Election Fraud Blog

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Remember the friends that I told you about who are working on a state campaign in Virginia? Well, it came down to within a few hundred votes and they need help getting the word out to election lawyers/political operatives who can help with a re-count. Would you mind forwarding this info to your list?

The campaign is Tom Perriello’s run for Representative in VA’s 5th. David Madden is the contact person. His number is (202) 550-6461 and his e-mail is david_madden@post.harvard.edu.

Thanks!

Tara James

The OTHER Election Night Story in Georgia:
No Early Votes Included in Reported Results
Wednesday, November 05, 2008

As the nation watched election returns come in state by state, and national, state and regional television stations began to report the numbers, every major news outlet reported that Georgia had voted heavily for McCain — all except for the Associated Press Atlanta office, the news organization that is rooted in the print, newspaper business. They held back.

At 10:35 p.m., The Savannah Daily News appears to be the first news organization in Georgia to begin to report that the results made no sense - how could all of the political polls that had Georgia as a McCain/Obama toss up be so wrong? And how could the Secretary of State be reporting that the majority of the votes were in, but the total was just over 2.8 million, when there are more than 4.8 million registered voters in Georgia?

It looked like Senator Saxby Chambliss (R) was handily winning reelection, defeating Jim Martin (D). All of Savannah’s TV stations were providing similar analysis.

Read more.

In Baltimore, a Democratic city.

MCM

Mark –

I have to be brief because I’ve been awake now for almost 35 hours.
I was rounded up along with a dozen or so other people last night at
an impromptu Obama celebration in Baltimore and jailed. My crime?
Photographing the Baltimore cops as they loaded people into a paddy
wagon. The crowd was very well-behaved — mostly Hopkins students
overjoyed with the Obama victory. A phalanx of cops moved in and
started arbitrarily arresting people. They tased an undergraduate
for trying to get back into his building — after asking him to go
inside. It was insane. I started taking photos with my cell phone as
they lined up cuffed college kids, professors, etc. and a cop
approached me. “I’m a journalist,” I said (I freelance for Baltimore
City Paper) and he knocked the phone out of my hand onto the street.
“Write a nice long story about this,” he said, spun me around, and he
and another cop cuffed me with flexi-cuffs and loaded me into the
police van.

This was 2am last night (Tuesday). I served as an election judge all
day, and the last thing I expected was to spend the night in
Baltimore City lockup. Unreal.

The dangerous thugs the police decided to jail included me (an
election judge, writer, and employee of the Bloomberg School of
Public Health), TWO professors of anthropology at Hopkins, a
Baltimore City school teacher, and a variety of students. It was one
student’s birthday. The student who was tasered had bruises on his
wrists from the cuffs and a bruised eye. Truly a dangerous group of
criminals.

We were released this morning — no charges were brought against us.
We’re getting together as a group to see what recourse we have. One
of the anthropology profs, Aaron Goodfellow, has contacted the ACLU
and I’m going to follow-up. There were lots of students with cell
phones, videocams, and cameras, so I’m hoping some of this was
caught on tape.

City Paper has a very brief clip on its site:

http://www.citypaper.com/digest.asp?id=16987

Thanks, Mark. I thought you and your readers should know about this.

Michael Hughes

The GOP used fake text messages and emails to send Dem voters out to vote today (i.e., Wednesday, Nov. 5).

This happened not only in Florida and Mexico, and at George Mason University, as the Salon article below points out. It also happened in New York, via Texas.

What happened is that such an email, sent from Texas, ended up getting forwarded to the cell phone of Jamie Kilstein here in NYC. Jamie looked into it, and learned that the message had been sent out by a Marine named Lupe, and that the Obama campaign was looking into it. (Thanks to Jamie for telling me about it.)

Even though Obama won last night, we can’t let this stuff go. It is a criminal attack on our democracy–and so it must all be exposed, and duly prosecuted.

MCM

2008.11.05 * 08:05 EST
Fake text messages give false voting information

This election has been full of superlatives and firsts. I’ve never been prouder to be an American abroad than right now. The historic rise of this unlikely candidate, in the unlikely story that is America, fueled by this unlikely swelling of the online masses donating in unprecedented numbers, is nothing short of historic and astonishing.

But there were also a few troubling episodes on the technological front, with text messages and e-mails being used as a way to perpetuate false information.

Wired reported late last night that voters in Florida and New Mexico received a fake text message from 505-507-6041 that says things like: “Due to long lines if you are voting for Barack Obama you can vote tomorrow,” or “Due to the long lines today, all Obama voters are asked to vote on Wednesday.”

Read more.

From Ben Manski:

Even as the world celebrates, thousands act to end voting rights violations:

VOTER ASSEMBLIES PLANNED FOR 40 COMMUNITIES TODAY

(November 5) - As the world celebrates the triumph of democratic politics over election fraud, an organized movement of pro-democracy activists will gather today in 40 communities across the United States. Meeting in "Voter Assemblies," these activists plan to review the hundreds of thousands of voting rights violations reported in the 2008 elections, and to demand swift action to insure that never again is the outcome of a U.S. election threatened by deliberate vote suppression, voter intimidation, misinformation, machine malfunction, or reckless election administration.

"In Oakland, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and 37 other communities in every part of the United States, a movement for democracy is taking form. We are heeding the President-elect's caution that yesterday's vote, "is only the chance for us to make [change]." said Ben Manski, executive director of Liberty Tree and coordinator of the No MoreStolen Elections! campaign.

A full directory of planned Voter Assemblies is available at: http://www.nomorestolenelections.org/va

In related news, the No More Stolen Elections! campaign issued a preliminary report on voting rights violations authored by the noted columnist, John Nichols. This report was distributed to over 55,000 Americans in an email this morning, and is posted at:http://www.nomorestolenelections.org/publications/john_nichols_special_report

# # #

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

http://www.NoMoreStolenElections.org

I was a poll inspector three elections running; this is the first
one I’ve missed. Here’s what I saw when I pulled up to my polling
place this morning:

————————————————————————

My polling place, at approximately 9:00am, the Prince of Peace
Lutheran Church at 3415 Erbes Road, Thousand Oaks, CA . Parked
in the driveway was a Lexus van (California license number 5 TKS
345) plastered everywhere with McCain stickers, Yes on Prop 8
stickers, Christians for McCain stickers– a campaign on 4
wheels. This was well within the 100 foot limit of the polling
place– 78 feet to the front door, to be precise. (Another voter
and I measured it with a measuring tape she had.)

I complained to the poll inspector in charge of the site, Tawne
Newcome, and she said she knew about it– because it was _her_
vehicle. I told her it was out of line, and illegal. She got
huffy and said she’d already moved it three times, that it was
more than 100 feet from the front door (That was nonsense; it
was 52 feet from the closest wall of the building, 78 feet from
the door), and anyway, it was registered to her husband, so it
didn’t count. (?!?!)

I and several other voters demanded to talk to her supervisor;
we registered a formal complaint. I demanded she be removed
from her position, which is supposed to be apolitical. The poll
inspector Tawne Newcome, a Thousand Oaks resident like the rest
of us, threw what I’d call a hissy fit: arguing, red-faced,
furious, yelling.

Myself and another voter, Susan Schroer, complained to the Ventura
County election supervisors (805 654-2784). I spoke to a Don
Morris, who told me there was “nothing wrong” and that they were on
the situation, that the vehicle was parked further than 100 feet
from the “Polling Place” sign on the front door (How he knew this,
from the city of Ventura 30 miles away, is a mystery to me.)
We also called the police to have the car removed as a traffic
hazard (it took up about 30% of the driveway). Mrs. Newcome
left the site, reportedly to call her lawyer. She was replaced
by her supervisor. The other poll workers– Democrat AND
Republican — all seemed relieved that the nutjob had been removed.

Submitted by Ted Newsom 1669 Woodside Drive, Thousand Oaks, CA 91362

805 300 6462

I hereby release all claims to copyright of the above image.
This information may be circulated and reproduced.

email from the other voter/witness:

This picture and previous two were taken of car parked fifty feet
from polling place in Thousand Oaks, California. When I went in to
complain I was told that car belonged to precinct captain. Precinct
captain stated it was her husband’s car and he needed to be contacted
to move it. Other volunteers had offered to follow her to park in
other location and drive her back to polling place and stated that
she was initially parked right next to building.
Distance of car from polling place was measured by another voter and
myself and found to be 50 feet from polling place. Volunteers stated
that captain said it had to be 100 feet from “entrance to polling
place” . This was measured and found to be 75 feet. After
approximately 30 minutes captain got in car and left, stating she was
going to speak with her “Republican representative attorney”.
– Susan Schroer

Yet another reason to get rid of electronic voting systems.

MCM

Broken poll book doubles the wait in Takoma Park
STEVE LASH
Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer
November 4, 2008 1:41 PM

Voters at Takoma Park Middle School waited up to two hours this morning to cast their ballots due to a broken Electronic Poll Book, the computer system election officials use to confirm a voter’s address and date of birth, said an election judge at the Montgomery County precinct.

The poll book, which collapsed at 8 a.m., was one of three the Takoma Park-Silver Spring precinct had at the 7 a.m. opening of the polls. The two-hour wait was double the hour-long line-standing reported in the early hours of voting in other areas of the county.

Prior to the breakdown, voters proceeded through the line at a relatively brisk pace of less than an hour, said Chief Democratic Election Judge Marlon Sellow. But with the breakdown came the long lines and his frequent calls to the Montgomery County Board of Elections, hoping the agency could provide a replacement machine, but none was available, Sellow said.

Read more.

The Ohio Republican Party today filed an amended complaint in its case against Secretary of State Brunner (Ohio Republican Party v. Brunner). This is the same case that the ORP earlier used as a vehicle for its arguments regarding the window for early registration and absentee voting, observers at in-person absentee voting sites, and mismatched voter information. The ORP previously got court orders against Brunner’s actions regarding observers and mismatches, only to have those orders reversed on appeal. [Disclosure: I joined amicus briefs on behalf of voting and civil rights groups supporting the Secretary of State's position and opposing that taken by the ORP on the window and matching issues.]

The new amended complaint in ORP is similar to its prior complaint, but appears to include new allegations regarding the discretion vested in county boards of election when it comes to counting votes. The apparent claim is that this discretion leads to the unequal treatment of voters from county to county. Presumably, this claim would rely in part on the Bush v. Gore decision, arguing that such inter-county disparities violate equal protection.

I suspect that the real purpose of this lawsuit is to serve as a placeholder, in the event that Ohio turns out to be close enough to litigate. The district judge assigned to the case, Judge Smith, is a Reagan appointee who has been quite sympathetic to the ORP’s position in its prior motions. Thus, the ORP might well want to have post-election disputes steered toward his courtroom.

Read more.

From Steve Brant:

CNN is reporting on voting problems right now.. in PA.. they played a tape of a woman calling in from Philly who has lived at the same address for 5 years and discovered she wasn’t in the registration book when it was time to vote today. What kind of purge effort swept her up???

CNN’s phone number for reporting problems is 877 462 6608 (GO CNN 08)

I’l see what I can do to promote Novick’s lawsuit.

Steve

Here’s the sort of racist fantasy that’s being used to titillate McCainiacs–and, it may well be, to justify some kind of crackdown by police and other troops.

Black Panthers?? Who else is out there, the SLA? (No doubt Bill Ayers is out there, too, calling Richard Nixon dirty names.)

This would be hilarious, if it didn’t threaten such grim consequences.

MCM

Voting Intimidation By Black Panthers In Philadelphia - trying to block and scare white voters away…A Military Vet (on camera) walked right between them - they confronted him and he got them removed away from the polls…said a black man holding a night stick yells at the Fox reporter and tells the military army vet, “That a black man is going to win this election no matter what.” Personally - I didn’t even know this 1960’s gang still existed…wonder how many other surprises were in for since it’s being reported that cops are getting riot gear ready…

November 4, 2008, 1:05 PM
Tim Robbins Faces Mix-Up at Polling Place
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE AND SEWELL CHAN

Updated, 4:23 p.m. | The actor Tim Robbins looked dejected and annoyed around 10:30 a.m. on Election Day, as he was sitting in a folding chair at the McBurney YMCA at 125 West 14th Street, one of the more than 1,300 polling places throughout New York City.

Mr. Robbins said that he had been surprised and dismayed to learn that he was not in the voter lists that are printed and bound before the election. “The issue is that they removed my name from the voting rolls,” he said. “My name was there for the primaries.”

Mr. Robbins expressed frustration. “The poll workers here know me,” he said. “I’ve been voting here 15 years.” He said the poll worker remembered seeing his name on the list during the primary.

Read more.