RFK Jr and Pap: "Is Your Vote Safe?"
Bobby: “There are about 30 scams the republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by democrats and republicans but it was passed by a republican congress with a republican senate and a republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for democrats to register, for democrats to vote and then for democrats to have their vote counted.
“One of these requirements under HAVA is called “the perfect match” and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this--just this one scam. And what it does is they use a computer system to compare your registration application to all other government records of you in the state. So they’ll look at your social security records, your motor vehicle records and any time you’ve had any interaction with the government and if there is any information on your voter registration that is different than the information on another government record that they find they remove you from the voting rolls.
“For example, if I registered as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and yet my motor vehicle license said Robert Frances Kennedy Jr. I’d be removed from the rolls. If your initial is different, if you leave an initial out, if you leave a “Jr.” out, if you leave a hyphen out in your name. And what they’ve done is a study in New York that said 80% of the errors are errors that were done by state clerks who are taking down this information. And particularly immigrant communities that people tend to vote democratic, people have names…spell Muhammad with an “o” instead of a “u” (crosstalk)
Pap: “Are the democrats suing to stop this?”
Bobby: “No, the democrats are doing nothing to stop it. In New Jersey, which is a swing state, 300,000 voters in New Jersey were just sent letters saying that they are now ineligible to vote. New jersey is nice enough to actually notify them--most states will not even notify them. And New Jersey intends to send out 870,000 letters so that is three quarters of a million people off the voting rolls in a state that could decide this vote by 50,000 votes. And these are democrats that are being pushed off the rolls.
Bobby: “Let me tell you about one other of these scams people should know about. If you’re a newly registered voter--and of course the democrats have done these gigantic registration drives--12 million people on registration--if you’re a new voter you MUST include your license or some other state I.D. when you come to vote. What that means is that if you’re a college kid (and college kids now--they’re sending in absentee ballots--they’re not going to the voting place, they do everything online or they do everything remotely--they don’t dream of going to the precinct house voting on election day and waiting in a long line) so if they send in the absentee ballot and they don’t include a color copy of their license their vote is going to be thrown into a trash can. And none of these people know this because you have had to read the law in order to know it. So there is no notification for when you fill out your registration form, so all of those 12 million people that the democrats have registered: those ballots are going to be just thrown out.
Pap: “And if democrats won’t talk about this how the hell’s anybody gonna know about it? I’m involved with this kind of thing every day--I didn’t know that until you just told me. The media is not talking about it. How in the hell is somebody gonna find this out? It’s just incredible.
Bobby: “Hopefully--Obama is getting 66 million dollars a month--hopefully somebody in the democratic organization is going to pay some attention to this before election day.
RFK jr. and Mike Papantonio would like to thank Orleans at Democratic Underground for helping report this story. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/orleans/243
- FILED UNDER: Host Posts
- September 22, 2008
Register. Re-Register.
Then, register again.
And then, check your registration status soon thereafter.
If it doesn't show as registered and active...
Register AGAIN.
Of course, this is ridiciulous and should not need to be done.
But it is what it is.
The GOP is going to try their damndest to hold onto power.
If you do not want that to be the case, it's going to take some extra work this year.
Unfortunately.
But if you care enough to end this disaster, you'll care enough to do the extra work.
Let's get to it, folks.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/actioncenter
http://action.barackobama.com/page/s/volunteer/
https://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php
Clock's ticking...
____________________
"We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace."
"Power to the peaceful..." --Franti
This is where the election will get stolen
Yes I'm worried about touchscreen machines screwing up votes and Republicans using intimidation and deception to prevent people trying to vote, but the big thing that makes me think the Republicans can steal it again is this purging of voter registrations. At least challenges at the polls can be contested most of the time, and I'm not convinced deception works. This purging however might be on a bigger scale than we realize, and literally millions of people might be wrongly turned away from the polls. Frankly, other than telling people to verify their registrations, I don't know what to do about it. People in states with registration at the polls should bring ID just in case, but those states rarely have these problems because purging and caging is so easy to thwart. Long term, we urgently need to go national with election day registration. Short term, I don't know. Even if someone checks their registration, couldn't purging be done after that? Can't another registration mean another clerical error? Is there someone who can sue to stop it?
The Raven's Blog: May the Better Bird Win
http://www.ravensblog.net
Is there a link
By the way, is there a link to the report on the purging in Colorado?
The Raven's Blog: May the Better Bird Win
http://www.ravensblog.net
purging
To get some action it would be very helpful to know the source of RFK Jr"s comment about Colorado. We need more than a rumor. We need to prove this is going on, where it's going on, who is doing it. Who has that information?
I'd like clarification...
As a local Colorado county party chair, I have not seen a single thing about a database-driven purge a-la Florida in our state. We *have* recently had a massive voter database purge, but it was based entirely around inactive voter rolls and the voters purged matched almost perfectly with our own contact failure data, indicating moved or deceased voters.
Also, in Colorado, we do not require a color copy of a driver's license. A quick check of the Colorado SoS's office will provide registration and mail-in ballot application forms along with the requirements for each - no color copy is required, and in fact utility bills still suffice for mail-in ballot verification.
Colorado Disenfranchisement Overstated
The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. quotation above is misleading. The figure RFK Jr. was probably referring to is the 19.4% figure who were purged from 4 years ago, not 25% of voters who were "just removed."
I just got off the phone after interviewing Rich Coolidge of the CO Secretary of State's office.
He said CO has about 3 million registered voters.
In the year 20007, just under 200,000 names came up as discrepant when they converted the data from county data to state data. The procedure is then to send these names to county board of elections who send letters to those voters telling them if they don't clear up the discrepancy their registration will be canceled.
Another 90,000 moved from county to county within CO or out of state.
Even if we add these two numbers together, it's about 10% of total registration, and it would be an exaggeration to say all those people were removed from the rolls, because they weren't. There were some additional names which came up as imprisoned or deceased, but that number is apparently less than these other two categories.
As for the "just been removed" claim, Coolidge says that since January 1, 2008, just over 45,000 registrations have been canceled, and of those 25,000 have moved (and, as long as they re-register in the new location, not then lost as voters). But even if we count all 45,000 of those canceled registrations, if these figures are correct, that's 1.5% of the registered voters in CO, not 25%.
I asked Rich Coolidge about the ethnic breakdown of these numbers and he said they don't have data by race so they don't know.
I ran these figures by the folks in Greg Palast's office for a comment, and Zach Roberts said the Secretary of State's office had refused to return their phone calls or email.
Reality is bad enough. Let's be careful not to overstate.
I emailed the ring of fire address yesterday but haven't heard back yet.
Okay...but...
There are hundreds of people getting voters to register. As a new voter in CO, I did not realize I needed to mail in a copy of my driver's license. The person who "helped" me register told me I didn't need to provide a CO DL number or proof of address.
Luckily, I decided to check my status. I immediately faxed in a new copy of my voter reg with a copy of my CO DL when I saw that not only was I not listed in CO, but was not listed anymore in Texas, either.
May I should register as a republican this time? Just to cover my bets.
Try This!
Crazy as this may sound, how about this idea?
President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosylnn actively campaign for democratic elections in foreign countries, especially those with known dictorships. Write them at carterweb@emory.edu and tell them "Charity begins at home!".
In other words, ask for theirs and the International community to provide oversight into our OWN elections. What kind of message would that send if thousands or hundreds of thousands of American's asked for outside "help" because NONE CAN BE FOUND THROUGH OUR OWN CHANNELS!?
American elections are being held hostage - there is overwhelming proof of this since 2000 and the foxes guarding the hen house don't seem to interested in fixing "their" system.
So let's do to them what they did to us - go around them!