Voter Outreach of America

[lasse]

What's happening??

Throwing democratic voter's just in the garbage >:(

News please!!!

[MMJ_fanatic]

sounds like your getting more left wing spin wherever you are Lasse.  as a matter of fact there are Republican campaign offices being ransacked over here (by guess who) and the liberal front also has lawyers lined up to litigate already if the election results are even somewhat close...

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

Aye Carumba!  Can we decide to not discuss these issues anymore?  "liberal front"? do you even believe that tripe?

there's all kinds of stuff happening here.  failing to point out that it is occuring on all sides just smacks of propoganda.  surely you're smarter than that, my friend.

[MMJ_fanatic]

JC, what do classify this as:

Throwing democratic voter's just in the garbage >:(

this sounds like exactly the type of hyperbole jesse jackson and his ilk would spread to throw the legitmacy of the election process into turmoil. and this bs is colorado trying to "distribute" electoral votes??? what are they afraid of?  the electoral college was set up to prevent people from being disenfranchised in the voting process...  there is so much goddamned spin in this election cycle it's a wonder anyone wants to vote anymore...

[MMJ_fanatic]

Here's an interesting one:


Article published Monday, October 18, 2004

Defiance County man arrested in alleged voter registration-crack cocaine scheme


Chad Staton is facing felony charge.

A Defiance County man has been arrested for allegedly filing more than 100 false voter registration forms in exchange for crack cocaine from a Toledo woman working on behalf of the NAACP's voter registration drive.

Chad Staton, 22, of Stratton Ave., faces a fifth-degree felony charge of false registration after sheriff's deputies said he filled out the registration forms by himself — using either fictitious names or addresses — and gave them to Georgianne Pitts, 41.

Toledo police searched Ms. Pitts' home and discovered drug paraphernalia along with more voter registration forms. Police said that Ms. Pitts admitted to paying Mr. Staton in crack cocaine, in lieu of cash.

Ms. Pitts, working on behalf of the NAACP National Voter Fund, submitted the forms to the voter fund, which in turn submitted them to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

Because the addresses on the forms were for the Defiance area, the Cuyahoga County elections board sent the registration forms to Defiance County's elections board, with a note to check the signatures for fraud, said Laura Howell, the deputy director of the Defiance County elections board.

Ms. Pitts told police she had been recruited to obtain voter registration forms by Thaddeus J. Jackson II, of Cleveland, who is coordinating the Toledo area's voter registration drive for the NAACP voter drive.

When contacted by The Blade this afternoon, Mr. Jackson said that Ms. Pitts was a "volunteer," but said he had no knowledge of any fraudulent voter registration forms. He declined to comment further.

Citing the case, Ohio Republican Party spokesman Jason Mauk said in a statement this afternoon that there is "an effort to steal Ohio's election" that is "being driven exclusively by interest groups working to register Democratic voters."
 

[MMJ_fanatic]

"liberal front"?

check it out:
Election to Be Scrutinized for Irregularities

Sun Oct 17, 7:55 AM ET   Top Stories - Los Angeles Times
 

By Ralph Vartabedian Times Staff Writer

Mounting concerns about voter registration foul-ups, election machine defects and other problems that might undermine the presidential election have spurred dozens of organizations to plan extraordinary efforts to scrutinize the polls on Nov. 2.
All Election Coverage
  
More than 25,000 poll watchers, including lawyers and computer experts, are expected outside and inside precinct stations to report problems and in some cases to intervene if they believe poll workers are violating voter rights or making technical mistakes.

The largest effort is being mounted by a coalition of 60 liberal and independent organizations that includes churches, civic groups, unions and minority rights groups; it has created a massive computerized tracking system to follow possible election day breakdowns.

But poll watchers will also include elite computer scientists, county election officials and even European observers who believe the U.S. system is flawed.

"If there are a lot of problems, we want to be involved," said Mark Monacelli, president of the National Assn. of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks. "People are less confident in the system than in the past. We are inundated with conspiracy theorists."

Monacelli, an appointed county official in Duluth, Minn., said he planned to dispatch a handful of people from his association to battleground states to observe elections. Given the increased politicization and citizen distrust of the election process, he said, "We are going down a dangerous path in this country."

In some respects, the 2004 election is a watershed in the evolution of U.S. elections. Hundreds of counties are using new election equipment for the first time. And federal reforms under the Help America Vote Act are imposing new procedures on local customs that traditionally come in many distinct flavors.

If the presidential election is close again, then all of these changes are bound to strain the system and lead to legal challenges, experts say. As a result, groups are putting in observers to detail every incident that might affect one vote or thousands of votes.

"There is distrust and lack of confidence in the system," said Elliot Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way Foundation, a key member of the Election Protection coalition.

Because liberal groups like the People for the American Way Foundation are involved, many Republicans dismiss proclamations that the effort is nonpartisan. There is suspicion among conservatives that the coalition is laying the groundwork for legal challenges to the outcome of the presidential race, particularly on such issues as voter registration and the provisional ballots that are now required under federal law.

But Mincberg rejects such concerns, saying the 60 organizations in his coalition include the League of Women Voters, the National Council of Churches and other nonpartisan groups that he says are simply concerned with making sure every eligible voter gets fair treatment.

The coalition also includes such giant organizations as the AFL-CIO, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the Service Employees International Union.

The main purpose of the Election Protection coalition is to watch for civil rights violations, an issue that resulted in litigation in several states in the 2000 election. The group plans to have 25,000 volunteers, including 5,000 lawyers, in 3,500 precincts in 17 states.

The group is contributing its data to a nationwide computerized incident reporting system that provides a running tally of problems. So far, there are about 345 incidents listed on the system now, including those that occurred during the primaries. The incident data is available at http://www.voteprotect.org .

A second major thrust in poll watching involves the monitoring of touch-screen voting equipment by technical and academic experts. Unlike civil rights concerns, which tend to be a Democratic focus, the efforts to build safeguards in electronic voting have been supported by Democrats and Republicans, in Washington and in many states.

VerifiedVoting.org, a group founded by Stanford University professor David Dill, is training poll watchers so that they might identify technical breakdowns, particularly involving optical scanners and touch-screen systems. He hopes to get 1,300 volunteers nationwide.

Dill acknowledges that simply watching a touch-screen machine is unlikely to identify malfunctions or fraud; and in some jurisdictions his volunteers will not even be allowed inside the poll buildings.

But he adds, "We hope this will encourage communities to be more careful."

A cornerstone of Dill's effort is to require all electronic voting machines to produce a paper audit trail that voters can verify before leaving the polling booth, to help ensure that discrepancies in software or hardware will not prevent a hand recount.

But manufacturers of the machines say the criticism is unfairly undermining public confidence in a technology that is more accurate and tamper-proof than the punch card and lever systems being replaced.

"The pounders and screamers are eroding voters' confidence," said Jack Gerbel, president of UniLect Corp., a Dublin, Calif.-based manufacturer of touch-screen systems in five states.

"There are lawsuits and people saying things they don't know anything about. I have been in this business for 40 years, and we haven't had those kind of problems."

But the potential for electronic systems to fail is a growing concern.

Sen. John Ensign (news, bio, voting record) (R-Nev.) introduced legislation this year to require electronic voting systems to produce paper audit trails. In 1998, Ensign lost his first Senate election by a margin of 428 votes. New Jersey Democratic Rep. Rush D. Holt has formed the Count Every Vote organization, in part to lodge criticism of the new technology.

Concerns with electronic voting have prompted a poll watching effort in Maryland, which has installed all new touch-screen systems. TrueVoteMD, a nonpartisan group in Maryland, wanted to send observers inside polling places, but the state's Board of Elections denied access. The dispute triggered a lawsuit, which is unresolved.

"We know that throughout history, people try to fix elections," said Bob Ferraro, co-director of the group. "That's the problem with paperless systems. It permits fraud on a scale that was never possible before."

Ferraro said the group already had more than 200 poll watchers ready across the state, and he expected more would join before the election.

Ballot boxes have been watched for hundreds of years. In some states, representatives of political parties are authorized to observe inside precinct stations. In other places, the League of Women Voters has watchers authorized to be present after polls close and votes are tabulated, said Kay J. Maxwell, the group's national president.

But this year, the process is reaching an unprecedented level.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell last week became the first governor to assign state workers to county election offices to watch for problems. Rendell, a Democrat, says he hopes to avoid a post-election dispute in a state that many consider pivotal to the presidential race.

State Republicans were distrustful of the move.

"Look, if you put 150 handpicked Democrat appointees out in our county election bureaus, doing who knows what, it surely will raise our skepticism," Drew Crompton, an aide to Republican state Senate President Pro Tempore Robert C. Jubelirer, told the Morning Call newspaper in Allentown.

Even foreign groups are sending observers.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation (news - web sites) in Europe, a 55-state group, has traditionally focused on monitoring elections in emerging democracies, but sent teams to watch the U.S. system in 2002 and for California's gubernatorial recall election last year. Some international observers were shocked to find partisan elected officials in charge of voting.

The aftermath of the 2000 race left many Americans with such deep misgivings about the voting process that they were determined to play a role in this year's election.

Cathy Danielson, a graphics designer in Nashville, said she built a website, http://www.nashvilleinsanity.com , to publicize allegations of vote fraud in Tennessee. And on Nov. 2, she intends to watch the system inside a precinct station, volunteering for poll duty if necessary.

"I got completely burned out by 2000," she said. "I lost confidence."

this is truly ridiculous--P.T. Barnum couldn't have come up with a better sideshow >:(

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

hey man, i could post entire articles too from just about anywhere that are just as ridiculous.

it is this division-that many folks on your side of the aisle just don't see-that is tearing us apart at the seams.  i recognize that both sides participate in such banalties, and as such deserve criticism.  however, i think that over time we will dispense with such rhetorical nonsense and remember that we are all americans, left and right and in between and everywhere else.

like a prism, politics are how you perceive the light depending upon how you bend it.  the so called "liberal front" is just as much perception as the so called politics of the owners of media conglomerates such as fox, gannett, etc.  so what i'm saying in a nutshell is, don't believe everything that you read, hear on radio, or see on TV.

now, back to the article:  it is not "liberal" to question how the process works or doesn't work.  as a computer professional myself, i can attest to the fallability of technology.  trusting something as important as this election to computers is like trusting crackheads with money.  as always, there are issues esp. when it is a close call.

but the facts remain:  the last election in 2000 was riddled with problems, some unexplainable.  whether those problems directly impacted the result remains to be seen-but i won't believe a word of it.  the so called ballots that were supposedly counted completely discount the facts that many votes were disqualified that should not have been, that people were turned away at the polls for no good reasons, that everywhere in the country there was this feeling that some dirty tricks were pulled.  of course, going back to what i said about perceptions that just might be a perception.  no one will ever really know the truth-that's between W, Jeb, the Supreme Court, and God.  just the appearance of infidelity with florida, of all the goddamn places with the candidates BROTHER as the govenor, there is this horrible problem with the count.  surely anyone with more than 2 brain cells can see why people would think that dirty tricks were played.  i believe that with all my heart and soul that they were.  usually the easiest explanation for these things is the correct one-if this were colorado, or wyoming, or south dakota or any other frigging state than florida, the perception would have been different (not to mention the outcome).  

if both sides are watching the process with a critical eye, then so be it.  poll watchers from all sides will be out in force on election day-good.  i feel like the election is like some kind of upcoming surgery-the pain and anticipation of waiting for that day to fix whatever ails us just seems so far away, yet is coming around the bend!

[MMJ_fanatic]

agreed