I don't trust that Obama actually won the Louisiana primary

[Rex_Goodheart]

because I voted on a touch-screen machine that didn't give me a paper printout to use as my official ballot.

This sh*t has got to stop.

[Arugula Latte]

1. I'm an Obama supporter and I agree with you.

We ALL need to know that our vote is recorded and counted correctly. We desperately need to have confidence in election results.

On edit: I have no special feeling or knowledge one way or the other about the accuracy of Louisiana results; but as a general principle I believe ALL voting should leave a verifiable paper trail.

[Recursion]

2. I'm an Obama supporter, and I'll fight for your right to a paper trail

Everyone should be confident in the outcome of elections.

[Rex_Goodheart]

4. Why has this issue died?

Why hasn't our Democratic Congress put an end to this baloney?

[MADem]

10. Because it is up to each state to decide how they run their elections.

Unless the Supreme Court steps in ... like they did with FL.

We don't have "national" voting standards. Each state comes to their own decision as to how they run their voting.

[Alexander]

3. I don't trust that Clinton won New Mexico either.

All you need to vote is a piece of paper and a pen.

Let's go back to that.

[cooolandrew]

5. Okie doke if rigging were to happen it surely would favour the establisment candidate.

[cooolandrew]

7. I trust the result far more this election cycle 06 being the prime reason...

...Many states cleaned up their act over the years and many more volunteer these days. For fair voting you must volunteer to work at polling venues and be objective and impartial.

[MADem]

11. ??

The Military-Industrial-Media Complex wants McCain to win.

They want him to face the candidate who can be slapped around the most, the one who is less known, who has "story lines" in his life that are unknown to Johnny and Jane Voter and consequently can be manipulated.

If there's any 'culling' of candidates, the idea is to get rid of the strongest opponent first. That's what rigging does.

[theHandpuppet]

6. Do they allow you to ask for a paper ballot?

What worries me is our next election here in WV. The last time we were given the option of touch screen or paper ballot but were told this time around it's going to be touch-screen only. Having served as a poll worker I know just how fucked up those machines can be and how the least amount of tampering can screw up thousands of votes. I want a paper ballot and a paper trail.

[billyoc]

8. Those machines have to go. Period. nt

[frazzled]

9. Do the lever machines in New York have a paper trail?

I believe the answer is no. (And these machines are manipulable, too; in addition, voters can make mistakes, because it's not always clear you've pulled the right lever.) Are we questioning the results in NY too?

[Cha]

13. There were no votes for Obama in

Harlem and the investigation is underway(should have something in about 2 weeks). I voted on one of those lever machines and I never thought to question if the right vote would be counted.

[FrenchieCat]

12. At least Obama believes in Election reform.......

Barack as a Constitutional Law Expert and an advocate for Civil Rights is the leader that will get this done for us.

----------------------
OBAMA'S US SENATE RECORD:

S.1975 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 11/8/2005) Cosponsors (4)
Committees: Senate Rules and Administration
Latest Major Action: 11/8/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.

---------------------

S.4102 : A bill to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit the use of telecommunications devices for the purposes of preventing or obstructing the broadcast or exchange of election-related information.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 12/7/2006) Cosponsors (None) Committees: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Latest Major Action: 12/7/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
--------------------

S.4069 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 11/16/2006) Cosponsors (4)
Committees: Senate Rules and Administration
Latest Major Action: 11/16/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.
--------------------

Obama's Rewards

13,000 a year, plus $2,000 for a car--a beat-up blue Honda Civic, which Obama drove for the next three years organizing more than twenty congregations to change their neighborhoods.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/moberg

Obama's organizing history may give few clues about what policies he would pursue as President, but Obama the presidential candidate still shows his roots--a faith in ordinary citizens, a quest for common ground and a pragmatic inclination toward defining issues in winnable ways.

Even when Obama was an organizer, Augustine-Herron told him he would be the nation's first black President. Now the Rev. Alvin Love, whom Obama recruited to DCP, looks at his candidacy and says, "Everything I see reflects that community organizing experience. I see the consensus-building, his connection to people and listening to their needs and trying to find common ground. I think at his heart Barack is a community organizer. I think what he's doing now is that. It's just a larger community to be organized."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/moberg

What Obama has done in the past, not including what he has done thus far during the primaries; bringing new voters into the frey.


Vote of Confidence
A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape—and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama.

In the final, climactic buildup to November's general election, with George Bush gaining ground on Bill Clinton in Illinois and the once-unstoppable campaign of senatorial candidate Carol Moseley Braun embroiled in allegations about her mother's Medicare liability, one of the most important local stories managed to go virtually unreported: The number of new voter registrations before the election hit an all-time high. And the majority of those new voters were black. More than 150,000 new African-American voters were added to the city's rolls. In fact, for the first time in Chicago's history-including the heyday of Harold Washington-voter registrations in the 19 predominantly black wards outnumbered those in the city's 19 predominantly white ethnic wards, 676,000 to 526,000.

None of this, of course, was accidental. The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization.

"It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.

At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama.

To understand the full implications of Obama's effort, you first need to understand how voter registration often has worked in Chicago. The Regular Democratic Party spearheaded most drives, doing so using one primary motivator: money. The party would offer bounties to registrars for every new voter they signed up (typically a dollar per registration).

The campaigns did produce new voters. "But bounty systems don't really promote participation," says David Orr, the Cook County clerk, whose office is responsible for voter registration efforts in the Cook County suburbs. "When the money dries up, the voters drop out." Nor did the Democratic Party always vigorously push registration among minorities, Orr says. "It's not that they discouraged it. They just never worked hard to ensure it would happen."
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-1993/Vote-of-Confidence

-----------------------
Project Vote is the voter-mobilization arm of ACORN. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose professed purpose is to carry out "non-partisan" voter registration drives; to counsel voters on their rights; and to litigate on behalf of voting rights -- focusing on the rights of the poor and the "disenfranchised."

Project Vote’s major program areas include the following:

Voter Participation Program: “, Project Vote has helped more than 4 million Americans in low-income and minority neighborhoods register to vote, including 1.1 million in 2003-04. In the same period, Project Vote reached more than 2.3 million low-income and minority voters to educate them about the importance of voting. Our methodology is based on face-to-face contact between voters and trusted community messengers, generally a representative of a local community organization.”

Election Administration Program: “ encompasses every aspect of election implementation, from voter registration application design to voting booth placement to vote counting and everything in between. Working in neighborhoods nationwide, Project Vote documents voting problems and works closely with elections officials, secretaries of state, and state legislators to enact proactive, pragmatic solutions. A central component of our work is the inclusion of low-income and minority voters through the involvement of our community partners.”

NVRA Implementation Project: “ partnership between Project Vote, ACORN and Demos aims to improve voter registration services at public assistance agencies. Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to offer voter registration to public assistance clients upon application, recertification or renewal, and change of addresses. The Project ... offers technical assistance.” The National Voting Rights Institute and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have recently become co-administrators of this initiative.

The stated purpose of Project Vote is to work within the system, using conventional voter mobilization drives and litigation to secure the rights of minority and low-income voters under the U.S. Constitution. However, the organization's actions indicate that its true agenda is to overwhelm, paralyze, and discredit the voting system through fraud, protests, propaganda and vexatious litigation. In this respect, Project Vote is following the so-called "crisis strategy" or Cloward-Piven Strategy pioneered during the Sixties by Columbia University political scientists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6966

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is the nation's oldest and largest grassroots organization of low and moderate income people with over 200,000 members in over 90 cities. For 35 years, ACORN members have been organizing in their neighborhoods across the country around local issues such as affordable housing, safety, education, improved city services, and have taken the lead nationally on issues of affordable housing, tenant organizing, fighting banking and insurance discrimination, organizing workfare workers, and winning jobs and living wages.

Over the last decade, ACORN chapters have been involved in over fifteen living wage campaigns in our own cities, leading coalitions that have won living wage or minimum wage ordinances in St. Louis, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Boston, Oakland, Denver, Chicago, Cook County, New Orleans, Detroit, New York City, Long Island, Sacramento and San Francisco.

In addition, we have led coalitions to win statewide minimum wage increases in five states - including the huge 71% ballot victory in Florida in November 2004 - which delivered a raise to an estimated 850,000 workers. ACORN is following up that exciting victory by promoting a National Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage through states and cities. This campaign includes cutting edge efforts to win citywide minimum wage increases - as well as ambitious statewide minimum wage ballot initiatives in the battleground states of OH, MO, AZ and CO for November 2006.

In 1998, ACORN established the Living Wage Resource Center to track the living wage movement and provide materials and strategies to living wage organizers all over the country.
http://www.livingwagecampaign.org /

THINGS WE THOUGHT NEVER COULD, CAN CHANGE!
....AND ELECTION REFORM IS ONLY ONE OF THEM!


WE CAN DO THIS IF WE WANT TO!

[sandnsea]

14. We need audited paper ballots

I don't think there are many DUers who would disagree with that.