Election Issues

Struggle: a Documentary set primarily in Ohio examines several conditions that lead to George W. Bush's victory in the 2004 Presidential election. This film places the audience right in the action with a unique "street level" perspective on the struggle to Protest Publicly or Vote Democratic in this American Society. Come see it at the Free Press Second Saturday Salon, Oct. 11.

The Producers of Struggle Struggle the Movie will be releasing segments of the film over the next month up until the eve of the 2008 Election. This film is a critical observation of an Electoral System in chaos which has produced subsequent fraudulent elections of President George W. Bush, and threatens to deliver another fraudulent result in the 2008 Presidential Election.

Struggle is the most recent "Street Level" Documentary from Mental-Rev Productions, directed by Roger Hill and in association with The Free Press www.freepress.org.

The Columbus Dispatch editorial of September 19 proclaimed: “Votes of confidence” and the editors offered this subhead: “Poll shows Ohioans trust elections to be fair, with accurate results.” The Dispatch touts a poll by the Institute for Public Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati demonstrating that most voters have confidence in the Ohio election system.

This is a bit like the Vatican scribes announcing in medieval times in a Papal bull that the vast majority of people believe that the world is flat. The Dispatch, with its usual Republican operative arrogance, writes “The outlandish conspiracy accusations concerning the 2004 election have been intended to convince the Democratic rank and file that the GOP ‘stole’ the Ohio vote to ensure President Bush’s re-election.”

As Goes Ohio...Election Protection Conference

Bob Fitrakis and Steve Rosenfeld on pre-Election Day Board of Elections Monitoring Project
Link: Fitrakis & Board of Election Monitoring

Keynote Address - Mark Crispin Miller delivers the keynote speech at the As Goes Ohio...Election Protection Conference, held Sept. 24 and 25 in Columbus.

Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University and author of the books: "Loser Take All," "Fooled Again, How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections" and "The Bush Dyslexicon." He is known for his writing on American media and for his activism on behalf of democratic media reform.

YouTube Link: Mark Crispin Miller Keynote (second one from left)

Mark Crispin Miller Interview:

The 'Trinity' of Reform

Interviewed by EON's Mary Beth Brangan and Jim Heddle, author, activist MARK CRISPIN MILLER talks about meltdowns, bailouts and what he calls the 'trinity' of reforms necessary to restore voting integrity in America: Election, Media and Campaign Finance reform.

An electronic voting machine test in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, on Friday revealed a programming error that, had it not been caught and corrected before the start of early voting next week, would not have counted hundreds -- or possibly thousands -- of votes for president and U.S. Senate in this Democratic stronghold.

The software error concerned straight party voting, where voters fill in one oval on their paper ballot that indicates they want to vote for all the candidates from a political party. The test revealed that the county's vote-tabulating computer, which scans the ballots and compiles the vote total, was not counting "straight party" votes for president and U.S. Senate.

"It was a simple error," said Rick Padilla, a senior system supervisor for the Santa Fe County Clerk office, which runs county elections. "When they did the programming, they didn't link the oval to the (presidential and senatorial votes on the) straight party ticket."

CHICAGO – With 31 days until the presidential election, Rainbow PUSH Coalition has increased its efforts to register voters. During the past week, they registered 2090 people in the Chicago area.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., founder and president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, opened the international broadcast of Saturday Morning Forum with a call and response chant, “Say: ‘I must register and vote’, ‘register and vote’.”

Rev. Jackson said the next president must correct the financial crisis on “your street and Wall Street.” This week the $700 billion bailout plan was passed by Congress in an attempt to get banks to start lending to each other again.

“This bailout doesn’t include a plan for the 6 million homeowners in foreclosure,” Rev. Jackson said. “When you lose your home, your neighbor’s home loses value, so really, at least 42 million homeowners are suffering. It is time to look at what happens and where we go from here. Where is the hope for the people who lose their homes?”

In his sermon, Rev. Jackson preached about the “middle class” and “working class”, referring to the terms as “buzz words.”

Ohio 2008 has opened with a surge of first-time voters and the subpoena of a shadowy Bush electronic operative who may have helped steal the White House, a subpoena that may be followed by one for Karl Rove.

The presidency could again be decided here by how well what’s left of the American democratic process can be protected. So election activists are asking concerned citizens everywhere to become registration volunteers, poll workers and judges, Video the Vote observers and to conduct post-election hearings with legal standing.

In-person balloting began Tuesday, September 30, as new Ohio voters registered and voted simultaneously. Thousands crammed into county facilities throughout the state. Set to continue until October 6, the innovation came by accident in an otherwise repressive piece of legislation foisted on the state by Republican legislators after the theft of the 2004 election.

The GOP has since sued to stop this simultaneous register-and-vote process, but lost 4-3 in the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court. Thousands of new Buckeye voters have now surged into election centers, and may do so through October 6.

The old presidential political truism  "how goes Ohio, so goes the nation" will likely hold true again this year, but there are other emerging "Ohios" as well.

One such state bandied about by pundits is Virginia, straddling the Mason-Dixon line to the south in much the same way the Buckeye State straddles it to the north.  With its rapidly sprawling share of the DC megalopolis giving it an increasingly "microcosm of America" character, Virginia has everything but the delegates - 13 to Ohio's 20 - to be a true kingmaker in the convoluted matrix known as the electoral college.

A better - and more surprising - pick for state-most-likely-to-be-the-next Ohio is tri-metro North Carolina, one state deeper in the south but with a demographic that mirrors Ohio's in many key ways.  

Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem are the Tarheel State's Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, and the exurban sprawl filling in the space between Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem is quite like that between Cincy and Cowtown. 

We are constantly being asked: "What can we do to stop the 2008 election from being stolen?"

Because we broke many of the major stories surrounding the theft of the 2004 election in Ohio (and because after four years it is abundantly clear that election most definitely was stolen) the flow of inquiries is heartfelt and non-stop. We cannot afford to have this happen again on November 4.

There is a simple answer for what you can do: be a poll worker.

There are additional options: be a poll judge, a poll observer, a member of a video the vote team, a voter registration researcher and assistant, an organizer for a post-election public hearing, and more.

By Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis
We are constantly being asked: “What can we do to stop the 2008 election from being stolen?”

Because we broke many of the major stories surrounding the theft of the 2004 election in Ohio (and because after four years it is abundantly clear that election most definitely was stolen) the flow of inquiries is heartfelt and non-stop. We cannot afford to have this happen again on November 4.

There is a simple answer for what you can do: be a poll worker.

There are additional options: be a poll judge, a poll observer, a member of a video the vote team, a voter registration researcher and assistant, an organizer for a post-election public hearing, and more.

Hurricane Ike has made it clear that paper ballots must be made available for all voters in Ohio and throughout the nation on November 4.

Ike has blown all the way up into the Great Lakes region with devastating impact. Power has been knocked out and airports shut by gale-force winds up to 78 miles per hour. Days later, hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners remain blacked out, and casualties still mount. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has declared a state of emergency, with up to 2 million Ohioans still without power.

A repeat performance on election day could change the course of US history if paper ballots are not universally ready.

A bitter battle now rages here in the Buckeye State over whether the Secretary of State’s office should provide as many paper ballots as voters might want.

Under current arrangements, half or more of Ohio’s may show up to the polls and be forced to cast their ballots on electronic touch-screen machines. Of 5.4 million ballots cast in 2004, George W. Bush’s official margin of victory was less than 119,000 votes.