2008 Stolen Election

Why Norm Coleman Could Not Steal Minnesota

Bob Fertik — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:13:35 -0400

Josh Marshall covers the posterior-covering post-mortem on Norm Coleman's recount loss to Al Franken.

As one GOP operative told The Hill, "They allowed the legal proceedings to define the media environment."

But Josh reminds us that Coleman did define the media environment for the first month.

But for the first month or so after the November election hardly anyone gave Franken any hope of winning. And all the all-knowing editorial commentary was pushing for him to get out. But Coleman's boffo media environment started to buckle as the recount started to show that he'd probably lost. Admittedly, a hard set of facts for a well manicured media environment, such as Coleman's, to overcome.

This is where a comparison to Florida 2000 is instructive: in 2000, the Busheviks created a media environment in which a recount was simply unacceptable. First, they attacked any voter who got confused by the butterfly ballot as too stupid to deserve to have their vote counted. Then they attacked Al Gore as a Sore Loser. Then they attacked any sensible effort to analyze hanging chads as irrational (even though Bush's own Texas law specified how many of the 4 corners had to be broken in order to count as a vote). Then they resorted to brute force to shut down the Miami-Dade recount.

In other words, they did everything possible - in the media, in the courts, and in the streets - to prevent any count of the 175,000 ballots that were rejected by machines. And while they created a recount delay, they screamed that any delay in declaring Bush the winner would create an unacceptable national crisis. And the media hyped the Bushevik narrative morning, noon, and night.

In Minnesota, Norm Coleman could not manufacture a bogus national crisis. Everyone understood a recount would take time, and Coleman's ping-pong arguments in court just made it take longer. And as Josh points out, the actual recount results eclipsed the spin, although it took a lot of progressive blogging to bring the results to the fore.

In 2000, Democrats.com and our heroic allies tried to force Florida to count all the votes, but the netroots were in its infancy and we didn't have Blogs. If only we had succeeded in forcing Florida to count all the votes, the past 8 years would not have been a catastrophe that will take a generation to fix - if we can fix it at all.

Al Franken Wins Recount

Bob Fertik — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:57:30 -0400

Minnesota finally completed the recount and Al Franken officially beat Norm Coleman by 312 votes out of nearly 3 million. So what's next? Norm Coleman will appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which will uphold the meticulous work of the 3-judge panel. Then Coleman will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the outrageous decision in Bush v. Gore as precedent, even though the Supreme Court declared Bush v. Gore should never be used as a precedent.

As Ernest A. Canning reports for BradBlog:

Referencing Florida 2000's controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore, Ginsberg contended Coleman was denied equal protection.

As both the Franken legal team, and the three-judge panel, observed, Ginsberg's equal protection argument is fatally flawed. For starters, there is a serious issue of waiver. Coleman did not challenge the lawfulness of the previously counted absentee ballots either during the post-election hand-count or in his notice of contest.

The three-judge panel observed [PDF] that Bush v Gore was based on questions arising under "Florida's basic command…to consider the 'intent of the voter.' The United States Supreme Court found that while this principle was 'unobjectionable as an abstract proposition…the problem inheres in the absence of specific standards to insure its equal application.'" Minnesota's objective standards for opening and counting absentee are specific, clear and unmistakable.

Franken's legal team argued [PDF] that imperfect application of these clearly delineated standards by local election officials does not "constitute a constitutional violation. Not only would this result in an untenable rule that would make democratic and federalist government impossible; it finds no support in the case law. Rather, courts have consistently refused to find constitutional violations due to errors or inconsistencies, where clear state standards exist."

Update 1: Ed Kilgore thinks the lesson progressives learned from the Stolen Election of 2000 was to copy Republican legal and p/r tactics. Wrong! We learned the need to work diligently within the legal system to make sure every vote is cast and counted. We know we could never get away with Republican fraud tactics because Republicans control the media, which lets them scream fraud at us ("ACORN") when they're the ones committing it!

Obama and Congress Must Act to Restore the Constitution

dlindorff — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:13:08 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

The calls for a reckoning for the criminals of the Bush/Cheney
administration are growing by the day, as the final few days of the
Bush presidency tick down, and as new evidence of their crimes keep
pouring out of the deflating gas bag that was the Bush White House.

For years, the Democrats in Congress, with a few notable
exceptions, have sat on their hands, allowing the ongoing destruction
of the Constitution, of the US military, of the nation’s reputation,
and of the rule of law, as well as of the institution of Congress
itself, by a cabal of Republicans in the White House, led by Vice
President Dick Cheney, who have sought to establish an executive-led government
that answered only to itself.

Obama, running for the White House, initially talked of restoring
the constitutional order, and of prosecuting crimes where they had
occurred, much as he talked of ending the war in Iraq. But now, as he
increasingly assumes the role of President, he is backing away from
that kind of talk, with plans instead to extend the war and occupation
in Iraq for years, while actually expanding the war in Afghanistan, and
to give the outgoing administration of criminals and
Constitution-wreckers a free pass, in the name of “letting bygones be
bygones.” Ironically, he is doing this even as some in Congress,
including House Judiciary Chair John Conyers, who ducked the issue of
impeachment and sat on proposed impeachment articles against Bush and
Cheney filed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) for two critical years when
he could have ordered a formal hearing by his committee, are now
calling for a special prosecutor.

But broken promises about the war aside, Obama cannot have it both
ways. If, as he is still declaring, “no one is above the law” in
America, then it is essential that those who have committed grave
crimes must be indicted and tried for those crimes. As he takes the
oath of office on Jan. 20, Obama will swear to uphold and defend the
Constitution. That means not only defending the integrity of the
document itself, but enforcing all the laws that have been passed in
accordance with that document.

As President, Obama has no more right than did his predecessor to
pick and choose which laws to enforce. At a time when the nation’s
jails are crammed to overflowing with hundreds of thousands of people
whose crimes are as minimal as stealing CDs from a convenience store,
if President Obama and his Justice Department fail to order an
investigation into profound White House crimes like the destruction of
evidence in the Valerie Plame spy-outing case, or the investigation
into the politicalization of the appointment and firing of US
Attorneys, or of the deliberate campaign of lies to justify an
unnecessary invasion of Iraq, if they fail to investigate fully what
the president’s illegal National Security Agency wiretapping program
was really all about, if they fail to investigate the rampant fraud and
profiteering by White House-connected private contractors in the Iraq
War zone, if they fail to investigate the clear evidence of White House
efforts to undermine fair elections in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008, if
they fail to prosecute the White House, right up to the offices of Vice
President and President, for authorizing, directing and then covering
up evidence of systematic torture of captives in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and in the so-called “war” on terror, if they don’t
investigate what the administration really knew and what it covered up
in the days and weeks before the 9-11 attacks in 2001, it will no
longer be possible to say, with a straight face, that in America
everyone is equal under the law.

But that is only part of it.

Many of the current administration’s “crimes” are not statutory
violations. They are so called “high crimes” as defined by the
Founders. That is to say they are abuses of power that threaten the
nation’s very essense. They are not crimes in the sense that they
violate a law, but, even more seriously, they undermine our political
system and consequently threaten the very continued existence of our
free and democratic society.

The appropriate remedy for these high crimes—things like Bush’s
refusal, expressed through signing statements, to enact or envorce laws
or parts of laws duly passed by the Congress, his and Vice President
Cheney’s refusals to comply with Congressional subpoenas, his lies to
Congress regarding the true situation regarding the alleged threat
posed by Iraq in 2002 and 2003, and his overall assertion of “unitary
executive” power as commander in chief—was impeachment, but with Bush
and Cheney about to leave office, that is probably a lost cause.
(Certainly the two men could still be impeached, as impeachment itself
does not require that the impeached party still be in office, and the
potential penalty for conviction of an impeachable offence, besides
removal from office, also can include a permanent ban on holding any
future public office—an important sanction for the historical record.)
But here Obama—and the Democratic Congress--could act creatively, for
example by ordering the creation of a commission of inquiry to
investigate and condemn such constitutional undermining. By compelling
the testimony of witnesses under oath, it is possible that actual
punishable crimes such as contempt or perjury could still be committed
by White House officials and even by Bush and Cheney, but more
importantly, the nature of these crimes would be publicly exposed and
condemned, so that it would be far less likely that any future
administration would again commit them.

Obama should also act unilaterally to undo as much of the damage as
possible—for example revoking all unconstitutional presidential signing
statements from the Bush/Cheney years, and canceling all
unconstitutional Executive Orders, such as those authorizing torture
and extraordinary rendition programs.

The time is right for these actions. The public is almost uniformly
angry at the outgoing administration, which is walking away from office
leaving the nation a smoking ruin. Contrary to what Obama and his
advisers and the pathetic leadership in both houses of Congress seem to
think, the American public doesn’t want them to simply “move forward.”
Sure we want action to fix the wrecked economy, and to get all the
troops safely back home, but we also way the country put back together,
and we want those who wrecked the place to pay for the damage they’ve
done.

Few Americans would be dismayed to see Bush and Cheney squirming in the dock. Most would, in fact, be cheering and jeering.

The time has come for the newly empowered Democratic government in
Washington to stand up proudly and unambiguously for the Constitution
and the rule of law, and to prove that the phrase “No one is above the
law” isn’t just, as Bush’s hack lawyer Alberto Gonzales once said of
the Geneva Conventions, a “quaint historical artifact.”
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His most recent
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now
available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Al Gore Comments on "Do Not Concede" Letter to Obama

davidswanson — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:20:46 -0500

By David Swanson

Former Vice President, and the man elected president in November 2000, Al Gore was asked on the radio this morning about a letter that Gore Vidal and many others have sent to presidential candidate Barack Obama urging him not to concede a stolen election.

(Read and add your name to the letter here:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/donotconcede )

Al Gore, like the rest of us, hopes it doesn't come to that but discusses his memory of what happened eight years ago. Above all he stresses the need to get out and vote today in huge numbers.

(Listen to the clip of his interview with Nicole Sandler here:
http://radioornot.blogspot.com )

Gore also advocates a massive green jobs program as a solution to both the climate crisis and the economic crisis. He lists a number of causes of the economic / financial crisis, and includes prominently among them the occupation of Iraq. Perhaps he will be willing to advocate for its speedy end.

The End is at Hand (to Leftist Conspiracy Theories)

dlindorff — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:36:32 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

With the polls continuing to show Barack Obama holding a steady or
even growing lead heading into Election Day, especially in the key
swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire
and Virginia, and with Democratic challengers looking strong in at
least 10 Senate races and dozens of open-seat or Republican-held House
races, it’s looking like this will be a big win for Democrats, both in
the presidential and the Congressional races.

Hopefully one thing such an across-the-boards win will lead to
would be a withering away of the self-destructive conspiracy-theory
paranoia that has gripped much of the Left over the last eight years.

Once largely emblematic of the far Right, which saw black
helicopters of the dreaded United Nations behind every mountain, Jews
running everything, Communists working nefariously under every bed,
fluoridation plots, an immigrant assault on the Anglo-Saxon gene pool,
and a liberal cabal out to steal their assault hunting rifles, now the
Left is awash in the same kind of fevered thinking.

Chief among the leftist conspiracy theories are that the
Bush/Cheney administration was behind the 9-11 attacks, that the
current administration has plans to cancel or annul the November 4
election and institute martial law, that there are plans for a “false
flag” attack on American forces which will be used to justify an
all-out war against Iran, that there is a false-flag terror attack
planned inside the US set for before the election, designed to throw
the vote towards John McCain, that the Wall Street meltdown and
subsequent bail-out are a deliberate scheme to steal the nation’s
assets and funnel them into Republican pockets, and that Republican
operatives have the technological capability, and plan to steal the
current election by manipulating the results on the electronic voting
machines used by many election districts. In a variant of the Right’s
anti-Semitic ravings, the Left attributes god-like powers to the Israel
lobby and its formal lobbying organization, the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Never mind that some of these conspiracies are mutually exclusive
(if Bush and Cheney are going to declare martial law, they should have
no need to steal the election), or that it’s getting pretty late in the
game for others to actually happen. The common thread running through
these conspiracies is that “they” (the Republicans, AIPAC or the ruling
corporate elite, as the case may be), have superhuman powers beyond our
wildest imaginations, as well as flawless execution, and are going to
achieve their evil ends no matter what we do.

Following this line of thinking (if it can be called that), there’s
no point in voting, because “they” are going to steal the election
anyhow (and that, of course, is if the election is even held next
week!). There’s no point in going to rallies or marches in Washington
DC, because “they” are going to attack Iran and start World War III
anyhow. Public protest is also dangerous, because “they” are going to
declare martial law, and then all of us who go out and publicly oppose
the government will end up locked away in detention camps in the Mojavi
desert.

I confess, as a journalist, to having unwittingly aided and abetted
some of this conspiracy thinking, for example with my reporting on the
evidence that all four of the so-called “black boxes” from the two
planes that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 were recovered, and that
the FBI actually has them, despite its testimony to the contrary before
the 9-11 Commission. I make no apology for, and still stand by that
report, which was based upon reliable sources at the National
Transportation Safety Administration and in the New York Police
Department, but I want to stress that such a report does not justify
going beyond asking the logical question, “What is the government
hiding here?” to making the wild speculation that it means the
government planned and carried out those attacks.

I also reported on solid evidence in 2006 that the Bush/Cheney
administration was moving several aircraft carrier battle groups into
position in the Persian Gulf in advance of Congressional off-year
elections in what appeared to be possible plans for an attack on Iran.
I still believe that may have been the administration’s game plan, but
that it was derailed by senior Republican leaders who prevailed on
James Baker, chair of the Iraq War Study Group, to release his team’s
bi-partisan study three months early, which called for negotiations
with Iran and Syria in order to bring peace and stability to the Iraq
region. I would add that this is a far cry from imagining that the
administration was planning to fake an Iranian attack on American
forces.

I am not saying that governments don’t engage in treacherous
conspiracies. Certainly the faked tale of a Gulf of Tonkin incident was
a conspiracy designed to allow the Johnson administration to begin an
all-out war against the Vietnamese. And certainly there was a
conspiracy in the Bush/Cheney administration during 2002 and early 2003
to mislead and lie to the Congress and the American people about Saddam
Hussein’s alleged links to 9-11 and to global terrorists. But those
relatively simple conspiracies actually prove my point—both have been
clearly exposed thanks to leaks, turncoats, and good investigative
reporting.

What I am saying is that the grander conspiracies being concocted
in the more fevered brains of some people on the Left do not hold up
under careful and critical inspection. The biggest failings they share
are two: first of all, conspiracies as grand as multi-state election
thefts via electronic fraud, and the carrying out of a two-front,
high-casualty mass terrorist act on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, require the cooperation of such large numbers of people that
leaks, turncoats, informants and simple screw-ups are inevitable; and
secondly, this administration in particular has shown itself to be
phenomenally inept, intellectually stunted, and tactically clueless.
The War in Iraq, which was supposed to be a “cakewalk,” has been an
unmitigated disaster for Republicans. The War in Afghanistan is a
fiasco. The War on Terror, while a success in terms of helping
Republicans win seats in Congress in 2002, and Bush to win re-election
in 2004, has been a bust longer term. Management of the US economy has
been a model of incompetence. So has the grand plan to crush Democrats
and create a dominant Republican Party for the next century. The Rovian
campaign strategy of lies, smears and dirty tricks, while initially
successful, appears to have worn out its effectiveness in just three
two-year national election cycles.

None of this would matter except that I think the Left’s embrace of
conspiracy-theories has become profoundly damaging to the whole
progressive movement. Conspiracy thinking produces a deep cynicism
towards positive action and towards the kind of long-term organizing
upon which real social and political change depends. When people think
that the fix is in, they are not inclined to put time and energy into
the hard work of organizing unions, working to get local candidates
elected to office, running for positions on party committees, etc.
Conspiracy thinking also leads people on the left to completely write
off the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressive change, as the
notion that “they” run everything is broadened to include in the term
“they” the elected Democrats in the White House and Congress. Democrats
may be weenies, but such a conflation of Republicans and Democrats is
also self-defeating nonsense, as is the notion that Obama is “just
another tool” of the corporate/imperialist power structure. Democrats
are not just Republicans by another name, and Obama is not just McCain
or Bush with a better tan.

The reality is that if Obama is elected president, and if Democrats
end up gaining solid control of Congress, it will be critically
important for progressives to organize powerfully to press this new
government to do the right things—promptly ending the two wars in the
Middle East, taking strong and far-reaching action to tackle global
warming, restoring some basic equity to the economic and tax system,
making health care affordable and available to all, restoring the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, demanding punishment for those in
the current administration who have committed crimes, and so on.

We cannot expect Obama, or the Democrats in Congress who have
proven themselves to be such gutless compromisers, to take significant
progressive actions on their own. They must be driven by force of
public action to do the right thing.

Maybe when this election goes right and isn’t stolen, making Obama
the president, and debunking the vote-theft fear-mongers, and when
Obama goes on to be inaugurated in January, without being blocked by a
military coup, these paranoid conspiracy theories will fade away and
people on the Left will start working to make change happen instead of
imagining reasons why it can’t or just moaning that “they” are going to
destroy us all.
___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Stolen Election Preview: How Will We Know?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:39:29 -0400

In 2000, Democrats.com was the largest blog fighting the stolen election in Florida. In 2004, we were the largest blog fighting the the stolen election in Ohio. But in 2008, I'm not very worried about another stolen election. I'm not saying Republicans won't try, because they certainly will. I'm just saying they won't succeed. Why?

Stealing elections isn't easy. Voting systems vary by state, even by county. Some are all paper (like Oregon's vote-by-mail) or old-fashioned mechanical (like New York's levers). Optical scanner systems produce a paper trail that can be manually recounted. Only touchscreens are black boxes, and honest election officials can keep evil hackers away if they try hard enough.

As a result, no one can press a secret button somewhere and steal all 50 states. There are just a few states (like Georgia) with a uniform touchscreen system. In other states, Republicans would have to conduct covert operations in key counties. If Republicans really planned to do this on a significant scale, they would have stopped Democrats from winning the House and Senate in 2006. There's no evidence they tried, and even if they did they certainly didn't succeed.

We're less than a week away from the 2008 election. If Republicans want to steal it, they will have to engage in fraud on a scale so massive it would be impossible to hide.

1. Obama is way ahead in the Electoral College, where victory means 270 votes. My favorite site, fivethirtyeight.com, gives Obama a lead of 348.2-189.8=158.4

2. Obama's lead in the battleground state polls is large and steady. Obama's lead in the states he needs for 270 is at least 8%. In other words, to lose the election, Obama would have to drop 8% in 6 days, which isn't going to happen.

Bloggers like Brad Friedman and the Election Protection Wiki are collecting a lot of evidence of small-scale fraud by election officials and problems with voting machines. (Natasha Chart has great tips for protecting your vote.) But are these problems large and widespread enough to steal the election?

In both 2000 and 2004, the election was so close it was decided by a single state - Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004. In 2008, Obama's 158-point lead is so large that it won't come down to one or two states so it wouldn't matter if Republicans stole both Florida (27) and Ohio (20).

Obama is way ahead in all the Kerry states. To reach 270, he only needs to add Iowa (where he leads by 10.3%), New Mexico (also 10%) and Colorado (8%). So McCain would have to steal those states too.

Moreover, Obama has solid leads in two more red states, Virginia (7.3%) and Nevada (6%) - so McCain would have to steal those too.

Stealing elections isn't easy. And in 2008 we have a very powerful tool to detect whether a state has been stolen: pre-election polling averages.

Pre-election polls are pretty accurate. The closer you get to Election Day, the more accurate they become. I have not seen any expert opinions, but I suspect an average of final pre-election polls will be more accurate than exit polls. Why? In states that allow early and no-excuse absentee voting, a high percentage of votes will be cast before election day; those votes simply cannot be measured with exit polls. Also exit polls aren't magical; they have their own margins of error, just like pre-election polls. Margins of error are always a function of sample size; the larger the sample, the smaller the MoE. The combined sample size of pre-election polls may be larger than exit polls, so their margins of error would be smaller. (This is all speculation; as I said, I have not seen experts compare the accuracy of pre-election polls with exit polls.)

Scott Althaus looked at the accuracy of the battlegrounds in 2004, using pre-election data from the final week. The inaccuracies were balanced - 6 states for Bush, 6 states for Kerry. They were also generally small; in only 4 states - WV, FL, WA, NV - were the inaccuracies greater than 2%.

In 2008, we have a lot more pre-election polling data to work with. How much more? Ask Karl Rove:

There has been an explosion of polls this presidential election. Through yesterday, there have been 728 national polls with head-to-head matchups of the candidates, 215 in October alone. In 2004, there were just 239 matchup polls, with 67 of those in October. At this rate, there may be almost as many national polls in October of 2008 as there were during the entire year in 2004.

And to compound our polling bliss, we also have several websites combining that data to produce highly accurate averages. For example, here is the Pollster.com average for Virginia:

For McCain to steal Virginia when Obama is leading by 7.8%, McCain would have to flip 7.9% of the votes. No one in the political world would believe election day results that were so far off from the polls.

Certainly the Obama campaign will have county-by-county, even precinct-by-precinct projections to compare to the "reported" results. (Here's a great example of county-by-county analysis, in this case Oregon's early voting.) That will allow them to pinpoint the discrepancies, and demand hand recounts in those counties or precincts. And if the hand recounts proved fraud, McCain would be caught red-handed. Instead of going to the White House, McCain would go to jail.

Update 1: The graph below shows the gap between the national pre-election polls and the final results. In 2004 (pink), Kerry was projected to lose by 1% and actually lost by 2.5%. In 2000 (gray), Gore was projected to lose by 2% and actually won by .5% due to the last-minute discovery of Bush's DUI. In 2008 (blue), McCain is 6% behind - past trends show a net change of more than 2.5% is extremely unlikely.

Polls Show Obama Victory Beyond Margin of Error

davidswanson — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:51:25 -0400

By Andrew First

Open this report in a PDF.

2008 Presidential Election Analysis, November 4, 2008

Introduction: On December 6, 2008, 538 electors will cast their votes for President and Vice President of the United States. A candidate must receive 270 votes to win. These electors will be chosen on November 4, with a popular vote within each state, with a winner take all system in 48 states, and the District of Columbia. Maine and Nebraska award 2 electoral votes to the winner of the state at large, as well as one vote for the winner of each congressional district. Although in about half of the states, electors are bound by law to vote for their chosen candidate, electors in other states face no such constraints. Occasionally an electoral vote is cast for someone other than the candidate, however, this is very rare, and is always done to make a statement. No elector would take such a risk in a very close electoral contest.

States and DC that were blue in 2004 = 252 electoral votes
Obama has leads in the opinion polls well outside the margin of error, and in most cases a double digit lead.

Iowa and New Mexico = 12 electoral votes
Obama has leads in the opinion polls well outside the margin of error.

Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina = 152 electoral votes
McCain has leads in the opinion polls well outside the margin of error, and in most cases a double digit lead.

Obama Winning Scenarios:
Toss Up - These states have all voted Republican in recent presidential elections, with some not voting blue since Johnson’s 1964 landslide win.

Obama could win one of these states:
Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, or Colorado.

Obama could win both of these states:
North Dakota and Montana.

Obama and McCain would tie* if Obama wins
Nevada or West Virginia (and no other toss up states).

* If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes (a tie), the House of Representatives chooses the president with each state delegation getting one vote. Currently 27 states have a Democratic majority House delegation.

Caveats: There are several caveats that may affect the outcome of this election.

1.Potential disenfranchisement of voters: Voters in poor urban areas are much more likely to vote for Obama than McCain. These voters are also most likely to fall victim to efforts to challenge voter eligibility.

2.Election result integrity: In several jurisdictions, the majority of votes will be cast on electronic machines leaving no “paper trail”. In Ohio in 2004, the exit poll results did not match up with the official vote total. Without a “paper trail”, there is no way to verify the official vote if there is a discrepancy with exit poll results.

3.Under representation of probable Obama voters: One third of Americans aged 18-25 have no land line, thus would not be in the pool of probable voters that the pollsters sample from. Additionally due to the tight primary race between Clinton and Obama, the Democrats registered many more voters than the Republicans did this year. These new voters will presumably vote heavily for Obama, but will not show up as a “probable voter” according to the pollsters.

[NOTE: This report will be updated in the coming week if one or more states change in the polls.]

http://afterdowningstreet.org/2008polls

Steal Back Your Vote

Bob Fertik — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:29:18 -0400

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast explain how Republicans are trying to steal this election, and offer valuable advice how to steal it back:

Contrary to Mr. McCain's assertions, the real threat to democracy is from the GOP itself. ACORN has served as a good distraction from Republican efforts to steal the vote from hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters, a genuine threat that has received almost no media attention.

They're stealing your vote, but you can steal it back. Here are some steps you should take to protect your vote. First, avoid the November 4th minefield. Voters, wherever possible, should vote early and in person. Where feasible, avoid mailing in your ballot, many are rejected for flimsy reasons, and first time voters in many states must include a photocopy of ID. However, if you have a mail-in ballot, don't throw it away. Follow directions, use the correct postage (that's an error that cost a hundred thousand votes last time) and, if possible, walk it in to your elections office.

At the polling station, should you find yourself one of the 2.7 million purged, or your ID rejected, then do your best to resist a "provisional" ballot--one third of which are not counted. Return with proper ID, or call 1-800-OUR VOTE for legal assistance. And never just walk away discouraged. That's just what they want you to do.

Brad Friedman continues to do heroic work exposing hackable and defective voting machines. The worst machine seems to be the ES&S iVotronic touchscreen, which has been seen flipping votes (usually D to R, but occasionally the other way) in WV, TN, TX and MO. Of course, as Brad always points out, no one knows what kind of vote-switching is going on unseen inside the touchscreen computer hardware and software. Here's Brad's advice if you see a voting machine problem:

Call poll supervisors to observe the problem.
Fill out a problem report.
Refuse to vote on that machine.
Request that the machine be taken out of service.
Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be difficult in many cases).
Tell other voters in line which machine it was and that they should NOT vote on that machine!
Report it to county/town election office.
Report it to the Secretary of State.
Call local reporters and tell them the story.
Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) and report it.
Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.
Raise holy hell.
REMINDER: Please bring a video camera/cell phone camera when you go to vote so you can document these problems on video tape, and then upload them to VideoTheVote.org and YouTube!

Castaway Voters: Felons in Virginia

davidswanson — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:06:24 -0400

Nonviolence Now

davidswanson — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:06:19 -0400

By David Swanson

Change is in the air. How about a change away from violence?

The state of Georgia is preparing to execute a man widely known to almost certainly be innocent. Here is an Amnesty International report on the case of Troy Davis. And here are things you can do to try to prevent this murder, this state killing, this official lynching in the twenty-first century.

And if you don't live in Georgia, don't get too self-satisfied. All of us are currently engaged in killing innocent men, women, and children every day in Iraq. Our representatives kill them with bombs and guns, and with the destruction of their economy, denial of electricity and clean water. We have killed over a million people and driven over four million from their homes. Most of those four million would like to return but are afraid to do so. The first step in ending this massive violence and in shifting our resources to saving lives at home and around the world is withdrawing American troops and mercenaries from Iraq. We know this, and we are about to vote for it in the third consecutive U.S. election. We must insist on it.

The less belligerent of our two war-making political parties appears poised to win the White House and additional seats in Congress. And I have already argued that the election fraud the Republicans are known to be engaging in renders any claim to victory for McCain-Palin illegitimate, even should the polls swing dramatically their way in the next week and a half. I proposed in the same article that we stage a nonviolent protest in Washington, D.C., in the event of a fraudulent outcome. Other possible locations for nonviolent action around the country are expected to be organized and posted online. And already police around the country are predicting violent riots in the event of a McCain "victory."

The only way we will successfully resist stolen elections, wars, Wall Street rip-offs, or the execution of innocents, the only way we will achieve nonviolence, is through nonviolence. If this election is stolen, that fact will be more obvious to more people than last time. Many will want to object, and some will be tempted to do so violently. People will need to be organized and focused by activists who understand the power and the techniques of nonviolence. That same discipline and courage may be needed just to resist police and Republican intimidation when attempting to vote.

The idea that our only options are acquiescence or violence ignores the Indian victory over British rule, the Polish victory over Soviet rule, the resistance to Nazism of the Danes, Dutch, and Norwegians, the popular overthrow of dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala, the restoration of rights in Argentina and Chile, the return of democracy to the Philippines, the reversal of a French coup in Algeria, the Czech and Slovak end to occupation, the workers' victories in Namibia or on U.S. farms, the end of Apartheid and Jim Crow, the people's struggles in Latvia, Russia, Thailand, and Serbia, the eight-hour day, the weekend, women's suffrage, and on and on.

I don't care what new weapons the U.S. military and "homeland security" possess. They are no more powerful to stop a people's uprising than were fire hoses to stop the civil rights movement. But we must be so consistently nonviolent that provocateurs stand out and are disciplined by us. If we are nonviolent and fearless, and if we are strategic -- applying our force where needed, and if we persevere in the face of repression, we cannot lose.

The title of this book has it right: "A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict," by Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall (also available as a video), and this book is invaluable: "Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential" by Gene Sharp. And you can never read this one too often: "A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr." Let's hope none of the lessons found in these books are needed on November 5th. Let's realize that they will all be needed during the coming months regardless of election outcomes.