Election Issues

Does Olympia Snowe really want to be the target of waves of anonymous attack ads in support of some conservative primary challenger? Wouldn't a retiring George Voinovich prefer to leave some shards of our democracy off-limits to being sold to the highest bidder? Could John McCain remember why McCain-Feingold was once of his proudest legacies and acknowledge how profoundly the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision damaged everything he was trying to do to safeguard American democracy?

After spending most of yesterday licking my wounds, drinking heavily, and staring morbidly at the metro section of the Dispatch, I am now ready, two days after, to put to pen and posterity my thoughts on this dark November and the American way.

The Democratic Party should disband, dissolve. Force its many malcontents and incompetents back into the GOP, where they belong. The great minds, of which there are certainly few, may find refuge from the storm in my backyard. We will drink beer there, and burn alley trash in great bonfires, and newspapers will be used only for kindling, and the puppet skulls still lingering on my fence posts, leftovers from the Day of the Dead celebrations only a few days before, will be the only reminder that our generation is as doomed as that of our mothers’ and fathers’ – and the yard will be the last known smiling place for any Democrat this year.

Now what?
We need to build a grassroots progressive movement -- wide, deep and strong enough to fight the right and challenge the corporate center of the Democratic Party.

The stakes are too high and crises too extreme to accept “moderate” accommodation to unending war, regressive taxation, massive unemployment, routine foreclosures and environmental destruction.

A common formula to avoid is what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the paralysis of analysis.” Profuse theory + scant practice = immobilization.

It’s not enough to denounce what’s wrong or to share visionary blueprints. Day in and out, we’ve got to organize for effective and drastic social change, in all walks of life and with a vast array of activism.

Yes, electioneering is just one kind of vital political activity. But government power is extremely important. By now, we should have learned too much to succumb to the despairing claim that elections aren’t worth the bother.

Thud goes hope. Whatever the causes of “voter dissatisfaction” and voter despair that gave the party of destruction so much power back, I sit in dread the next morning not so much of the results as of the phenomenon of openly purchased elections.

“The midterms have shattered spending records for a nonpresidential contest, providing a likely blueprint for the frenzy to come when the White House is up for grabs in two years.”

So the Washington Post informed us on Tuesday. The exaggerated influence of corporate money in politics and government has always been a problem, but last January the Supreme Court threw open the floodgates, overturning all restrictions on corporate spending to influence election results. Its 5-4 ruling in the closely watched Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case advanced the spooky cause of “corporate personhood,” giving Wall Street and the military-industrial complex the same free-speech rights as actual people, which means moneyed interests have a new way to game the system.

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce will not reveal the list of individuals and corporations that have funded its election campaign in the Buckeye State, despite having promised to do so in a public hearing.

In Columbus on Monday, November 1, Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney for the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville election theft lawsuit, argued in a racketeering complaint in front of the Ohio Elections Commission that the Partnership for Ohio's Future, an affiliate of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, should disclose its secret donors. We are co-counsel and plaintiff in the King-Lincoln suit.

Arnebeck argued that former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove and the Chamber of Commerce are illegally coordinating donations in Ohio. While the recent Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision allows for unlimited contributions from independent campaign organizations, it does not allow coordination between candidates and independent committees.

Ohio election attorney Cliff Arnebeck has filed a two-count complaint against The Partnership for Ohio's Future, an affiliate of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

Arnebeck charges that the Partnership is "...not truly independent, but rather has been coordinated with the Republican candidates, their agents, committees, parties and their de facto coordinated national campaign being directed by Karl Rove."

He also charges that when the Partnership claims in its advertising that it's "not authorized by a candidate or a candidate's committee" that they are making an illegal "false statement."

Arnebeck is lead attorney in the on-going King-Lincoln-Bronzeville class action lawsuit stemming from the theft of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. We are co-counsel and plaintiff in this lawsuit. On Sunday, October 24, Rove was served with a subpoena agreed to by Ohio's Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, in conjunction with that lawsuit.

The new complaint was filed at the Ohio Election Commission in downtown Columbus on Thursday, October 28.

Election woes got you down?

Imagine the look of contempt on Karl Rove's face this past Sunday as he swaggered toward his star turn on CBS's Face the Nation only to be served with our subpoena sanctioned by the Secretary of the State of Ohio.

The federal subpoena orders Rove to testify in deposition. Our attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, intends to ask Mr. Rove about his role in the theft of the 2004 election, and to discuss his orchestration of tens of millions of corporate/billionaire dollars in the one coming up on November 2, 2010.

As co-counsel and plaintiff in the on-going King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit, we have fought for six years to win justice and full disclosure in an election that Rove stole for George W. Bush.

In the course of this civil rights federal suit, we have seen the illegal destruction of hundreds of thousands of paper and electronic ballots that were supposedly protected by federal law.

If you have a choice, vote the old fashioned way: At the polls, allowing plenty of time, and ready to assert your right to vote, by provisional ballot if necessary, if you are told your name is not on the list. Although it is "easy and fun", vote by mail is second only to Internet voting in the risk it presents to American democracy. To get a glimpse of just how slipshod our control system for vote-by-mail is, read the story of Jeffrey Dean and his prison companion, John Elder:

While in prison, embezzler Jeffrey Dean became friends with a narcotics trafficker named John Elder. While still in prison, on a work-release program, Jeffrey Dean was tasked with creating a computerized vote by mail program for King County, Washington. He began this assignment while working for his brother, Neil Dean, whose business had a contract with King County to provide temporary workers for its huge absentee voting operation. At the time, King County had about 1 million voters, 600,000 of whom voted by absentee.

The May database is not the May database, and the Election Day Polling place are actually triple-counted absentee votes, and it is not possible to print results reports, and the main server for electronic pollbook data is just an old computer used only for military absentee votes, and we can't print an audit log because we never do and by the way, no one can look at the bank of live touchscreens being operated a week after the election together with a do-it-yourself poll tape manufacturing kit.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Let's review the latest whoppers, and then please read on for additional material misrepresentations, big fat lies and links to the actual documents. See for yourself that Shelby County elections officials deserve your nomination for the Pinnocchio Award.

BREAKING - Thursday Sept. 23 11:34 am MEMPHIS: Shelby County Aug. 2010 election

"MAY POLL BOOK" DATA PROVIDED TO INSPECTION TEAM DOES NOT MATCH ACTUAL MAY POLL BOOK

Consultants examining the Aug. 5 Shelby County, Tennessee election found 3,221 more votes than voters on documents provided by Shelby County elections officials pursuant to a court order.

Most voterless votes were found in large Republican precincts, a non-random distribution.

The inspection team sought and obtained documents in connection with a lawsuit filed by ten defeated candidates over irregularities in the election.

Read more about the investigation here.