Left of Center?

July 28th, 2008

Much to look at today — and it was a toss up as to which topic [Obama or voting] should take bonus position; both are worthy of our attention. But first, a snip that caught my eye — look at this headline:

Robert Novak Brain Tumor Diagnosed

There will be less angst over the Dark Prince than there was over the Old Lion of Congress, but … wonder how much they used their cell phones?!

Obama’s ‘risky’ visit to the world, away from the Punch and Judy campaign show, turned out to be picture perfect in more ways than one, everything breaking for him. And he was unaccustomedly present on Sunday TV, punching up his victory.

Coaxing a glitch into a firestorm, the McRib camp put out an ad that O refused to visit troops because he couldn’t take pictures — truth is, the Pentagon informed him that he was unable to bring campaign aids with him, and since he’d already switched from diplomatic to campaign hat, he bypassed in order not to create a political issue by using campaign funds for the trip. MSM seems unwilling to report truth on this one; too ‘nuanced,’ I guess.

The ‘Liberal media’ bias against Obama is pretty apparent; also gone underreported is the report that foreign diplomatic workers were barred from attending Obama’s Berlin speech, but not from flocking to McCain’s Ontario speech. The Liberal media meme is kind of like the notion that the ‘middle’ is somewhere between Bush and Obama … no, that middle is still Far Right; or the smoke being blown that the majority of the nation IS IN that middle; NOT.

The media is not Liberal … it’s “for profit.” Period.

Clearly, McRib’s nastiness over Obama’s big crowds and respectful international attention has to do with his own dinky crowds and missing ass-kissers; I read a report that he showed up in some small town this week to have his plane met by a single reporter. He would be better off, cheesy as he is, not pouring any more whine over the last weeks issues — indeed, you’d think he’d want a little time without the spotlight to re-think his campaign; he’s been painted into a corner with the ‘time line’ business, now that Maliki and even Bush are willing to shift toward Obama’s plan. Mac is running entirely on the efficacy of the surge — and the news out of Iraq indicates that there’s new problems brewing there along with an up-tick of violence.

The series of events that led him to a Fudge Haus in Pennsylvania while Barack was giving his Berlin speech to 200,000 pretty much says it all — and these comments from a guy over at HuffPo who was live-blogging the event:

The McCain campaign alerts me that their candidate is now juggling six flaming chainsaws, and it’s really awesome, and you’re missing it.

and later

Meanwhile, John McCain is about to circumnavigate the state of Ohio in a jetpack that he designed and built himself. It’s too bad we are missing it!

Obama is moving on to huddle with his economic advisers this week [including Warren Buffett] while McSame continues to rail on about war [the one topic that animates him;] leaving an impression in the minds of the nation that Obama looks presidential and in-charge while Mac looks … well … old and cranky. Yet still we hear what a ‘horse race’ this election is … when polling shows that’s a lie. Blame MSM who wants us breathless and watching, reading, wondering ’til the very last minute. The Dems still have hurdles to leap … but not the ones being reported.

This isn’t a horse race — it’s shaping up to be a rout. Barring major scandal or October Surprise, Obama’s got this in the can … crusty old white Republicans and generational issues be damned.

With Obama enjoying a nine-point lead nationally [the polls flip around but the national indicators are stable] and Johnny Mac so desperate to get attention that he’s gone a bit twisted and whiny, it’s important to revisit the delivery system for votes once again; we should have learned this lesson by now, but it’s still a major problem. Voter rolls are in jeopardy due to the usual hitches and bumbles, a continuing GOP push to remove those they’d rather not see vote, and more … this season we have hundreds of thousands of people being evicted from their homes and changing address, putting their vote in limbo.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the impeachment business; I spent Friday night watching truth spoken on C-Span, one witness after another … while the rest of the nation pretended things are ‘normal’ in an election year.

It seems clear … the stanglehold the Right had on American politics is soooo “over” — it’s more like the desperate grip of someone sinking into quicksand, clutching an overhead vine. What comes next, though we’ll have to fight for it, is Left of center for real.

Jude

More MSM Malfeasance — The Conyers Hearing And Tom Brokaw’s So-Called “Interview” Of Obama.
Lawrence Velvel, OpEdNews
July 28, 2008

Here are two recent impressions. They will be stated in conclusory fashion, without the usual supporting elaboration and details.

Last Friday John Conyers held a hearing where several witnesses (e.g., Vincent Bugliosi, Bruce Fein, Rocky Anderson, Elliott Adams) made truly powerful statements about the immorality, criminality, and incompetence of the current administration. The hearing was carried live on CSpan.

Did the mainstream print media write about the hearing the next day, Saturday? The New York Times didn’t – there was not one word about it in Saturday’s Times. No doubt the geniuses who brought us WMDs and didn’t tell us about NSA spying before the 2004 election — thus respectively bringing us Iraq and a second term for Bush — thought that what was said at the hearing on Friday shouldn’t be written about because much of it is old news in their minds. Thus, better to fill the paper with numerous lengthy stories whose details, or even existence is often of little interest or consequence to most of us. The Boston Globe did write about the hearing, but almost entirely failed to write about the crucial parts while extensively covering the excuse mongering Republican Congressmen who were engaged in pretenses from the get-go.

I don’t know what other print media did on Saturday, but to me the responses of the Times and the Globe on Saturday say it all about the long term bad impact of the corporate MSM.

Then there is Tom Brokaw, who originally hailed from reactionary North Dakota (didn’t he?), with the smooth good looks and mindless hero worshipping characteristics that lead to success in America, especially on mindless corporate television. I happened upon Brokaw interviewing Obama on Meet The Press on Saturday morning. Now, I don’t watch TV much, but anyone sensate has seen Brokaw a fair amount over the last 20 or 25 years. But never have I seen him so obviously angry, so obviously antagonistic, as when interviewing Obama. It was palpable, and it tells you yet again where the corporate MSM’s collective heads are at.

Let me say for Obama that he made an intellectual monkey out of the transparently stone dumb fool who was interviewing him. Obama remained calm, articulate, thoughtful, parried Brokaw’s most strident efforts, and at times even joked when Brokaw did something especially stupid like reading a tremendously long excerpt from a column by David Brooks disparaging Obama — a reading far longer than any I have ever seen directed at any presidential candidate before.

Brokaw’s conduct was yet another example of where the corporate MSM’s collective heads are at, while Obama’s measured speech and conduct will only make the MSM fear and dislike him the more because even vicious efforts by a major MSM figure seemed unable to rattle him. ++

Americans Move Left, New York Times Misses It
Jeff Cohen, HuffPo
July 27, 2008

The headline atop Saturday’s op-ed page was a hallowed standby for the New York Times: “Americans Move to the Middle.” Assembled by Times”visual columnist” Charles Blow, the text of the column was dwarfed by 15 graphs tracking recent movement in American public opinion, based on Gallup polls. There was one problem: the headline totally distorted the data.

An accurate headline would have been “American Opinion Moves Leftward” — but accuracy was apparently trumped by centrist ideology. (Yes, there are ideologues of the center, as well as of Left or Right.)

It’s a cherished myth of many in establishment punditry that most Americans perpetually and happily find their way to the safe center of American politics. This pleasant status quo consensus is marred, in Blow’s text, by “party extremists sharpening their wedge issues” to rally their bases and caricature their opponents.

Here’s the data presented by Blow and the Times (pdf): 15 public opinion graphs on various issues starting in 2001-2003 and ending in 2006-2008. Of the 15, about a dozen track issues on which there are recognizable positions associated with Right and Left. Of those dozen, the trend in opinion is unmistakenly leftward on virtually every one.

On foreign policy:

– “The Iraq war has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism.” 37% in 2003 and 49% four years later.

– “The U.S. should not attack another country unless it has been attacked first.” 51% in Oct. 2002 and 57% in 2006

– “The government is spending too much for national defense and military purposes.” 19% in Feb. 2001 and 44% in Feb. 2008.

On cultural issues:

– “Organized religion should have less influence in this nation.” 22% in Jan. 2001 and 34% in Jan. 2008.

Asked if the following were “morally acceptable,” trend lines were leftward. “Gay relationships”: 40% in May 2001 to 48% in May 2008. “Divorce”: 59% to 70% in same time period. “Medical research using stem cells from human embryos”: from 52% in May 2002 to 62% in May 2008.

Some might argue that there is one Times graph that trends rightward: “The state of moral values in the country as a whole is getting worse.” It went from 67% in May 2002 to 81% in May 2008. Yet I’m no conservative and I’m absolutely part of the 81% — given the declining morals that descend from corporate, government and religious elites.

So the Times presents Gallup data showing a clear trend toward the left, and calls it a “Move to the Middle.” Is the assumption that we were mostly rightwingers a few years ago? Or is the “move to the middle” line simply more reassuring to an establishment newspaper?

The reality is that longterm trends in American opinion are generally leftward on issues, as documented in well-researched studies.

It’s a reality that troubles those Beltway pundits who constantly goad Barack Obama toward “the center” on issues like Iraq and NAFTA — when they mean away from the center of mass opinion and upwards toward the center of elite opinion.

A demagogue like Sean Hannity instinctively knows this reality, which is why his attacks on Obama emphasize WrightAyresBitterMichelle more than issues. ++

How Obama Became Acting President
FRANK RICH, NYT
July 27, 2008

IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.

He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.

The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”

Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.

Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.

On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”

Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.

But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.

The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” — much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed.

Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (”A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.

“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.

Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.

The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.

When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.

Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.

During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.

The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge. ++

No cliffhanger, more like an Obama landslide
Sidney Morning Herald
July 28, 2008

Luckily for the Republican nominee John McCain Europeans can’t vote in the November US presidential election - just 100 days away. If they could it would be a landslide for the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama.

Nevertheless Senator McCain has reason to be worried - very worried. Last week three leading political scientists declared the US media’s presentation of the election as a toss-up as a “myth”.

Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University, Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, and Larry Sabato, professor of politics at University of Virginia, accused the media of flogging a dead horse in trying to portray the presidential race as a cliffhanger.

It was a particularly bold call for Professor Sabato, who has previously cautioned about Senator Obama’s claims that he can redraw the political map in America.

“While no election outcome is guaranteed and McCain’s prospects could improve over the next 3½ months, virtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed - historical patterns, structural features of this election cycle, and national and state polls conducted over the last several months - point to a comfortable Obama/Democratic Party victory in November,” the three men wrote in Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter.

–”Trumpeting this race as a toss-up, almost certain to produce another nail-biter finish, distorts the evidence and does a disservice to readers and viewers who rely upon such punditry. Again, maybe conditions will change in McCain’s favour, and if they do, they should also be accurately described by the media. But current data do not justify calling this election a toss-up.”

The trio reviewed the national tracking polls and found that Senator Obama has led Senator McCain in every national poll in the past two months, except for twice early on when they tied.

Senator Obama’s margin has been in the 4-6 point range, in contrast to the polls in the election run-ups in 2000 and 2004 which showed much more variation over time, they said.

The state-by-state polls have also consistently given Senator Obama an advantage.

“Obama is leading in every state carried by John Kerry in 2004 along with six states carried by George Bush: Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Indiana, Nevada and Colorado. A seventh Bush state, Virginia, is tied,” they wrote.

But there are other worrying signs for Senator McCain.

A Fox News Poll found that 51 per cent of Americans think Senator Obama will win. Only 27 per cent pick Senator McCain (from 32 per cent last month).

There’s no doubt Senator Obama has run a campaign with few stumbles, apart from his serious mishandling of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright issue. That’s been achieved by keeping a safe distance from media questioning, keeping the images tightly controlled and focusing on reassuring voters about his weaknesses, for instance, his national security credentials.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama is making headway with the demographics that commentators warned would be difficult - and which conversely offered an opportunity for Senator McCain.

A Pew Hispanic Centre poll released last Thursday shows overwhelming support from Latinos for Senator Obama - 66 per cent versus 23 per cent favouring Senator McCain.

On Super Tuesday, Senator Obama received only 38 per cent of the Latino vote, while former rival Hillary Clinton received 58 per cent, CNN exit polling showed.

Senator McCain is facing a particularly hostile political environment. The war remains deeply unpopular in the US, although support for the surge has risen somewhat as its impact becomes clearer. The economic news just gets worse, and Senator McCain is struggling to distinguish his economic remedies from those of George Bush. He is also struggling to convince Republicans he is their man.

Polling data continues to show that Democrats are more satisfied with their party’s nominee than Republican voters and more highly motivated to vote. While Republicans normally benefit from higher turnout among their supporters, that may not be the case this year.

There was a ray of hope for Senator McCain last week with a Quinnipiac/Washington Post poll showing him ahead in Colorado by 1 per cent, reversing Senator Obama’s lead in the last two polls. More implausibly, a Rasmussen poll had Senator McCain ahead again, by 10 points. in Ohio, where Senator Obama has enjoyed a solid lead in the last two polls.

The issue still remains for Senator Obama whether he can overcome what some fear is a deep-seated racist reserve about him in middle America. ++

bonus

Three States Accused of Illegally Purging Voter Lists
The states are swapping data files to find duplicate names, but civil rights attorneys say they are not following federal law to remove them.
Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
July 25, 2008

Election officials in a handful of states appear to be ignoring the federal law dictating the way registered voters may be purged from voter rolls, civil rights attorneys say.

National voting rights groups have contacted officials in Kansas, Michigan and Louisiana in recent weeks because those states appear to be purging registered voters after election officials found duplicate names and birthdays of people on their voter lists and in out-of-state databases, such as driver’s license records.

The states are assuming that a more recent driver’s license or voter registration in another state indicates that the voter has relocated, meaning the voter registration tied to their prior address is no longer valid. While purging voters who move, die or are imprisoned is a routine part of managing elections, the federal law governing purges — the National Voter Registration Act — lays out a multiyear process of trying to contact voters to confirm a change of address before deleting them from voter rolls.

The election attorneys say the NVRA process seeks to err on the side of protecting voting rights and cannot be circumvented by what appears to be a duplicate voter registration.

“The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) limits the circumstances in which a state may cancel a voter’s registration,” the Fair Elections Legal Network, a Washington-based voting rights consortium, said in a June 24 letter to Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh. “The NVRA does not permit cancellation based on a match alone.”

“We are looking at several statewide purge issues,” said Bradley Heard, a senior attorney with Advancement Project, a voting rights law firm. He said that in Michigan, both data matching and mailings by local officials to verify a voter’s registration information were of concern. “We are also looking at a state law that calls for purging a bunch of voter registration records that are otherwise eligible.”

But state election officials in these three states disagree with the voting rights groups, offering different explanations that suggest existing state laws or election management practices pre-empt the NVRA.

“We follow the state law that was adopted by our state Legislature,” said Jacques Berry, press secretary for Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne, a Republican. “It supersedes the NVRA.”

“There is a section of the NVRA that they (the voting rights lawyers) interpret differently than we do,” said Brad Bryant, Kansas deputy secretary of state. “It has been this way for 15 years.”

Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, did not reply to requests to comment.

Voting Rights Groups Target Purges

Last week, Project Vote, which is working in two dozen states to register voters in 2008, sent a letter to Dardenne saying his state appeared to be ignoring sections of the NVRA that require that voters be notified by mail over two federal election cycles before being removed. Project Vote’s attorney said Louisiana Commissioner of Elections Angie LaPlace was treating apparently duplicate database listings as “cases of suspected fraud or some other irregularity.”

Last year, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sued Louisiana over the purging of registrations of refugees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Many people who applied for a driver’s license in a neighboring state — to quickly acquire an ID after losing their belongings in the storms — also were registered to vote without their knowledge, NAACP attorneys said. Those new voter registrations resulted in 21,000 voters being removed from Louisiana voter rolls last August, the group said.

While the NAACP suit was dismissed, Project Vote’s recent letter suggests the state’s voter list maintenance practices have not changed. Project Vote also wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice about the matter, as the agency oversees federal elections in most Southern states as a result of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Louisiana election officials disagreed with Project Vote’s assessment, saying the state has its own voter purge process that “supersedes” the federal law. Berry, the secretary of state’s spokesman, explained that Louisiana updates its voter roll annually with multiple mailings to voters so the lists are accurate in state elections — not just federal contests. He said that process is more rigorous than that outlined in the federal NVRA, requiring, for instance, that voters reaffirm their Louisiana voter registrations in person after receiving a final state notice. Berry said the process was approved by the Department of Justice.

“What we find is in the vast majority of cases the voter has moved out of Louisiana and registered in another state, not realizing that they will not automatically cancel their voter registration,” he said.

The issue of whether states are heeding the National Voter Registration Act reveals how the implementation of the nation’s election laws often turns on a patchwork of local or state policies. In the absence of litigation, whether a state or election jurisdiction is following the NVRA often remains a question of local interpretation.

In Madison County, Mississippi, county supervisors this week rescinded a plan to send a mass mailing to voters, where returned postcards were to be used to purge voters over a two-year period. In this instance, Project Vote notified county officials that its timetable would violate the NVRA, and, according to local news reports, the county’s supervisors decided to abandon the plan and instead prepare for a high-turnout election in the fall.

“The mildest things confuse people and can ultimately disenfranchise people during elections,” Madison County Supervisor Karl Banks said in a Clarion Ledger report. “Here we are willing to disenfranchise people because they don’t send a card back?”

In Kansas, Bryant, the deputy assistant secretary of state, said his state has an established practice of comparing its voter rolls with databases from neighboring states to identify people who have moved. He said Kansas has a “memorandum of understanding” with 11 states to share databases that can be used to clean up voter files. Those states are Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

Bryant said statewide election data has improved in recent years, facilitating the job of updating voter rolls. The federal Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002 after Florida’s presidential election debacle, required states to consolidate county or municipal voter rolls into statewide lists. Bryant said the new statewide lists have created “certain data elements” that can be compared with other states, such as driver’s license data.

“All the comparisons do is create a list of possible matches in each state,” Bryant said, adding that it is then up to each state to decide how it treats that information for purge purposes.

The attorneys for the voting rights groups agree to a point, saying vote list maintenance in itself is an important and necessary goal. However, the attorneys and states disagree about what should come after the matches are discovered — whether to immediately purge voters or to follow the NVRA process of sending postcards to voters over two federal election cycles to verify their residence and registration information.

Bryant said he did not know how many registered voters had been removed in 2008 using his state’s data-matching process.

Michigan’s Secretive Approach

In Michigan, the issues are more complex. Advancement Project’s Heard said there has been an overall lack of “transparency” regarding several aspects of the state’s voter purge process. In 2006, he said, Michigan election officials did a statewide mailing to all voters that did not mention the mailing would be used to verify voter registration information. Still, Heard said the returned postcards were used to remove 230,000 registered voters from voter rolls within 90 days of that year’s general election, which also violates the NVRA, he said.

Jan BenDor, statewide coordinator for the Michigan Election Defense Alliance, a local voting rights group, said state officials cited an April 2007 letter from the Department of Justice pressuring the state to do more to clean up its voter roll for the statewide mailing and August 2006 purge. Ten states received those letters, which critics said was a political move because the claims of sloppy voter rolls was based on outdated data, notably U.S. Census population estimates.

Since the 2006 purge, Michigan has used driver’s license databases from other states to identify another 280,000 names as apparent duplicate voter registrations, Heard said. This month, staffers for Michigan Secretary of State Land, a Republican, canceled a meeting with Heard and Michigan activists to discuss purge issues.

“We have been trying to get a meeting with election officials to talk about the issues and get their explanation,” Heard said. “It’s hard to say what happened with the 280,000 supposed out-of-state movers, since we can’t get the info from the state.”

Land’s spokeswoman, Chesney, did not respond to requests to comment. However, newspapers in Michigan have quoted Chesney as saying the meeting was canceled when an information session appeared to be a precursor to litigation. Heard said Advancement Project has not ruled out filing a lawsuit.

“We have to evaluate all of our options,” he said. “We are hoping the secretary of state’s staff will sit down and talk about it.”

Purge Issues Not Going Away

The purge issue is only going to rise in profile in the coming weeks. Several voting rights groups are studying the process in a number of swing states and hope to issue reports later this summer. Among the issues being studied is the accuracy of the database matches used to purge voters. When California first implemented a data-matching program in 2006, some counties had error rates as high as 40 percent, meaning a registered voter who appeared to have moved would have been incorrectly purged without further efforts to confirm their residency and voter registration status. ++

Obama Doesn’t Sweat. He should.
Greg Palast

In swing-state Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State conducted the biggest purge of voters in history, dumping a fifth of all registrations. Guess their color.

In swing-state Florida, the state is refusing to accept about 85,000 new registrations from voter drives – overwhelming Black voters.

In swing state New Mexico, HALF of the Democrats of Mora, a dirt poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, found their registrations disappeared this year, courtesy of a Republican voting contractor.

In swing states Ohio and Nevada, new federal law is knocking out tens of thousands of voters who lost their homes to foreclosure.

My investigations partner spoke directly to Barack Obama about it. (When your partner is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., candidates take your phone call.) The cool, cool Senator Obama told Kennedy he was “concerned” about the integrity of the vote in the Southwest in particular.

He’s concerned. I’m sweating.

It’s time SOMEBODY raised the alarm about these missing voters; not to save Obama’s candidacy – journalists should stay the heck away from partisan endorsements - but raise the alarm to save our sick democracy.

And that somebody is YOU. Joining with US, the Palast investigative team. Here’s how:

We have been offered an astonishing opportunity to place the Kennedy-Palast investigative findings on a national, prime-time, major-network television broadcast. Plus, separately, we have an extraordinary offer to create a series of reports for national network radio.

But guess what? The networks will NOT PAY for our public service reports. We have to raise the start-up funds in the next two weeks to film it, record it and get it on the airwaves.

WE need YOU to fund the reports, DISSEMINATE the findings as we post the print, audio and video on the web– and ACT on it.

So, for only the second time this year, I am asking each one of you to make a tax deductible donation to the non-profit, non-partisan Palast Investigative Fund of $500, $150 or $100.

Progressives have complained for years of no opportunity to get the hard, cold sweaty truth on the air. Well, put your money where your heart and soul is.

Donate at least $500, I’ll send you every book I’ve written and every film, signed.

Send $150 and I’ll send you as a gift, a copy of John Ennis’ film Free For All, the brilliant and funny film about the Theft of Ohio. AND I’ll send you, signed, a copy of my book, Armed Madhouse, plus a copy of the BBC/Democracy Now film investigations, The Election Files and a copy of the spoken word CD Live from the Armed Madhouse all signed.

Donate $100, and I’ll send you 3 copies, one signed to you, of “The Elections Files, ” the best of our BBC/Democracy Now films – including special never-broadcast interviews with Kennedy and fired prosecutor David Iglesias.

I know you’re ponying up for your favorite candidates. But what’s the point of winning folks’ votes IF NO ONE COUNTS THEM?

Please make your donation – today. No corporation, no big foundation, is going to take on this emergency in our democracy. The election’s about to be stolen – for a third time. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Donate today (for $1,000 minimum, we’ll list you as a Producer of our next DVD, in gratitude). Why? Because the only way to get the vote-chewing cockroaches out of the voting machinery is to turn on the lights – tell the truth on them. On prime time.

After our team busted the story of Katherine Harris’ attack on innocent Black voters as “felons,” the NAACP sued and won back their rights. The truth CAN make the difference. Yes, we can. Indeed, we HAVE.

Think all votes should be counted in America? Then YOU stand up and be counted. Don’t expect networks or commercial sponsors to pay for your democracy. Feed the truth, donate $100 right now and pass on a copy of the Elections Files to your dippy cousin who thinks Kerry lost fair and square.

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Rove Threat to Blackmail GOP IT Mastermind Triggers Immunity Request to Ohio AG by Election Lawyers
GOP Threatens “Valerie Plame” Style Strike Against Wife of IT Mastermind if He Doesn’t Become Fall Guy for Gaming the 2004 Ohio Election
John Michael Spinelli, ePluribus Media

OhioNewsBureau - COLUMBUS, OHIO: The little story about how the GOP cyber-gamed the Ohio presidential election in 2004 is growing by the day, spurred on to greater heights Thursday when an Ohio election attorney asked the Ohio Attorney General to provide immunity protection to Mike Connell, the GOP IT mastermind who built various computer systems they say not only won Ohio for President Bush in 2004 but led to many other wins for Republicans over the years of the Bush Administration.

A key figure in the grand strategy of the Grand Old Party to build a cyber system that could assure permanent control by Republicans of key offices, state and federal, is Mike Connell, an Ohio native some refer to as a “High IQ Forrest Gump” for his brilliance in masterminding the construction of various computer systems associated with election procedures and data security, including the so-called firewall in Congress.

Ohio Attorney General Asked to Protect Key Witness in Election Fraud Case

In an email sent to OhioNewsBureau by lead attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who filed a federal lawsuit in August 2006 asserting the GOP gamed the system and won the state by suppressing the votes of various progressive-leaning groups like students and African Americans and who wants to revive the case to protect the integrity of the 2008 election, Nancy H. Rogers, the former dean of the law school at The Ohio State University and interim Attorney General, was asked to provide immunity protection services to Connell.

The immunity request from Arnebeck to the Ohio AG was triggered by information from a confidential source that Karl Rove, a kingpin GOP strategist, threatened that if Mike Connell doesn’t go in the tank for cyber-rigging the 2004 election in Ohio, his wife will be sued for lobbying law violations. Using this kind of hardball tactic to rain retribution down on an individual for not allowing himself to be “thrown under the bus” smacks of the identical retaliation tactic used to punish Valerie Plame by outing her as a spy for remarks made by her husband Joe Wilson before the commencement of the war in Iraq that no evidence existed for uranium being sold by Niger to Saddam Hussein.

In an email to the General Mukasey at US Dept. of Justice, Arnebeck said:

“We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to “take the fall” for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations. This appears to be in response to our designation of Rove as the principal perpetrator in the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim with respect to which we issued document hold notices last Thursday to you and to the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.”

Continuing, Arnebeck said, “I have informed court chambers and am in the process of informing the Ohio Attorney General’s and US Attorney’s offices in Columbus for the purpose, among other things, of seeking protection for Mr. Connell and his family from this reported attempt to intimidate a witness.

“Concurrently herewith, I am informing Mr. Conyers and Mr. Kucinich in connection with their Congressional oversight responsibilities related to these matters.

“Because of the serious engagement in this matter that began in 2000 of the Ohio Statehouse Press Corps, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, C-Span and Jim VandeHei, and the public’s right to know of gross attempts to subvert the rule of law, I am forwarding this information to them, as well.”

In an exclusive interview with OhioNewsBureau, Arnebeck said he expects to meet in person next week with attorneys in the Ohio AG’s office on his request for immunity filed today. For information on the King-Lincoln lawsuit, go here. Stressing that his aim is to enhance his lawsuit of 2006, Arnebeck said, “I’m not >trying to screw things up. I want to help not hinder.”

Asked what other offices could play a role, if they chose, in his campaign to unravel the Matrix behind what he and computer experts like Stephen Spoonamore say is going on but no one has yet to prove exists, Arnebeck said the Office of Ohio Secretary of State, the chief of elections, could use its legal authority to interrogate Connell, or initiate her own inquiry into the matter if she wants to hold off on the federal case. Arnebeck said Judge Algenon Marbley, who’s in charge of his case, has had members of his staff informally informed of the direction Arnebeck and his co-counsel, Bob Fitrakis, want to take the case along with their request to recover various emails of Karl Rove and the US Chamber of Commerce they feel makes their case.

“We want to cooperate,” Arnebeck said in a telephone interview today, about working with all offices on finding the truth behind efforts to build an effective but undetectable system that tilts close elections to Republicans.

Rove Alleged to Issue Blackmail Threat to Wife of GOP IT Mastermind

Arnebeck was especially concerned that Connell’s wife would be slapped with a GOP lawsuit alleging violations of lobbying laws if Mike Connell didn’t fall on his sword as the person responsible for building the system.

“If this is true about Connell’s wife, we want to do everything to make sure every witness will be protected against any such threat,” said Arnebeck, who added that if Connell feels threatened by Rove threatening to go after his wife on a criminal basis, he might not talk to House Judiciary Committee as he once said he might do but instead will seek out defense counsel.

“Intimidating a witness in a federal case is a serious crime,” Arnebeck said of his assertion that Rove has indeed made threats to Connell in this regard. Other sources familiar with the case say Arnebeck’s concerns are justified by people who would know but who cannot identify themselves for fear they could suffer similar threats or attacks on them Arnebeck said Ben Espy and Damian Sikora of the Ohio AG’s office are in receipt of his request.

For a view of the full letter authored by Arnebeck, check out this link at ePluribus Media. For links to more background on this developing detective story about the alleged subversion of law by Rove, the GOP and Connell, check it out here. The Bradblog covers it as does the Velvet Revolution.

OhioNewsBureau sent an email to the Office of Ohio Attorney General seeking a response about whether the office was in receipt of Arnebeck’s request, confirming his statement to ONB that it had, what authority the office has to provide protection to Connell and members of his family and whether General Rogers was prepared to direct her agency to help in any matter. At the time this story was posted, no response was received from the Ohio Attorney General.

Blackwell Tells House Judiciary Committee Bi-Partisan Election System Ultimate Deterrent to Conspiracy Theories

In a related but separate story, J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State for the 2004 general election, testified before the House Judiciary Committee today. Blackwell was questioned by Chairman John Conyers, who was on Arnebeck’s list of recipients, about charges that the election, under his watch, was severely flawed.

As reported by The Columbus Dispatch, Blackwell told Conyers and committee members that Ohio’s 88 county boards of election are all run by both Democrats and Republicans. He said local officials decide on the distribution ratios for voting equipment, the location of polling stations and select the voting equipment used in their counties from lists of equipment certified by the secretary of state’s office, the Dispatch reported. In the report, Blackwell said, “All these local safeguards ensure that local concerns about access to polling stations are handled locally and that both parties have a say in the final decisions.”

When Mr. Spoonamore, the cyber security expert Arnebeck has enlisted as a key witness and whose professional paths have crossed those of Connell, was asked a week ago whether the explanation that elections couldn’t be cyber stolen because they are run by two major parties, as Blackwell told the House Judiciary committee as an air-tight reason why conspiracy is only a reality in the mind of conspiratists, Spoonamore said with great emphasis that none of the board of election members, Republican or Democrat, or their staff wouldn’t have a clue that the election-system Matrix set up by pros like Connell was at work, undetectable to anyone, not the least of which would be board members who have no expertise in the software underlying the system they think they’re running. No one has really probed the voter database software that touch-screen vendors bundle in with the equipment each county purchases for them, failing to understand that vendor technicians, who come and go with no checks on them, could tilt the playing field of elections is so directed by their superiors, who are not any of the people who believe they are in control of the system. ++

Arizona Activists Outline Evidence of 2006 Electronic Vote Theft
The attorney who won the country’s first case declaring electronic voting records are public now summarizes the case for vote count fraud.
Bill Risner, Election Defense Alliance
July 22, 2008

Editor’s Note: Electronic vote count fraud is very hard to prove. Yet for several years, a group of election integrity activists and Democratic Party officials in Tuscon, Arizona, have made as much progress as anyone in the country. At issue was a 2006 regional transit bond vote that was behind in pre-election polls but won on Election Day. Attorney Bill Risner, the Pima County Democratic Party, and AuditAZ, an election integrity group, sued and won the release of the vote’s electronic records. That established for the first time in the country that such data was a public record. Now Risner and the activists have a sworn confession from a whistleblower who says he was told the transit bond vote count was altered and much related evidence. In this recent letter to Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, Risner asks the state to reopen its own investigation and recount the 2006 ballots.

[open link for article]

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves