No More Stolen Elections

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Over the course of the next few days Liberty Tree's No More Stolen Elections! campaign will be sending out a series of action alerts, updates, and tomorrow, a request for financial support.  Additionally, this week our Wisconsin Wave project and the Hand Count Votes Now Coalition will be releasing their final report with results from the citizen audit of Wisconsin's recall election. We recognize how busy you are, and in normal times, we would not send out this many requests. But these are not normal times, and future generations will be counting on every one of us to do everything we can to expand democracy and defend voting rights in the final days of the 2012 election cycle.  American democracy is in crisis. The election of November 6th, 2012, is just one week away, and certain aspects of that election are already perfectly clear.  Millions of Americans may be denied their inalienable right to vote. Millions more will be denied the right to vote for the candidate of their choice. And the vast majority of Americans will have their votes tabulated by unverifable electronic voting machines.  Meanwhile, the power of a tiny, wealthy minority is greater than ever, causing private campaign funding to reach previously unimaginable levels and making this the most expensive election in U.S. history. We need you to act now in two important ways: 1) Read and sign the pledge pledge of action and forward it on everyone you know. 2) Organize a voter assembly in your community for the day after the election and post it here.   No matter what happens Tuesday, we will be ready on Wednesday to take action. This is the fifth No More Stolen Elections! mobilization.  Because we were prepared in 2004, there was a Presidential recount in Ohio, and because we were prepared in 2011, there was a recount in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The lesson is simple: be prepared, alert, and ready to act. Sign the pledge of action today.  Please accept my personal pledge of non-violent action to prevent another stolen election: "I remember Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, and Wisconsin 2011, and I am willing to take action this year if the right to free and fair elections is denied again. I support efforts to protect the right to vote leading up to and on Election Day.  If necessary, I pledge to join nationwide pro-democracy protests starting on the next day, either in my community, in key states where fraud occurred, or in Washington, D.C., and if necessary, to demand a recount, investigation, and criminal prosecutions of those responsible. I pledge: No More Stolen Elections!" Join Noam Chomsky, Thom Hartmann, Tom Hayden, Jill Stein, Medea Benjamin, Rocky Anderson, Daniel Ellsberg, and Margaret Flowers and many others in signing this pledge. Sign the pledge of action today.  Thank you for your support. In solidarity with those protecting the vote everywhere, Ben Manski Adam Porton Jolie Lizotte Sarah Manski Like us on Facebook! Follow us on Twitter! P.O. Box 260217 | Madison, WI 53726-0217 US

Ohio Republicans send voters wrong election date, voting location

Last week, the Republican-run Ottawa County Board of Elections sent a mailer to 2,300 voters in three northwestern Ohio precincts informing them that Election Day was November 8. It is, of course, November 6. Further, voters were told in the mailer their voting location had been moved to a building on the east side of Danbury High School. Unfortunately, the actual voting location is on the west side of the high school. These are the sorts of obstacles we face getting Democratic voters to the polls in Ohio, and it's why we have to go all-in to make sure Democratic voter turnout efforts in this must-win swing state are as effective as possible. To help out, at Daily Kos we've placed the biggest and best Democratic voter turnout efforts in Ohio on a single Act Blue page: President Obama's reelection campaign, Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's reelection campaign, Democratic U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton's reelecton campaign, and Workers' Voice, the union-backed Democratic voter turnout program in Ohio. Please contribute $3 to each of these Democratic candidates and voter turnout programs in the all-important swing state of Ohio. Keep fighting, Meteor Blades, Daily Kos P.S. If you can't make a contribution, or if you would like to do more than just contribute, please sign up with Workers' Voice to make phone calls to help get Democratic voters to the polls.

Website for attorneys, paralegals, & law students to help with voter protection

If you're an attorney, paralegal, or law student who wants to help prevent the GOP's stealing the 2012 presidential election, here's the place to sign up: https://my.barackobama.com/page/s/join-the-victory-counsel

"Romney-linked voting machine company to count votes in Ohio" ~ Salon Magazine

From Salon Magazine:

The company counting critical votes in Ohio and Colorado has extensive connections to the Romney camp

By Craig Unger

Voting machine provider Hart Intercivic will be counting the votes in various counties in the crucial swing states of Ohio and Colorado and elsewhere throughout the country come Nov. 6 — even though it has extensive corporate ties to the Mitt Romney camp, and even though a study commissioned by the state of Ohio has labeled its voting system a “failure” when it comes to protecting the integrity of elections.

Reports of Hart Intercivic’s ties to Romney first surfaced in late September, in a blog post by Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis in the Free Press, an Ohio website that reported that a key investor in Hart was HIG Capital, seven of whose directors were former employees of Bain & Co., a consulting company of which Mitt Romney was once CEO. (Romney left the company in 1984 to co-found a spinoff company, Bain Capital.) HIG Capital announced its investment in Hart on July 6, 2011, just one month after Romney formally announced the launch of his presidential campaign.

Nor were those the only ties between Hart and the Romney camp.....

Complete article

It's come to this: international monitors needed for US elections

Republican attempts to reduce voter turnout in minority neighborhoods are so widespread that, at the request of American civil rights groups, international monitors will oversee our elections: United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week.[...] The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers from its human rights office around the country on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, including potential disputes at polling places. It's part of a broader observation mission that will send out an additional 80 to 90 members of parliament from nearly 30 countries. Liberal-leaning civil rights groups met with representatives from the OSCE this week to raise their fears about what they say are systematic efforts to suppress minority voters likely to vote for President Obama. The election is going to come down to a battle between Democratic voter turnout efforts and Republican voter suppression efforts. At Daily Kos, we have made it easier to win this battle by putting the two largest Democratic voter turnout operations—President Obama's reelection campaign and the union-backed Workers' Voice—on a single Act Blue page. Please help get Democrats to the polls, and make sure their votes count, by contributing $3 each to President Obama and Workers' Voice. Keep fighting, Chris Bowers Campaign Director, Daily Kos

"My father's vote was just stolen in Ohio" -- reprint from Democratic Underground

The following is reprinted from this post at Democratic Underground:

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My Father's vote was just stolen in Ohio...

My father had a stroke a few years ago, and he has trouble reading. He votes absentee, so my mother can help him with the ballot. Well, he sent in his ballot a couple weeks ago, and he did EVERYTHING as instructed. Everything was signed, documented, etc. Proper postage and everything.

Yesterday, he got a letter from the Butler County board of elections saying something was not up to snuff with his ballot, and he had to provide one of the following blah blah blah. One of the choices is his drivers license number, which he already included on the absentee ballot. It says he has to deliver it by hand to their office and his deadline is November 16th.

So basically they're only gonna count it as a provisional ballot. What really happened is they opened his ballot, and saw that he voted for Obama, and now they're not going to count it. I don't know who to contact. I'm so pissed I can't see straight.

Original post at Democratic Underground

Website to sign up as election protection volunteer

Here is a website to go to, to sign up as an Election Protection Volunteer.

http://www.866ourvote.org/pages/election-protection-volunteers

"Ohio Should Be Out Voting" By Gary Polvinale

(Reprinted with permission from http://www.madogmusic.com)

Ohio Should Be Out Voting
by Gary Polvinale (Sandusky, Ohio)
http://www.madogmusic.com

Got a few million bucks to spend on a comic book?  I see that someone just paid three million dollars for a Superman first edition.  And you can bet he didn’t have to save his nickels and dimes.  Currently, right-wing politicians want to give people like this a $250,000 tax break and pay for it with contributions from poor Americans.  And it’s Jon Husted’s fault.  How’s that?  Who’s he?  I’ll get to that in a minute.

There’s plenty of money out there.  Money that could provide security, healthcare, education and jobs for every American.  But it’s a safe bet you haven’t seen any of it lately.  Because it’s in the hands of a few, the job creators – and this is what they do with it.  And that comic book?  Well, your deprivation bought it.  Republicans chant, “Nothing wrong with being wealthy and well compensated.”  That’s baloney.  Doing well for yourself is one thing – having 3 mil from overseas investments to drop on a comic book is something else.  Something obscene, when 50 million Americans can’t pay the rent or feed their kids. 

While the rich have become obscenely rich, seniors you’ll be forced to give up the Social Security and Medicare you paid for all your life, and sick people you’ll be left to die because you can’t afford insurance.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  We’re the richest nation in the world.  With enough wealth for every single family to live happy, healthy and productive lives.  Instead, a few live in the lap of unimaginable luxury while the rest of us get squashed under their Gucci boot.  And now the Republican party pledges to deliver what’s left of your money to these rich guys, spending billions on advertising lies, scary billboards… and vote suppression in swing states.  Which brings me to Jon Husted’s part in all this.

Husted is Ohio’s Secretary of State, the man in charge of Ohio’s elections.  And he’s after your vote – literally.  100,000 Ohioans, mostly Democrats, used the weekend before election day to vote early in the last presidential election.  Husted refused to provide that early voting time, even though two federal courts have ordered him to do so.  For months Husted has ignored the court’s ruling.  However, a few days ago on Oct 16 the United States Supreme Court unanimously denied Jon Husted’s appeal to squelch early voting the three days before the election.  Even so, aside from the early voting restrictions, Husted’s tougher voter ID requirements are making it harder for seniors, shut-ins, nursing home residents, low wage earners and college students to vote. And all that theatre is distracting media attention from the rest of the disenfranchising being wrought from hacking electronic voting machines, shorting machines in Democratic precincts, purging largely Democratic voter rolls, intimidating billboards in low-income neighborhoods and malarky advertising.  In this close election, all it takes is a couple of hundred thousand votes to swing Ohio and snatch the presidency.

You would be behind bars if you ignored a federal judge.  But every time there has been another court ruling come down on Ohio’s early voting, I have called the board of elections and asked whether those early voting hours were in effect.  And every time the same answer, “No early voting the three days before… orders from the Secretary of State… there is an appeal pending.”  The Secretary of State has said he doesn’t want to confuse Ohio voters by changing the hours to comply with the court while it is being appealed.  So his website and local Board of Elections sites showed no early voting hours available during that time, until the Supreme Court finally said “or else”.  And the early voting flyer I received in the mail from the Secretary of State didn’t show them.  The local print and broadcast media had no idea until the Supreme Court decision.  Even the Obama early voting info website didn’t show them.  Even though by law, those hours should have been in effect.  The damage has been well done.  Ohio voters are completely confused and disgusted. 

That’s pure vote suppression, designed to discourage Democrats from voting.  Husted’s true motives were revealed months ago when he attempted to block early voting in highly Democratic precincts only.  Sure, it seems outlandish, over the top, so outright outrageous that people can’t wrap their heads around it.  But that’s why they can do it.  At stake right now in Ohio, control of the American people (that’s you), their money and their lives; both Obama and Romney have been camped out here in Ohio for months.  If Jon Husted doggedly continues to follow his Koch Bros directive to confuse Ohio’s election process and stifle Democratic votes, he should be locked up until the election is over.  Ohio Boards of Elections need to encourage people to vote, instead of disenfranchising them. 

An encouraging bit of information.  As of Tuesday Oct 16 when I voted, twenty percent of Ohio’s registered voters had already voted early.  And seventy five percent of them were Democrats.  It’s possible that the grassroots thing in Ohio is working, and that Democratic Ohioans are determined not to be bulldozed. 

It’s up to you Ohio:
      - ID requirements are a hassle, but not impossible.  Go to the
        “Ohio Secretary of State” website
        http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/elections.aspx to learn official
        voter ID requirements. 

      - You can vote early during the week, daytime and evenings at
        your local Board of Elections.  Call them or visit their website for
        hours and info. 
      - Owing to the Supreme Court’s decision, early voting hours are
        also posted for those all-important three days right before the
        election. 
                                Sat    Nov. 3rd   8:00 am - 2:00 pm
                                Sun   Nov. 4th   1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
                                Mon Nov. 5th   8:00 am - 2:00 pm

      - Ask your local Democratic Party or Obama headquarters about
        obtaining transportation to vote. 

      - If you can’t get there in person, mail-in absentee ballots are
        available on your local Board of Elections website or they
        can mail one to you. 

      - All this info is also available on Obama’s voting website
        http://vote.barackobama.com/en/OH/early-voting/ or call
        Obama’s vote hotline 800-311-VOTE. 

      - Or for voting issues and information visit my music website
        http://www.madogmusic.com and my voting website
        http://www.madogmusic.com/vote. 

      - Anyone interested in using my new song “Gotta Vote” to dress
        up your voting programs, presentations, websites or advertising
        can download the recording for free on
        http://www.madogmusic.com.

Ohioans, don’t be suppressed.  Find a way to vote.  That’s what it comes down to.  Help someone else find a way to vote.  We all want to be able once again to look at our spouse and say, “Honey, it’s gonna be ok.”  But we have to make it ok.

New Movie "Struggle" about Ohio Election Fraud

Kickstarter page for "Struggle"

@StruggleDoc on Twitter