Should DNC work to combat election fraud NOW or wait till nominee's known?

[blm]

[blm]

1. Kick

.

[mod mom]

2. Why abandon the midterms? They need to act before November.

[blm]

3. Heh - - that is a big part of the point I'm trying to make.

Seems to me that we know now that election fraud is a a four year job for the Republicans. They are working every day for 4 years to suppress Dem votes, purge voter rolls and enact state legislation that will prove harmful to Democratic voters.

Why some people put the responsibility of securing elections on a presidential nominee who has so many other responsibilities to perform and the shortest given timeframe to do it is still puzzling to me.

[blm]

4. poll kicking

.

[shance]

5. The DNC should have been working on this years ago.

When I approached the electronic voting machine issue with Terry McCauliffe a few years back, he proceeded to give me a deer in head lights response and replied by saying he'd "heard about all those conspiracy theories too but he didn't believe them".

Denial by choice is an amazing thing.

[blm]

8. Alot of Dems don't realize that truth you just wrote. He HAD the power and

was in charge of the infrastructure that could have worked to combat their tricks, but he did not take them seriously, and all the election experts that the DNC had who were assuring Kerry were all looking under the wrong rocks.

[flpoljunkie]

15. Remember this editorial written a few days before the election in '04...

An Election Day clouded by doubt

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.voting27oct27,1,595879.story

By Avi Rubin

Originally published October 27, 2004

ABOUT 50 MILLION Americans will cast their ballots for president on touch-screen terminals Tuesday. If my experience as an election judge is any guide, voters will love these machines, which are generally easy to use and which easily accommodate voters who have disabilities or do not speak English. And if my experience as a computer scientist is any guide, those voters will not realize just how dangerous it is to rely on these machines to conduct a free and fair election with a reliable result.

Voting on a direct recording electronic voting machine, or DRE, is in many ways similar to transferring money from one account to another at an automated teller machine. But there is one critically important difference: no receipt. There will be no physical record produced that could later be used by your local election board to prove how you intended to vote.

<>For voters to have confidence in the election process, it should be as transparent as possible. When technology that is inherently opaque is used in elections, peoples' confidence in the process will be justifiably shaken. There are ways in which DREs provide an apparent advantage over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. But there are other ways in which these systems, implemented without voter-approved paper ballots that allow meaningful recounts, are potentially much worse.

Our goal should be voting technology that is beyond reproach. That goal may never be fully attainable, but we must do better than this. The foundation of our democracy is at stake, and thus, ultimately, so is our freedom.

[OneBlueSky]

6. they should have been working on it for the past five years . . .

but, hey. . . better late than never . . .

although delaying any longer is insane, if they ever expect to win ANYTHING ever again . . .

[blm]

9. I know - I feel like I've been screaming in a box since fall 2002.

And that the box is just now about to open.

[Freddie Stubbs]

7. Chairman Dean is already working hard on this issue

[blm]

10. I know he's working on it, but apparently some people believe it's not the

DNC's job to secure the elections for Dem voters, they believe the responsibility belongs to the Dem nominee to take charge of the issue when that nominee is determined.

This topic has come up more than a few times and from many a poster, so I thought I'd break it down to its starkest logic and go from there.

[Freddie Stubbs]

14. How would we know that the nominee would fight for this?

Are any of the potential nominees doing anything about this issue now?

[blm]

17. So far Kerry wants all electronic machines banned, but hasn't crafted a

plan to push it through the states, as far as I know. But, then, he has learned alot about them the hard way.

So far, I've only heard neutral comments from the others, concluding that they didn't take the question about the machines seriously.

[Freddie Stubbs]

18. When did Kerry say that he wanted to ban all electronic voting?

:shrug:

[blm]

20. When he was in LA and talked to a group of bloggers last month,

one of them posted about it here at DU. He quoted Kerry as saying that the machines need to be banned on a state by state basis.

[Freddie Stubbs]

21. I don't suppose that you can provide a link for that?

:shrug:

[blm]

22. sure - I'll do a search - he had it on his blog, too.

.

[blm]

23. Found it - from June 1

The HL (349 posts) Thu Jun-01-06 11:16 PM
Original message
Story and Pictures of my meeting today with John Kerry.

Hi,
My story about my meeting John Kerry is finally done
its at
http://www.thehollywoodliberal.com

[Freddie Stubbs]

24. There are no posts dated June 1 on that website

http://www.thehollywoodliberal.com

[blm]

26. Well he was the one that posted about the meeting and that was his post

from DU that I copied.

He said he talked about the machines and that Kerry said the course that needs to be taken is getting the machines banned state by state.

[Freddie Stubbs]

27. Kind of reminds me of Mark Miller's claim that Kerry said that

he believed that the 2004 election was stolen. Kerry's spokesman denied the claim.

I wonder why he won't say such things to the press.

[blm]

28. There were other bloggers at the meeting that verified what HL wrote.

I don't think Kerry will come out publically until he crafts a strategy. He worked on crafting a withdrawal plan since last summer, but didn't have it worked out till late October.

[ProSense]

11. Op-ed in today's Boston Globe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2697262&mesg_id=2697262

[blm]

13. good piece - let us know how Boston folks react to it.

.

[flpoljunkie]

16. Yes! How could the Dem leadership ignore the September 2005 GAO report!

[flpoljunkie]

19. Very interesting that the precinct-level data has NOT BEEN RELEASED!

The data they released allows researchers to correlate voter characteristics (race, age, sex, etc.) with voting preferences -- but it was not the data that identified specific exit poll results with specific precincts. That data remains the property of the media consortium (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and the AP) that commissioned the polls. No one has provided a coherent account of how polling error could explain the discrepancy. We have only the pollsters' blithe assertion that Kerry voters must have disproportionately participated in the polls. Yet the available state-level data contradicts the pollsters' explanation, also termed the ``reluctant Bush respondent" theory. The data does show that key variables -- racial makeup of a state, partisan control of governorships, whether a state is a swing state, and reports of Election Day complaints -- all correlate with the magnitude of the poll discrepancy.

The report also indicated that for rural and small-town precincts -- the only ones where comparable data does exist --the difference between the exit poll results and the official count is three times greater in precincts where voters used machines than in precincts using paper ballots alone. If we had access to the withheld precinct-level data, we would be able to investigate whether the size of the exit poll discrepancy correlates with the voting technology used.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/06/26/a_call_to_investigate_the_2004_election/

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

12. Now, today, tomorrow, yesterday, next week, next month, next year

and forever as long as there are GOP'ers out to steal elections who are in cahoots with the makers of voting machines.

And after that total vigilance for whatever new method they may come up with.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

25. KICK

[Jack Rabbit]

29. Election fraud effects everybody

I would hope that DUers would be against election fraud even if our own were benefitting from it instead of being screwed by it.

What does it matter who the nominee is? Election fraud is a crime against the voters, not any particular candidate. It must be fought wherever it exists and whoever benefits.

[blm]

31. EXACTLY - it has to be fought in 4 yr battles, not 6mo before presidential

election. It's about US and the security of OUR vote - and that is the duty of the Dem machine.

[in_cog_ni_to]

30. NOW. n/t