EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ELECTION FRAUD BUT WAS AFRAID TO ASK.
This may be the most important email you get this election. Pay attention. Keep it and read it when you have fifteen minutes. But don't wait too long.
We're going to talk about the white elephant in the room, the fact that a bunch of our votes may not count if we don't act now. If we don't devote attention to this in our volunteer duties, we will lose. Two sentences added to the end of a phonecall or random conversation can win this election.
"Have you checked your voter registration lately?" and "Do you know where your early polling place is?"
Early voting IN PERSON is the key, not absentee. Most cities have polling booths open days ahead of the election in at least one central location. You can show up a few days ahead of time, find your name on the rolls and then cast your vote. If there's a problem you can still make changes to your registration or file a complaint so others know a problem exists BEFORE November 4th.
VOTING ABSENTEE CAN BE DANGEROUS. If your vote was challenged shortly before the election because your house was foreclosed and the GOP challenged your address at the last minute, you will not know you are not on the rolls. Soldiers in Iraq or otherwise overseas vote absentee and their votes often didn't count in 2000 and 2004 because DO NOT FORWARD letters sent to their house in the States on behalf of the GOP, friendly little reminder letters, have been returned to sender and the GOP has used them to challenge the vote of some poor grunt that may take a piece of shrapnel to protect somebody else's freedom to vote.
That grunt may die on a sandy battlefield never knowing his own right to vote was just challenged because he had to vote absentee.
Also, if its a Republican County and there are Republican poll workers sorting the mail there when your ballot comes in absentee, they could very easily toss in the trash anything that looks like its coming from a Democrat. Absentee only works in SAFELY Democratic districts we shouldn't be worrying about anyway.
Have I mentioned how important it is to learn how to become a poll worker?
How does the GOP poll worker that signed up to work the polls while you were watching Seinfeld know who's absentee ballots to toss in the trash?
Duh.
They looked at the name.
If the name sounds like John Smith, they may seig heil it as a good old boy white male Republican and let it through. If its Tanisha Jackson, or Maria Ramirez, Or Fundi Abdul Han, they would figure its a minority leftist insurgent, AKA a Democrat, and throw it out.
In some counties, absentee ballots are even marked on the distinctive envelope "DEMOCRAT".
Way to go slick.
Speaking of dummies, some people are even dumb enough to actually mark their party affiliation on the absentee ballot. I'm sure that will get past the hands of some unbelievably lucky Republican poll worker or mail thief with no scruples and a bone to pick.
I got a lot of this information out of the book "Armed Madhouse" by Greg Palast, a well respected American BBC reporter who is partnered with Robert Kennedy Jr. He's done his homework. You can find "Armed Madhouse" at the library or Borders and its all pretty well documented in those pages.
In his book, Greg suggests as I do that early voting, IN PERSON, is the key. I would suggest getting the word out to as many groups as possible about this. This needs to be distributed in the real world by real people, not just on the internet. PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW WHERE EARLY POLLING PLACES ARE. I'm not writing this to pass notes to my buddies, I'm writing it for the elderly couple in Indiana, the young turks in Ohio, and the middle aged taco vender in New Mexico. I'll let you translate it into something more suitable to get to those areas.
The people affected by this problem probably don't have the internet anyway. For 56 days we have a national organization that can get to them.
If we do nothing, we do it at our peril.
I don't have time to post the information on every group but a few of us could if someone is willing to start devoting time to this. We should also petition the obviously distracted and busy Obama campaign to do the same.
Nothing is more important as an issue, especially if you live in a swing state and especially if you live in an area that trends minority and Democrat, as those are the easiest to target for fraud due to the names.
Make no mistake, the GOP IS cheating. The poll results that have just come out as being skewed Republican in USA Today, Rassmussen and others are a foreshadowing of shady things to come. They're manipulating the polls to influence swing votes who believe mistakenly there's a GOP bandwagon to get on and to set us up for a possible loss. It is not a coincidence that every major election comes down to a few thousand or hundred votes. We are not that perfectly bipolar in our views across the nation.
Want to know more? Keep reading.
Other ways the vote is stolen? The privatized voting companies, who trend Republican because they're corporate, (don't ask me why we privatize our vote, or why one of John McCain's campaign managers tried to by Diebold, the biggest offender that also makes ATMs, just after he go the nomination.)
These private companies will deliver too few or too old manual voting machines (not electronic) to minority neighborhoods. Rickety machines will break early in the day or if there's not enough to begin with they will create long lines. At various times I've voted in Republican districts where I ALWAYS breezed through in twenty minutes. I've also voted in minority neighborhoods where it took me three hours.
Go figure.
People wont want to wait long periods and they'll go home or be forced back to work without voting. I don't know how we do it, but someone should be checking amounts of voting machines and quality of voting machines delivered to heavily minority areas. Really the campaign should be doing this or we should make them. Don't assume I am forwarding this information to the campaign or that they already know. I was shocked by the lack of knowledge on behalf of the Obama campaign when these issues occurred Super Tuesday. The response I got was, "we're going to file a complaint."
Somehow, that didn't work for Gore or Kerry. If we wait for the powers that be to act, we'll be waiting another four years.
The most frustrating and illusive way the vote is stolen is by electronic vote. Although usage of electronic machines is down because of problems that create miscounts that have surfaced publicly, (The new Secretary of State in California just decertified them shortly before the primary) electronic machines still represent 30 percent of the total machines nationwide, which is a huge margin. Most importantly, Ohio is still using them even though they admit that they lost at least 2000 votes in 2004. The real figure is probably in tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds. (The race was won by a Bush margin I believe less than ten thousand votes.)
In 2004, in one precinct in New Mexico, registered voter population 900, entirely Hispanic and heavily Democrat, where the Catholic church did a massive get out the vote drive to transport people to the polls from all over the rural area in school busses, there were 925 votes cast on the Diebold electronic machines. EVERY VOTE was either for BUSH or none of the above. Kerry didn't receive a SINGLE vote.
Can you say "machine error"?
There was no paper trail as these votes were beamed directly to the companies corporate headquarters. So Democrats drove miles in schoolbusses to vote "none of the above" or for Bush... I guess.
I talked to an IT tech. What happens is electronic machines can be "accidentally bumped" to change the touch screen radius, skewing the totals so some people may vote for Bush instead of Kerry because Bush has a touch radius on the screen bigger than Kerry. There's no paper receipt so you'll have no idea if the machine sent in a mistake.
Provisional ballots. Suck. If you get a provisional ballot in a swing State, count on your vote not counting. Sometimes Republican poll workers will stand smiling at the door and ask where people live, to direct them to either the green or orange table where they'll be on the rolls.
Only, in reality, sometimes they'll direct anyone that is minority or who looks bohemian or younger or just plain angry to the wrong table, so you won't find your name on the rolls and you'll be handed a provisional ballot that will not count because the most likely Republican Secretary of that swing State will rule NOT to count provisional ballots almost automatically. They only count provisionals in razor close votes, and if they haven't counted thousands of them yet, perhaps not even realizing the amount there, how will they ever know its close?
They won't. PROVISIONAL BALLOTS DO NOT COUNT!
Switching people to provisional ballots is also the purpose of why so many Democrat voters registrations get switched "magically" to Republican or Independent. I personally know six people this has happened to, and as a poll monitor I witnessed or heard secondhand of at least another 100 minority voters in just TWO precincts in Pasadena that were furious because their registrations had been switched without their knowledge and they were denied the right to vote in the Democratic primary. They were told gladly that they could vote for McCain or Romney... if they wanted.
Why bother changing a Democratic registration to Republican, you may ask?
Why? So that when voters show up on the day of the vote, their registration isn't listed where they think it will be, and again they'll be handed a worthless provisional ballot. Poof. No vote. I guess nobody thought to check under R for Republican.
When I told the Obama campaign about the many lifelong Democrat voters being turned away as being magically Republican in a Democratic primary, they were rightfully furious. Campaign workers said, "Those people should have been handed provisional ballots!"
Uh... did I mention the problem with those yet?
How does the anyone accomplish this amazing magic of registration switching and why does it happen to a few Republicans too? I remember on Super Tuesday night, the news even did a fluff piece on a, heaven forbid, REPUBLICAN, who had her vote registration switched in the primary. Hey, are the Democrats pulling something too?
I don't think so. I'd guess this lady probably is just a whale watcher and she got caught in the same net the Democrats that lost their vote did.
A whale watcher? What do I mean by that?
Well, all these magic flips of registration may have occurred months or years ago and voters were too lazy to check and see if their registration is still what they think it is. Independent groups loyal to the GOP have operatives canvass neighborhoods or hang out on college campuses. Y'know the guys with the petitions to save the whales or approve that new Indian Casino? Next time you sign one, flip to the last page. If there's a faded carbon copy there, it could be a voter registration change form, or transfered to one, and you sign it, they'll send it in and request your registration be changed to Republican or Independent.
The Republican on the news crying about how her registration was switched probably thought that she was saving the whales when she signed that form in the parking lot at Wallmart. Come to think of it, she did LOOK sort of liberal. Well, the result was that the form got sent in somehow to change her to a liberal on paper at least.
You think you're saving the whales and instead you're saving the GOP.
The angry would be whale watchers I met on Super Tuesday that had their registration changed weren't cheated by the DNC or Greenpeace in 2008, they probably didn't even bother to vote in 2004 or 2006 and their vote was stolen a long time ago by Karl Rove or someone else in a local race and we were just feeling the effect in the massive voter turn out caused by Clinton and Obama.
We can assume all those people that were turned away have fixed their registration by now, right?
Hmn. Big assumption. I'll bet money they're still working ten hours and then watching Sienfeld over a pizza instead of stressing about it. We better mention that the next time we make a volunteer call or have a conversation somewhere, huh?
Dealing with forms and government agencies scares people. They won't bother to check. I talked to girl who's registration was switched to Republican years ago and she's never been brave enough to figure out how to switch back so she can vote in a Primary. Some people actually think they'll get in trouble with the IRS if they call. Heck, beurocracy scares me too.
I know in Los Angeles you can check your registration at lavote.net, but for the rest of the country, I don't know. Thats up to you to figure out.
Rule 1 in election fraud; All politics are local. Even in a Democratic state, a Republican district may create election fraud. Why did those Precincts in Pasadena have so much magical registration flipping? Who cares, this is sunny Democrat California, right?
Wrong.
I live in a Republican Distict that has a lot of tight local races. These people were frauded to keep a local hack in office, not to rig a Presidential campaign, but the result is just the same.
When it comes to election fraud, the thing to understand is that its death by a thousand cuts. There is no one grand scheme. Yes, Karl Rove did approve thousands of names on caging lists, (voters to be challenged by first class mail being returned) The email was titled "RE: CAGING LISTS" and sent by Rove's protege Tim Griffin from his Washington office. Little Timmy was under investigation for vote caging until Bush fired the prosecuting US Attorney and gave GRIFFIN the U.S. attorney's job, uh, until Griffin resigned the day Greg Palast outted the story to Rep. John Conyers who swore to investigate (no joke, you can find the actual lists CC'd to Karl Rove in the latest version of "Armed Madhouse" Greg Palast's book.) The lists were sent accidentally to rnc.org instead of rnc.com, or something like that, and thus they were sent to a spoof site instead, who handed the emails to Palast. Oops.
But that was just part of it.
All the GOP in general does is look at any way possible to keep the amount of people voting down as much as possible.
When you add overly improvisational and passionate neocon poll workers to the mix, overly creative neocons working to approve registrations within the local parties, and some whacky new laws like the "VOTER ID" laws in Indiana and other states that will disenfrancise thousands of people simply because they're working two jobs and don't have time to go get a new I.D., or they're too elderly to get out of the house and get an I.D., or they can't pay the fee, if there is one, which amounts to a Jim Crow poll tax, well, that can ad up.
Thats why the Democratic party fought the voter I.D. laws and the GOP screamed to the rooftops about illegal aliens voting twice. (What illegal alien is even going to show up when they're afraid they're gonna be deported anyway?) Y'know how many people were charged with vote fraud in the last eight years, after Bush's task force on it?
Five.
And I'm sure those were probably trumped up. Oh wait, it was six. I almost forgot Anne Coulter.
Bottom line, find out where early polling places have been set up in each district and spread the word locally. Every volunteer at every Obama phonebank to a swing state should be at the end of the call telling voters to check their registrations before they vote with enough time to fix problems, and to vote early, IN PERSON, at early polling places.
I'm no supergenius expert here, I got all the information either by just reading some articles factchecked online or directly out of Greg Palast's book "Armed Madhouse." Its a book I highly recommend everyone get in the next few days and read, at least the chapters on stealing the vote. You can go to gregpalast.com to learn a bit more about the issue.
Dont assume I'm forwarding this information around. I took the time to compile it so you wouldn't have to spend a week reading Greg's book and so you can share it. Please, forward this information to anyone you know who cares about the right to vote, especially if they live in a swing state or Republican district with tight local races. We can short circuit this problem if we inform voters to simply check their registrations, vote early and vote in person at established early polling places.
Voting absentee is not the best solution, and neither is waiting until November 4th to figure out if your vote has been lost six months beforehand.
Make no mistake. This is a war for the future of this country and it will be won in the fine print.
Most importantly, most importantly of all, is DO NOT DESPAIR.
Hopefully you are still reading and not hanging from the rafters by now.
When I first heard all this information, my immediate reaction was to throw up my hands and say, "What?! Why bother to make an effort to vote if there is massive evidence out there of all this fraud."
I read the book "Armed Madhouse" before Barack Obama decided to run for the White House. I went into this effort knowing all the information I just gave you, and yet I have canvassed for Obama in two States, I've made hundreds of phonecalls, and I've made an award winning ad that played nationally for free.
Why? Why did I choose to support Senator Obama and work my ass off, putting my life and career at times on hold, when I knew what I know?
Because the GOP wants us to despair and stay safely on your computer bitching, or at home eating pizza.
Because from the start, from even before the start, I knew that Barack Obama was the only possible candidate that can surpass any effort to cheat the American Electorate. I knew that Barack Obama could do what he has done, that he could motivate the American people, and that there's nothing more dangerous than a motivated electorate. Barack Obama represents our best chance at taking our country back from the criminals that stole it in 2000 and 2004.
And the GOP has known it all along too.
Well, you see, its precisely because of all our efforts that stuff like vote caging isn't going to work. Elections can only be frauded if people aren't paying attention. In a war, you sacrifice some brave troops to the machine guns in order to overwhelm the machine gun nest. Not all the votes have to count, but there needs to be enough of them cast that they overwhelm any effort to cheat.
Why haven't we heard more outrage from our leaders on this issue? Why isn't Obama screaming from the rooftops about it the way that Dennis Kucinich did after New Hampshire in the primary? And hey, whatever happened to Dennis's appeal for a recount in New Hampshire?
Trust me, Obama comes from Chicago. He understands vote rigging. I believe he's on it. Think about it. That's why he's running the tremendous ground game he is. If Obama was to come out and say anything about possible election fraud in a way that was picked up by the main stream press, not only would he look like a fringe candidate, as Kucinich unfortunately but bravely did, he may also actually supress voter turn out. You'd get a lot of people that would say, "what's the use, my vote isn't going to count, why should I bother?"
We don't want to foster that impression, either in our own minds or others. We MUST, MUST, MUST educate ourselves on these matters so that we can fight them. We MUST, MUST, MUST, put enough fear in voters to get them a bit angry and make them check their registrations even if they believe them to be valid, but we MUST NOT cause despair.
The turnout in this election will be historic. Chances are that our months of voter registration drives already are going to overwhelm any chance at election rigging in at least most states. But all it takes is one State like Ohio or Florida, that is why we must concentrate our efforts in those swing States and be careful how its discussed with voters. We don't want to turn them off.
We're simply informing them about how to check their registration just to prevent any unforeseen problems that might be lurking because maybe they haven't ever bothered to check before. If you sound like a conspiracy theorist, they'll ignore you. Be practical when they say, "Oh, I'm not worried, I know my registration. I got my sample ballot." Then you just tell them, "Yes, but its worth a call to check your registration anyway. Last minute errors have been known to cost votes. Better safe than sorry".
Words to live by. Better safe than sorry.
Distribute this far and wide please.
P.S. I'm listening to radio as I type this. The talk radio host on Air America 1150. In Madison Wisconsin, Democrat voters are apparently getting unsolicited absentee ballot applications that are mailers apparently from JOHN McCAIN'S campaign. These mailers misinform voters to send applications to the wrong office in the wrong city to recieve their ballots.
(They're probably not really from the campaign, but they're from an Independent group with enough GOP funding to mess with the absentee vote. Try googling the story as told on Air America radio at 11:10am.)
I will say it one final time. VOTE IN PERSON AND VOTE EARLY. FIND YOUR EARLY POLLING PLACES AND SPREAD THE WORD.
Best,
The Samurai Patriot
Voters can check their registration at barackobama.com. There's a link here https://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php#
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