For all of you in the swing states....
 

Steal Back Your Vote!

Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believe that the 2008 elections have already been stolen. What's an American to do given these circumstances? They suggest: "Steal it Back"


Palast, an investigative journalist, and Kennedy, a voting rights attorney, paired up to create a nonpartisan voter guide that illustrates the six ways that American votes will be stolen this election and seven ways to steal them back.
You may ask who's stealing your votes. Palast and Kennedy believe that the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), created in 2002, is one of the main reasons votes are systematically being stolen. Secretaries of state attempting to comply with HAVA are purging voters from the registration rolls and blocking new ones from registering. The purging occurs if a voter's name does not match a government database.

Those who are at most risk for having their vote stolen are new voters, people of color, low-income, elderly and swing state voters, Palast told Truthout.


In 2006, Palast says that 40 percent of citizens who were purged from the voter rolls in California had Islamic, Vietnamese, Chinese and Hispanic names. These names were at most risk for misspellings.

The Steal Back Your Vote Guidelines promote the importance of going to the secretary of state Web site for your state to confirm that you are registered ahead of the election.

The New York Times appeared to confirm Palast and Kennedy's findings on mass voter purges in its report last week titled "States' Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal". The newspaper found that tens of thousands of eligible voters were being illegally purged ahead of the 2008 elections.

In the crucial swing states of Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio, The New York Times reported that Social Security databases are being used to verify voters, as opposed to more accurate state databases. Federal law requires Social Security databases to be used for verification only as a last resort.

The swing states of Michigan and Colorado are also violating federal law, according to The New York Times, because they are removing voters from the registration rolls within 90 days of the presidential election.

When a name has been purged from the voter rolls, election workers will hand out a provisional ballot. However, Palast points to 1.1 million provisional ballots that went uncounted in the 2004 elections as proof that provisional ballots often go uncounted.

"Once you sign that provisional ballot, the chances are officially one in three that your ballot will be thrown in the garbage can," said Palast.

In their guide, Palast and Kennedy write that a provisional ballot will most often render a vote uncounted. They suggest seeking adjudication on the spot, by calling a voter's rights hotline instead of accepting and signing the provisional ballot.

"Don't go postal," says Palast, urging voters not to mail in their ballot.

Palast told Truthout: "All you need is the most minor error, like you didn't use your middle initial in your registration; not enough postage cost a third of a million votes in the US the last time around because most ballots are two stamps, not one. There's a million ways to not count your vote on a mail-in; don't do it."

The other suggestions in the "Steal Back Your Vote" guide include voting early, getting involved in voter-registration and get-out-the-vote organizations, and pursuing legal action if disenfranchised.
Palast and Kennedy will be following the 2008 elections as they unfold, including publishing reports in Rolling Stone and BBC news.

Hmmm, my ballot envelope states "no postage necessary". I smell partisan reporting here. Where's the outrage over voter registration fraud by the likes of ACORN?

The instructions that came with my Ballot stated CLEARLY the required amount of postage ($0.60).

I was concerned about ACOR in the beginning when I first heard about it on Fox news while covering the last debate. However, I am not sure it requires any outrage from voters. The situation is simply fraudulent employees who cheated their employer.

Registration fraud is not Voter fraud. It does not yield in one additional or one less vote.

In Ohio the fraudulent ACORN registrants were allowed to vote the same day they registered. Considering Ohio historically decided the election for Republicans I'd say ACORN did its job for Republicans.

ACORN is responsible for the people representing them in the process and should take responsibility because they are using Government (thus public) funds. The abuse is systematic and until they can assure compliance they should be shut down and investigated.

Two quotes you'll hear EVERY election year:

"Highest voter registration ever"

- and -

"Voter fraud"

Dumb...dumb..and pointless.

ACORN is trash (cough Obama loved it before it hit the light) and everyone associated with ACORN should be detained on federal vote tampering charges. IMO.

Just so you guys realize, much of the ACORN issue was misreported by Fox who is actually the only network that seems to be making a big stink over this. The number thrown around was that ACORN had turned in 5,000 registrations in one bunch, and about 2,100 of them were fraudulent. But what they did not mention is that those 5,000 that they turned in were actually 5,000 that they had put aside in a special category under "possible fraud". Those registrations had actually been flagged by ACORN as suspected fraud. And of course, about 40+% of them were.

There is a much larger issue here with legitimate voters being purged from the voting databases. In 2000, over 95,000 Florida voters were purged from the databases, most of them minorities that happened to be registered Democrats. Following the election, the NAACP sued the state of Florida, and in 2003 the parties agreed to a settlement which included Florida restoring over 90,000 of those people as registered voters. This was clearly fraud and is what caused Bush to win the election. This idea that the claims that Bush stole the election had something to do with hanging chads or a few hundred votes is misinformation. If voters had all been allowed to vote, Gore would have won Florida by over 50,000 votes. It appears that the same thing is happening this year in many states.

There is also another illegal thing going on in Virginia. The Democrats have gone through the effort of registering many new voters there, most of them young people including many students. Apparently Republican officials got ahold of the lists of student voters, most of whom are Democrats and Obama supporters (young people seem to be overwhelmingly supporting Obama), and have sent out mailings to them telling them that if they register to vote in the district where their school is, then their parents will not be able to claim them as dependents on their tax return and they will not be covered by their parents health plan. Apparently these claims have been very effective and many of these students have withdrawn their registrations. The problem is that what the Republicans have put in that letter is simply not true. This is the kind of thing people should go to jail for.

how are those blinders Eric, I'd love to pick up a set :rofl:

ACORN is a POS...even saw a blurb on CNN (the Libby network) about it. So that should tell ya something. If half your crap is fraudulent...you're fraudulent.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/...ref=newssearch

Here you go:

http://liberty.davar.net/Images/Humo...icBlinders.jpg

hhmmmmmm.....
In the last 3 weeks, I have had 3 seperate young Democrats knocking on my door looking for people other than myself; with the intent of helping them to register to vote.
:rolleyes: