Filed under: Barack Obama, Coffman, Colorado, GOP, ballot, candidate, democracy, diebold, disenfranchisement, election, election fraud, fraud, halloween, mail ballot, mark crispin miller, paper ballots, public trust, voting machines, voting rights
BOO!
Check out my Barack O-lanterns –
Early this morning a raccoon crawled up on my porch, dragged the O pumpkin into the yard and ate half of it. Can you buh-lieve it? Wonder if he’s the one who stole my Obama Biden signs on Monday night. Must be a McCain operative.
Happy Halloween!
Check out YES WE CARVE.com
It’s getting really scary out there …
Yup. That’s right. While we’re stuffing our faces with mini Snickers bars, the Republicans are oh-so-busy stealing our votes.
Colorado is already a big ugly mess –
18,000+ Mail-In Ballots On Way To Denver Voters
Completed Ballots Must Be Returned By Nov. 4DENVER — More than 18,000 mail-in ballots were scheduled to be delivered to waiting Denver voters Tuesday and Wednesday.
The ballots are coming from Sequoia Voting Systems in California, which failed to send them out earlier this month and to notify Denver election officials that they had not been mailed.
And we’re supposed to trust the Sequoia ballot counting computers to count our ballots properly. Uh-huh …
Purged voters can cast provisional ballots in Colorado
By Naomi ZeveloffVoting rights advocates entered into a shaky truce late Wednesday with Secretary of State Mike Coffman’s office over his allegedly illegal purge of 30,000 voters in Colorado.
The Advancement Project, a national voter protection group, filed suit against Coffman late last week to force the secretary to reinstate the voters and halt any new purges. Coffman’s removals included people who moved, inactive citizens, and newly registered individuals whose voter cards bounced back to county clerks. The Advancement Project claimed that Coffman’s removals violated the National Voter Registration Act because they occurred within 90 days of a federal election. Coffman denied any wrongdoing.
But with the general election less than a week away, both sides agreed to a preliminary fix during a Wednesday hearing. After deliberations that stretched more than eight hours, the Advancement Project and its plaintiffs — Colorado Common Cause, Mi Familia Vota and the Service Employees International Union — gave up on restoring purged voters to the rolls. Instead, they agreed to let them vote by provisional ballot.
Oh crap! They don’t count the provisional ballots in Colorado. Wow. That’s some compromise.
Non-Profit Election Watchdog Demands Failed Machines Be Removed from Service, Impounded
Velvet Revolution (“VR”), a non-profit dedicated to fair, honest, accurate and transparent elections, today called for elections officials in all states to immediately impound any voting machine that has flipped votes from one candidate to another. It has been widely reported in the media over the past week of early voting that Direct Recording Election (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machines made by ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia and Hart InterCivic have been flipping votes, predominantly from Democratic candidates to Republican candidates, but in some reported cases, just the opposite.
These vote flips were first reported in West Virginia and the elections official there quickly ordered the recalibration of some machines, but video has shown that recalibration does not correct the problem and the flips continue.
Vote flipping has also now reported to have occurred in Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, Nevada, Colorado, Georgia and elsewhere.
Huh. Funny how they still keep finding voting machines that flip from Democratic to Republican – but not the other way around. Weird.
Some voters ‘purged’ from voter rolls
By Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein
CNN Special Investigations Unit
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — College senior Kyla Berry was looking forward to voting in her first presidential election, even carrying her voter registration card in her wallet.“Vote suppression is real. It does sometimes happen,” said Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University.
But about two weeks ago, Berry got disturbing news from local election officials.
“This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote,” a letter from the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said.
But Berry is a U.S. citizen, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a passport and a birth certificate to prove it. Watch some of the concerns of voting experts »
The letter, which was dated October 2, gave her a week from the time it was dated to prove her citizenship. There was a problem, though — the letter was postmarked October 9.
“It was the most bizarre thing. I immediately called my mother and asked her to send me my birth certificate, and then I was like, ‘It’s too late, apparently,’ ” Berry said.
Berry is one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been “flagged” because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote.
OK. Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. In McCain’s GOP World, you are not eligible to vote if you’re a student, you’re serving overseas in the military, you’re black, Hispanic, lost your house, or you moved – or YOU’RE A DEMOCRAT.
Only 4 more days …
Get out and VOTE!
You can read even more gory details at –
Take a break from this hectic election season and enjoy Autumn in Colorado, brought to by my friend, Ann Ramsey, author of Me, the Tree and Just Be You.
Enjoy!
Filed under: Colorado, Garfield County, ballot, democracy, election, paper ballots, voter ID, voting machines, voting rights
That’s right. I stand corrected. For early voters or Election Day voters, you can request a paper ballot rather than vote on a voting machine. However you should be prepared to show ID when you vote in person, whether or not it’s your first time voting, and whether or not you vote on paper or by machine. You can find a list of acceptable forms of ID and locate your polling place at the GarCo website.
Early voting begins October 20 and ends October 31, at the following locations:
Glenwood Springs Courthouse – 109 8th Street, (Room 101c) – Glenwood Springs
Human Services Building (Conference Room) – 195 West 14th Street – Rifle
Report Says Colorado Poorly Prepared for Electronic Voting Machine Problems
Myung Oak Kim, The Rocky Mountain News: “A new national study released today said Colorado is one of the least-prepared states to handle electronic voting machine failures on Election Day. The report gave Colorado low marks because state regulations don’t outline in detail how poll workers should address problems with voting terminals and don’t require counties to keep paper ballots as back-up.”
Don’t vote on a voting machine. Request a paper ballot!
For my readers who don’t live in Garfield County, please call your County Clerk’s office and ask whether paper ballots will be available at early voting stations and at the polls on Election Day. Even if paper ballots are made available, you must request a paper ballot.
Just do it! VOTE!
Filed under: ACORN, Barack Obama, candidate, election, election fraud, fraud, republicans, voter fraud, voting rights
At Wednesday night’s debate, ACORN got thrown under the bus by McCain, and Schieffer didn’t let Obama respond to a whole string of lies.
First lets get the fun facts straight.
What I’ve been blathering on and on about for weeks is called election fraud. Purging voters from the rolls, caging, voter suppression, rigging voting machines, provisional ballots, tossing out mail ballots – stuff like that. Election fraud is a complex game that involves keeping eligible voters from voting and then preventing votes from being counted. Ever since there have been elections, election fraud in one form or another has been committed by election officials, candidates, and party officials. In the 21st century we can add voting machine companies to that list.
Voter fraud – OTOH – is really quite simple. It’s when a voter votes twice. Or when a voter votes under someone else’s name. Or when a person votes who is ineligible, such as a non-US citizen. Or when Ann Coulter lies on her voter registration form. Stuff like that. Voter fraud. The voter commits fraud.
Please do not confuse election fraud with voter fraud.
Fox News and CNN have also been beating the fake news drum with this ACORN story.
Brad Friedman did a superb job of splaining it all in the Guardian.
The Republican voter fraud hoax
Donald Duck and the Dallas Cowboys won’t steal the election for Obama. Acorn’s only crime is registering Democratic votersBarack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen, known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.
The only problem? Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of “Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states” as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it’s true. None of it.
ACORN Senior Organizer Bertha Lewis and Executive Director.Steve Kest are also putting out the facts.
The Truth About ACORN’s Voter Registration Drive
Election Day is less than a month away, and our efforts to make sure that low-income and minority voters have a voice and vote on November 4th are in full swing. Unfortunately, just as we’ve seen in previous election cycles, the more success we have in empowering these voters, the more attacks we have to fend off from partisan forces making unfounded accusations to disparage our work and help maintain the status quo of an unbalanced electorate. We want to take this opportunity to separate the facts of our successes from the falsehoods of our attackers.
So where have we heard about this ACORN group recently?
Oh yeah. In Greg Palast’s Theft of the 2008 Election, that doofus Republican operative Pat Rogers accused ACORN of “serious voter registration fraud” in New Mexico.
So who’s Pat Rogers?
Welp. According to Brad Friedman: “Rogers is likely best known to the national audience for having inappropriately pressured NM’s former US Attorney David Iglesias on behalf of the GOP front group calling themselves “American Center for Voting Rights” (ACVR) to bring phony “voter fraud” charges before the ‘04 and ‘06 elections in the state.”
Huh.
Here’s the real skinny:
The Republican War on Voting
By Art Levine
Using the Department of Justice, friendly governors, and its usual propaganda outlets, the GOP has propagated the myth of voter fraud to purge the rolls of non-Republicans.
So anyway, the point is, ACORN does and did not commit voter fraud or voter registration fraud. They actually reported it. Duh.
More homework:
Watch Murder, Spies & Voting Lies on Link TV
Clint Curtis was an everyday computer programmer in Florida until he was asked to create vote-rigging software for electronic voting machines. What happens to a guy at the wrong end of a smoking gun? In Murder, Spies, and Voting Lies, directed by Patty Sharaf, hear Curtis’s story about being asked by Florida Republican Congressman Tom Feeney to manipulate voting machine software. While Curtis made these charges in a sworn affidavit, and in sworn testimony to a congressional committee, mainstream media have given scant attention to his story. Join journalist/blogger Brad Friedman as he pokes at the seamy side of our democracy.
Filed under: Colorado, Garfield County, Glenwood Springs, ballot, county commissioner, democracy, election, mail ballot, voter ID, voting machines, voting rights
Oh thank God! Finally. It’s almost over.
If you requested a mail ballot, it should be arriving in your mailbox shortly. Look for it. If you don’t receive your ballot by Friday, October 17, you should contact the Garfield County Clerk.
Yikes! The ballot is 4 pages long! You can view ballots by precinct at the GarCo website.
According to an article in The Paper, Garfield County Clerk Jean Alberico said that unsigned ballots will be returned to the voter for verification. Just don’t screw it up. Sign your ballot.
Voters can view ballots now at county website.
BTW, Tod and I are supporting the two Steves for Garfield County Commissioner – Steve Carter and Stephen Bershenyi. Our letter to the Editor appeared in The Paper on Sunday.
Put John Martin out to pasture
According to John Martin’s letter (Sept. 30), Garfield County is spending $1.5 million in taxpayer dollars and $1.5 million from a Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) grant (which is funded by gas severance tax) to improve County Road 204, so that one property owner can develop his mineral rights. Therefore, the rebuilding of that road will only benefit one mineral-rights developer and the energy company that will extract the gas, at a total cost of $3 million to taxpayers.
This is exactly why we need a per-well impact fee. Most of Western Garfield County roads are deteriorating because of industrial truck traffic servicing the gas well industry. We are constantly told energy development benefits our local economy. But where is the evidence of that?
It’s time to put John Martin out to pasture. We drastically need new leadership in Garfield County. Vote for change November 4. Vote for Steve Carter and Stephen Bershenyi for Garfield County Commissioners.
Peggy and Tod Tibbetts
Silt
You have until October 28 to request a mail ballot. If you wait that long you’ll have to vote fast because you can’t mail your ballot back on November 4. The County Clerk must receive your ballot ON OR BY NOVEMBER 4 at 7 pm. Also, if you mail your ballot, it’s so big it requires 59 cents in postage. However you can drop off your ballot for FREE at the County Clerk’s office in the Courthouse in Glenwood Springs, or at the Rifle Annex.
Early Voting begins on Monday, October 20, and ends on Friday, October 31. But you will be required to show ID. Valid forms of ID can be found at the GarCo website. And you will vote on an uncertified voting machine. Early voting takes place at these locations:
Glenwood Springs Courthouse – 109 8th Street, (Room 101c) – Glenwood Springs
Human Services Building (Conference Room) – 195 West 14th Street – Rifle
Just do it! Vote!
Filed under: Colorado, ballot, certification, diebold, disenfranchisement, ebook, election, election fraud, fraud, greg palast, mail ballot, paper ballots, robert kennedy jr, stolen elections, voter ID, voting machines, voting rights
Check out this BBC America report by investigative reporter Greg Palast:
Steal Back Your Vote is a downloadble comic book by Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with cartoonists Ted Rall, Lloyd Dangle, and Lukas Ketner.
It’s fun and chock full of valuable info. However they are far too dismissive of the proven problems with hackable voting machines. As much as I respect and admire Greg Palast and Robert Kennedy Jr, I disagree with their stand on mail ballots. They point to a three isolated incidents of problems with mail ballots to discount mail voting as an option. They claim that according to official reports of the 2004 election, “526,426 absentee ballots were received but not counted”. While that’s definitely a HUGE problem, how many votes were disappeared from voting machines? We’ll never know because there are no statistics for hacked votes.
Mail voters MUST be conscientious. You must pay attention!
1 – Read and follow instructions
2 -Fill out your ballot properly
3 – SIGN YOUR BALLOT legibly in your registered name — as in not Bob for Robert
4 – Keep a copy of your voted ballot
5 – Deliver your ballot in person, be prepared to show ID
I prefer to put my “trust” in the hands of local elections officials. I used to be a local election judge in Minnesota. In 4 years, I never threw out a mailed ballot and I never saw a mailed ballot get thrown out. Moreover, I think the problem with local officials showing partisanship and tossing ballots points to the need for nationalizing elections and taking the oversight out of the hands of Secretaries of State and local officials. If corrupt SOS’s and local officials want to commit election fraud, they will tamper with any form of balloting, not only mail ballots.
Call me crazy, but give me a piece of paper with a ballot number any day over unsecured hackable blips on a computer screen. I guess it all boils down to personal choice — a crap shoot. During my years as an election judge, I never could’ve imagined that voting would some day be like gambling.
Filed under: Colorado, ballot, disenfranchisement, election, election fraud, election integrity, mail ballot, paper ballots, voter ID, voting machines, voting rights
Or – why I’m voting by mail.
Uh-oh. Our election system seems to be in as much disarray as our financial markets.
The news is not good, people.
Is Colorado the next Florida?
Watchdogs worry huge turn-out and a new untested voter database could spell disaster on Election Day
By Naomi ZeveloffFirst there was Florida. Then there was Ohio. Will Colorado be next?
The state’s got a brand new voter database system, the longest ballot in the nation and hundreds of thousands of new voter registrations to contend with, all of which raise the specter of chaos at the polls come November. And while elections officials maintain that Colorado can pull off its elections without a hitch, several voter watchdog groups say otherwise …
Huh. Get this. According to The New York Times, removing voters from databases violates federal law:
States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal
By Ian UrbinaTens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.
The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.
Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening and trimming of voter registration lists in the six states – Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina – could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers …
It’s enough to make you scream.
Paranoid yet? Well, I am.
As I have shown you on this blog for the past several weeks, your vote is not safe – no matter how you vote. And not only is your vote not safe, your voter registration is not safe. You should verify your voter registration right now at Voters Unite!
Newly registered voters! If you haven’t provided your County Clerk with a copy of your driver’s license, go the office and show them your driver’s license. If you did send a copy of your driver’s license, be sure to double check to verify that you are indeed registered to vote.
I’ve suffered permanent brain damage from all the research I’ve done on voting. Some experts say vote by mail. Some experts say don’t vote by mail. Everyone agrees that you should vote – and vote early.
I can’t tell you what to do because I don’t know the answer. One thing’s for certain. I absolutely will not vote on a voting machine. I did vote on a voting machine in the August 2006 primary election and it creeped me out. The machines can be hacked. Period. That’s all I need to know.
So here’s my plan, which is already in the works:
1 – I received my voter registration card in the mail. But I still verified my voter registration with the CO Sec of State’s office online. Anyone anywhere can go to Voters Unite! and verify their voter registration. Then I printed a copy of my voter registration.
2 – I decided to vote by mail. A mail ballot is a paper ballot. It has a number that corresponds with my name. Therefore it is a physical object that I can trace.
3 – I mailed my request for a mail ballot. Now I wish I had dropped it off at the County Clerk’s office instead because I’m paranoid that my mail ballot request got lost in the mail. Argh!
4 – I received my CO blue book and I’m working on filling out the “cheat sheet”. We have 14 ballot issues (recently pared down from 18) this year.
5 – When my ballot arrives I will be sure to sign it exactly the way my name appears on my voter registration and I will check to make sure my address is correct.
6 – After I check off the right boxes, or fill in the right squares, I plan to scan and make a file of my voted ballot, including the ballot number. Or, a voter could make a photocopy of his voted ballot.
7 – I won’t mail my ballot, I will deliver it to the County Clerk’s office in person.
8 – If there are problems with the vote in Colorado, after the election I will trace my ballot with the County Clerk’s office.
Election Integrity put together an amazing Wiki that has so much info it’ll make your brain numb. They also have a super blog. The Election Defense Alliance will be conducting their own independent EVP exit polling on Election Day. You can find out more at their website.
Only 25 more days …
Filed under: John McCain, Keating 5, candidate, conflict of interest, cover up, economy, election, fraud, investigation, republicans, savings & loan, scandal
The first thing you need to know about the Keating 5 scandal is without John McCain it would have been the Keating 4 scandal.
The second thing you need to know is John McCain and his “pals” caused the collapse of the Savings & Loan industry. Sound familiar?
Want to know more? Here’s a primer:
Filed under: Barack Obama, Stephen Spoonamore, ballot, candidate, democracy, disenfranchisement, election, election fraud, mail ballot, mark crispin miller, paper ballots, stolen elections, voting machines, voting rights
In this brand new 40-minute, in-depth interview, computer security expert Stephen Spoonamore explains in detail how the fix is in.
He recommends hand-counted paper ballots, and in the absence of that method, you should vote by mail.
Click here now and watch the interview
Stephen Spoonamore’s blog is Must Be Fed.
You can also listen to a one hour audio of an important speech by Mark Crispin Miller now through October 6. Miller says, “The struggle may begin on Election Day.” Go to WRUW 91.1 FM – Program Guide. Look for “Doing Democracy” and click on the 56k to the far right.
