Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that our movement is...

[Yellow Horse]

...falling apart?

Threads on here drop in like a week's time instead of hours, lots of people have "moved on" (wait til 2006 to see how much good it'll do ya'), the Prodemocracy list and calls seem to be done for, as are a lot of the other groups (many broken down in in-fighting over 100% hand-counted paper vs. auditable machines), meantime the HAVA deadline is less than 90 days away and a lot of us are going to get paperless DREs, no one has plans for anything beyond that, HR 550 is probably going to get twisted into "Son of HAVA" complete with REAL ID, there are no more conferences scheduled to discuss any of this face to face with anyone (and I just can't handle another web site or e-mail list to deal with), and...

This is the most alone and most despair I have felt -- honestly -- since November 2. Somebody please tell me that we are going someplace with all this. Please.

[wisteria]

1. People will be back, they're just burned out right now.

Give it a little time and they will be back fighting as good as new.

[RoyGBiv]

2. Moles and trolls, moles and trolls ...

(movie reference)

No, I do not get that feeling, at all.

[catmother]

3. is it just me

read nancy gregg's article "dear elected officials" published on the DU on 9/21/05.

[kster]

7. Heres the link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/09/21_dear.html

[catmother]

9. link

thank you. by the way nancy is my sister. hope you've read her other articles. she's had about 8 published in the last year.

[populistdriven]

4. Don't worry, everything is on schedule with project "X"

[applegrove]

5. Pumpkin - you have 126 posts. There is ebb and flow here. Wait a while.

It comes it goes. Depending on the issues. Oh and - Welcome to the DU :hi:

[Yellow Horse]

6. Well, thanks for the welcome, but I have been here over a year.

Read a lot, don't post much.

But am very active elsewhere and DU is not the only place I've been feeling this.

Edit to add: Oh, and I believe that this issue is central to all others -- if we don't have fair elections with the will of the people being followed, there will be little headway we can make on anything else. This is an issue and a time when we should be flowing, not ebbing!

[applegrove]

8. Sorry - we have no way of knowing. If you've been here lately - you've

seen the odd freeper trying to bring us down. Hard to tell but people are generally suspicious of low post numbers - with good reason. Sorry if you get thrown in with that lot. The ring and runners. The impregnate many and run neocon types. They make a mess wherever they go and sometimes innocents - just expressing real distress - get nailed.

Actually things are looking up. We have the media back actually asking journalistic type questions. Did you think that perhaps we lost some people to CNN? CNN numbers went up by like 400% during Katrina.

So it could be a good thing that it is quiet here. Means the public as a much greater whole than just the DU is getting some real news.

Cheers. I'll try to remember your name. So I don't welcome you again in a year when you are at 350 posts. But I cannot promise that I will remember then.

Sorry.

[mestup]

10. I lurked here a brazillion years before ever posting.

The trend I see lately is many new posters here, searching for answers to questions they may not have had before Katrina.

Each time DU gets vilified by O'Reilly or Free Republic types, the confused and disenchanted are likely to find these forums on the web before finding anything else.

And I'm glad. There are so many intelligent and passionate posters here. It's like an online liberal university for people who find themselves thinking, "WTF!?"

[eomer]

11. There is an ongoing lawsuit in Ohio and one in New Mexico.

In Ohio they are going to depose SOS Blackwell sometime between now and the end of the year.

In New Mexico they are looking at the machines used in 2004.

I don't post as much as I did early this year but I still hang around. I'm hoping that something will develop in either OH or NM in the next few months. That timing would be a great follow-on to the DeLay, Frist, Abramoff, outing, DSM, ... investigations.

[Fly by night]

12. Some of us are busy working in our states -- all of us should be right NOW

Here's the Tennessee legislative platform, which we are drawing much support for now. What is the election reform platform in your state and what are you doing to support it?

Memorandum from Tennessee legislators to the State Election Commission

The responsibility of selecting and approving the voting equipment that will be purchased with federal funds from HAVA rests with the State Election Commission. Because the State Election Commission is appointed by the legislature, and our committee is charged with oversight of such issues, we submit the following recommendations for your consideration and action. Please see attachments for more complete information on the following seven issues.

1. The Commission should mandate that all voting equipment purchased after 9/1/05 will use or produce a voter-verified paper ballot, and that this paper ballot will be retained as the ballot of record by the county.

2. The Commission should mandate that all existing voting equipment that cannot use or produce a paper ballot be phased out of use in Tennessee by 11/1/06.

3. Voter-verified paper ballots are important for many reasons to help ensure the integrity of the election process. They allow for small-scale audits or assessments of the accuracy of electronic vote-counting equipment. The Commission and the Legislature should study, with county election officials and citizens groups, how to conduct small scale (e.g., 5% of votes in each county) mandatory random manual recounts after each election to insure the completeness and accuracy of voting systems used in Tennessee. A process for implementing mandatory random manual recounts with all elections should be in place by 11/06.

4. Control of the election process must remain in the hands of county election officials. The less complex the voting equipment used, the more control that county election officers and poll workers can retain. In counties where punch card voting machines have long been used, continued use should be supported where desired. This option is allowed in the HAVA regulations.

5. HAVA funds allocated for upgrading voting equipment in Tennessee should be judiciously spent. Optical scan systems are not only a paper ballot-based voting system to begin with, but they are also less costly and more efficient than direct record electronic (DRE) equipment and should be considered for widespread use wherever voting systems are upgraded or changed in Tennessee.

6. To meet HAVA requirements for disabled voters (persons visually or physically impaired) to vote privately and independently, counties that will need to purchase new equipment should be directed to choose either Automark ballot marking device or Accupoll e-voting machine, or to consider less-expensive options. At this time, no other e-voting equipment offered by major vendors fulfill HAVA standards for disabled-access voting, nor have they been federally qualified.

7. There is no place in Tennessee electronic voting equipment for the presence of any wireless access capability or any other means for electronically communicating with the voting equipment before, during or after the election process without detection. The Commission should mandate that all voting equipment sold in Tennessee after 9/1/05 should come without wireless capability installed. In addition, all current voting systems in Tennessee that contain a wireless access capability should have that capability disabled or removed from the voting machine before 5/06.

[Stevepol]

13. Nobody has been un-convinced of the truth of the fraud.

Once you see it, you know it's true. Right now, people don't want the truth. They'd rather live under a cyber-dictatorship I guess, but more opportunities will keep coming up and eventually when some well-publicized audits are done or a few well-placed people get enough knowledge and courage, the break will come.

I can only speak for myself, but I ALWAYS check the posts on the 04ERD forum when I log on and kick or recommend the latest vote scam posting, but it's hard to go beyond what we've already gone. The evidence is out there. We've several whistle-blowers, overwhelming statistical evidence, books and articles galore, regular seminars and programs, so there's not much that can surprise us anymore.

We also see the addle-brained bone-headed ignorance of even educated people about this issue. I'm thinking of Mitofsky remarking that the election results cdn't be wrong since it would be impossible for it to happen in so many areas of the country at the same time, never mind that the same voting machines are used in every state of the union and 25 well-placed tricksters could swing the whole election.

I don't see how we could do more than we're doing. We just have to keep on doing it, making the position more and more certain, learning the way to frame the issue in every circumstance. Eventually, we can pray, our ship will come in and the country will achieve something approaching democracy again.

[FogerRox]

14. Fly by night

thats right

1)I have been to about a dozen County Freeholder meetings this year.
2) most of those meetings I put together a presentation-- sometimes 30 pages long.
3)Hosted a Vendor--- DEMO
4) 2 weeks ago-Met With the guys from Liberty concerning ceretification in NJ.
5) Organized 2 local --what noble cause-- protests.
6) went to about a dozen anti war protests. Big & Small
7) NJ is now in the middle of a Governors race

[Cocoa]

15. the same voting machines are used in every state in the union?

how true is that?

[FogerRox]

22. no--

there are about adozen or so different vendors and even more models

[Kip Humphrey]

16. The movement is suffering from

misdirection and burnout.

One simple fact about the movement: until we start spreading the word about our stolen elections and subsequet loss of our democracy, WE GO NOWHERE.

We need, "We the People" - that is, a significant political base - before we should ever expect effective change to be enacted. HAVA has proven to be a distraction of the movement for the simple reason that we don't presently have a sufficiet political base to prevent ANYTHING!

EDUCATE, INFORM, SPREAD THE WORD! These are the activities WE MUST BE PURSUING if we are to win.

[Fly by night]

17. It's not an "either ... or ..." situation.

Here in Tennessee, every presentation we make to any group starts with reviewing the abundant evidence that our election system is broken, that allowing private companies to count our votes in secret is (and always was) a bad idea -- and that the evidence for how this privatized system is being manipulated is clear.

Following on that premise, we then discuss the fact that HAVA is now being manipulated to further this paperless electronic voting trend, not to retard it. And that in every state, the existing HAVA plans need to be revisited to insure that our elections are free, fair and verifiable. I don't know how many other states have the good fortune of catching their Coordinator of Elections in a series of lies about what HAVA requires, as we have been. Revealing those lies -- and getting county election commissions to purge the kool-aid from their veins in order to make decisions (like keeping punch-card systems or choosing op-scan systems over DREs) that will protect the integrity of our elections -- is the best thing we can be doing now. Anyone who ignores the juggernaut that is HAVA and who doesn't fight against a misrepresentation of that law stands the risk of losing verifiable voting for the next generation.

If you're interested in election reform in your state, you have less than 90 days to do something. And the best way to make change is to start from the premise that the system is broken (based on the abundant evidence of election fraud) and must be fixed. Not in the ways that corrupt election officials want it fixed, but in the ways that any small "d" democrat knows are obvious. So don't just sit there typing about the problem -- get up, stand up, show up and speak up -- NOW. Go to your county and state election commission meetings. Write and call your state representatives. Demand voter-verified paper ballots, mandatory random manual audits in every election and insist on no wireless capability in your voting machines -- implementing those three steps alone will make a huge difference.

[BeFree]

18. No Doubt about it, Kip

We need "The People".

Reality: Even on DU there are about 40% (educated guess) of OUR PEOPLE who don't think e-voting is an issue.

We haven't done a good job of reaching out to our own DU'ers. Yeah, a few election reformers show up on occasion at the few threads that go up in the GD Forums, but for the most part, election reformers are absent.

My Gawd, DU is our back yard and we've not cleaned it up yet. How will we ever get the rest of the US to act up if we can't even educate and motivate our closest associates?

Bush is Illegitimate!

[yowzayowzayowza]

19. I haven't seen a single...

DUer who doesn't think e-voting is an issue. Am I really that blind? WTF are you talking about?

[Febble]

20. A suggestion

don't feel you have to convince people the election was stolen in order to convince them that it was stealable.

The case that elections are stealable is watertight. The case that the 2004 was stolen isn't. Even if you personally are convinced it was.

The fact that there is even a question mark over the legitimacy of the 2004 election is proof enough that the system needs reform.

And don't forget disenfranchisment by voter suppression. The case for that is watertight too.

[garybeck]

21. it's just you.

they key players and advocates are still here. the base of supporters are waiting for something to do. you can't expect this forum to be as active as it was right after the election. it's OK, the hard workers haven't gone anywhere.

[Land Shark]

23. Maybe you should be attending the regular conferences?

the pacific northwest is buzzing with activity....