LIBERADIO(!)

On Tuesday, Lisa Z. reminded us that we should all complain about a lack of a paper trail when we vote this time around. Her story is here. On the same day, our friend Marga suggested that we should also make a xerox copy of our complaint before handing it in to a poll worker since the last time she complained the election commission claimed they never received it.

Today, Jackson voted and tried to complain but was told that there’s no such thing as a complaint form. So, he called the Davidson County Election Commission and spoke to Ray Barrett. Jackson writes, “I was told that the Davidson County Election Commission had no control over the move to electronic voting. I was told that the Davidson County Election Commission has had no access to review to source code powering the vote tallying and storing software on the voting machines. I was told that there was no independent citizen review of the machines being used in this election.”

He then urges us all, regardless of who we are voting for, to “contact your election commission by phone at the time of your vote and in writing as soon as you can to let them know that you demand a system that includes a paper record of your vote. Our democracy depends on it.”

Yes. Yes, it does. And for those of you on the more conservative side of the aisle who want to label us as part of the “tin-foil hat brigade” (I’m talking to you, Mr. Bart and Mr. Williams), please realize that this threat to our democratic process is harmful to all of us. This is more about the right to elect our representatives disappearing before our eyes than it is about partisanship.

To see what I mean try this little experiment. Read chapter 4 of Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast or either this or this article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.. Now, everywhere there’s an “R” in front of an elected officials name replace it with a “D.” Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Are you concerned yet?

Some people are finding an anti-miscegenation racist signal in the RNC’s “Tacky Blonde” Harold Ford attack ad. In defense of the ad, local conservative blogger, Nathan Moore, writes that he’s been “in hundreds of Republican meetings, and not once can I think of a time when race was brought up and discussed in any context.”

Dude, the fact that the Republican party, one of only two major political parties in the US, hasn’t discussed race in “hundreds of meetings” “in any context” is nothing to be proud of.

And by the by, no one should be accusing Republicans of being racist. They should be accusing them of pandering to and manipulating people who are.

Yesterday, during the White House’s “Radio Day,” Mr. Karl Rove predicted the Republicans would retain control of Congress, discounting polls and the legimate momentum that points to a Democratic takeover. “You heard it here first,” Rove declared in his interview with Fox News Radio.

In the manufactured reality of Bush administration, Rove could very well be right. Fox news was the first to call the election for President Bush in both 2000 and 2004 and the rest of the cable stations and networks repeated the news without question. In 2004, exit polling data, which is never wrong, told us that John Kerry would be the next POTUS but Fox News, once again, declared George Bush the winner and CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS all fell in line. (This year they tried to outlaw exit polling).

It’s not surprising that Mr. Rove would say that he expects victory because all he has to do is utter the words and his radio & TV mouthpieces will legitimize his predictions. He can say that he has better polling information then the rest of us and when we wake up on November 8 and the Republicans have retained both the house and the senate we will call Karl Rove a political genius and, without question, accept the GOP victory. Despite all the polling information, despite the convetional wisdom, despite the momentum of the Democratic base, we’ll soothe our discomfort by repeating their talking points: the Republicans mobilized their base; the evangelicals came out for them; they have a better ‘get out the vote” machine than we do.

Well, the Republicans do have a machine and it’s called Diebold. The confidence of Mr. Rove that the Republicans will win in two weeks is backed up by the federally-mandated troubled machines with their hacked vote-flipping software. The machines are in place and ready to do GOP bidding. There’s no paper trail. We don’t have access to the software. There is no recount mechanism built into the system.

Electronic voting machine trouble has already started this year. In the hotly contested Virginia Senate race, the machines cut off Democratic candidate Jim Webb’s name and the problem can’t be fixed by election day. Oopsie.

But the machines are not the most disturbing part of the Republican plan. They have also implemented a systematic vote-supressing mechanism. In Ohio in 2004 the mechanism included the manufacture of “humiliating and frustrating waits” in strategic areas (urban and university precincts). This election cycle they’re “defending strict new voter ID laws from legal challenges in states where their candidates are at risk of losing their seats…” (Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, Florida, Indiana), mailing letters that erroneously tell voters they must show a photo ID to vote (Georgia), systematically purging voter rolls using a tactic writer Greg Palast described as “caging lists” and rejecting voter registrations in mass quantities.

Palast predicted all of this in his last book, Armed Madhouse (p. 240), although he thought they’d wait until 2008. Perhaps 2006 is just a practice run.

Because radio is such an important tool in getting out the orchestrated and targeted message of the GOP, the White House organized “Radio Day,” a tax-payer funded 24-hour campaign commercial where more than 30 talk-show hosts were invited to question senior administration officials. If you listened to any radio in the last 24 hours you were bombarded by an orchestrated message delivered by Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, National security adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Senator Rick Santorum, and White House press secretary Tony Snow.

Boy that’s an awful lot of effort for a medium that’s dead.

Donald Rumsfeld defended “stay the Course.” Senator Rick Santorum affirmed Senator Joe Biden’s plan for Iraq. Mr. Rove predicted the Republicans would retain control of Congress. So did Dan Bartlett.

Time now for a Liberadio(!) singalong:

“Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleaning up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don’t give you any choice
’cause they think that it’s treason.
So you had better do as you are told.
You better listen to the radio.”
– Elvis Costello, “Radio, Radio”

An email sent to us from Lisa Zhito was a much needed reminder that those of us concerned with the integrity of our elections can do something during this election season.

She writes: “I know many of you have been active on this issue and spoken before the Election Commission. But only until the complaints start flooding in from actual voters on election day will anything change. It won’t happen for this election, and it may not for the next one, but we have to keep letting our voices be heard to create change.”

So, when you go to the polls to vote either during early voting or on November 7, please ask for a complaint form so that you can complain about a lack of a paper trail. If you are told that complaint forms are not available, ask to see a poll captain. If you are still not given a complaint form, then call or visit your the Division of Elections in your County to complain in person. A complete list of Tennessee Counties can be found here (click on the link for your County info). Other State info can be found on the web (use “the Google” like President Bush!)

Please spread the word and tell everyone you know to VOTE & COMPLAIN!

As Lisa says, “I could tell I was the first person to raise this issue with the poll captain, which surprised me, what with all the talk about problems with electronic voting machines. So I urge everyone to please, please, please, VOTE, vote EARLY, and then COMPLAIN to the poll captain about these machines.”

UPDATE: Another astute listener, Marga M., says “Be sure to make a photocopy of your complaint form before you leave the voting station or there may be no evidence that you filled one out.” A few weeks after the primary she someone at the Election Commission and was told that they had not received any complaint forms from that election.

There’s a movement afoot to reclaim elections for the people. Interviews, documentaries, blogs, articles, websites, toll-free hotlines. The problems have been identified. Listed below are interviews, articles, films and websites to fill you in.

Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System
Wedesday, Nov. 1 and Friday, Nov. 3 at 6:30 PM (Free)
Earnhardt Pirkle, Inc, 2123 8th Avenue South
For advanced reservations e-mail david@EternalVigilance.us or contact Kris Rarick at 327.0600.
Attend a special pre-election screening of “Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System, a new documentary by Nashville-based filmmaker David Earnhardt. Eternal Vigilance documents a myriad of illegal tactics and dirty tricks used to manipulate election outcomes by those in control of the election system. Beyond proving what is wrong with the system, Eternal Vigilance shows American democracy in its purest form by chronicling the struggle of a courageous few who seek nothing more or less than their birthright to honest, open, and accountable elections.

“Hacking Democracy”
Thursday, November 2 at 8:00 PM (more scheduled times)
HBO
Electronic voting machines count 80% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America’s democracy.

Liberadio(!) interview with Rob Richie, Executive Director of FairVote.org (original air date 23 Oct 2006)

Congressman Dennis Kucinich addressing the Floor of the House
“Mr. Speaker, today’s Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 has nothing to do with protecting the right to vote and everything to do with restricting it. The real threat to our electoral system is not a contrived conspiracy of noncitizens illegally voting in Federal elections. The true threat is vulnerable electronic voting machines.

“Was the 2004 Elections Stolen?” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Rolling Stone)
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted — enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

“Will the Next Election Be Hacked?”, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Rolling Stone)
“Fresh disasters at the polls — and new evidence from an industry insider — prove that electronic voting machines can’t be trusted.”

BlackBoxVoting.org – Read about the problems in Shelby County, TN.

The tools to fix the problems are available but we must demand that they be implemented. Frederick Douglas said it best, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

*NEW* Election Reform Information Project
Tennessee for (IRV) Instant Runoff Voting
Fairvote.org
Verified Voting Foundation
Wheresthepaper.org – A Web Site Dedicated to Election Integrity

More to follow…please email mary@liberadio.com with additions to the list and I will post them.

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In this episode we interview Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote, formerly the Center for Voting and Democracy, a non-profit organization that researches and advocates election reforms that promote voter turnout, accountable governance and fair representation. Richie is an expert on both international and domestic electoral systems and has directed the Center since its founding in 1992. He is also the co-author of Every Vote Equal: A State-based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote (2006). (21:39 19MB)

Listen to: Interview with Rob Richie

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President Bush can talk about the Dow’s record numbers and tax cuts that are good for everyone but middle-class voters are not buying it. They know the harsh reality.

“Disenchantment over the war in Iraq has morphed into disillusionment over the direction of the country, breeding distrust in the administration’s policies, surveys suggest. Moreover, concerned by weak wage growth, costly health care and eroding benefits, many middle-class voters do not see the economy improving for them.” (New York Times, 24 Oct 2006)

Yesterday morning on ABC News’ This Week, George W. Bush forgot that recording equipment was invented decades ago and told George Stephanopoulos that “We’ve never been ’stay the course.’”

Hey, Mr. President, check this out. YouTube has about 83 more. Google News about 5,220. Hey! Your Daddy said it too!

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Guests: Rob Richie, Executive Director, FairVote & co-author of Every Vote Equal, and Will Kimbrough, Rawker! & Activist. His latest release is Americanitis (Amazon, iTunes). Elbert Ventura joins us for another edition of MMFA Smackdown!