progressive Caucus, which is encouraging. The Progressive Caucus has some new leadership and could conceivably fight for its positions in the coming months, but having a separate caucus that might do so doubles our odds. As the Blue Dogs have shown, it's not the number of members you have, but your willingness to take a stand that gives you power.

Here's what the Populist Caucus says it wants to work on:

1. Creating Good Jobs and a Secure Retirement: Creating and retaining good-paying jobs in America, providing fair wages, proper benefits, a level playing field at the negotiating table, and ensuring American workers have secure, solvent retirement plans;
2. Cutting Taxes for the Middle Class: Cutting taxes for the middle class and establishing an equitable tax structure;
3. Affordable Healthcare: Providing affordable, accessible, quality health care for all Americans;
4. Quality, Affordable Education: Ensuring quality primary education for all American children, and affordable college education for all who want it;
5. Fair Trade: Defending American competitiveness by fighting for fair trade principles;
6. Protecting Consumers: Protecting consumers, so that Americans can have faith in the safety and effectiveness of the products they purchase.

There's potential, but change I can believe in ain't in that list yet. How do you do #1 but not commit to the Employee Free Choice Act? How do you do #2 but not raise taxes on corporations and millionaires, and slash the expenses of wars, bases, and weapons? How do you do #3 but not back HR 676? Why would you fight for fair trade in order to be "competitive" rather than fair? Protecting consumers is good but what about citizens?

I blogged yesterday about a meeting that some allies and I had with Congressman Perriello. I had asked him if he would cosponsor the Employee Free Choice Act and thought he had clearly said yes. And that's what I reported. His office now tells me that he said he would support it but not necessarily cosponsor it. They haven't said that he won't cosponsor it, only that he's not saying he will. I've asked how, then, he will support it, and I'm waiting for an answer. Maybe the Populist Caucus will have one.

Perriello, Peace, and Justice

davidswanson — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:12:21 -0500

By David Swanson

Peace and justice activists in Virginia's Fifth District were thrilled last November when we and our neighbors replaced Congressman Virgil Goode with Tom Perriello. We got together and held a couple of meetings to discuss what we might begin talking with the new congressman-elect about. On February 17th we finally met with him. This brief report may prove somewhat useful to others meeting with their representatives and senators, and I've included links to useful materials to modify as needed and bring along to your meetings.

Congressman Perriello has thus far introduced and passed one piece of legislation, a section of the stimulus bill creating a tax credit for higher education. While tax credits may not be the ideal stimulus, backing education is a very welcome move.

Perriello has also expressed a willingness to challenge his own party on behalf of his constituents, according to his website:

"Before the final [stimulus bill] vote, Perriello bucked party leadership by requesting that the final vote be delayed until 48 hours after the bill had been posted online, to allow constituents ample time to study and understand the bill. He was one of only 18 Democrats to take this stand. In a letter sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday afternoon, Perriello said, 'I support the passage of this bill because only urgent and dramatic action can begin to close the $2 trillion contraction in our national economy, but providing for these funds does not exempt us from our responsibility to keep policy-making transparent for our constituents.'"

Of course, former Congressman Goode didn't always march to the Republican drumbeat, but his own music was worse rather than better, and his attitude toward his constituents was one of poorly disguised manipulative contempt.

So, the times are a changin. But we were unsure going into Tuesday's meeting what to expect, and were disappointed that it had taken Perriello so long to schedule the meeting with us. In addition, I had interviewed Perriello for an hour on a radio show during the campaign and had been disappointed with his apparent belief that his job, if elected, would be to support whatever President Obama decreed. I'm sure Congressman Perriello means such comments as pragmatic observations more than expressions of loyalty, but it's not clear what difference that makes in the outcome of a congress member's actions.

Five of us arrived for the meeting representing a coalition of groups, including the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, People's Alliance for Clean Energy, the People United, and Code Pink. We were immediately informed that our 60-minute meeting would last 20 minutes because the Congressman had managed to schedule a radio interview. Not a good opening note. And, sure enough, our new congressman had a habit of closing discussion of issues by remarking "That's probably going to be executive-led. Which is not to pass the buck, but …." This remains the point that disappoints me and discourages me about our new representation. We don't want to be told to what extent the now misnamed "executive" creates legislation. We know the score. We want our representative to lobby his colleagues and the president on our behalf, and we know that to the extent others in Congress stand up with him, power could be returned to its proper seat on Capitol Hill.

But, putting these sticking points aside, and allowing for the abbreviated meeting, Perriello was impressively smart, informed, professional, and far more than Goode ever was, on the side of peace and justice. We went into the meeting hoping (incredibly unrealistically for an hour meeting, much less a 20-minute meeting) to touch on six topics. We put the most important one that all the groups in the coalition came together around first, knowing we might not get past it. We handed the Congressman this sheet (PDF) with specific asks on the topics of: shifting resources from wars and military to human needs, rejecting the power Bush claimed to make a war-treaty with Iraq without consulting Congress, establishing the right to organize in the workplace, creating single-payer healthcare, opposing nuclear energy and weapons, and defunding the School of the Americas.

On the topic of war and military spending, we had prepared our own talking points (PDF) but on the day of our meeting we received from United for Peace and Justice a copy of Congressman Barney Frank's proposal (PDF) for how to cut 25 percent, so we brought that too. Frank's plan is not a peace movement document. It proposes an escalation of war in Afghanistan. It accepts three more years of war in Iraq. But it also explains how much money can be saved by scaling back and then ending the Iraq occupation, and how much could be saved by ending useless but costly weapons programs. We didn't push hard for commitments from Perriello on ending wars, but his position was pretty easy to guess from his past statements and his decision to begin talking about the president.

We did point out that President Obama has proposed reducing nuclear weapons to 1,000, along with Russia doing the same. And we pointed out that ending the wars would not mean ending weapons factory jobs. I wish we'd had time to push the issue of closing foreign bases, since there's probably $130 billion there that's not going to jobs in Congress members' districts. Perriello said that he thought it would be too hard to cut any weapons this year because of the economy and members' reluctance to cut jobs. We told him about research showing how many more and better paying jobs you get from nonmilitary investment, but that didn't seem to change his calculation. The exception was nukes. Perriello said he was completely on board with reducing nukes to 1,000 if not fewer and gave us an informed discussion of the need to fix or replace the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. While we'd like to urge our representative to urge things on Washington, at least there are finally some good things in Washington that a representative from Southern Virginia agrees with. (Goode always despised spending money but not if it could hurt foreigners.) And Perriello really is informed and interested, even telling us about his friend Matt Brown who's working on the Global Zero campaign. But we did not hear any commitment from Perriello to take any particular steps to advance the nuclear disarmament agenda, possibly because we had no time.

We also brought along and gave the Congressman talking points (PDF) on Congresswoman Barbara Lee's resolution rejecting the authority of the treaty Bush made with Iraq. I'm guessing this was a long shot ask with Perriello, but we did not have time to ask it, and he directed the conversation to other items on the list.

On the topic of workplace organizing (talking points PDF), Perriello said he would cosponsor the Employee Free Choice Act. We can't take any credit for persuading him, but we can spread the good news that he was already willing to make that commitment. I hope he will also urge his colleagues to quickly bring it to a vote.

Having received that commitment as the meeting was ending, and having already discussed -- in fact the Congressman having discussed it more than we did -- the potential for jobs creation through healthcare, we asked two questions on the topic (talking points PDF) and did not get a satisfactory answer to either. Perriello said that he (like every other homo sapiens I've ever heard of) was for "universal health care" but that he was undecided about Congressman Conyers' legislation H.R. 676. This was a step forward perhaps from what he'd told me last year, which was that he would back whatever the president proposed. So we asked what we could do to persuade him of the merits of single-payer health coverage, with no time left to present any information. And the Congressman replied: "Keep doing what you're doing, pressuring me, phone calls and Emails," or words very much to that effect. We also asked if he could send a representative to a public forum on healthcare planned for Charlottesville on Monday the 23rd. He said that he could ask his staff but that he "didn't know their schedules." So, for those of you in the Fifth District of Virginia, here's something you can do at the request of your Congressman: Give him a call at (434) 293-9631 and ask him to please send a staffer to the event.

We had presented our position on nuclear energy and renewable energy to the Congressman earlier in the meeting, and he spoke very intelligently about the subject and agreed with us, but we never got to any specific commitments.

The School of the Americas was the last topic on our agenda, and we never got to it at all, but we'll be following up with more meetings, phone calls, and Emails, with far more hope than we had for Goode, albeit hope we're going to work for rather than believe in.

How Did Perriello Beat Goode?

davidswanson — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:08:24 -0500

By David Swanson

How did a Democratic challenger defeat a Republican incumbent in an enormous rural district in southern Virginia? A Democratic group in Charlottesville called Left of Center organized a forum on that topic Monday night. Speakers included three staffers on Tom Perriello's victorious campaign: Brian Bills, his personal assistant; Kelli Palmer, who registered African American voters in the southern most part of Virginia's Fifth District; and Rachel Klarman, lead field organizer for the southern counties. Also speaking were two newspaper reporters, Will Goldsmith of the C'ville Weekly and Lindsay Barnes of the Hook. And providing some historical context was Fred Hudson, chair of the Fifth District Democratic Committee.

All of the speakers addressed the reasons Perriello had won. Of course he won by only 0.2 percent, but the big question was how he'd managed to make it close at all. The loser, Virgil Goode, had always carried at least 60 percent of the vote in the past. Each speaker provided different reasons for the upset, not because they disagreed with each other, but because there were a great many factors that had all come together. The speakers all steered clear, however, of the biggest, if least heart-warming reason for Perriello's success: money.

Perriello brought in almost as much cash as Goode. He spent it as I would want a candidate to spend it, but not necessarily how a candidate has to spend it to win in our corrupt system. Perriello had 30 people on staff and paid rent for eight offices. According to Bills, Perriello spent more on his field operation than any other congressional campaign in the country ever has. But what about the fortune needed to buy back essential little snippets of time on the television airwaves we own but do not control? That's where the powers of party and money combined. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C., and the independent group My Rural America spent over a million dollars on ads for Perriello and against Goode. In contrast, the Republican Congressional Committee and the National Right to Life Committee only spent $150,000 on pro-Goode and anti-Perriello ads.

The speakers on Monday all seemed to agree that the field work and the ads had worked well together, that people who had seen the ads late in the campaign had been able to connect them with their memories of having met Perriello or his staffers or volunteers earlier in the year. Over the summer, Perriello's staff and volunteers did a great deal of charity work in addition to traditional campaigning. That was one factor in the campaign's success at generating more media coverage than the incumbent.

Another major factor that was discussed on Monday was the incumbent himself, Virgil Goode, who had become a recognized failure as a congressman and who ran a terrible and complacent campaign (so complacent that no major signs of vote theft or suppression arose). Goode's obsession with bashing immigrants, Muslims, and gays made him less relevant to voters than a candidate who talked about jobs. While Goode denied that he hated immigrants when I blogged about it, Perriello was able to convince voters that Goode's immigration obsession alienated him from even his own party in Congress, making Goode less effective.

Perriello talked about religion constantly during the campaign, not to mention country music and NASCAR. But on the traditional pseudo issues of cultural division like abortion and gay-bashing, he did not adopt right-wing positions, as Goode, the former Democrat, had done, and as Virginia Governor and incoming chair of the Democratic National Committee Tim Kaine has done. Perriello mocked Goode's tendency to answer questions about the miserable economy of Southside Virginia with comments on same-sex marriage.

Obama boosted interest in this election in a district that is 24 percent African American but had previously seen only 16 percent of voting by African Americans. Yet Bills pointed out that Perriello was the only contested candidate in the state who actually received more votes than Obama. Hudson noted that Perriello actually swamped Obama north of the James River (where the progressive city of Charlottesville is) and trailed him south of there. Yet it was in the southern towns that Perriello gained the most over the performance of previous challengers to Goode: up 20 percentage points in Martinsville and 14 in Danville.

Palmer said that the campaign had sent a mailing to every known unregistered voter, and had then sent registration forms. Then they had used robocalls that said "If you need help registering to vote, Press 1." Pressing 1 took you to a real person. They also hired and recruited aggressive staff and volunteers. Some of them would drive up to anyone on the curb, ask if they were registered, and if not jump out of the van with a clipboard and register them on the spot. Another technique was to look for houses with lots of cars and activity, walk in the front door or the back yard and start registering everyone. Palmer said they were able to register 5,500 new voters in her area in nine weeks, heavily young voters. In all, 50,000 new people registered since the last election (many registered by the good work of the Virginia Organizing Project). Palmer registered whole families, including elderly black voters who wanted to know what they would have to pay and what test they would have to take -- vestiges of Virginian traditions.

Klarman pointed out that Goode's seniority and membership on the appropriations committee were hurdles to be overcome. Perriello, she said, was able to convince people that he would work harder and be more effective, and in fact he campaigned much longer and harder than Goode. There was also the problem of undervotes. Some 15,000 people had voted for president four years ago and not voted for a congress member. According to Hudson, solving this problem was likely aided by the Obama campaign's decision not to provide yard signs. This allowed the district to create 3-way signs for Obama, Senate candidate Mark Warner, and Perriello. This was important for those who still thought of Goode as a Democrat, as well as those who were big fans of Warner, a former governor. Some 10,000 people voted for McCain, Warner, and Perriello.

The discussion on Monday night must have been heaven for people who love political strategy (and isn't most everyone now an amateur strategist?). But I still tend to focus on what is generally called "the issues" or "policy positions." I want to know what a candidate will do if elected. There was no discussion in Monday's presentations of what policy positions helped or hurt the campaign, much less of what Perriello would be working on first. Back in April, I had interviewed Perriello for an hour on a radio show (audio clip) and I'd struggled to get him to commit to any progressive positions. I'd been frustrated by his open intention to simply obey his party and its president. He wouldn't back single-payer health coverage or anything else I asked about. (Of course Goode had run ads calling his previous challenger a supporter of "socialized medicine," "amnesty for illegals," etc.) People I know have spoken more privately with Perriello and come away thinking he was very progressive, albeit without any specifics.

Bills called Perriello a "conviction candidate." He said that his guy did not triangulate and pander like Bill Clinton, but told it like he saw it, and he saw it very much from the left. He was not bound to any party. And so forth. But the instant that someone asked a question from the floor, Bills retracted "left-leaning" as not the correct characterization for Perriello. None of the speakers touched on what the positions were that Perriello had expressed with such conviction. Members of the audience discussed campaigns for lobbying Perriello to take some good positions, but even among the audience members I spoke to the idea of anyone challenging Perriello in a primary in 2010 was unthinkable. Hudson said that he believed Perriello could win the general election again, and that we could ensure that he be able to remain in Congress as long as he wants. Hudson said this as if such an outcome must unquestionably be everyone's goal, and quite regardless of whether Perriello does what we want while he's on the job.

When I asked about policy proposals that had had an impact on the victory, Bills said that Perriello's economic plan for jobs was a big selling point. It was at this point in the discussion that the speakers touched on Goode's failures to relate to his struggling constituents' need for more than targets of hatred. Lindsay added that Perriello's smarts and long-windedness played well in a race against the bumbling Goode in a year in which President Bush's feeblemindedness had made wonkishness attractive.

Perriello's staffers seemed extremely smart, dedicated, and passionate. They had won an upset election over the most racist and hateful member of our national legislature by registering more people to vote and investing in grassroots organizing, while giving 10 percent of their time to charity. Regardless of what Perriello does, his campaign was inspiring. I wish I could tell you what he'll do. I wish I could provide Perriello's own perspective. A large coalition of peace and justice organizations that I work with has been requesting a meeting with him for weeks and has been getting turned away.

I expect that the audio of Monday's forum will show up here:
http://www.cvillepodcast.com

Goode Riddance

davidswanson — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:06:11 -0500

A Darfur-supporting, time-tithing, self-deprecating newcomer becomes Virginia's big electoral surprise.
By Dahlia Lithwick

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—It's been more than 72 hours since the polls opened on Tuesday, and Tom Perriello is only 19 minutes away from the official declaration that he has won—in one of the most dramatic upsets of the 2008 election—the congressional seat for the 5th District in Virginia. Perriello is sitting outside a coffee shop in Charlottesville, besieged by voters dying to know whether they've stopped the ballot-counting marathon yet. "Can I say congratulations yet?" asks a woman. "What's the final count?" A man says he is getting tired of hitting "refresh" on the Virginia State Board of Elections Web site. Perriello grins, explaining that after days of what he calls "cinematic" vote counting, the official count now gives him a 747-vote lead. This after the AP prematurely called the election for incumbent Virgil Goode on Tuesday night, then called it for Perriello on Wednesday. Vote totals seesawed back and forth as military ballots, paper ballots, and write-in ballots were counted and recounted.

Read the rest at Slate.

Recount Fictions in Virginia's Fifth

davidswanson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:22:28 -0500

By David Swanson

As of about 9 p.m. ET on Thursday, 316,476 votes had been counted in Virginia's Fifth District congressional race between incumbent bigotted xenophobe Virgil Goode and challenger Tom Perriello, with 158,562 going to Perriello and 157,914 to Goode, for a difference of 648 votes or 0.2 percent of the total.

According to a report on Charlottesville's NBC-29:

"There is no 'automatic' or 'mandatory' recount. If the results differ by one percent or less, the losing candidate can formally request a recount in court. If the difference is less than half of a percentage point, the same candidate still has to make a request and the state will pay for it."

Two years ago Mr. Macaca, George Allen, lost a close senate race in Virginia, the last great Virginian rejection of racism before the defeat of McCain-Palin and the possible defeat of Goode. Allen chose not to request a recount. His campaign or supporters of it had engaged in widespread suppression tactics, including misleading calls and flyers and intimidation. It's possible that he preferred to avoid close scrutiny of the election because of how deep his dirty tricks ran. Or maybe he just decided he couldn't win. If Goode loses the initial count this time and chooses not to recount, the same question will haunt us. If Perriello loses the initial count, only requesting a recount would fit with the statements he has recently made about the importance of taking the time to be sure every vote is counted. But then, he is working with the Democratic Party which absolutely loves to concede, so anything's possible.

The interesting question is, if they do a recount, what in the world will the recounters do in order to maintain the charade that they are "recounting" something? I ask this not because I distrust the people doing the recount in any way, but because there simply isn't anything to recount. Most of the votes were cast on DRE machines, electronic machines. Unlike voting on a paper ballot, voting on a DRE does not leave behind any item that can be counted or recounted. The same NBC-29 story explains:

"If and when a recount occurs, it's different every time. According to Iachetta, electronic ballots can be 're-counted' by re-reading the cards that hold the results or just by going over the statement of results again."

Even NBC was forced to put "re-counted" in quotes. The votes exist, if they exist, inside a machine. The machine spits out a number, and we all simply have to trust it. If the machine can be made to spit out a different number, that would be interesting, but it wouldn't help anything, because we'd have no basis on which to guess whether the first or second number was closer to an accurate count.

Now it could be discovered that some of the counts are impossible or improbable (machines have sometimes given candidates in various parts of the country more votes than there were voters, or reported that huge numbers of voters chose to vote in a local race and ignore a national one, etc.) Or it could be shown that a machine had been suspiciously tampered with, or that the data had been altered by an interested party. Or some innocent human error in processing the totals could be found. But aside from those possibilities, assuming everything seems to have worked perfectly, we actually have no possible way of knowing whether a machine count is accurate or not. As far as I know we have no exit polls here to help us either.

This probably means a couple of things. First, it probably means that a "recount" is not going to change the results dramatically, since most of the votes can't be recounted. Second, it might just mean that more people in Virginia come to grips with the need to replace our misguided techno-fetish for dysfunctional machines with paper ballots publicly counted at every polling place. In fact the Virginia Constitution requires the public counting of ballots, and DREs can't do that.

Now, some of the ballots in this contested race are paper. I voted early on a paper absentee ballot, as did a lot of other people, and others voted on provisional ballots on election day. All of those ballots could be carefully recounted by hand and the totals made public for each polling place. In most places, paper ballots are counted on optical scan machines, which are notoriously as unreliable as DREs, even when they aren't being jammed by wet ballots as happened in some parts of Virginia on Tuesday. The advantage of optical scan counting is that it leaves behind the paper ballots, which can be counted by hand if needed. But check out this report from the same NBC-29 story:

"Paper ballots will most likely go through a tabulating machine again."

Are they serious? If the ballots are counted by hand in small numbers locally, and the totals posted publicly and added together, a count can be extremely reliable. If the ballots are counted by a machine, and the total comes out different from last time, which total do you use?

Other factors could come into play here, including late arriving absentee ballots or attempts by Goode's team to disqualify various people's provisional ballots. There is some chance, I think, that this will help wake us up to the need for universal registration. If we didn't make everyone jump through so many hoops in order to vote, and simply let everyone vote in the same way that we let everyone have a Social Security number, then scary tales about Mickey Mouse showing up at the polls wouldn't be taken seriously even on Fox News.

When the first count is finished, if either the winner or the loser has any suspicion that a recount could come closer to the truth, then they have a duty to insist on it, and to insist that it be taken seriously and done with the extreme care that we put into counting money or sports scores. Sadly, we just don't have an electoral system that will allow any of us to be sure of the outcome no matter how many times they "recount" it.

Tom Perriello Up By 814

davidswanson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:55:29 -0500

By David Swanson

In Virginia's undecided Fifth District congressional race, Tom Perriello is now up 814 votes with possibly more still to be added, and a recount likely. But most of the over 300,000 votes cast cannot be recounted, since they were made on electronic machines.

Good bye, Virgil Goode, You left us all worse off and more hateful. May you become a nicer person in a line of work where you don't think bigotry is your key to success.

Welcome to Congress, Tom Perriello. May you actually represent us and be patient with us as we experience the shock of it.

Goode-Perriello Recount Required?

davidswanson — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:27:21 -0500

WINA reports:
"State law calls for a mandatory recount when the separation in the vote total is less than one-half of one percent."

But here's a citation of state law stating that a recount must be requested by apparently losing candidate.

Check the official results.

Be glad if you voted on paper because for most voters in Virginia's Fifth District there simply ain't nothing to recount.

AUDIO OF A PERRIELLO INTERVIEW TODAY.

And an encouraging statement from Perriello.

And a call for help:
"Remember the friends that I told you about who are working on a state campaign in Virginia? Well, it came down to within a few hundred votes and they need help getting the word out to election lawyers/political operatives who can help with a re-count. Would you mind forwarding this info to your list? The campaign is Tom Perriello's run for Representative in VA's 5th. David Madden is the contact person. His number is (202) 550-6461 and his e-mail is david_madden@post.harvard.edu "

And an analysis of Perriello's success, and a prediction the recount will take till Christmas, and something very strange: votes oddly eliminated and added:

VERIS is the new (and controversial) state voter registration database system. I just did an analysis of the changes due to the VERIS malfunction (?). In Danville, Tom Perriello’s vote totals (”original value”) were REDUCED by 308, while Virgil Goode’s vote totals were INCREASED by 1819. I do not understand why vote totals would have been affected by VERIS “going down after midnight,” as the VBE update page states. It seems the system is used to report vote totals. So precincts were able to report vote totals before midnight (presumably, these are the “original values”), but were prevented from finishing until this morning, when (it seems) the system was rebooted. Why, then, would vote totals have been decreased as well as increased? Also, the data from the missing precinct in Lunenberg were just added (9:58am): 351 Goode, 207 Perriello.

Possible explanation here.

And another mystery.