I stopped by John Kerry's website today to look at some of the ads he's got out, and for the most part I really like them.
One ad, titled "Keep Our Word" should be very effective, but only if the person watching it is actually watching. If they've tuned out the visuals at all (by reading or if they're in a different room, for example), the ad could misfire badly because it's based on taking audio quotes from President Bush and then countering his promises with written statistics demonstrating how he's failed to live up to word on a variety of issues. The information presented is great, but I think it would be stronger if the countering statistics were both printed on the screen and spoken aloud.
I particularly like how on some of the ads, when it gets to the point where Kerry himself has to appear and say that he approves of the ad, he doesn't just recite the "I'm John Kerry and I approve of this ad" line. He carries the thought a bit further, and says something like "I'm John Kerry and I approve of this ad because we need to do what's right for America's economy" or something similar that's appropriate for the theme of the ad. It makes the line a lot less awkward sounding, and gives the ad almost a more personal feel.
I imagine by the time the election actually gets here, we're all going to be terribly sick of campaign ads - they're starting so early - but they do seem to have an impact, so if they're going to be out there, I'm glad to see that they look like they might at least have some impact for undecided voters.
Adam Cohen has an excellent editorial in today's New York Times on the controversy over electronic voting machines. Cohen notes that while many of the allegations being made about possible voting fraud in recent elections cannot be proved, the crux of the problem is that the states involved can't prove that there wasn't any voting fraud, either.
A healthy democracy must avoid even the appearance of corruption. The Georgia and Nebraska elections fail this test. Once voting software is certified, it should not be changed - not eight times, not once. A backup voting method should be available, so if electronic machines fail or are compromised shortly before an election, they can be dropped.Put simply, trust should not be an issue in any election. If fraud is alleged, then the state should prove that the vote was counted properly. When we allow our ability to verify that a vote was fairly cast and fairly counted, we start to hand our right to choose our own leaders over to others, who may not have the country's welfare at heart.Votes must be counted by people universally perceived as impartial. States should not buy machines from companies that have ties to political parties, and recent company executives should not be running for elections on those machines.
And every voter should see a paper receipt. This "voter-verified paper trail" should be retained, and made available for recounts - a low-tech check on the reliability of electronic voting. Most Americans would not do business with a bank that refused to provide written statements or A.T.M. receipts. We should be no less demanding at the polls. [Emphasis mine - K.]
Every machine used to vote should produce a hard copy of that vote that can be verified by the voter as being accurate and which can be used if a recount is necessary. Each candidate should have the right to demand a paper recount if there are questions regarding the election, and the state should be able to prove that the votes were counted properly.
There's now proof of how easy it can be for someone to alter the results of an election by hacking into the electronic voting machines.
When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the safeguards and interfere with an election.Verified Voting.org, an advocacy organization working toward getting voter-verifiable paper receipts added to electronic voting machines - which would allow each voter confirm that their vote has been recorded accurately and creates a paper trail that can be used to recount votes if necessary - has listed several examples of miscounts and other questionable results at their website, along with a great deal of other information on problems with the way electronic voting systems currently work.They were disturbingly successful. It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location.
As I've said before, this is not something that should be considered a partisan issue. Republican votes can be stolen just as easily as Democratic votes, which can be stolen just as easily as votes for Independent or 3rd party candidates. Everyone is at risk from this. The hell we went through following the Florida debacle is minor compared to the hell these machines - as they are currently used - can cause. In Florida, we at least had the possiblity of recounting to votes to determine if the results were correct. That option does not exist with these machines.
Now that Maryland has proven that the machines are vulnerable to outside attacks, it is inexcusible for any politician to oppose the addition of voter-verifiable paper reciepts to these machines. It's not hyperbolic to say that the future of democracy in this country depends on it. It's a fact.
I've been having a really hard time figuring out who of the Democratic candidates I support. Realistically, I'm not sure it matters, since I don't think Kansas is holding primaries this year, but it IS something I've given some thought to.
There are things I like about Dean, but having just watched tonights "The Daily Show", I think John Stewart has summed up quite well at least one of the things that has made me hesitant about him: "You know, here's the problem. With this guy you never know if you're going to get 'Smeagol Dean' or 'Gollum Dean'. You just don't know."
Of course, there's more to it than just that, but Dean's volatility does unsettle me somewhat. I'm also not sure I like the way he's made it so transparent that his starting to talk about his faith is a way to attract southern Democrats. It's a reasonable strategy (though I find it troublesome when any candidate make his faith an issue in regards to whether he should be elected or not), but being so obvious it is just a bit crass - and probably none too bright. If I thought a candidate was only talking about his faith in an attempt to get my vote, I'd feel like he was being a bit too patronizing.
A more substantial concern I have with Dean is his keeping some of his gubernatorial papers sealed. I've spoken many times about how much I dislike Bush's secrecy and disagree with his decision to keep papers from his gubernatorial term in his father's Presidential library, where it will be harder for citizens to get at them, along with the executive order that prevents many of the documents from both President Reagan's and the first President Bush's terms from being made public. I don't care for that kind of secrecy from a Democrat, either, and it makes me very uncomfortable with Dean.
Should Dean wind up being the Democratic candidate, I will vote for him as President, and I will support him during the campaign. But even though I'm still not sure who would be my first pick, I'm pretty sure it won't be Dean.
I decided to take out some time tonight to view each of the Bush in 30 Seconds ads that have been named finalists in MoveOn.org's contest. I've seen a few comments about the coming though here, mainly from conservatives complaining about MoveOn promoting too much hate, so I thought I should see them for myself. Below are my reviews on each one - you can see all of the for yourself at the link above.
Child's Pay
I sort of liked this one. The ad uses the imagery of children doing adult jobs to bring home the point that it's our children and grandchildren who will be paying off the deficit that Bush has created. While the metaphor doesn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense if you think about it too much (is the ad's creator suggesting that kids will have to take working at hard-labor jobs in the future to pay off the deficit?), the initial impact the ad has is pretty good. C+
The point the ad is trying to make is good, but it has one major flaw: The "catch" is so painfully transparent, that I'd be surprised if anyone who saw it couldn't tell within the first few seconds exactly where the ad is going. The actor has gotten less than a sentence into his monologue when I thought "Oh, ok. We're going to compare America to the 'evil' Arabic countries we're trying to bring democracy to. Next." I had no interest in the rest of the ad, because I didn't need to. The point its trying to make is a good one, but this isn't the way to try and make it. D -
This one didn't really provoke much of a reaction, good or bad, really. I was a little bothered because a couple of the sound bites used struck me as having been "shortened" a bit, putting them into a slightly different context, the most notable one being the comment from the State of the Union address where Bush said that "The British have learned" that Saddam is trying to obtain uranium. By dropping off the part about the British, it makes it sound like Bush claimed Saddam had uranium. As we all know, that's what he wanted all of us to think he was doing, but he wanted to make the claim deniable, so he blamed it on the British. When we, then, turn around and use only the shortened version, we open ourselves up to criticism from the right claiming that we took the line out of context. The thing is, whether the British are mentioned or not, we now know that Saddam wasn't trying to obtain uranium, so either way, the statement is still a lie. Using the fuller version, though, is more defensible, which, in my opinion, needs to be considered when making an ad like this. D
One of the better ones. It, too, uses the shortened quote, which I'd rather not see, but the impact of the rest of the ad is strong. The quickly changing pictures down in the corner really helps bring home how many have died in this war. B
This one is really good. The kids do a great job of delivering their lines, and it's a nice touch to watch all of the parents faces turn from pride to horror as they hear what their children are claiming. The individual points are well made. All-in-all a very good ad. A
Not bad. The actors are all likable and the message is strong. For some reason, though, it comes off - to me at least - as being a bit "overwrought," which diminishes it's effectiveness overall. C
An excellent ad. The use of the muted images behind the moving text give them a strong impact by making them seem even more somber than they already are. The "count up" on the number of soldiers killed in Iraq is effective, and the tagline - "Lies: The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction" is just beautiful. The sound bites from the State of the Union Address all seem to be presented appropriately, and the ad just hangs together very well. This would be an extremely effective ad. A+
A cute idea, but the voice of the announcer on the radio is a bit too hard to hear, which blunts the message considerably. If it can be re-produced with a clearer voice, I'd give this one a "B". C
The music struck me as a bit odd, but overall, I liked this one. The way the focus sort of jumped around on the "are you sure you want to delete these items" message box was a bit distracting, but when the tagline "what's next?" came up, I found myself agreeing with it. This one could be effective for people who are still undecided. I also like that it touches on a number of the many reasons why Bush is bad for America. B+
The cuts to soldier's benefits and pay is an excellent topic, and I liked the the "If we can support our troops, why can't Bush" line a great deal. The narrator's voice, though, was somewhat distracting, and the final image of a flag-draped coffin and the question "or is this what they mean by an 'Army of One'" seemed a bit puzzling to me. I'm not quite sure how that fits in the context of the rest of the ad. But it's not a bad effort, and with a bit of work, could probably be quite good. C
This one goes for a play on the MasterCard "priceless" ads, and mostly succeeds. It doesn't seem to have the same kind of "grabbing" resonance that some of the others have had, and it may just be that the "priceless" thing has been overdone enough that it's losing it's punch. C
Another favourite. The "stealing from the poor to give to the rich" message is made without it actually having to be said, and there's almost a bit of a humorous feel to the whole ad which makes it more interesting. The music sets the perfect tone. Well done. A
Like "Child's Pay", this one uses the image of children to make a point about the size of the deficit - but this one also ties in the fact that those who are already rich are the ones benefiting from the tax cuts that are creating the deficit. The kids emptying out their piggy banks and taking money up to the billionaire at the teachers desk is a memorable image, as is the guy holding up his money and saying "thanks kids." A
Very well made point about how Bush so often says one thing and then does another. The imagery is good, also. I like the metaphor of taking a car in for repairs and having the tech beating it up and breaking parts on it to illustrate what Bush as done for the country. The narrator's voice on this one was a bit distracting also, but the message was strong enough to keep my interest. B+
Not a bad effort, but something just doesn't quit hang right. I know they're trying to simulate an odometer and speedometer, but when the narrator says "three point three million" and the number on the screen is 3300000 there's a momentary disconnect while my brain visualizes the decimal point so that they match, and it broke my focus for the next point. B-
The following press release (including links to copies of the findings from InfoSENTRY and Compuware, who tested the voting machines on Ohio's behalf) was sent out today from the Ohio Secretary of State's office, documenting the confirmation of several security flaws within the electronic voting machines from 4 different manufacturers and stating that the Secretary of State will not be using any of the electronic voting machines until the security concerns are resolved.
This is great news as it helps point out to other states that there are problems with these machines that need to be fixed before they are suitable for general usage.
Blackwell Seeks Improvements and Additional Security Assurances from Electronic Voting Machine VendorsLinks to the documentation released by the state of Ohio in conjunction with the press release:
Tuesday, December 2, 2003COLUMBUS – Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell today ordered electronic voting device vendors to resolve security weaknesses uncovered in two comprehensive examinations. Also, in the most extensive release of electronic voting device security information to date, Secretary Blackwell released the full findings of each examination.
“Today’s release of information provides voters with a check list of problems found and a road map for corrections,” Blackwell said. “In order to maintain strong public confidence in our elections systems, voters must be assured that the security risks uncovered in our reviews have been addressed and resolved,” Blackwell said.
Secretary Blackwell will seek an extension of federally mandated Help America Vote Act (HAVA) deadlines in order to provide system manufacturers time to correct deficiencies.“I will not place these voting devices before Ohio’s voters until identified risks are corrected and system security is bolstered,” Blackwell said. “Fortunately, all of the documented risks will be expeditiously corrected by each of our voting machine manufacturers. When Ohioans begin casting ballots on these electronic devices they will do so with the knowledge that the integrity of their voting system has been maintained.”
Compuware Corporation, based in Detroit, conducted a thorough technical analysis of each of the four electronic voting device vendors’ software and hardware. The review included an examination of the computer source code, and scrutiny of the potential for penetration and points of failure specific to each voting machine. Compuware examined the Diebold Election Systems AccuVote-TS, the Election Systems and Software (ES&S) iVotronic, the Hart InterCivic eSlate 3000, and the Sequoia Voting Systems AVC Edge.
In its review, Compuware identified a total of 57 potential security risks within the software and hardware tested. The risks were sorted into high, medium and low categories. Diebold Election Systems had five high potential risk areas, two medium and eight low potential risk areas. ES&S had one high potential risk area, three medium and 13 low potential risk areas. Hart InterCivic had four high potential risk areas, one medium and five low potential risk areas. Sequoia Election Systems had three high potential risk areas, five medium and seven low potential risk areas.
InfoSENTRY, based in Raleigh, NC, conducted on-site vendor inspections and interviews to assess voting system vendors’ security plans, procedures and processes. The review included all information systems security procedures utilized by voting system vendors. InfoSENTRY also assessed Ohio administrative security procedures and made recommendations for improvement.
As a result of InfoSENTRY’s review, the secretary of state will seek additional security and quality assurances with documentation from voting machine vendors. Also, the agency will ask vendors to implement industry standard security and quality practices and procedures. While citing procedural and administrative issues, InfoSENTRY advises that the identified risks are manageable and can be addressed in time to accommodate the secretary of state’s new deployment timetable.
Originally setting March 2004 for implementation in select counties, Secretary Blackwell has now identified the August 2004 special elections as the first scheduled use of new systems. County boards of elections have until January 15 to select preferred voting systems. The secretary of state’s election reform staff, working with boards of elections, will develop a new deployment schedule.
Vendors are currently in the process of making the necessary software, hardware and operational security improvements. When complete, each vendor and their voting devices must undergo additional verification testing by Compuware and InfoSENTRY and in some instances seek federal and state re-certification. Counties currently using electronic voting systems will be provided with mitigating strategies to bolster security and reduce risks.
-30-
For more information, contact Carlo LoParo at (614) 752-8110.
InfoSENTRY: Summary of Findings & Recommendations (PDF)
Good news on both the free speech front and in regard to the electronic voting controversies - Diebold has backed down from it's threat to sue activists and others who have been distributing copies of their internal memos on the Internet.
A Diebold spokesman promised in a conference call Monday with U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel and attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that it would not sue dozens of students, computer scientists and ISP operators who received cease-and-desist letters from August to October.Diebold is reserving the right to sue others in the future if they feel it is necessary, and even though Diebold has backed down from their present threats of suits, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is still going to proceed with a suit it has filed against Diebold for their actions in intimidating web hosts and ISPs into removing the material in question.Diebold also promised not to file lawsuits against two Swarthmore College students and a San Francisco-based Internet service provider for copyright infringement, according to a motion that company attorneys filed Nov. 24 in San Jose's federal court.
"The implicit threat was, 'If you don't take this material down, we might sue,'" Seltzer said. "Without them ever needing to file a federal complaint, they got these documents taken down from a huge number of sites. It was a chill on free speech that stopped discussion of electronic voting issues without ever getting before a judge."
From this week's VerifiedVoting.org Newsletter:
GREAT NEWS! CALIFORNIA GOES VERIFIABLEYou may have already heard, but it's worth repeating. This is a huge win.
Last Friday, November 21, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley announced that the state will require an accessible voter-verifiable paper audit trail on all voting equipment by July 2006. His announcement was a response to rising concern in California, along with the rest of the nation, about the increasing use of computerized touch screen voting systems.
In February 2003 Secretary Shelley appointed a task force, including yours truly, to analyze touch-screen voting and report its recommendations. Our final report included many recommendations to improve the security of electronic voting systems. It also included a recommendation to require a voter-verifiable audit trail on all new election equipment by 2007. Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation, Dr. David Jefferson of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, and I strongly expressed the need to impose
such a requirement much sooner.Even though we were in the minority, Secretary Shelley was obviously listening - to us and to over 4,000 letters his office received favoring a voter-verifiable paper trail requirement. His order is more aggressive than the task force recommendation. It requires that all equipment purchased after July 1, 2005 include a voter verifiable paper trail, and it bans paperless touch-screen machines by July 2006.
While many of us would have liked to see an even more aggressive timeline, this announcement is still a WIN of huge proportions. Remember, the entire country has been watching California. We are such a big market for voting equipment that vendors are sure to produce equipment to meet our requirements and those machines will be available everywhere else in the country.
You can read the news release here:
http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/press_releases/2003/03_106.pdf
MORE GREAT NEWS! H.R. 2239 NOW HAS REPUBLICAN CO-SPONSORSSince mid-October, when VerifiedVoting.org's calling campaign began, the number of co sponsors has nearly doubled. As of this writing, H.R. 2239 has 82 co-sponsors, and three of them are Republicans. They are: Tom Davis (R-VA), Chairman of the Government Reform Committee; Christopher Shays (R-CT); and Charles Bass (R-NH). We deeply appreciate the courage of these
three men.Our thanks also goes to the many VerifiedVoting.org volunteers and the countless others across the nation who joined in and have clearly brought this important issue to the attention of Congress.
In Representative Holt's press release announcing the Republican support, he said, "I am very pleased that my Republican colleagues have joined my effort to protect the future integrity of our elections. There's clearly momentum building in Congress and across the country to see this legislation pass. I expect we'll see even more cosponsors sign on in the days and weeks to come." http://holt.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=7225
OPEN LETTER TO THE HOUSE ADMINISTRATION COMMITTEESix VerifiedVoting.org volunteers have written an open letter to the committee where H.R. 2239 currently resides. The letter was faxed to all members of the committee on Wednesday, November 19.
Using words spoken by Senators and Representatives during the HAVA deliberations, it reminds the committee members of the democratic intent of the legislators when they passed HAVA. It points out that the goals for HAVA are not being reached and that H.R.2239 must be passed immediately in order to attain the legislators' stated goals.
We are actively working to get this letter published in newspapers in the states (ideally districts) served by the members of the committee:
California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
You can read the letter at
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/openletter2003Nov19.htm.We encourage you to add your endorsement.
TAKE QUICK AND EASY ACTION FOR H.R.2239EFF has set up an action page where you can easily send a letter to your Representative supporting H.R.2239. Even if you have already called and emailed and written, please take a moment to go to www.verifiedvoting.org and click on the second action item at the top of the page. We suggest that you fax the letter. We understand that faxes are more effective than emails to Representatives.
Today is Veterans Day - a day for us to honour and remember the many men and women who have been willing to risk their lives for the good of the country. Among Heathens, today (as at Memorial Day) we also give a special honour to the Einherjar - those warriors who have made that ultimate sacrifice on our behalf.
It would be easy to day to use the opportunity to go over all the different ways that the Bush administration is mistreating our veterans, but my heart's just not in it. Thinking about it makes me very angry, and the feeling I have today is one of gratitude and I don't want to taint it with my fury.
Instead, I just want to offer a very heartfelt "Thank you" to all the men and women who have served - or are currently serving - in the Armed Forces, and to the families of our past and current soldiers. Handling the work of war is dangerous, but necessary, and it is work that the people in my family have been unable to do for health reasons. Your willingness to face the risks involved in war is what allows the rest of us to have the lives here that we do, and regardless of whether I agree with the reasons for a war or not, you will always have my support.
I also heard about a situation in Colorado Springs that I found rather touching. Harbard, who belongs to one of the Heathen lists I'm on, had this to say about it:
Just as an aside, Colorado Springs had it's Veterans Day parade on Saturday, and this year's parade was specifically designated (with plenty of mediaIt is far beyond time for us to have recognized that the soldiers who went to Vietnam are deserving of our support and gratitude, just as the soldiers of other wars have been. The war itself may have been wrong, but that is not the fault of the men and women who went there to fight it on our behalf. I'm glad to see that at least one community is trying - even at this late date - to recognize that, and even more so to hear from a Vietnam vet that the gesture was appreciated. I can only hope that other such attempts to reach out and recognize the service of those soldiers can be made throughout the country.
coverage) as a very belated 'welcome home' for the veterans of Viet Nam -- the parade we never got. It touched a lot of us. The veterans of 'Nam are pretty much middle aged now (and many of us still bear the scars, both physical and emotional); it's so good to see that people remember, and are beginning to accept that while the reason for the war was dubious, what we
did there wasn't.
Lastly, for this message, at least, I want to offer a pointer to the Iraq Coalition Casualties list maintained by LunavilleThese men and women, killed in the war in Iraq, are the newest American Einherjar. I raise my horn to them and offer a sincere "Hail!"
The WINvote electronic voting machines - made by Advanced Voting Solutions of Frisco, TX - wound up causing some difficulties for Fairfax County, VA. Apparently, 9 of the machines developed technical glitches, and when rebooting the machines at the election site failed to solve the problem, the machines were taken to a centralized location, fixed, and brought back to be used for the rest of the election.
The new machines, meant to simplify voting, made the tallying of the votes more problematic, with more than half of precinct officials resorting to the old-fashioned telephone to call in their numbers or even driving the results to headquarters, elections officials said. A handful of precincts resorted to paper ballots.Personally, I can't think of too many situations in which it should be considered appropriate to take a voting machine out of the voting booth after voting has already started, take it to an off-site location, have someone tinker around with it, and then return it to the voting booth to be used again.Election officials said it was the slowest performance in memory for counting votes on election night in the county. The problem came when precinct workers tried to electronically send results from the 953 new machines to election headquarters, unexpectedly overloading computer servers.
When the electronic system of sending results over telephone modems failed, precinct workers tried to call in the results but were met with busy signals. Many decided it would be quicker to drive.
Some voters also complained about using the new machines, and officials said that resulted in slow going at some polling places during the day. For example, a line of 100 people snaked around the polling room at Sleepy Hollow Elementary School Tuesday morning, workers said.
Fairfax election officials expressed surprise at the glitches.
"I don't know what the holdup is," Margaret K. Luca (D), secretary of the county's three-person elections board, said late Tuesday night. "I thought we had it covered. We tested all week in the county."
At least one candidate - Mychele Brickner, a Republican - has filed a suit to set aside votes from the machines in question until a judge can decide if the votes were recorded correctly or not. In addition, Christopher Craig, the attorney for the Republicans, notes that legally, machines should not be removed from a polling place and then returned for further use.
I've noted before that I believe that the security and effectiveness of electronic voting machines is something that should be of concern to all voters, not a partisan issue. In this case, it's a Republican who may have been hurt by the problems with the machine (though the reports indicate that they don't think the total number of votes in question would change the outcome), and I sincerely hope that she is able to get some kind of relief though her suit, though without a paper trail, I don't really know how that will work.
In this situation, there doesn't seem to be any reason to suspect actual fraud, but that just highlights another danger of these machines. Even if no one tampers with them, these machines are, at their heart, computers - pretty much like the ones we use everyday. They may work well most of the time, but they don't work all the time, and if one does break, there's no permanent record that can be used to verify that no damage has been done.
Wired is running a story that California has halted the certificatio process on new Diebold machines after they learned that in one county, reportedly Alameda, the Diebold machines in use in the recent recall election may have had uncertified software installed by Diebold.
Alameda County, a Democratic stronghold that includes the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, converted to all-electronic voting last year at a cost of more than $12 million. The county used the machines in state elections last year and in last month's gubernatorial recall election. The machines will also be used in tomorrow's municipal election in Alameda.This report is similar to reports from Georgia that, prior to the 2002 elections, Diebold patched the software on many of those machines. Software on voting machines is supposed to be certified prior to an election, and if any changes are made to the software (such as a patch would do), the software is supposed to be recertified before it can be used. In the Georgia races, questions about the software certification have come up in large part because many of the races in last years elections reported surprising results - with all the good news in favour of Republican candidates. Diebold's president is known to be a staunch Republican.The only other California county currently using the Diebold touch-screen machines is Plumas. No one was available for comment on whether uncertified software may have been installed on machines used in Plumas.
Oh, one other comment from the California article I found interesting:
Diebold officials, who were attending the meeting, seemed surprised by the announcement and expressed displeasure to several panelists afterward that it had been introduced in a public forum.I'll bet they were. I, however, think it was the perfect place to raise the issue. The public needs to be aware of these kinds of problems, and needs to be able to see where patterns of illegal or unethical behaviour are forming.
From Moby's journal:
ok, so here's the information on the contest that i'm organizing with moveon.org, david fenton, lee solomon, jonathan soros and laura dawn.This sounds like a great opportunity for creative types to put their heads together and try to come up with an ad that has the potential to really make an impact. If it sounds at all interesting to you, be sure to check it out!the contest is called 'bushin30seconds', and for the contest anyone can make & submit a 30 second tv ad that is somehow based around 'the truth about george bush'.
the ads will be put up on our website (bushin30seconds.org) and will be voted on by moveon's 2 million subscribers and the general public.
10 finalist ads (or 15 finalist ads) will then be chosen and sent to our celebrity judges, who at present are:
- Jack Black
- Donna Brazile
- James Carville
- Margaret Cho
- David Fenton
- Janeane Garafalo
- Stan Greenberg
- Moby
- Michael Moore
- Mark Pellington
- Tony Shalhoub
- Michael Stipe
- Gus Van Sant
- Eddie Vedder
and a winner (or possibly winners) will be chosen and broadcast on tv before george bush's january state of the union address.the idea behind the ad is best summed up in eli's 'why we're doing this' essay:
"Year after year, a few dozen Washington consultants make the great majority of political ads. They look the same, they sound the same and even the actors seem familiar.so please go and look at 'bushin30seconds.org', and, if you feel inspired, make an ad and help us to tell the truth about george bush.
Perhaps as a result, voters tune out, even when there are critically important messages to convey.For the last three years, President Bush's policies have ransacked the environment, put our national security at risk, damaged our economy, and redistributed wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest Americans. Yet thanks to a complacent media, the President has managed to hide behind a carefully constructed "compassionate" image. As the 2004 election nears, it's crucial that voters understand what President Bush's policies really mean for our country. And to do that, we need creative new ads that clearly show what's at stake.
Thats why we decided to launch Bush in 30 Seconds, an ad contest that's intended to bring new talent and new messages into the world of mainstream political advertising.
We're looking for the ad that best explains what this President and his policies are really about -- in only 30 seconds.
The Bush in 30 Seconds ad contest has been developed and run by a small team of people: Laura Dawn, David Fenton, Moby, Eli Pariser, Lee Solomon, and Jonathan Soros. We've come together because we believe that by tapping into the vast talent pool of creative people beyond the Beltway, we'll find the right messages and ads to expose the failure of President Bush's policies.
Legally, Bush in 30 Seconds is a project of the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, a new 527 fund affiliated with MoveOn.org, the pre-eminent online advocacy group in the United States. The Voter Fund's mission is to create and run powerful political ads in swing states to challenge President Bush's policies and his administration."
thanks
moby
When I first read about the Republican plan to have electoral challengers at several precincts in Kentucky for the upcoming gubernatorial election, I honestly didn't think much of it. I had read that the Republicans typically have a hard time finding enough people to serve as poll workers, and that these challengers would likely be used to help fill in some of those slots. It appears now, though, that there may be more to it than that.
When the plan was first announced, several complaints were posted saying that the GOP was targeting minorities in largely black neighborhoods. The Republicans, of course, deny this.
Jefferson County GOP Chairman Jack Richardson IV said the precincts were chosen at random or because the Republican Party has had trouble finding registered voters in those areas to serve as election workers. The challengers, who will receive the same training as precinct workers, could fill in if needed.Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has found a memo sent out in July from Mike Czerwonka seeking volunteers to work at polls in the upcoming election. Czerwonka is a Republican activist who had run for office last year. He had alleged that there were voting irregularities in his race which cost him the election, but the Jefferson County Election officials said that they found no improprieties.Richardson said the precincts weren't chosen because of their racial makeup or voting patterns. Using challengers is a "legal, proper and permissible" way to ensure that voters are bona fide, he said.
"It is in the best interest of everybody and the responsibility of both parties to protect the ballot integrity," Richardson said. "That is the bottom line."
This memo makes it quite clear that the precincts where the Republicans are planning to install challengers were specifically chosen because they are heavily populated by both minorities and Democrats. The memo reads (in part) as follows. Some lines in the memo itself are highlighted by the use of a larger font. I have reproduced those lines in bold type. Otherwise, I have typed this as exactly as I can based on the copy of the memo available at TPM:
Gubernatorial Election Integrity Call to ArmsThis memo clearly states that their concern is related to the Democrats encouraging poor blacks to vote illegally. Their solution is to bring in poll challengers who are empowered to challenge any voter they believe may be voting improperly and put that voter in the position of having to sign an oath swearing that they are who they say they are and that they are eligible to vote before that voter can be given a ballot. While signing the oath isn't necessarily a difficult thing to do, the prospect of being challenged at the poll over your eligibility to vote is something many people might find intimidating. There are many people who would be so indignant at being challenged that they would choose to leave rather than vote, and others who would be so concerned about the possibility of being challenged that they won't go out and vote at all. This, presumably, is the entire point behind the exercise - finding ways to prevent minority and Democratic voters from going to the polls is a charge that is frequently leveled against the Republicans. For example, last year, in Baltimore, flyers were distributed in an area known for having a large number of blacks and Democrats, which read:What do the 1994 Lary Forgy/Paul Patton Gubernatorial Race, the 2002 narrow victory of Congresswoman Anne Northup over Jack Conway, the 2002 Mike Czerwonka/Paul Bather Kentucky State Representative and the 2002 Louisiana US Senate race have in common???
All were adversely impacted by the presence and influence of the Democratic National Committee, the A. Phillip Randolph Institute (the black militant division of the AFL-CIO and funded in part by the DNC), and the NAACP and their efforts to marshal the Get Out To Vote efforts targeted toward the black, poor voters in selected communities and selected targeted races of national impact.
Their tactics are [illegible] in nature, encouraging people sometimes who aren't registered to vote and commit voter fraud by voting or sometimes engaging in illegal election practices (i.e. vote buying, etc.). All for the sole, singular intent of getting the Democratic nominee in Gubernatorial, and National Congressional and Senatorial races elected.
In Jefferson County alone during the 2002 General Election Fifty=Seven (57) Republican Precinct Poll positions went unfilled by Republicans and in the 2003 Primary Election One Hundred and Fifty (150) Republican Precinct Poll positions went unfilled by Republicans. During this same period the Democrats had a surplus of four hundred and fifty (450) Democratic Precinct Poll Workers. What this means is that we, as Republicans, have failed our civic responsibility and consequently a fair and honest election cannot be guaranteed. Fund Raising is incredibly important, it is the life-blood of a campaign; however, it is not enough.
We must protect the integrity of the voting process.
I have been asked by the Fletcher Campaign for Governor to serve in the capacity of insuring the integrity of the election process in the West End / Portland areas of Louisville. We will require approximately Three Hundred (300) Republican Precinct Poll Workers to achieve this goal. However, I cannot do it alone. I need the Associated Builders & Contractor members, staff, friends and families in Kentucky to step up and volunteer to help achieve the goal of a fair and honest election. With Ernie Fletcher, we have a real opportunity to bring honesty, integrity and dignity to the Governor's Office of the Commonwealth of Kentucky; a chance to end the corruption of many previous Democratic administrations and the rampant abuse of personal service contracts; and a gentleman who is conservative in nature, pro-business and who will put us on a level playing field.
Our goal is within reach. Let's make it happen now!
Your commitment as a Republican Precinct Poll Worker is to attend a Board of Elections training seminar and to work at the assigned precinct poll on Election Day, November 4, 2003 from 6:00 A.M. till 6:00 P.M.
The pay is not great but the reward is incredible. This is our civic responsibility.
Please join Ernie Fletcher and me for an informational meeting at the ABC Office's in Louisville, KY on Monday July 21, 2003 at 9:00 A.M. to learn more about this more important and vital issue.
We need your help!!!
Thank you
Mike Czerwonka
"URGENT NOTICE. Come out to vote on November 6th. Before you come to vote make sure you pay your parking tickets, motor vehicle tickets, overdue rent and most important any warrants."The goal there was to discourage anyone who might owe money or have minor tickets from voting, even though it would be perfectly legal for them to do so, and the information in the memo was entirely false. Even the Internet has gotten into the act, with e-mail messages being sent around stating that due to "concerns about poll crowding" (or something of that nature), Republicans were to vote on Tuesday - the actual voting day - and Democrats were to vote on Wednesday - after the polls had closed and the winners had been declared.
(When searching Google for this, I used the phrase " "Republicans vote on Tuesday" "Democrats vote on Wednesday ". Just to check and see if it really was more widespread on the part of Republicans than Democrats, I then tried " "Democrats vote on Tuesday" "Republicans vote on Wednesday" " to see how the result totals compared. Neither brought up a lot of hits - and all that did come up were from various Yahoo! Groups, but there were several more "Republicans on Tuesday" than there were "Democrats on Tuesday".)
To help poll workers better understand what poll challengers can - and cannot - do, poll workers were recently given a training session. Among other information, they were told:
Challengers can only question a voter's eligibility if they believe the voter:Kentucky Democrats have called on Ernie Fletcher, the Republican Gubernatorial candidate and President Bush to condemn the practice, especially in a situation where it appears to be a blatant attempt to intimidate minority voters, and DNC chariman Terry McAuliffe has called on John Ashcroft to do likewise. In addition, many black ministers in the area are planning to speak from the pulpit on Sunday, encouraging their congregations to be sure and vote in the election and not let the prospect of poll challengers intimidate them.
- Is not a duly registered voter in a precinct;
- Is not a resident of the precinct;
- Is a felon;
- Is not whom he or she claims to be.
"The law requires that the challenger has to have reason to believe the basis for his objections or his challenge," Cato said.Challenges must be issued to election workers before a voter receives a ballot, Cato said. Challengers can't confront voters directly.
A challenged voter must sign an oath verifying his or her identity and right to cast a ballot in that precinct. The challenger must sign the same oath and write down the reason for the challenge.
Even if election workers know the challenge isn't correct, "they have to go ahead and make his challenge," Cato said. "It's not a case where the election officers can assume that they have the power to determine whether a challenge is valid or not. They don't have that power."
A challenged voter will be allowed to vote — and that vote will be counted in the election. Voters' oaths are collected later by the election office and forwarded to the commonwealth's attorney for investigation.
While the practice is certainly legal and the Republicans are within their rights to make use of poll challengers, I have to agree that the way these challengers are being placed specifically at polls in areas that are predominately black and Democratic smacks of dirty politics. Just because something is legal doesn't automatically make it right or ethical. In my opinion, the Republicans plan is neither.
So, what would the Republicans do if Bush - by some miracle - should totally self-destruct and become un-re-electable? South Knox Bubba has a few suggestions - and provides a wonderfully irreverent guide to their various strengths and weaknesses. Go check it out.
Tom at Crooked Timber takes a look at the use of Microsoft Access in a system that needs to be secure. His basic opinion appears to be that Access provides just a bit too much of it's namesake - and too little in the way of security.
From a geek perspective, I offer the opinion that the whole e-voting thing is bad enough when you trust the political neutrality of the vendors, given the scope for technical fuckups. And it's also worth saying that we Brits have every reason to fear that we'll be subjected to similar nonsense given the blind optimism of our government, which appears to be countenancing voting mechanisms which include 'the use of the Internet, text messaging, interactive digital TV, and touch-tone telephony'. Gah.I agree with one of his conclusions - the software for election systems needs to be open-source, both to help with increasing security by allowing a wide range of tech-heads look it over and improve on it, and also so that it's functions can be verified and there can be reasonable certainty that the tabulation mechanisms are designed to count the votes accurately.Back to Diebold. As someone who fiddles with relational databases as part of my living, I don't know whether to laugh or cry when it is revealed that the system which is offered as the backing infrastructure for American democracy involves as its lynchpin an Access database.
Access, as any fule know, is a toy program for putting together a database upon which you want to record the details of your CD collection or keep track of the contents of your sock-drawer; it does not supply a platform which anyone with the tiniest bit of nouse would use for anything that actually mattered.
If making such systems open-source cuts into the profitability of making voting equipment, so be it. This is one area where secrecy serves only to help undermine the ability of the voting public to have any kind of confidence in the equipment - or its ability to accurately reflect who has actually been chosen as the leaders of this nation. The integrity of the system must outweigh all other concerns - even the capitalistic ones. Its really that simple.
From and article in the Salt Lake Tribune
"If the people don't think I'm doing my job they'll find somebody" else, Bush said. "That's my attitude."That could be used in so many ways for Dem candidates - just by reminding people of Bush's "attitude" and pointing out that he's not doing his job - and hasn't been since the day he took office.
While looking for more information on the new electronic voting machines, I found a sited called Verified Voting.org which is an organizational site for people interested in helping fight the new voting machines. They have a lot of information on the problems with the machines, what kind of steps can be taken to help ensure that even with electronic voting machines each vote is counted for the candidate the voter actually selected and resources for finding out more about the issue. I would strongly recommend spending some serious time there checking it out!
Also, I've uploaded a copy of the recent report by SAIC for the state of Maryland showing that there are a number high-risk security issues with the machines. This is the report that the state of Maryland commissioned and then ignored when it decided to go ahead and buy the machines anyway. The report is in PDF format.
There's been a lot of discussion on blogs recently about the new touchscreen voting machines (sometimes called "black boxes") that are being purchased by states eager to comply with the Help America Vote Act of 2002. An article in the Independent (UK) earlier this week offered an overview of some of the allegations and concerns raised by these new voting systems, and Wired is running a story alleging that patches were applied to the system before last year's Georgia elections, but that the machines were never recertified after the changes were made, something that should have been done, according to election laws.
I'm not really in a position to get into a serious discussion how much of a threat there may or may not be from the reported security problems with the machines or the concerns that there may be something of a conspiracy afoot to use them to help ensure Republican victories. Most of what I've read has been from the BlackBoxVoting site - a site who's sole purpose is to raise awareness of the potential threat to democracy that the operators believe these machines present, but I've not found much offering any other side to the story.
Still, there are solid reasons to be concerned about these machines. They leave no paper trail and there's no way to verify that the votes recorded are actually the votes that were cast. There are extensive security concerns about the machines - many of them listed in a report done by testers at John Hopkins (file is in .pdf format) - that, if left uncorrected, could leave the machines vulnerable to tampering both locally and from a remote location. On top of that many of the executives working for or otherwise associated with the firms designing and marketing these machines are staunch supporters of the Republican party. Walden O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold has - in a fund-raising letter recently sent to Republicans in Ohio - made a promise to "deliver" that state's electoral votes to Bush. Additionally, US Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) holds an ownership interest in ES&S, another firm that makes these machines.
There's another danger, though, posed by these machines, that I've not yet seen widely discussed - and in my opinion, it's the most dangerous one of all. In comments on several threads I've read about the black box voting machines, I've noticed a number of people saying that with these new machines being so vulnerable to tampering and with the companies that make them so firmly in the Republicans' pockets, they feel like there's no point at all to voting next year. The Republicans are going to win, these people figure, so their vote won't matter - especially since there's a good chance that their vote won't even be counted correctly by the machines.
What I find really ironic is that, the way things are going right now, the Republicans and their supporters in the election-machine industry may not have to do a thing if they want to win. The more alarmist stories that are published, with bold headlines shouting that the next election is already rigged, the more dispair I see in the comments being posted in response. By offering little or no defence to the charges, giving few answers to the questions being asked and paying minimal attention to the concerns being raised, all that's being heard are the voices of doom, telling us that the fix is in. But if we buy into that mentality - if we let the frustration, cynicism and anger we feel silence our voices - then the Republicans will win. They won't have to use any dirty tricks or try to manipulate the data. They'll win by default.
Like I said, there's plenty of reason to be concerned, and any problems that are found must be fixed - but we can't let the concerns get us down. If we do, then it won't matter if every single vote in every single district in every single state across the country is registered accurately and counted correctly. We will have defeated ourselves.
~=<*>=~ ~=<*>=~ ~=<*>=~
Are you registered to vote? Are your friends? If not, be sure to give them the link!
Make sure you know when your state's registration deadline is!
According to reports, Bob Graham has decided to drop out of the race for the Democratic Presidential primary. He announced his decision on the Larry King show, saying: "I'm leaving because I have made the judgment that I can not be elected president of the United States."
Retired General Poised to Seek Democratic Nomination in '04
From what I've seen of Gen. Clark so far, I must say I'm impressed. He has acknowledged that he does have some learning to do in regards to domestic issues, but he has struck me as someone who has a fairly level head on his shoulders and good instincts.
I'm still not entirely sure who I would vote for at this point - I also like both Dean and Kerry, but I'm glad to hear that Clark is going to enter the race as well. I certainly like the idea of having him as one of the choices.
I had recently written to my US Representative, Dennis Moore (D-KS) to express my concern over the possible shortcomings - including susceptibility to fraud and other tampering - that some of the new computerized voting machines posses. He responded with information on a bill now in the House Committee on Administration, called the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003.
He decribes the Act as follows:
...the bill wouldThese are excellent provisions that are a minimum of what needs to be done.
- require all voting systems to produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits and recounts;
- ban the use of undisclosed software and wireless communications devices in voting systems;
- require all voting systems to meet these requirements in time for the general election in November 2004;
- requires that electronic voting systems be provided for persons with disabilities by January 1, 2006; and
- require mandatory surprise recounts in 0.5% of domestic jurisdictions and 0.5% of overseas jurisdictions
Please write your congressmen and women to support HR 2239 and ask that the do whatever they can to help get it out of committee and onto the floor for passage. If you're not sure who your Representative is or how to contact them, just plug your zip code into the nifty little "Contact Congress" box over on the sidebar that ate Cincinnatti (just click the link - its faster than scrolling *g*) and let them know what you think!
9/11/03 6:00pm - Update from Yuda posted to the comments section at Skeptical Notion:
I have it on good authority that this bill won't make it out of the Committee on House Administration. At present, they have not scheduled a hearing on it.Comittee Members:
-Republican Members
Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-OH) Chairman
Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-MI)
Rep. John L. Mica (R-FL)
Rep. John Linder (R-GA)
Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA)
Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-NY)
Democratic MembersRep. John B. Larson (D-CT) Ranking Member
Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-CA)
Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA)
So these are the guys to hammer about it, first. 6-3 is a tough ratio to overcome.
We've heard a lot about "Astroturf" in the last several months. The term refers to "artificial grassroots" support for the President's plans and policies. Typically, GOP Team Leaders are sent a copy of a letter for them to sign their own name to and send to their local paper to see if they can get it published in the "Letter's To The Editor" section. The goal is to make it look like there are a lot of people out there who support the President's aims strongly enough that they are willing to take the time to compose and send their own letter to their local paper - except it's not their words, or their time that went into writing it - it's just a "sign and send" thing, more akin to the petition letters used by many activist groups that are sent directly to politicians.
Why does who it's sent to make a difference in how one might feel about these practices? Well, one crucial difference is that the Astroturf is being sent to hundreds of different papers around the nation, all over different signatures. The different publishers may not know (at least not until or unless they start getting several copies of the same letter over and over again) that this is a piece of pure propaganda and not the actual thoughts of one of their citizens. As a result, the GOP essentially gets free advertising from the paper. Rather than having to buy ad space to make their point in their own specific words, they just get supporters to send those same specific words in to the papers and see how widely they can get them printed.
When a group of people send identical letters to a single politician or even a group of politicians, however, the effect is different. While these letters come in on individual sheets of paper or as individual emails, the effect they have is more like a petition - where you would have one sheet of paper with a single message on it, and tons of signatures under it. More important, however, is the fact that these letters, which are sent to the politicians who's views the senders are trying to sway, aren't being used to try and pitch any group or party's "party line" to the general public, and the group or party that organizes the campaign doesn't get the free advertising out of it. If they want their message in a newspaper, they'll have to go out and pay for it like everyone else, rather than just trick a newspaper editor into running it for free.
As I mentioned earlier, I've been re-reading "All the President's Men" recently, and have been stunned, angered and depressed by some of the similarities I've seen between the Republican party of the early 1970's and the one I've seen in the last several years. I even found what looks like an early attempt at "Astroturf" - though in this case, the Republicans did actually pay for the space - they just made it look like it wasn't them doing it.
[Woodward is speaking to a "well-placed Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP) officer] "Remember the decision to mine Haiphong about 5 months before the election? Some of us felt that decision could make or break the President. We spent $8400 on false telegrams and ads to stir up phony support for the President's decision. Money was used to pay for telegrams to the White House, to tell the President what a great move it was, so that [Nixon Press Secretary Ron] Ziegler could announce that the telegram support was running some large percentage in support of the President. Money also went to pay for a phony ad in the New York Times"Of course, the first thing that I thought of when I read that passage was the phony little "riot" staged by GOP staffers from DC who were flown in to Florida to intimidate Date County into ending their recount of the ballots during the 2000 Election.He took a copy of the ad out of his desk and handed it to Woodward. Headlined "The People vs. the New York Times," the advertisement criticized a Times editorial that had opposed the mining.
"Notice," the man from CRP said, "it is signed by about ten supposedly independent people, leaving the impression that citizens are up in arms about the editorial, and are willing to fork over several thousand dollars of their own money to express their opinion. Not so. The ad was paid for by CRP with forty of those $100 bills from the pile in [CRP Finance Chairman Maurice] Stans safe."
A line in the advertisement ran: "Who can you believe -- the New York Times or the American people?"
Old habits die hard, I guess?
UPDATE: Reading a bit further, I find that the CRP also rigged a poll that station WTTG was running on the mining issue. Apparently, the station put "ballots" in the Washington Post and the Washington Star - and according to James Dooley, a 19-year-old who worked in the CRP newsroom at the time
"The Press office ran the project, " Dooley said, "and work ground to a halt. Everyone had to fill out fifteen postcards. Ten people worked for days buying different kinds of stamps and cards and getting different handwriting to fake the responses.... Thousands of newspapers were bought from the newsstands and the ballots were clipped out and mailed in."When Woodward called the McGovern campaign for what, if anything, they had done, they said the idea of rigging the poll had not occurred to them at all.At a minimum, Dooley said, 4000 ballots supporting Nixon's decision were sent from CRP. WTTG reported that 5157 ballots agreed with the President and 1158 disagreed. Had the CRP ballots not been sent in, the President would, at best, have lost by one vote - 1158 to 1157.
"When all the ballots were clipped," Dooley continued, "people became afraid the newspapers might be discovered, so someone said, 'Shred them.' McCord was in charge of the shredder and he was upset about a tun of newspapers all over the shredder room .... But all the newspapers were destroyed as directed."
Woodward called CRP spokesman Devan Shumway and asked if they poll had been rigged. "When you're involved in an election, you do what you can, " Shumway replied. "We assumed the other side would do it also. On that assumption, we proceeded. I don't know what the other side did." [Emphasis mine]
Obligatory Disclaimer: I have no doubt the Dems have pulled some similar tricks. However, I am unaware of any examples, nor have I seen anything so far that leads me to believe that the intent to create the image of phony public support by the Democrats comes anywhere close to reaching the same scope as that demonstrated by the Republicans.
Maybe this isn't the best time to be doing this, since it so easily gives rise to thoughts that could be described as "paranoid", but I've been re-reading "All the President's Men" lately, and it's both amazing and sad how much the attitude held by the Nixon administration as described in the book is similar to what I see in the Bush administration. I'm not suggesting that the Bush campaign is engaged in any of the same kinds of activities, necessarily, but both camps come across as having a sense of entitlement when it comes to the office, and a willingness to stoop fairly low when it comes to getting what they want. Neither seems to have any sense that maybe the people have a right to know what their government is up to, and both Nixon and Bush seem to believe they should be beyond questions. They both demand extreme loyalty. Mostly, though, there a sense from both administrations that truth that doesn't match their ideas, plans, goals or is otherwise inconvenient is simply irrelevant and need not be told.
One of the things I'm finding most interesting reading the book this time around is that the Washington Post has an extensive "Watergate" section posted at their website with copies of many of the original Woodward and Bernstein articles. Being able to read what was originally published, as opposed to excerpts from the articles, really helps connect all the pieces of the narrative together.
Reading one of their articles tonight - the October 21, 1972 piece "FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats" I came across this quote:
The investigators said that a major purpose of the sub rosa activities was to create so much confusion, suspicion and dissension that the Democrats would be incapable of uniting after choosing a presidential nominee.Now, I'm going to give the Bush campaign the benefit of the doubt and try not to assume that they would actually try to use similar dirty tricks to the same end this year (though I do have to admit that between Bush's frat boy mentality and the fact that he's raising $200,000,000 for a primary campaign season in which he's running virtually unopposed, that sometimes seems to be asking a lot of myself), but confusion, suspicion and dissension can come about from forces that have nothing to do with Republican deceit.
There are aspects of the Democrats campaign this year that sometimes make it feel like a strong split from a hard-fought primary season could be a significant factor in the coming election. Because there are so many candidates starting out, they have to find ways to distinguish themselves from each other. Unfortunately, this can easily lead to rancor between backers of the different candidates - sometimes to the point where when one candidate finally wins the nomination, supporters of one or more of the other candidates won't want to transfer that support to the party nominee.
This year, though, more than ever, it's important that Democratic voters be willing to unify behind a single candidate when the time comes. I'm not saying not to push hard for your favourite candidate during the primaries - that's important because we need to make sure that whomever the nominee is, he or she is fire-tested and ready for prime-time. I just hope that when the convention is over and the nominee has been named, that the other candidates will give whole-hearted support to the nominee and that those who voted for them will follow the candidates' lead.
We can't let Bush win in 2004. Letting him win because we couldn't manage to pull ourselves together behind our nominee would be worse that foolish, it would be nearly suicidal. Even if the Republicans aren't doing a thing to create such a situation this time around, I think we need to all keep in mind that it's probably exactly what they want. Let's send them home empty handed, eh?
Today was Not Geniuses' "Flood the Zone" Friday. The theme was Bush's Financial Irresponsilbity. While I'm late posting this to the site (sorry!), I thought I'd go ahead and share my letter with you all:
The Bush campaign is urging people to write their local papers, commending Bush for his "strong leadership on the economy" and claiming "[h]e has taken bold action to create lasting economic growth." Their suggested talking points include claims that "[t]he President's economic growth agenda creates jobs" and that his "plan puts money back into the pockets of working Americans."I'll let you know if I hear of it being published anywhere.Reality, however, suggests none of these claims are true. This year alone, the deficit will be in excess of $455 billion, and the Fed is concerned about "deflation", something that they've not spoken of since the Depression.
The tax cuts the President is so proud of are largely responsible for the huge deficit, and do nothing to help the economy in the short-run. They are set to kick in primarily in the future, and they target the wealthy and those with stocks, the classes of people least likely to quickly spend the money. In addition, because Bush's tax cuts are so heavily weighted to the wealthy, their claim that taxpayers will receive an "average" of over $1,000 in tax relief this year is highly misleading. Remember that if you give one person a $5,000 a year tax cut and another no tax cut at all, you can still claim that both of them are getting an "average" tax cut of $2,500 a year.
As for his record on jobs, Bush has presided over the first job-losing Presidency since Herbert Hoover, with over 3 million jobs lost since he took office - and unemployment now stands at 6% with 8.8 million Americans out of work. Since Bush took office, the economy has lost an average of 69,000 jobs a month. During the previous administration, however, the economy gained an average of 239,000 jobs per month.
When considering President Bush's claims about the economy, the best question to ask yourself is if you, and the country, are better off now than you were before he took office. The clear answer is a resounding "no".
While federal laws may not provide for the legal ability to actually hold a recall election (which, in many ways, is probably a good thing), the Fair and Balanced PAC is funding a Recall Bush campaign. The campaign cleverly latches on to the main reasons given by Republicans in California for recalling Governor Grey Davis and shows how the same allegations apply to President Bush. It may not be possible to actually recall Bush, but efforts like this may help people understand why, come next November, we need to let him know his time is up.
A special message from Not Geniuses (found via Skeptical Notion):
Flood the Zone Fridays, brought to you by Karl RoveI'll admit, when I first heard about the project, I was a bit skeptical but you know, if the Bush Campaign wants to let ordinary folk make their thoughts about Bush's accomplishments as President, why not take them up on it? Besides, we've all heard how much money Bush is raising for his campaign - he might as well spend some of it to support our candidates and agenda, no?Posted by Ezra Klein
George W. Bush has a new website up, and upon seeing it, you have to admit -- this is a campaign that "gets" the web. Their website consolidates many of the tools that the Democratic challengers and their supporters have been experimenting with, and they are well implemented. Particularly impressive is their Action Center, which has one the the coolest, most useful tools I've ever seen:
If you scroll about halfway down the page, you'll see a field where you can input your zip code -- once you do, you'll be given a large list of newspapers and radio shows in your area, complete with contact information for each of them. It's mighty impressive.
Well, George Bush might have some good tools, but we have the online organization -- and tools mean nothing without good, motivated activists. However, we can do a lot with those tools, and we mean to.
Matt Singer and I originally conceived of this as a project for the DDF, but we quickly realized this wasn't candidate specific -- this is for every lefty in America. So here is what we propose. We want to get a coalition together -- every influential and non-influential lefty site with the ability to direct readers and members over to the Bush action tools. And every Friday, we want to use those tools to write letters and make calls highlighting a different part of the Bush disaster. This Friday will be fiscal irresponsibility day -- where we blanket the media with calls and letters about Bush's absurd fiscal policies. We're even going to get you the info, for instance, behold the Bush Record (if you're not a Dean supporter, just ignore the stuff about Dean).
But this week, we have to pull together the players. That's where you all come in. This needs to move through the blogosphere in much the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" day did. Matt and I can get to a lot of people, but we don't know everybody and we don't have the manpower to do it on our own. So E-mail this around, or simply E-mail your favorite blog-owners and ask them to be part of "Flood the Zone" Fridays, brought to you by Karl Rove and the good folks running the Bush Campaign.
Come Friday, Matt or I will post up some talking points and sample letters, and then watch the fun begin. Lets show Rove who owns the 'net.
P.S - I am so getting audited.
At any rate, it sounds like it could be interesting and it might even make something of an impact. So, I'm in - and would like to invite anyone who reads here to join us in Flood the Zone Fridays. If you have a blog and decide to support this project, be sure to let Not Geniuses know!
Reading through a Newsweek article on the making of the third Harry Potter movie ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"), and ran across a rather interesting quote from the film's director, Alfonso Cuaron ("Y Tu Mama Tambien", "A Little Princess") comparing characters in the Harry Potter story with current (or recently former) world leaders.
Cuaron's outspokenness is also new to the franchise. Does the evil wizard Voldemort still remind him of George W. Bush, as he said recently? "In combination with Saddam," he says. "They both have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people. I read books four and five, and Fudge - Rowling's slippery Minister of Magic - is similar to Tony Blair. He's the ultimate politician. He's in denial about many things. And everything is for the sake of his own persona, his own power. The way the Iraq thing was handled was not unlike the way Fudge handled affairs in book four."What's scary is he's really not that far off, when you think about it, though the way I see it has a bit of a reversal to it. In reality, Bush and Blair - who were on the same side, unlike Fudge and Voldermort - were apparently manipulating things to make Saddam seem like even more of a threat than he may have been. Fudge, especially in the most recent book - "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" - Fudge is trying to manipulate things to make people think Voldermort really isn't a threat at all. But I would have to agree with him about Bush. Short-tempered, petty, demanding absolute fealty from his "subjects", and pretty good at not admitting his own failures.
Too bad Harry's not American-born and 35 - the Democrats could use him!
Over at This Modern World, Bob Harris points the way to a New Zealand site that has an article explaining just how easy it is to tamper with the Diebold electronic voting machines.
Apparently, their security isn't all that whoopy, and, it's auditing features are fairly easy to edit, passwords aren't hard to obtain or copy, and it makes use of multiple copies of the data that makes it easier to tamper with the data without it being easily detected.
I'm not sure this is exactly what I'd call progress.
Select Smart offers a Presidential candidate matching tool which is supposed to help you see which candidates have the best match for your beliefs and views. Obviously, there's always going to be room for questions about accuracy, but most of the Select Smart tools I've used have - for me anyway - been pretty accurate.
Just for the fun of it, I thought I'd share my results with you. When using the selector, you can limit the field of candidates it tries to match you to by specifing whether or not you want to have candidates listed who have withdrawn from the race, whether or not you want to have candidates listed who have not yet announced their candidacy, and whether or not you want to have candidates listed who are not members of one of the two main parties. Just so you could see the range of candidates this thing covers, I went ahead and had it run a full match with no limitations.
When you get your results, a link is provided for each candidate to a page with info about them. Not only does this give you some ideas of what the candidates stand for, but it also gives you a peek at what kind of information their analysis of each candidate was based on - which you can use to get a feel for how accurate your score for that candidate was on the selector tool.
The percentage after each names is how closely their profile matches my answers.
I still haven't decided who I'm going to support, and probably won't for quite a while. I've been leaning towards Dean lately, but I want to make sure that it's him I like and support, and not that I'm just getting caught up in the internet buzz he's creating. As for other candidates, there is a lot about Kerry I find intersting, also, and I've been planning to spend a bit more time reviewing his record and platform. After looking at this, I'll probably also give both Kucinich and Edwards a closer look.
At any rate, it's kind of a fun little tool to check out, so give it a whirl. You may even surprise yourself :)
Christopher Key has written a wonderful piece on what we, the citizens of the United States, should be demaning in our next leader. I got a bit teary-eyed reading it, because his vision is so clear and so dead on.
From DailyKOS, a suggestion for the Democrats:
We all talk about the Democratic Party standing for something. Well, there it is.Well, it's one sure way to differentiate the Democrats from the Republicans, and it might help remind some people what we stand to lose if things keep going as they have been.The party of personal liberty.
It's a winner, both tactically (helping us win elections), and philosophically. Government can and should lend a helping hand. But it should also protect our individual freedoms from those (like Santorum) who would tear them away.
Do read the entire piece - he has some good points about Liberitarians and how they might just fit in with the Democrats better than the Republicans - and wouldn't that be a boost next November?
I just hope someone passes this on to Terry McAuliffe at the DNC. Or maybe a lot of someones. ;)
Howard Dean has now issued a call for Sen. Rick Santorum to resign from his leadership position in Congress. Currently, Sentorum is the Republican's #3 man.
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean on Wednesday called for Republican Sen. Rick Santorum to resign his leadership post after the lawmaker compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.Go Howard!
"Gay-bashing is not a legitimate public policy discussion; it is immoral. Rick Santorum's failure to recognize that attacking people because of who they are is morally wrong makes him unfit for a leadership position in the United States Senate," Dean said in a statement.
At this point, I haven't yet decided who I will support for President in the 2004 election, but I have a feeling it will wind up being a tough call between Howard Dean and John Kerry. Both seem to have a number of strengths, but I haven't yet identified what their major weaknesses are - and every candidate will have a few. I would, however, like to recommend checking both of them. Dean is garnering a lot of excitement in some quarters right now - not just for his denunciation of Santorum, but because of his stand on other issues as well - including the Iraqi war. Kerry got a major burst of publicity a couple weeks ago when he called for a "regime change" here in the US and was blasted by the GOP for daring to suggest we need a change of presidency during a way.
Information on Dean is available at his official campaign site Dean for America and his official blog Dean: Call to Action.
Information on John Kerry is available at his campaign site John Kerry for President.
Howard Dean, a Democratic candidate for president and the Vermont governor who signed that state's "Civil Unions" law, allowing gay couples to form legal relationships similar to marriage, has posted a statement to his official blog about Rick Santorums comparison of consensual gay sex to adultery, bigamy, incest and polygamy:
In an interview published yesterday with the Associated Press, Rick Santorum, the third highest ranking Republican in the Senate, compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. I am outraged by Senator Santorum's remarks.As I noted yesterday, Santorum's comments equate consensual gay sex with acts that are either deceptive or exploitave in nature, neither of which is a inheirent part of gay sex between consenting adults.That a leader of the Republican Party would make such insensitive and divisive comments --comments that are derogatory and meant to harm an entire group of Americans, their friends and their familie -- is not only outrageous, but deeply offensive.
The silence with which President Bush and the Republican Party leadership have greeted Sen. Santorum's remarks is deafening. It is the same silence that greeted Senator Lott's offensive remarks in December. It is a silence that implicitly condones a policy of domestic divisiveness, a policy that seeks to divide Americans again and again on the basis of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.
I hope that more will also speak out against Sentorum's comments and make it clear that consenting gay adults have the same right to love whomever they choose as any other couple of consenting adults, and that making public statements otherwise is as bad and as shameful as making other bigoted comments.
Link via Atrios
Found via Tom Tomorrow, a US News blurb that is one of the most terrifying things I've read in quite some time:
With Republicans expecting President Bush to roll to reelection in 2004, their focus is fast turning to 2008 and whom the GOP will run against expected Democratic nominee Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now, Whispers is told that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush looks strong. "If Jeb is in the mix" for the nomination, says a top GOP official, "it's his."
Right now, I'm liking John Kerry very much. Not just for having said that maybe we need a regime change here in the US (a phrase he backed off of somewhat once the criticism starts - though he's not backed down on the idea that Bush needs to be replaced), but for actually pointing out that if the Republicans want to criticize him for speaking out against the war or against the Bush administration, they'd better not try to question his patriotism - since he actually fought during the Vietnam War as opposed to the many conservatives who found ways to avoid going.
Kerry is someone I'll have to watch as the Presidential campaign gets underway, but so far, so good. He's had his inconsistancies - such as voting to give Bush the authority to start the war and then complaining that we didn't spend enough time to really let diplomacy work - but, sadly, I expect that from a politician.
One thing I do find amusing about the way the Republicans are working themselves into a lather over Kerry's comments is that they seem to be outraged at the use of the word "regime" - as if that only denotes some kind of undemocratic government (ignoring, of course, the irony in that, given how Bush wormed his way into the Presidency). Yet as Eschaton and Ornicus point out, during the Clinton years, many conservatives used the term "regime" to describe the Clinton administration. How soon they forget.
The whole flap about Kerry does, however, bring up one other concern. For the last month or two, I've seen several suggestions from liberal bloggers that the Bush administration may find a way to cancel the upcoming elections so as to protect his ability to stay in power. While I wouldn't put much past them, I've always sort of felt that concerns about them cancelling the election were closer to paranoid than possible. Yet, whether he intended to or not, Mark Racicot has just made the situation worse, by making it sound as if war could be used as a justification to avoid the risk of replacing Bush. In responding to the controversy over Kerry's comments, issued a press release with the following statement [emphasis mine]:
Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America's commander-in-chief at a time when America is at war. Critical analysis offered in the best interests of the country is part of a healthy democracy. But this use of self-serving rhetoric designed to further Senator Kerry's political ambitions at a time when the lives of America's sons and daughters are at stake reflects a complete lack of judgment.
You don't have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to follow the reasoning there to its extreme conclusion. Now I just wish that some Democrats would have the courage to speak up and question exactly what he means by that - begin a debate on just how far this supposed "line" extends, and what happens if next November we're still at war? The first few to bring it up will be ridiculed horrendously, but if enough ask the questions, the more seriously they may be taken.
At the end of last year, blogs helped push the issue of Trent Lott's racism to the forefront of national debate. This may be another issue we want to work on pushing until it, too, is more widely discussed. Pointing out now whenever the Republicans make statements that imply that replacing Bush is somehow a bad idea - in the sense that even suggesting we should elect a new leader (which is all Kerry was doing) is "over the line" - may be the best way we have of waking up others to the possibility and thus defusing it. It's worth a thought, at least....
Right now, I'm liking John Kerry very much. Not just for having said that maybe we need a regime change here in the US (a phrase he backed off of somewhat once the criticism starts - though he's not backed down on the idea that Bush needs to be replaced), but for actually pointing out that if the Republicans want to criticize him for speaking out against the war or against the Bush administration, they'd better not try to question his patriotism - since he actually fought during the Vietnam War as opposed to the many conservatives who found ways to avoid going.
Kerry is someone I'll have to watch as the Presidential campaign gets underway, but so far, so good. He's had his inconsistancies - such as voting to give Bush the authority to start the war and then complaining that we didn't spend enough time to really let diplomacy work - but, sadly, I expect that from a politician.
One thing I do find amusing about the way the Republicans are working themselves into a lather over Kerry's comments is that they seem to be outraged at the use of the word "regime" - as if that only denotes some kind of undemocratic government (ignoring, of course, the irony in that, given how Bush wormed his way into the Presidency). Yet as Eschaton and Ornicus point out, during the Clinton years, many conservatives used the term "regime" to describe the Clinton administration. How soon they forget.
The whole flap about Kerry does, however, bring up one other concern. For the last month or two, I've seen several suggestions from liberal bloggers that the Bush administration may find a way to cancel the upcoming elections so as to protect his ability to stay in power. While I wouldn't put much past them, I've always sort of felt that concerns about them cancelling the election were closer to paranoid than possible. Yet, whether he intended to or not, Mark Racicot has just made the situation worse, by making it sound as if war could be used as a justification to avoid the risk of replacing Bush. In responding to the controversy over Kerry's comments, issued a press release with the following statement [emphasis mine]:
Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America's commander-in-chief at a time when America is at war. Critical analysis offered in the best interests of the country is part of a healthy democracy. But this use of self-serving rhetoric designed to further Senator Kerry's political ambitions at a time when the lives of America's sons and daughters are at stake reflects a complete lack of judgment.
You don't have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to follow the reasoning there to its extreme conclusion. Now I just wish that some Democrats would have the courage to speak up and question exactly what he means by that - begin a debate on just how far this supposed "line" extends, and what happens if next November we're still at war? The first few to bring it up will be ridiculed horrendously, but if enough ask the questions, the more seriously they may be taken.
At the end of last year, blogs helped push the issue of Trent Lott's racism to the forefront of national debate. This may be another issue we want to work on pushing until it, too, is more widely discussed. Pointing out now whenever the Republicans make statements that imply that replacing Bush is somehow a bad idea - in the sense that even suggesting we should elect a new leader (which is all Kerry was doing) is "over the line" - may be the best way we have of waking up others to the possibility and thus defusing it. It's worth a thought, at least....
I found this at Progress is an Illusion and just had to share it. Too perfect!
"Ready 2004" swag available here: http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/store.aspx?s=ready2004
From an article on a recent LA Times poll:
WASHINGTON -- The share of Americans favoring President Bush's reelection in 2004 has fallen below 50%, while Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts have emerged as the leaders for the Democratic nomination to oppose him, a new Los Angeles Times poll has found.
Just 45% of registered voters said they are now likely to support Bush for reelection, while 40% said they were inclined to back the Democratic nominee, the survey found. Fifteen percent said they don't now lean in either direction
John O'Ferrell has written a pointed, but hilarious piece for the Guardian Unlimited, suggesting that perhaps, rather than sending British troops into a risky war designed to help W get re-elected, perhaps the troops could be deployed to states in which the race is close and help campiagn for Bush instead. Joe Bob says "Check it out"!
From an email sent out by the Democratic National Committee:
Out of a total nearly 79 million votes cast nationwide, a shift of just 41,000 votes would have kept the Senate in Democratic hands.
Now, I imagine they had to do at least a little bit of fun math to come up with that statistic (I generally don't trust statistics from a biased source unconditionally), but there is no denying that many races were very close, and that it wouldn't have taken too many votes to have changed the overall outcome. Something for the party faithful from both sides to keep in mind over the next two years, as we approach the 2004 Presidential Elections.
A few days ago, I wrote a piece about the upcoming FX show, American Candidate. This has been the quite the talk of the Blogosphere, and now Phil Bowermeister from the Ace of Justice has an idea he'd like to share.
His goal is to get Stephen Green from VodkaPundit nominated to be one of the potential-Candidates on the show. Be sure to read Phil's piece, and if you agree with his idea, send a letter to FX (address provided) and we can see what happens from there.
TV show set to select a presidential candidate
Friday, September 20, 2002 Posted: 5:36 PM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) -- There's a real president, a fictional president on "The West Wing," so why not a presidential candidate chosen by television viewers?
That's what the FX hopes to produce. The cable channel announced on Friday the start of a series, "American Candidate," designed to pick a TV-endorsed potential president. [...]
At first glance, the idea of using a television show to select a potential presidential candidate sounds positively, incredibly, embarassingly stupid. At second glance, too.
The article notes that a similar kind of show is already underway in Venezuela. Perhaps that will be of comfort to some. I don't know, though.
I think part of why my initial reaction is to balk at the idea of using an "American Idol"/"Survivor" kind of concept to pick a potential presidential candidate is because our entire election system sometimes seems to be so much of a joke anyway, and there's no way this would actually help to alleviate that any. From the enormous amounts of money raised to fund our campaigns, to the constant "ooh! See what we dug up on this one?" from both opponents and the media, to the yearly attempts to explain the Electoral Collage and so on. For a country that is supposed to be the Last Great Superpower (tm), we sometimes just come off looking silly.
So, into this already glurpy mix steps FX, and their intent to make the 2004 election even more of a spectacle that it already is. The basic concept is that they'll start with a selection of potential potential-candidates (since there's no guarantee that the winner will actually go on to actually run in the election), and then traipse them around the country to "patriotic" locations and have them engage in competitions so that they can display their views, their skills and their ability to look good on camera. Some of the potential potential-candidates will be "voted off" each week until a grand finale to take place around July 4th, when FX will hold a "convention" of sorts, and the last three candidates will compete to be the winner. After that, they're on their own.
FX has stated that they will not be providing the winner with any campaign funds and will make sure that all financial aspects of the show conform to election law. Now if we could just get the political parties to do that, we might get somewhere. At any rate, the cable network acknolwedges that as a part of the media, they cannot actually run anyone as a candidate, which is why they won't guarantee that the winner will actually run.
Somthing I realized, though, as I was thinking about all of this. In some ways, this might not be such a bad method for picking potential candidates. You start off with a fairly large pool of people who are interested, and the you essentially take money out of the equation. With the show, the contestants will all have an equal shot at proving themselves worthy at each stage of the game up until they're voted off. Someone who comes from a family with very little money has the opportunity to get the same exposure for his or her qualifications, capabilities and views as, well, someone from a family as rich as the Bushes. To me, that part of it is actually a fairly appealing concept.
I've often thought that one of the biggest problems with our electoral system is that whoever can raise the most money really does have the best chance of winning. And just because they may have a larger pool of funds to draw from, it doesn't necessarily follow that they have more supporters. It could just be that their supporters can afford to make donations at the legal maximun (and probably have some good accountants or lawyers who can help them find ways around those limits as well -- and yes, that applies to the wealthiest candidates of ALL parties).
Doing something like what the show is doing helps take much of that advantage away - and its possible that by the time the show is done, the winner will be popular enough with the voting public that they could actually have a chance at really competing with the big boys. Most likely, they won't get a big enough boost from the show to actually have a shot at winning the presidency, but it could make them enough of an issue that the main candidates have to stop sniping at each other long enough to deal with other issues. Personally, I think a campaign that actually dealt with issues in general would be a nice change of pace.
So, part of me still feels that the show itself would be an embarassment, but part of me thinks it could actually have some value. It's going to take a lot more thought before I can make up my mind, but it might almost be worth risking a few snickers from overseas if it helps refocus the campaign here on more tangible issues and away from the "gotcha!" mentality our campaigns seems to be run on now.
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