Dead people voting in South Carolina

Regardless of what anyone may think of Project Veritas' latest political stunt, Primary of the Living Dead, which purports to show just how easy it is for dead people to vote here in New Hampshire, since we require no form of ID before voting here, this "real investigation" by the AG of South Carolina should concern everyone: ["South Carolina's Attorney General detects voter fraud"].

Where did Gravel's votes go?

AP has corrected its vote totals. Here is where they are now:

2917 of 6913 Precincts Reporting - 42%

	Name	Party	Votes	Vote %
	Clinton, Hillary	Dem	470,687	52%
	Obama, Barack	Dem	271,662	30%
	Edwards, John	Dem	142,642	16%
	Biden, Joe	Dem	8,665	1%
	Richardson, Bill	Dem	8,469	1%
	Kucinich, Dennis	Dem	5,636	1%
	Dodd, Chris	Dem	3,050	0%
	Gravel, Mike	Dem	2,938	0%

But the question remains: Where did Gravel's votes go? He had 21,124 40 minutes ago! Is there more vote fraud going on again?

Update: Looking at these numbers, it is more than just Gravel's numbers. Where did Biden's votes go? Where did Kucinich's votes go? This is amazing. A total turn around in vote totals from one figure to another figure.

Some things going on ...

Here are some links worth looking at. I'm going to try and catch up with work stuff over the rest of the week so I will be on a bit of a hiatus. Of course, if something major happens, I'll post it. Also, I'm working on a health care piece which will be posted later this week.

Ron Paul ends N.H. recount effort

This letter was just sent out by a Ron Paul supporter:

Update: Vote fraud at Iowa caucuses

This is an update to the previous entry I put together in the wake of the Iowa Caucuses about a week ago: ["Rumor: Vote fraud at Iowa Caucus?"].

The 2008 New Hampshire Primary Aftermath: Gender politics trumps liberal white guilt, the war hero beats the CEO

A lot will be written and said about the aftermath of the 2008 New Hampshire primary in the coming months and maybe even the coming years. It would make a great case study in presidential politics. And, with so many people contributing to the process - regular/mainstream and alternative media, like citizen journalists and blogs - there is a lot to take in. But for this political junkie, looking at the very long [and yes, too long] campaign and the ultimate outcome, it is easy to call the process a complete mess of monumental proportions, while at the same time, wondering how long our state can hang on to the first-in-the-nation primary status. What the primary did do though was defy the Democratic naysayers who claimed that because New Hampshire was not “diverse enough,” minorities and women could not get a fair shot. Please note: A woman finished first, a black man finished second, and a Latino man finished fourth, in one of the whitest states in the country. Hopefully, the diversity card will not be played against New Hampshire [and Iowa for that matter] ever again.

On the Republican side, grassroots politicking and honesty by one candidate trumped the millions poured in by another candidate. Republicans, with the help of independents, also denied the more negative candidate of the top two the prize.

But it is safe to say, that the days of our primary could be numbered for other reasons. A deep analysis is needed to look at the entire process. That will come later. For now, let us look at what happened yesterday. 

McCain running away with it

Clinton and Obama neck and neck. It's going to be an interesting evening.
I wonder if a slew of people came up from Massachusetts to vote in the primary, at the urging of the Clintons and Boston Mayor Tom Menino. With same-day registration, there are opportunities for cheating and fraud.

Rumor: Vote fraud at Iowa Caucus?

Update 3: I have a new update here: ["Update: Vote fraud at Iowa Caucuses"].

Update 2: Here is some more information: The site was in eastern Iowa, not very far from the Illinois border. At about 6:30 p.m. about 60 locals had gathered to caucus on the Democratic side. Most of the people were chatting because they were acquainted with each other.

Q1: Will Bush be impeached Monday?

The Internet and global press have been abuzz about something called The Downing Street Memo, written in July 2002 and recently released in Britain: ["The secret Downing Street memo"].
In the memo, British intelligence officials claim that the Bush administration was rigging intelligence to make the case for invading Iraq. Here is the suspected incriminating segment of the memo:

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

This memo has been virtually ignored by the mainstream press in the U.S. and a Google of the words "Downing Street Memo" pretty much proves this, even though the story was broken in early May in the British press and clearly affected that country's election cycle since Blair barely hung on to keep his seat [Isn't it interesting that we hear everything about the Royals but nothing about this? We heard about Charles' second wedding to the woman whose tampon he once said he wanted to be; we still hear about Diana, almost eight years after her death; but nary a word about this].

A persistent vegetative state ...

Not unlike lots of other folks, I think it is tragic watching the Terri Schiavo case unfold 24/7 on every channel across the spectrum. And, if you are a news junkie like I am, you are seeing a lot of this case.
Personally, I am getting a bit sick of it. In typical fashion, the media are going completely overboard in covering this tragedy which is essentially a local - and family - issue. While Schiavo is incapacitated, it is easy to say that the media are also in a persistent vegetative state.
The coverage brings up a whole bunch of different emotions on a variety of levels. There is the issue of when life ends or who has control over someone in this state. There are those of us who are truly concerned about preserving "life" and there is the manipulation of the issue by some of the most craven politicians in our country: ["Dialysis was denied for DeLay dad "]. There is the issue over who should have guardianship in these situations - a husband who has two kids from another relationship - or the parents who want to preserve the "life" of their daugher. Having watched some of the relentless coverage, I am aghast at what I have seen.
Once again, FoxNews has gone completely over the top.
Rita Cosby on "The Big Show" Saturday virtually claimed that Michael Schiavo was somehow responsible for his wife's heart attack when everyone knows that the attack was brought on by a lack of potassium - a sign of bulimia. Maybe FoxNews is thinking that Michael somehow made Terri starve herself to lose weight. The Schindlers - Terri Schiavo's parents - did nothing to dissuade this kind of talk even though it probably isn't true. If I were Michael Schiavo, I would hire a libel attorney after seeing some of the coverage. But it isn't just these issues. I won't even go into Sean Hannity's night after night after night of claims that she can talk and that somehow her husband is killing her. And where are the conservatives - like Howie Carr, for example - who are always yelling at anti-war protesters to "get a job." They have been silent on this issue too, yet one could say that all these people holding candles need to get a life, no pun intended.
Like David Ross of CBS News said last week in his commentary, the Schiavo case hasn't really preserved life - it has preserved death. Everywhere, families and loved ones are having serious conversations about the end of life and how we would like to go out. Ross noted that most of the people he talked to stated the same thing: I wouldn't want to be alive if I were in her condition. This doesn't mean that a person's request will actually be respected in the end - without a living will or some other sort of documentation - but it does allow for these serious conversations to occur.
But what about "life" or the quality of said life? It is one thing to say that a fetus in a mother's womb has the potential to live a long life as a child if brought into the world; it is quite another thing to say that a person in Schiavo's condition is going to have any sort of life, lying there, unable to feed herself, unable to speak, unable to do much of anything that most of us would consider having a life. Personally, I wouldn't want to live that way ... but I wouldn't want to die that way either.
On a larger - and more important scale - look at what the world is missing while we are distracted with Schiavo case, the Wacko Jacko nonsense, Prince Charles' silly wedding, the pope's condition [which, granted, is important to hundreds of millions of Catholics], night after night: Important stories like this ["Baghdad Coup D'Etat For Big Oil"] or the second anniversary of the Iraq invasion, which was barely covered by most of the press, the bulging trade deficit and globalization wrecking the American family, foreign nations buying up all of our debt, the utter sin of the bankruptcy bill ["Christian lawyers say bill, Bible don't mesh"], etc. etc. It is an absolute disgrace. And, it is also one of the reasons I work in the media - so I can do relevant stories for people and not get caught up in all of this unimportant nonsense.
Ralph Nader has his thoughts about the case: ["The Many Layers of the Terry Schiavo Controversy"] which I found pretty interesting, and of course, there is Jesse Jackson's view, again, all over the place, including of all places, on FoxNews where Hannity was acting like a complete rump-swab ... actually treating Jackson like a human being instead of an adulterer and a swindler ... which has previously been the case with Hannity. Yeah, it was pretty shocking to see tonight.
We all know that life is precious ... and this is no way to end one, no matter what you feel about the issue or the outcome. 


Other stuff:
* Former Dem VP candidate John Edwards is on a tear of late: ["'08 White House Race Draws Iowa's Interest"]. Is he the one? As I have said before, I honestly believe that had he been out on the stump more, Kerry might have pulled it off. It seemed as though Edwards disappeared for a month there late in the campaign. Where did Shrum hide him?
* "Hot" Air America, as Nader called it during the 2004 campaign, gets raked over the coals this week on HBO: ["HBO to Air Docu on Air America: 'Left of the Dial'"]. I don't have HBO so I will be missing this but I bet it is amusing.
* This is so scary and makes me worry more and more about what is going on with this government: ["Administration kept mum about unapproved modified corn sold"].
* Danny Schecter is one of our country's most important commentators right now. He has a good piece on the coverage - or lack of coverage - of the anti-war movement: ["Miscovering Anti-War Protests (Again)"].
* I totally missed this but I bet it was a funny sight, for lack of a better word: ["SNL Tries Penile Implant"].
* This headline says it all: ["'One huge US jail'"]. Between the pipeline crap and this, what the hell is going on over there?
* Political things in Massachusetts are getting a little testy these days and once again, it looks like the Democrats are going to eat themselves alive. Typically, incumbents in the state Legislature are trying to protect themselves while reformers want to make the process better. At the same time, the party hacks want to make it harder for outsiders to get on the ballot: ["State Democrats seek to streamline primary process"]. Possible gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick is making the early rounds, in what will be a David vs. Goliath fight for the nomination: ["Impressions of Deval Patrick from Cambridge, 3/26"] and ["Dem rival gives gov run for his money"]. Then, there is this, by a former three-time non-victorious candidate from the left, George Bachrach: ["Reform the Democrats with more democracy"]. [I didn't really want to call Bachrach a three-time "loser" because while I think he can sometimes be a bit whiny, his heart always seems in the right place. And, as we all know in campaigns, more people are non-victorious than victorious, so Bachrach is in good company.]
* One of the reasons some liberals have no clue is because they don't read all forms of commentary. I may not agree with a guy like Robert Novak much, but he always has some pretty good ditties like this one; ["RNC warns Congress of Republican electoral disaster in 2006"] and this one: ["With Condoleezza Rice’s support, America will leave Iraq this year"].
* The book is still not closed on the 2004 election and this article proves it: ["Voting glitches haunt statistician"]. I will never for the life of me understand how so many smart people can get caught up in so many dumb theories. Exit polls are wrong all the time! They are completely unscientific. Folks lie on them. Maybe the pollsters didn't do their work properly. It is completely illogical to presume that a sampling of one one-millionth of a precent could determine the outcome of an election. The only thing exit polls are good for is for gathering data on the people who fill them out and to get some sense of what those sampled voters were feeling at the time. Exit polls are not good predictors. And lastly, these types of theories make wild and grand allegations about voting technologies that no one actually knows to be true. As was seen during the Nader recounts here in New Hampshire and the Miami Herald recounts in northern Florida, many historically strong Democratic towns and counties in both states in 2004 voted for Bush. The recounts prove it. In Ohio, the majority of voting machines are not computerized but paper ballot or punch card ballots. There may be rigged machines in some places across this nation but not so far in the ones that have been recounted and no one has still shown me that the nation's voting machines can be rigged in some giant conspiracy to swing the election. We know that there are other problems as noted in an entry posted here two years ago: ["Vote fraud, conspiracies, and real solutions to the elections problem"] Of course, no one wants to talk about double-voting or illegal aliens voting; it is much easier to keep perpetuating the theory that there is a wizard somewhere swinging the votes to the evil, Christian Republicans. Give me a break.

Interesting stuff ...

Here are some links in the past few weeks I haven't been able to post because I have been too busy with other stuff.
Yesterday, this was posted by Kevin Zeese, Ralph Nader's press secretary: ["Mishandling Nader"]. Check out this section, about the meeting between Nader and Kerry:

"Instead, at the meeting Kerry warned us of the coming legal threat telling us of the thousands of lawyers they had lined up to ensure a Kerry-Edwards victory. Some of us thought these lawyers were to prepare against Republican harassment, others interpreted it as a threat to the Nader-Camejo campaign’s ballot access. And, when we got back to the office the news was not only covering the Kerry-Nader meeting but the announcement of a new anti-Nader, pro-Kerry 527 organization. Rather than a two fisted battle against Bush the Democrats drew the battle lines between Nader and the Democrats – diverting significant attention from Bush-Cheney."

Wow. So, once again, the Democrats blew an opportunity to win an election because there were obsessed with Nader. Zeese is currently in New Hampshire, heading up the Nader recount effort, which so far, has yielded little change in the results: ["Nader-requested recount in N.H. moving slowly"] and ["Recount New Hampshire"]. It's interesting that AA's big mouth Randi Rhodes would request Nader perform a recount when she attacked him so harshly during his campaign. Here is some of the data from Ida Briggs: ["Invisible Ida"].
Here is another post from Common Dreams, about the recount in Ohio: ["Ohio Presidential Results to be Challenged"]. Isn't it interesting that the Greens and Libertarians would care enough about the actual outcome to raise $150k to force a recount, yet Kerry and Edwards can't seem to be bothered? And why is the media ignoring all of this? Mark Jurkowitz has a good piece here: ["Media accused of ignoring election irregularities"].
Then, there is Clinton and his silly library. Interestingly enough, there isn't any factual information about the numerous scandals he and his wife were involved in: ["Whitewashing Whitewater"].

This is too funny ...

This is too funny:
["Bush Wins Florida!"]

This is not:
Of course, the voting problems have just started. Here is a roundup of some of the stories:
["Battleground vote fraud alleged"]. There has been a lot on the Web about this story.
["Florida looks into vote fraud"]. Again, Florida. Ugh.
["Florida probes activists' voter-registration effort"].
["Election tactics push envelope"]. Hmm: Don't give Republicans absentee ballots, eh?
["Voting Irregularities In Dona Ana County"].
["Early voting brings cries of bullying"]. I wonder if they should be allowing this early voting stuff. Absentee ballots? Sure. Machine voting weeks before the election. I don't know.
["Vote fraud: What they aren't telling you"]. OK, Devvy Kidd is a little out there. But, that doesn't mean she is lying.

F-ing outrageous!

How cryptic is this?: ["AP: Rumsfeld, FBI Official Kept 9-11 Items"].

Voting machine problems
Some interesting fallout from the Democratic primaries. It seems as though the "miraculous" DRE touch-tone voting machines didn't work very well in the states that have purchased them. Here are some of the headlines:
* In Florida, Gephardt beats Kerry, sort of: ["Bay County Election Problems Stir Bad Florida Memories"].
* While seniors have problems: ["Florida senior voters have trouble with electronic voting machines"].
* In California, some senators make formal complaints: ["Senators assail touch-screen voting"]. Note the subhead: "Too many problems to correct by November's election, a Democrat and a Republican say." Ouch. Not good.
* In San Diego, county election officials post their problems: ["County polling reports"]. I particularly like this entry:

Approximately 40% of the PCM devices failed to "boot-up" to the correct screen when turned on by the poll workers.

Vanity Fair also has a pretty extensive article about the DRE machine problems which I have only skimmed [it came in the mail Thursday]. But the overall tone of the piece, as well as Graydon Carter's editorial - that Republicans will steal the election in 2004 by hacking into these voting machines - is really above and beyond.
In the article, the author also elevates Bev Harris as just another courageous grandmother fighting to expose the problem. Yet, and not surprisingly, the article ignores Harris' rabid partisanship and her outrageous - and near slanderous - attacks against conservative Christians. It also revises Harris' history in investigating these problems - ignoring her conspiratorial and fraudulent attacks against paper ballots scanned by optical scanning machines.
As I have shown on this blog, the allegations are baseless - since optical scanning machines have been proven time and again to be more accurate than human counts: ["Vote fraud, conspiracies, and real solutions to the elections problem"].
Harris is right about the DREs. But the article, which should have been more balanced, does a disservice to democracy by ignoring the partisanship of Harris and others.

Bush and Kerry: Clueless on manufacturing

OK, so, after five months of waiting, Bush finally appoints his "Manufacturing Czar." But the guy likes building plants in China ... so, he won't be the "Manufacturing Czar" after all: ["Bush Economic Team Draws Fire Over Jobs"].
Then there is Kerry, calling on help from Mickey Kantor to explain Kerry's manufacturing policy. Kantor held a conference call with reporters on March 11: ["Greenspan Warns Congress Not to Create Trade Barriers"].
Frankly, screw Greenspan. He is wrong on this issue and you can tell by the use of his words. Tariffs aren't "trade barriers." Tariffs are "taxes" on imports. There is a difference. For over 200 years, tariffs were used to punish and reward good countries. They were also used to collect revenues when there were no income taxes! Don't these people know American history? But back to Kerry and Bush.
Of course, Kantor is the same guy who negotiated NAFTA - which Kerry voted for - and helped President Clinton ram it through the Congress, leading to the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs.

Democrats shouldn't limit primary debates

Democrats shouldn't limit primary debates: Here is my latest column on the move by some to limit the number of candidates involved in the Democratic debates.
With less than three months until the first presidential primary votes are cast, Democratic insiders and the mainstream media have started their pathetic practice of deciding which candidates are "electable" and who should have a seat at the debate table.
In an editorial in New Hampshire's Concord Monitor last week, the newspaper cited low ratings and "tedious sniping" as the reason "drastic changes" were needed in the debate process. Of course, the newspaper ignored the fact that all the debates so far have been broadcast on cable news channels and C-SPAN, cable-only stations which historically garner low ratings. Then, there was Donna Brazile, Al Gore's former campaign manager in 2000, who said, "It's time for the rubber to hit the road. It's time for some of the candidates to stay home." Brazille - who is black - wouldn't name names, but it was very clear from her comments which candidates should not be included in the debate: The lower tier candidates which include the only two black candidates and the true peace candidate. Strangely, Brazile is chairman of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute - a group that is supposed to be promoting choices and participation.
How is that for hypocrisy?
For political junkies like me, this behavior by the media and bigwigs at the DNC is not a surprise. Throughout the history of the modern political era, insiders and the media have manufactured frontrunners to make politics easier to digest. By first establishing a tier system to rate the candidates, the media and insiders control the process a year before even the first debate.
There are several factors in deciding who a top tier candidate will be. One is a candidate's ability to raise scads of money. In election after election, campaigns have become obscenely expensive. In the past, all a candidate needed was a million or two and the commitment of some important party activists. Nowadays, $5 to $10 million a quarter has to be raised in order to win what some are calling "the invisible primary." The cash is then used to bombard the voters with manipulative ads. In order to get the money for the ads, the candidates have to lean on the moneyed interests within the party. It also helps to curry favor with the Washington media establishment so the same interests know you're working to be taken seriously.
After the tier system is created, the media can then ignore the lower tier candidates and spend all its time emphasizing the handful considered "electable" by the cocktail crowd. Essentially, the political pundits make the decision for you - by judging who can win and who can't - before a single vote is cast.
Isn't that nice of them?
These electable candidates will then get the majority of coverage from the big newspapers, national magazines, and major television networks, while the other candidates struggle to be heard. This lack of coverage can be the death of a lot of campaigns since most voters have other things to worry about than candidates in a final election a year away. But similar to the logic that "early money is like yeast," free media - especially during presidential campaigns - is one of the only ways a campaign can reach the voters in the very early stages of a candidacy. Being able to participate in the debates is essential.
Complaints by the media and the insiders that debates are too crowded are not unusual. In 1992, there were six Democratic candidates involved in the early debates and that was too many for some of the insiders. In 1988, seven Democrats participated in the debates and many candidates lasted until the Super Tuesday primaries. In 1984, as many as eight candidates were on television in the debates.
Republicans also have a history of crowded presidential debates. In 2000, as many as nine candidates participated in the primary process before a few candidates dropped out. Former-Ambassador Alan Keyes - a black Republican - was allowed to participate in all the debates even though he didn't have a chance in hell of winning the presidency. In 1996, nine candidates participated in the debates and the media didn't say a thing.
The logic of limiting participation in the debates is that only the "winnable" candidates would be allowed. But with that logic, only one candidate should be allowed to debate since there will only be one winner. As well, the insiders are selling many of these candidates short. Gore's campaign was probably one of the worst run campaigns in the history of the party, all the more reason not to listen to cranks like Brazile. But almost all of the states he won in 2000 will probably be won by most of the Democratic field. This means that the nominee really only has to win one southern or Midwestern state in order to galvanize enough Electoral College votes to beat President George W. Bush. Most of the lower tier candidates are from Midwestern or southern states while most of the top tier candidates - the supposed electable candidates - are not.
So, while the insiders think they are bettering their odds by suggesting exclusiveness, they may actually be costing themselves the election. More importantly, the premise of limited participation calls into question one of the founding principles forwarded by the Democratic Party: Inclusion, or supposed inclusion, of all kinds of activists, voters, donors, and yeah, candidates.
What the complainers don't realize is that debates are no longer about having an extensive conversation about policy initiatives. That reporting is something people will need to read - after newspapers and magazines conduct long sit down interviews with the candidates. Debates have become short boxing matches where the candidates' visual and verbal presentations are accentuated. Who scored the best jab, the best one-liners, who slipped out of their chair during the low-key questioning period, are all repeated and analyzed on the post-game news shows. Media outlets are even tracking the number of seconds each candidate received during a 90 minute debate, not unlike football possession time or pitch counts for a starting baseball pitcher.
If the media wants a serious discussion about issues, it doesn't need to limit the number of participants. It can simply lengthen the format and time candidates are allowed to answer questions. While good candidates should be able to explain their positions on the invasion of Iraq, tax cuts, and health care within 30 to 60 seconds, a little more time would allow them to get more specific.
The question then becomes, Will the American people be patient and attentive enough to sit through these answers, keep a personal scorecard, in order to find a candidate to support? So far, the voters seem disinterested whether there are two candidates or nine.

... and some differing follow up ...
What a difference a day makes. I admit, I have been working on the above column for a couple of weeks. In fact, this version was the third version and edited down to the main point about limiting access to the lower tier candidates. However, I got up this morning to see that the Pew Research Center For The People & The Press has done some surveys and found that Republicans are making gains in swing and solidly-Democratic states: ["Poll shows dramatic GOP gains nationally"].
Now, these are polls of a small amount of people, so there really isn't any proof - just guesstimates - that the country is swinging right. A better way to do the analysis would be to check the voter registration numbers in states and track them during an annual period. Then, you might see shifts in party support. While most people don't change their affiliation, it would show how new voters are registering and that might reveal better pattern numbers.
However, that wouldn't necessarily prove that either party had gains just by registration. During the 2000 election, 13 percent of Democrats in Florida and 8 percent of Democrats in New Hampshire voted for Bush, according to CNN's exit polling. I have used these figures - along with others - to make the argument that Ralph Nader didn't steal the election from Al Gore. Independent registrations are trending higher than most political parties which spells trouble from the process because without allegiance one way or the other, the swing voters change the course of elections on little more than a whimsy - an effective ad here, a small scandal there, an exaggerated policy position over here. Because these independent voters have no affiliation to a political party, they can often be swayed by half-truths or out-right lies during the media portion of a campaign.

... McAuliffe is in trouble ...
DNC head Terry McAuliffe is in "limbo" with other Democrats after gubernatorial losses in Kentucky and Mississippi: ["Election result leaves McAuliffe in limbo"]. The Democrats get hammered in 2003. They got hammered in 2002. They got hammered in 2000. How many more losses must the party take before the leadership is canned? Keeping McAuliffe on is like keeping a CEO on while the stock slides. The Democrat's stock has been sliding for 12 quarters. When is someone going to jump in and stop the hemorrhaging?
Second note of the Democratic losses: How much longer will it be before the computer voting conspiracy buffs start blaming optical scanning machine software for the Democrat's losses?
Quick, the clock is ticking ...
It should be noted that when I went to vote on Tuesday for my local municipal elections [most of my candidates lost, BTW], I talked with a couple of precinct workers about the Accu-Vote machines used in my town. Not only are the machines not hooked up to modems - a major plank of the conspiracy argument, all those rightwing Christian hackers out there breaking into the phone lines and manipulating the results - the clerk has seen no major problems with the machines and in recounts they have had incredible accuracy to the paper ballots, similar to the accuracy I posted in my articles about recounts in some of towns I have done research on: ["Vote fraud, conspiracies, and real solutions to the elections problem"].
At the end of the voting, the precinct captain prints out the results from the machine and calls in the results to the clerk. Later, the voting card is taken out of the machine and both the card and the print out are brought to the clerk's office.
So, how do the rightwing Christians hack into the software to manipulate the results again?
I have been thinking about doing a study of counting process with local election boards just for kicks to see what other towns and cities do. It would be interesting to know. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time. Maybe some states use modems. So far, from what I have seen in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, this isn't the case.

Miller, wow!

Georgia Sen. Zell Miller was on "Meet the Press" this morning and wow. I may have to borrow his book at the library because he made shocking sense. He also subtlety took on the vote fraud charges being discussed in Georgia by noting that 5,500 blacks won elections in 2002 despite the losses of an incumbent Democratic governor and incumbent Democratic senator.

"I'm trying to help this party, I am trying to help them with a life-preserver. They can call it Bush-lite but that is where the people are."

Victoria Collier continues the mission

Victoria Collier has started where her father and uncle left off, working to expose vote fraud: ["A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America"].
Good for you Victoria!
I did a bunch of radio programs about vote fraud while doing a talk show on WMFO in the 1990s, including interviewing Collier. This was back before talking about vote fraud and media consolidation - for that matter - was trendy. In fact, only rightwingers talked about vote fraud because they didn't believe that people like Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy could actually get elected.
And we can't forget that it was the Democrats who sponsored the media consolidation. Liberals and Democrats didn't care about media consolidation or vote fraud because, for the most part, their side was benefiting. But now, with the nation split down the middle, with swing voters casting votes for conservatives and Democrats running their negative campaigns and races into the ground trying to out-Republican Republicans, the vote fraud issue is finally being taken seriously.
It is about time - even if the speculation about computer machines and vote fraud isn't completely accurate or correct.

Partisan accusations won't fix elections

Once again, the conspiracy theorists concerned about electronic voting machines have infiltrated the media with more groundless accusations that the Republican Party is rigging elections. The latest was a piece entitled ["All the President’s Votes?"] published by Andrew Bryant in the Independent/UK on Monday, linked here at Common Dreams since the article has been pulled from the Independent’s Web site.
The latest allegations? Well, polling data before the election showed incumbent Democrats in Georgia winning but then they lost because the state has DRE touch-screen voting machines. 
Now, as I have said before on a few occasions, there is vote fraud in America and I don’t trust the touch-screen voting machines because there is no paper trail. However, more information, testing, and data are needed in order to clearly show whether fraud is actually occurring instead of conspiracy theories forwarded by political partisans who don't understand the process.

Kucinich pleads with Greens and Naderites for help ...
Having already raised $ 2 million, Kucinich is really pulling out all the stops: ["Open Letter to Nader Voters and the Greens"]

"I am a Democrat, but I understand that Greens and Nader voters are not just liberal Democrats. Still, I note that in Europe, even when political parties disagree on issues, they are often able to work together with each other in coalition. I'd like to raise that possibility again today. And I note that Ralph Nader has suggested that my candidacy is worth supporting. We all know we will do better if we work together. Perhaps we can find common ground on issues and principles. I would like to open up that possibility. And I would like to ask that you give serious consideration to my candidacy for President. Because a better world is still possible."

...But Norman Solomon says greens have other intentions
["Green Party Taking the Plunge for 2004"]

"The Green Party is now hampered by rigidity that prevents it from acknowledging a grim reality: The presidency of George W. Bush has turned out to be so terrible in so many ways that even a typically craven corporate Democrat would be a significant improvement in some important respects. Fueled by idealistic fervor for its social-change program (which I basically share), the Green Party has become an odd sort of counterpoint to the liberals who have allowed pro-corporate centrists to dominate the Democratic Party for a dozen years now. Those liberal Democrats routinely sacrifice principles and idealism in the name of electoral strategy. The Greens are now largely doing the reverse -- proceeding toward the 2004 presidential race without any semblance of a viable electoral strategy, all in the name of principled idealism. "

Vote fraud, conspiracies, and real solutions to the elections problem

It has taken a long time but it looks like political progressives have finally started grasping the issue of vote fraud and the rigging of American elections. But like many other issues in the political spectrum, both political parties can be faulted for vote fraud and deserve blame for the problem. And unfortunately, these progressive accusers are making wild claims devoid of any real evidence and are weaving conspiracy theories that only Republicans are engaging in the process of stealing elections to gain political power.