Dialing In For Democracy - Now Is Critical

[Chimpanzee]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0103-32.htm

Dialing In For Democracy - Now Is Critical


by Thom Hartmann

Jeff Taylor is one of Vermont's three electors - representatives elected by the citizens of Vermont to vote for President of the United States. He and his two peers have joined the electors of several other states in signing resolutions asking their state's congressional delegation to protest the Ohio slate of electors.

"If they can have fair elections in Kiev," Taylor told me, "why not in Cleveland?"

Here's what troubles Taylor:

If you flip a coin a hundred times, odds are that around fifty times it will come up heads and fifty times tails. In reality, it may be 49-51 or even 47-53, but it will always pretty much evenly split. That's the nature of random events, including random errors and mistakes.

So if the tens of thousands of election "irregularities" being reported all across the nation - but particularly in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, and North Carolina - showed "irregularities" worked randomly to the benefit of both parties, it would be easy to say that we have a broken, but not a stolen or hacked, election system. But that was not the case.

In nearly every case now documented, producing odds not of 50:50 but, according to credible statisticians, sometimes rising to 1:250,000,000, "irregularities" seem always to favor George W. Bush or other Republican candidates. These include:


machine errors

misplaced machines

unmailed absentee ballots

certification of more votes than registered voters in some areas, and dramatically low voter turnouts in other areas

modem-connected voting machines and tabulators

different standards for provisional ballot recounts in different areas

phony companies registering voters and then tearing up the registrations of people who checked one party but not the other

voting machines defaulting to a particular candidate or 'jumping' by recording a vote for one candidate when another's button was pushed

exit polls not corresponding with reported votes

voting elections officials creating what look like phony election machine poll tapes and tossing original, signed tabulations in the garbage.
And while the vast majority of the "irregularities" in 2004 are breaking to the benefit of George W. Bush, they also did so in 2000, and for Republicans generally in 2002.

[jimfromthebronx10469]

1. today i called senators clinton and schumer

and urged them to support john conyers.schumers people told me their making no public statements.i expressed my concerns and added i will no longer vote democratic,this after 38 years of dem. loyalty.i ask what's the use if the repugs can alter the vote to steal an election..if our elected democrat leaders wont support john conyers then my friends the democratic party is doomed...thank you:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :dem: :dem:

[nashville_brook]

2. it isn't going to be over for a long time

see this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x232406

we've got the power -- we are a MOVEMENT -- here's why (and how)

no deadlines -- no compromise.