Six more days to request an Absentee Ballot in California! (Oct. 31)

[Peace Patriot]

The deadline for registering to vote in California is already past. But the deadline for requesting an Absentee Ballot is NEXT TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31. Still plenty of time. For other states, check local rules.

An Absentee Ballot is the ONLY guarantee that you will be able to cast a vote in this election, in the case of electronic voting machine "breakdowns," which have become a pandemic nationwide, and in the case of misuse of voter ID requirements at the polling place to disenfranchise you. In California, the Diebold shill whom Schwarzenegger appointed as Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, has given election officials the go-ahead to provide only "PROVISIONAL" ballots in case of machine "breakdown"--instead of real paper ballots--and ALSO to provide you with only a "Provisional" ballot if your request a real paper paper ballot (which you have the right to do in California). "Provisional" ballots are EASILY tossable. DO NOT vote on a "provisional" ballot, if you can help it.

The ONLY guarantee you have of casting a vote on a real ballot--or of casting a vote AT ALL, by any method--is requesting an Absentee Ballot NOW, and then hand-delivering it to your polling place on election day, or mailing it to your registrar in advance.

(Note: 1st class postage is acceptable, but I recommend mailing your Absentee Ballot certified/return receipt requested, to insure that it gets there--and mailing it ASAP to insure that it is counted early. Also: fill out ballot and envelope carefully, to prevent it being disqualified--with special attention to your signature. Sign the envelope exactly as you signed your voter registration form, and as it appears on your sample ballot and AB mailing.)

With your own Absentee Ballot in your hand at the polling place, you cannot be disqualified from voting; your vote cannot be diverted to a "Provisional" ballot--which can be, and often are, EASILY tossed out--and, if the machines "break down," you will not have to wait in long lines, or leave without voting. Further, if you intend to request a real paper ballot at the polling place, they very likely won't have any available! McPherson says they will "treat provisional ballots like real paper ballots." DON'T BELIEVE HIM! Do NOT assume that you will be able to cast a real vote, or any vote.

Machine "breakdowns" could be used strategically to disenfranchise black, minority, poor and other Democratic and progressive voters. But even if the "breakdowns" are not focused on those voters, the chaos produced by this crapass voting technology, and all the unnecessary complication of voting, and confusion about voting qualifications, voting methods, vote counting, types of ballots, and all the rest, may be deliberate. The fascists are using chaos to fleece us in Iraq. I think they've made a deliberate mess of our election system for the same reason.

California in particular has a huge Diebold problem. Our anti-Dieobld Secretary of State Kevin Shelley--whom the voters elected in the LAST transparent election that we have seen (2002)--was "swift-boated" out of office in 2005, on completely bogus corruption charges, BECAUSE he had sued Diebold for their lies about the security of their machines, had demanded to see their source code, and had de-certified the worst of their machines--the touchscreens--prior to the 2004 election. Schwarzenegger then APPOINTED Diebold shill Bruce McPherson to that office. McPherson has illegally RE-certified Diebold touchscreens and is fast undoing all of Shelley's reforms--including Shelley's providing Californians with a paper ballot option (a real ballot) at the polling place. (Now it's a "provisional" ballot, at the option of corrupt county officials--of which we have many, I'm afraid.)

VOTE FOR *DEBRA BOWEN* FOR CALIFORNIA SECRETARY OF STATE! She is a good election reformer opposing McPherson.

The main problem with our election system is that electronic voting corporations with close ties to the Bush regime and far rightwing causes took it over, during the 2002-2004 period, and are "counting" all our votes with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it. In addition, the voting machines and central tabulators are extremely insecure and insider hackable. All it takes is one hacker, and a couple of minutes, to change thousands if not millions, of votes, leaving no trace. These machines are also "tested" in secret, by the election theft industry itself. With a guaranteed and undetectable 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists (my broad estimate of the %'s), the Bush Republican machine has ALSO been able to suppress Democratic votes in many other ways--voter list purges, and Voter ID suppression--and have even gotten away with blatant violations of the Voting Rights Act with no legal consequences. You put a Bush in office, and you get an Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, and NO oversight of a Kenneth Blackwell or a Katherine Harris. It is a cascade of effects, but the heart of it--and the worst of it--is direct corporate control of the vote counting, a quite new and devastating development that came out of the Anthrax Congress, engineered by major crooks, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by Corporatist 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd). They poured $3.9 billion into fast-tracking these egregiously non-transparent voting systems all over the country. (With typical fascist humor, they called it the "Help America Vote Act.")

(Note: Be advised, though, that HAVA does NOT mandate electronic voting--it just FUNDS it. The big money contracts corrupted everybody and their brother, but, if we can get to these local/state officials with public pressure, we can still legally toss these machines and go back to real vote counting.)

Secretly coded, non-transparent control of the vote counting is the FIRST thing that we must get rid of, in our overall effort, as a citizenry, to peal off the many layers of fascist control over our country. One way to do that is to BOYCOTT THE MACHINES.

THE ABSENTEE BALLOT PROTEST

Many Californians are revolting against rule by Diebold. Absentee Ballot voting has increased to 50% and 60% in some places. The increase is huge--quintupled in some cases--all over the country, but especially in California. And these dramatic increases in AB voting directly parallel the cancerous spread of Diebold/ES&S and other election theft machinery. This revolt of the citizenry is very heartening. It means they KNOW what's going on, and are trying to find a way around it, by voting with an Absentee Ballot. And the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--the Sacramento Bee, the NYT, AP--are ALREADY trying to spin this AB voting revolt as voters choosing "convenience." Absentee Ballot voting has ALWAYS been convenient in California. That is NOT the reason for this enormous increase in AB voting. It is a PROTEST. People DON'T TRUST these Corporate-controlled voting machines, and are REFUSING to vote on them!

Absentee Ballot voting is not particularly secure in this highly corrupt environment, and will not likely insure accurate vote counts THIS TIME. But this amazing revolt of the voters DOES have the potential to END rigged elections, by forcing LOCAL officials to reform the system. Election reform activists need to get out front, and provide some focus and leadership for this indigenous citizen protest against the machines, to push corporate media to interpret it correctly, and to USE IT as a club over election officials in the demand for TRANSPARENT vote counting.

We election reformers have been good--have, indeed, been awesome--at highlighting the problem, and raising public consciousness about our extremely compromised voting system. But we have NOT been good at creating a strategy to defeat these machines. And here we stand on the eve of another election with NO WAY OF VERIFYING THE RESULTS.

Well, I think the people are devising their own strategy--out of desperation! BOYCOTT THE MACHINES! DON'T VOTE ON their goddamned machines! Choose the nearest approximation to the old system of hand-counted paper ballots--vote with an Absentee Ballot. It may not insure accurate vote counts this time--nothing can--but it damn well tells the powers-that-be that millions of people have had it with this latest Corporate-run, democracy-killing, fascist vote stealing method!

It won't stop Bush. It won't stop the war. It won't stop "centrist" Democrats from voting for war, torture, suspension of habeas corpus and an end to women's rights. Yet. But it will stop them eventually. First we have to restore TRANSPARENT vote counting.

JOIN THE REVOLUTION! BOYCOTT THE MACHINES!

VOTE BY ABSENTEE BALLOT!

THROW DIEBOLD, ES&S AND ALL ELECTION THEFT MACHINES INTO 'BOSTON HABOR' NOW!

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THE 2006 ELECTIONS

You wonder why Bush, Cheney and Rove can be predicting the victory of thieves, murderers, traitors and child molesters for another Bush "pod people" majority in Congress. THIS is why. They HAVE the CAPABILITY of stealing the election outright. I don't know what will happen. They might put together a phony Dem majority in the House--with the swing votes being Bushite Democrats (like the ones who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus the other week), to shut us all up. That would be their smartest move. But they also might just steal it again, outright. What's to stop them? There might be civil unrest. What do they care? Bush is already setting up his 100,000 acre getaway in Paraguay, complete with U.S. taxpayer funded military airport, military base and troops. All they have to do is stave off any serious impeachment effort for two more years.

The fundamental problem is that there is NO CERTAINTY about election results, which makes it possible for their buds in the war profiteering corporate news monopolies to spin a total reversal of the pre-election polls on election day. They did it in Ohio, last year, on the election reform initiatives (predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over into 60/40 LOSSES on election day); they've done it in several Senate elections; and I think they did it in 2004 (reversal of a 3% Kerry win of the votes cast, and reversal of a 4%-5% Kerry win of all suppressed votes and votes cast). That's all I'm saying. They CAN do it. And they have. On the other hand, it's possible that there has been a split between the Bushites and the Corporate Rulers--that their interests have diverged (the Bush Junta has become bad for business maybe?), and that such a split--if it has occurred--will result in an election that better reflects the majority of Americans. And if that happens, the better Democrats MIGHT then reform the election system. But until the elections system IS reformed, we do not really have a democracy. And I think it's going to take THE PEOPLE, in thousands of local/state venues around the country, to get it done--with very little help from either party, both of which have leaders who benefit from Corporate Rule.

There is the coming election, and there is the future. Stolen Election III--or half-Stolen Election III (Bushite Democrats controlling Congress)--will be bad, and could be extremely depressing and demoralizing. We must not let that happen. We STILL have a window of opportunity to repair our election system at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some influence, and where decisions about voting systems are still made. The big Absentee Ballot protest at the least tells us that MANY ordinary citizens and voters are NOW AWARE of the problem. Whatever happens on Nov. 7, we must use that momentum and that awareness to get rid of these election theft machines before the '08 primaries and general election.

Finally, I want to cite my two favorite poll numbers, that have greatly heartened me over the last three years.

56% of the American people opposed Bush's war on Iraq way back in Feb. '03, before the invasion. That would be a landslide in a presidential election.

Some say, yeah, but stupid Americans still think Saddam had WMDs and/or had something to do with 9/11. Think about it. That 56% opposition to the war has steadily grown to about 70% today, even with about 50% of Americans still having those bits of disinformation rattling around in their heads. I think it shows discrimination. Many Americans figured it out--that even if Saddam still had some WMDS, it wasn't worth a war; and, even if Saddam had something to do with 9/11, it was minor, and it WASN'T WORTH A WAR. People are TRYING TO OVERCOME the relentless 24/7 rightwing propaganda and think for themselves. They may have believed what Bush said, but they didn't agree with what he did about it. And that original 56%--which must have included some who believed in the WMDS, and some Republicans--didn't trust Bush and didn't believe him that war was the only solution.

63% of the American people oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04).

So, if what we're looking at on Nov. 8 is another Bush "pod people" Congress, or anything less than a solid progressive Democratic majority in the House, please don't blame the American people. Understand that they have been DISENFRANCHISED, and help them to restore their right to vote.

[Mountainman]

1. Be sure to put two stamps on if you have to pay postage to mail it in.

Some CA counties have postage paid ballots and others make you pay the postage to mail in the ballot. It is too heavy for just one 39 cent stamp. Put two 39 cent stamps to make sure it gets there. Whether it is counted or not is any body's guess.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Thanks for the reminder, Mountainman. I kept hearing rumors about this

and couldn't verify it--that two stamps may be required. Best to get it weighed, if you can. And send it certified/return receipt requested.

As to Absentee Ballots getting counted, all in all I would say, get it in early. One trick of corrupt election officials is to "call" an election on the electronic vote, and count the AB votes later. You are more likely to get your AB vote counted for early returns if you get it in early.

As to other perils in AB voting, the question is, if your choice is to vote on a machine manufactured by a Bushite corporation, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--whose purchase enriched, and continues to enrich, hostile rightwing corporations and corrupt officials--or to cast a vote IN PROTEST against this democracy-killing technology, which should you do?

I say: BOYCOTT the machines! FLOOD election officials with MOUNTAINS of Absentee Ballot votes--to put so much pressure on these officials that they will be forced to reform this rigged system, or resign.

The massive increase in Absentee Ballot voting is bound to bring new scrutiny to how AB votes are handled and counted--all to the good. With 50% and 60% of the people voting AB in some places, they had better mind their p's and q's. And AB voters and others can HELP this happen, by DEMANDING better procedures--for instance, the hand-counting of AB votes, and posting of the results, before any electronics are involved, and the refusal to call an election before ALL the votes are counted.

Standard transparency, and democracy.

If the number of people who WANT transparent vote counting--92% in a recent Zogby poll--all voted by Absentee Ballot, we will have created a paper ballot system by default--and then we can deal with the central electronic tabulators (also run on "trade secret" code, also highly riggable).

The Montgomery Bus Boycott didn't end segregation overnight. But it was a start. If you want to end segregation, STOP USING THEIR SEGREGATED BUS SYSTEM!And stop paying them money to segregate you!

If you want to end rigged elections, STOP VOTING ON RIGGABLE MACHINES! And stop election officials from giving these rotten corporations more of your money!

The black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, chose to walk to work. We should choose Absentee Ballot voting because it is the one way that we can NOT vote on their machines.

Anyway, a whole lot of people are making that choice this election. We are seeing a huge protest against the machines right under our noses, by individual citizen effort and choice--largely unorganized--and amounting to huge outpouring of DISTRUST and opposition to non-transparent, corporate-controlled electronic voting systems. And they will not be left standing in a long line, or forced to vote "provisionally" when the machines "break down."

[KingFlorez]

3. I've got mine all filled out and ready to go