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Clintmax Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 08:20 AM
Original message
What can we DO?
I've been reading all the posts here on DU about the unfathomable voting irregularities in many states in this election. I am thunderstruck at all the information pointing to fraud, and can't help but wonder...with all the numbers out there, why haven't I heard that teams of lawyers are out there filing suit after suit against these companies and individuals involved? Surely the data isn't available only to US here at DU!

It's nice that we can share this info with each other and I think we ALL know what a disastrous mess this election was, but I wish there was SOMETHING I or WE could DO about it! I've been racking my brain trying to think of something I personally could do to get something done, but I'm coming up empty here.

There is talk now that * wants to make homosexuality illegal. That puts me and my husband in GRAVE danger. We need to STOP this and right NOW!

I can't quit my job and take this on full-time myself, but I sure would be willing to help in any way I could. So I ask again...What can we DO?
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GreenPartyVoter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 08:26 AM
Response to Original message
1. Start with some of these things then
get to work making the voting systems in your town and county and state as effective as possible. I live in Maine where we have publicly funded elections, but the systems needs to be tweaked. We are also looking at putting Instant Runoff Voting into place.

-------------------------------------------------------
Help expose the 2004 Election Fraud!
http://geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm
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demnan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 08:57 AM
Response to Reply #1
3. I agree with this totally
we have to empower ourselves from the ground up. Local polling is is the place to start.
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malatesta1137 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 08:32 AM
Response to Original message
2. the only thing to do
is a financial boycott of corporate America. No gas, no entertainment items, nothing unless it's absolutely vital.

As for Bush making homosexuality illegal, he can't. He wants to ban gay marriage, which is different anyway. He can't do that either. He'll never get enough votes in congress or the states necessary to go along with it.
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aintitfunny Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 09:09 AM
Response to Original message
4. Rest Assured
that Bush will not be able, even if he wanted to (and I don't think he would say out loud that he wanted to)de-legalize homosexual behavior, it would not happen. He has even come out as a proponent of Civil Unions. Too many, including Cheney, of course, have gay and lesbian loved ones. Even many fundamental christians have a brother, sister, father, son, daughter, etc. who is gay. While they may not approval due to their religious beliefs they do not want them punished by the Gov't only God. Sigh.
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nodehopper Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 09:27 AM
Response to Reply #4
5. that's kind of besides the point at the moment
don't you think?

The issue is illegal electoral fraud
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aintitfunny Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 01:08 PM
Response to Reply #5
7. Yes, for the overall question
but I was responding with my thoughts on the grave danger the writer is concerned with regarding making Homosexuality illegal. I am afraid I have yet to come up with a good solution for "what to do" right now, except to push for more widespread media coverage of voting abuses and fraud, and with the corporate media being what it is I have severe doubts about ever being heard.
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BayStateBoy Donating Member (562 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 09:32 AM
Response to Original message
6. HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS ON WHAT WE CAN DO RIGHT NOW
I got an e-mail from a reporter at Madison.Com (I assume WI?) and he's suspicious as hell. Suggests letters to his paper.

You may send a letter to : tctvoice@madison.com


Also suggest writing to a fellow at CBS (Editorial Director at CBS) to whom I have been feeding information: dmp@cbsnews.com

I'm working on the following for my local Mass newspapers. It's too long, so I may submit as an editorial. Everyone is welcome...
--------------------------------------------------------------------

The dust has barely settled on what in America passes for a democratic election, and already the air is heavy from the smoking guns in Ohio and at Election Fraud Central (Florida). The brilliant Presidential puppeteer, Karl Rove, has mistakenly assumed that winning at any cost would legitimize an incompetent, divisive, and arrogant President and endear him to the bosom of America and the embrace of history.

The history of voting in America is the history of vote recounts and rigged elections. Sadly the former is impossible in about 1/4th of precincts where electronic (BBV) machines are used which leave no paper trail or permanent record. One needs to use the permanent record qualifier because not all electronic voting systems fail to leave a paper trail. Voting by such means is like making a bank deposit for which no receipt is received and about which the institution retains no hard copy. An election that cannot be audited is a bogus election. It is a felony on democracy and should be eradicated permanently from the electoral landscape (S 1980, HR 2239).

A key ingredient in the Bush Election Juggernaut is the smear campaign against exit polls. First of all, exit polls are like the canary in the coal mine. They are the election red flags historically and consistently accurate to less than 2% of subsequent vote tallies and often accurate to 0.1%. They are so accurate that in Europe elections are called on the basis of the exit polls. In America we never had any “wrong” exit polls of consequence until Election 2000, and then, only in Florida. The most common reason for exit poll discrepancy is not sampling error or intentional skewing, but failure to count votes.

On November 2nd exit polls were done in 18 states throughout the voting cycle including sets of 4 each in Ohio and Florida which showed John Kerry winning comfortably to a statistical probability of victory of 99.9982%. Of course that does not prove fraud but it does set off alarms all over the landscape. What is indisputable and for which no logical explanations have been forthcoming are the following: (1) Exit polls closely correlated with vote tallies in every state except in those states using BBV machines or states like Florida that use electronic voting plus optical scanning; and (2) in every instance of exit poll and vote tally discrepancy, G.W. Bush was the recipient of the extra votes and never John Kerry.

The Bush vote “bounce” ranged from about +3% to +8% being +6% in Ohio and +7% in Florida. The statistical odds of Bush reversing the exit poll results have been calculated by an MIT statistician as 1:50,000.

Those vote inflations are just the beginning of the story. Winning Ohio for Kerry was a stretch, but most strategists agree that Kerry should have won Florida or had a razor thin margin despite the “hurricane sympathy votes” and the Hispanics. But Florida is the Bush Family Fiefdom and it is only common sense not conspiracy theorizing to believe that Jeb Bush would do anything to guarantee his Brother's success. And we must remember that the BBV and Optical Scanning machinery is made by Diebold and ES/S Systems whose CEO’s back Bush with one (O’Dell) even on record in 2003 as saying that he would do anything to guarantee a Bush victory in Ohio.

Florida is about equally divided between BBV machines and optical scanners (leave paper), but the three biggest Democratic counties, Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade have no paper trails making a recount impossible. Even more disturbing is the fact that both Miami-Dade and Palm Beach reported a total of 142,753 more votes cast for President than registered voters in the counties. In total 237,522 more votes were counted in the State of Florida than were cast. On Nov 8th the Florida Department of Elections erased all those discrepancies from its website. Any state that wipes out 1/4 million votes like that should be audited for that reason alone.

However, the differential between the registered voters and the actual votes is vastly more skewed for the Florida counties using Optical Scanning than BBV. Republicans gained 128.45% in counties using optical scan voting machines while Democrats had a -21% loss (yes, that is negative 21%). Some districts in Florida showed gains over 400% while one, Liberty County, gained over 700% for Republicans. Of course, some of this may be due to heavy voter crossover, but this situation begs for a recount (with the only caveat being that many don’t consider optical scans as true paper trails because they can be reconfigured once in the computer).

If there were voting fraud in Florida one can almost be certain that a practice run was made before election 2004. Indeed, a Mr. Fisher who was a candidate from the 16th Florida District has submitted to the FBI information that he claims not only proves that the central computers were hacked, but who is responsible, how it was accomplished, and how they did the same thing successfully back in 2002. Certainly, the computers are highly vulnerable to hacking as demonstrated several days ago by Bev Harris of the nonpartisan group BlackBoxVoting.Org and Dr. Howard Dean.

Computer voting machines are also highly vulnerable to counting backwards (Broward); having touch screens default to the incumbent even if one uses the hard point of a pencil eraser (Palm Beach & Sequoia - continued all day long); manufacturing votes for Presidential candidates (Palm Beach: 542,835 votes for President with 454,427 voters turning out including absentees); and losing votes. The list is almost endless. For the good of the nation, so should be voter questions and legal challenges.
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Chimpanzee Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 02:33 PM
Response to Reply #6
11. tct is
The Capital Times newspaper in Madison WI (liberal as they come)
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mzmolly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 01:12 PM
Response to Original message
8. See my thread!
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Eloriel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 01:14 PM
Response to Original message
9. Everyone -- please see this


VOTE FRAUD Links - a DU Compendium
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=201&topic_id=1984#

I'll be updating it shortly. Be sure to see the Activism section (esp. after it's updated).

One of the most important things, IMO, is to contact all your own family, friends, etc., with as much info as possible. The media (except for Olbermann) isn't covering, so WE must be the media. Send the stuff to them, and ask them to send it on. We need to get bloggers on it too.

Here was an earlier couple of threads I started on that issue:

URGENT: VOTE FRAUD? Tell everyone you know -- details
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1337662


Good news and bad news
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2632513#2632589


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seemunkee Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 02:24 PM
Response to Original message
10. Help tablulate some info for your state.
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aprillcm Donating Member (168 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 02:38 PM
Response to Original message
12. Help
I need the following message to be its own thread but dont have enough Posts yet to do it will someone do it for me :)

And everyone you will see from the info I am posting that its someone who knows, I was also asked to tell you Kerry is putting his armor on and ready to fight, if he doesnt win this one he means to speak loudly from the Senate, So peeps please hang on to your support awhile longer!!!

Hi April,
>
>Can you get this out? It needs to say it came via Dick Bell. ANd please let us know where you post it, OK?
>
>THanks!
>
>Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 10:11:02 -0500
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>I am grateful to the many people who have contacted me to express their deep concern about questions of miscounting, fraud, vote suppression, and other problems on election day, especially in Florida and Ohio. Their concern reflects how much people care about the outcome of this election.
>
>
>
>I want to you to know we are not ignoring it. Election protection lawyers are still on the job in Ohio and Florida and in DC making sure all the votes are counted accurately. I have been conferring with lawyers involved and have made them aware of the information and concerns people have given me. Even if the facts don't provide a basis to change the outcome, the information will inform the continuing effort to protect the integrity of our elections.
>
>
>
>If you have specific factual information about voting problems that could be helpful to the lawyers doing their job, please send it to vri@dnc.org rather than to me.
>
>
>
>The election protection effort has been important to me personally, and I am proud of the 17,000 lawyers around the country who helped. It's obvious that we have a way to go still, but their efforts helped make a difference. Their work goes on.
>
>
>
>Thank you,
>
>Cam Kerry
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newyawker99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 05:45 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. Hi aprillcm!!
Welcome to DU!! :toast:
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tonyblair Donating Member (25 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 06:07 PM
Response to Original message
14. UK press
Hi, I'm in the UK.

These are the best press contacts I can think of off the top of my head. The Guardian was responsible for the "write to a voter in Clark County, Ohio" campaign - a good bet. Gary Younge did a lot of their election coverage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1346642,00.html
- only mention of possible fraud I have seen

'Private Eye' is a satirical mag known for sick humour (examples on their site). It was the only UK publication (to my knowledge) to cover the Janet Reno 2002 story.

I very much doubt the BBC will break a story but might pick it up once it's been reported elsewhere.

The Independent is no longer really independent - but you can try.

The others are Green/ Left publications with small circulations.

www.guardian.co.uk

www.independent.co.uk

www.private-eye.co.uk
strobes@private-eye.co.uk

www.redpepper.org.uk
redpepper@redpepper.org.uk

www.morningstaronline.co.uk

It's important to show up the character of Blair's pet chimp!!
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