The Blue State

Democrats unveil bill that protects against voter "caging"

A brand new Senate bill would fight a certain voter suppression tactic:

A new bill introduced by Democrats in the Senate today would makeRepublican attempts to challenge voters' eligibility based on thetime-tested technique of using returned mail illegal.

The voter suppression technique, which has come to be known as "caging," has been practiced by Republicans for decades,but received additional attention for its role in the U.S. attorneyfirings scandal. Timothy Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove whoreplaced one of the fired prosecutors in Arkansas, was forced to defendhis role in an alleged 2004 caging scheme when he worked for theRepublican National Committee. (We ran down the evidence that Griffinwas involved in a 2004 scheme to block African-Americans in Floridafrom voting in a story this June.) Those questions, along with the circumstances of Griffin's appointment, eventually led to his resignation.

Still trying to get a grasp on what caging means?  Here is a better explanation:

Vote caging is an illegal tactic to suppress minorities from voting by having   their names purged from voter rolls when they fail to respond to registered   mail sent to their homes. The Republican National Committee signed a consent   decree in 1986 stating they would not engage in the practice after they were   caught suppressing votes in 1981 and 1986.

Voting irregularities in Iowa Straw Poll

There seems to have been some controversy unfolding, so I am deciding to live blog this, and post more as new information comes in.

UPDATE (9:02 PM ET): There is a delay in the announcement of results.  According to the Free Market News Network, the delay either came as a result of voting irregularities, and/or there is currently a recount taking place.  However, we do know that Romney won.  The question is who finished second?

UPDATE (9:14 PM PET): Des Moines Register reports that there were indeed voting irregularities during the Iowa straw vote:

Voting machine difficulties delayed the announcement of the vote totals tonight at the Iowa Straw Poll.

About 1,500 ballots needed to be recounted, said Mary Tiffany, a spokeswoman for Republican Party of Iowa.

One machine caused the problem, said Chuck Laudner, the party’s executive director.

At one point, its black box contained 500 paper ballots but the machine’s memory said it had scanned in 498.

Allthe ballots fed into that machine throughout the day were hand counted,and now are being re-fed into the machine to recalculate the vote.

Good Lord!

UPDATE (9:26 PM ET): Now the AP is all over this story.  Apparently, some GOP coordinators who are in charge of counting the votes are starting to get annoyed by it.  The recounting is still taking place.  And Ron Paul's people are livid:

"That's what they've been doing this whole time, but they clearlymisjudged how long this would take," GOP spokeswoman Mary Tiffany said.

The situation may have added fuel to the fire of some Ron Paul supporters who had sought to block voting at the event because of themachines. They filed a federal lawsuit on the constitutionality of thevoting process this week, and argued that the vote-counting machines,made by Diebold Election Systems, had fundamental weaknesses.

I am continuing to follow this story.

UPDATE (9:34 PM ET): It's official.  The AP is reiterating the fact that Mitt Romney won the Iowa Straw Poll.  Again, we knew this would happen.  Now waiting for the final vote tally so we can move on and call it a day.

UPDATE (9:37 PM ET): Huckabee gets second.  Brownback gets third.  I will post a recap of all the results in about 10 minutes.

UPDATE (9:55 PM ET): Iowa straw poll recap is in, with the results and everything.  Thus ends our live blogging of this rather peculiar event.

Two convicted of rigging '04 Ohio recount

Whenever anyone even brings up the idea of election fraud in 2004, the common response is that Bush won Ohio handedly in the statewide recount.  More than two years have passed since the election and the recount that followed.  Now, for the first time, two poll workers have been convicted of rigging the 2004 Ohio recount:

Two election workers wereconvicted Wednesday of rigging a recount of the 2004 presidentialelection to avoid a more thorough review in Ohio’s most populous county.

Jacqueline Maiden,elections coordinator of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board, andballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony countof negligent misconduct of an elections employee. They also wereconvicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of electionsemployees to perform their duty.

Prosecutors accused Maiden and Dreamer of secretly reviewingpreselected ballots before a public recount on Dec. 16, 2004. Theyworked behind closed doors for three days to pick ballots they knewwould not cause discrepancies when checked by hand, prosecutors said.

Just two days ago, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) nearly broke down in tears on the Senate floor while announcing that he would not run for president in 2008.  He started choking up after acknowledging how close he came to the presidency in '04.

Last year, Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote a column in Rolling Stone Magazine that detailed most of the election day flaws in Ohio.  Had the recount been conducted properly, maybe it would have led to an even larger investigation that could have overturned the results.  Or, maybe Bush still would have won Ohio.  Nonetheless, the 2004 vote marked the second straight presidential election where there were voting irregularities in the most decisive state.

 

Election results skewed towards GOP

The November 7th election may have been an even larger landslide than we had thought.  The Election Defense Alliance is alleging that election results were skewed by about 4%, or three million votes towards the GOP:

A major undercount of Democratic votesand an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate racesacross the country is indicated by an analysis of national exit pollingdata, by the Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization.

These findings have led EDA to issue an urgent call for furtherinvestigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium ondeployment of all electronic election equipment.

"We seeevidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to politicalconditions existing before recent developments shifted the politicallandscape," said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of ElectionDefense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for theactual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig anelection, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift fromexpectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics)the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What wasplenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7.

"Thefindings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and votecounting systems used in the United States," according to SallyCastleman, National Chair of EDA. "This is a nothing less than anational indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!"

Imagine how many House and Senate seats the Democrats could have picked up if this was indeed true?  Maybe Ford could have won in Tennessee.  Maybe 40 or 45 House seats could have been a possibility.  Again, I would like to see more evidence on this from either side before rushing to judgment.

What happened in Yellowstone County, MT?

After a long and mostly decisive night, we still can't overstate our wins.  The Senate is not over, if the Republicans have anything to say about it.  They will try and get Montana and Virginia to change their vote totals.

The biggest mess is in Montana, where Jon Tester now leads Conrad Burns by 3,128 votes, according to CNN, with less than 1% left to be counted.  Here is the deal though: by state law, an automatic recount will be issued, free of cost to the candidate, if Burns trails by 0.25% or less.  However, if Burns is between 0.25% and 0.5% behind Tester, he can file a petition with the secretary of state's office and he must for the recount himself.  At the moment, Conrad Burns is within 0.15%, meaning there will be a recount no matter what.

The problem is we have not even got to a recount yet.  Some counties, such as Yellowstone, which is ironically Conrad Burns' home county, they are still counting after workers did not know how to operate the machines:

"Yellowstone County is counting their ballotsagain. They encountered some difficulty operating their vote-countingmachine, and as a result, they are counting their ballots again," saidBowen Greenwood, press representative for Montana secretary of state'soffice.

It is highly unlikely that Burns could make up the 3,128 vote difference, according to the Billings Gazette.  On the Billings Gazette web site, they have already declared Jon Tester the winner.  The Associated Press also declared Tester the winner.

Regardless, there is a pending recount.  We also need to get more information regarding what happened in Yellowstone County, and why poll workers were unable to work the machines?  Last night, I also remember hearing other reports of poll workers re-marking ballots because they had been marked by some voters with the wrong writing utensil.

I will stay on this.

JUST IN: According to the Great Falls Tribune in Montana, new votes from Butte-Silver Bow are now in, and Jon Tester has a 3,000-vote cushion.  Nonetheless, the battle over what happened in Yellowstone County begins.

Poll worker chokes voter in Kentucky

More voter intimidation:

A poll worker at the United Auto Workers hall on Fern Valley Road wasarrested after he was accused of assaulting a voter, said Lt. Col. CarlYates, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriffs’ Office.

Theworker, whose name has not been released, has been charged withinterfering with an election and fourth-degree assault, said Yates, whohad not other details.

Paula McCraney, a spokeswoman for theJefferson County Clerk, said the poll worker was accused of choking andpushing the voter out of the door. Election officials called the policeand when an officer arrived, the voter wanted to file charges, McCraneysaid.

“That about tops off the day,” McCraney said.

It is not my intention to dig for stories that deal with this sort of thing.  If I had it my way, I would be focusing more on the campaigns themselves.  But there are so many reports of voter intimidation today that this is becoming hard to ignore.

(Video) Hour and fifteen minute wait to vote at 8 AM in Ohio

Below is home video shot earlier this morning at a polling destination in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.  The filmer interviewed people coming out of the library (polling station).  It turns out that these new electronic ballots give the full information on every single initiative, including each side's position.  So what you have here are few polling booths, and people sometimes taking 30 minutes to read over every single initiative, making the line an hour and fifteen minutes long.  Some even got out of line and said they would come back later.  But later on, even more voters are expected.

Watch the video.  Judge for yourself:

Voting problems in Ohio, already

Two members of the U.S. House had problems voting today.  One of them was even turned away for lacking the proper identification:

Two Republican House members reportedly encountered difficulties attheir respective polling stations. U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot was said tobe turned away for not having proper identification, and Rep. JeanSchmidt could not get the scanner to accept her ballot.

Here is the video of a report from Channel 12 news in Ohio, via Raw Story:

Hooray for Diebold!

Cases of voter suppression in Virginia being investigated by FBI

You knew this sort of thing would happen in a closely contested state.  In Virginia, the FBI is now investigating some suspicious phone calls that have been made to confuse people about voting day -- one call even threatening to arrest people if they showed up:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is lookinginto the possibility of voter intimidation in the U.S. Senate racebetween Sen. George Allen, a Republican, and Democratic challengerJames Webb, officials told NBC News.

Stateofficials alerted the Justice Department on Tuesday to severalcomplaints of suspicious phone calls to voters who attempted tomisdirect or confuse them about election day, Jean Jensen, Secretary ofthe Virginia State Board of Elections, told NBC’s David Shuster.

Jensen told NBC that she had been contacted by FBI agents. The FBI in Richmond refused to comment.

State Democratic Party counsel Jay Myersonsaid in a written statement issued by the Webb campaign that hebelieved Republicans are behind an orchestrated effort to suppressvotes for the Democratic challenger.

Republicanofficials, including the executive director of the Virginia RepublicanParty, have told NBC that the GOP and Allen campaign are focused onmobilizing voters and have not discouraged anyone from voting.

Inthe Washington, D.C., area, NBC affiliate News4 reported on its Website that it had received e-mail from a viewer in Virginia who said hereceived a phone call from so-called volunteers threatening voters witharrest if they cast ballots.

It's worse than you think!  On the NBC4 web site, it says that fliers have been distributed into African-American communities in Virginia telling them to "Skip This Election."

I will keep my eye on all this.

Hopefully no deja vu

My 18th birthday was one day before the 2000 election, enabling me to vote for the first time.  Today I turned 24, also one day before a huge election.  So many major moments in American history have taken place within that six-year time span.  Now you all know why my generation is so involved in politics.

I can just only hope that history does not repeat itself.  Of course I am referring to the court battle over the recounts.  If this happens again, it will create an even deeper wound than before, and divide our country more than ever.   The odds of that happening are greater than you'd think.

I have a feeling that something dirty will happen tomorrow.  There have been reports in a number of states that voting cards have been stolen.  Those cards can be manipulated to create mathematical formulas that keep certain candidates ahead, all without any trace of tampering.  Just watch HBO's new documentary Hacking Democracy.  So I will keep an eye on it throughout tomorrow evening.