Send Wyden & Smith an email. They'LL answer questions in 1 hour - READ!!!

on KGW in Portland at 7pm. Email questions@kgw.com your questions and they will answer on the air.

Ask them what is their opinion about the VOTE FRAUD and why they didn't vote to YES to object to Ohios Electors.

"Did you not feel it important to support your fellow Congresspeople on January 6, when they stood up to call attention to voter irregularities in Ohio?"

probably too partisan sounding but what the heck!



www.cafepress.com/showtheworld

Senator Wyden:

Although you spoke up Friday and said you were concerned about VOTE FRAUD, you didn't object to the OHIO electors vote. Why didn't you stand with Barbara Boxer? You certified Ohio's fraudulent results!

Did you read Representative Conyers 100 page report?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxx
Portland, Oregon

Let us know if they use that one on air. I'm in Seattle so can't listen and Wyden probably wouldn't listen to me anyway, but you're in Portland!



www.cafepress.com/showtheworld

How about YOU answer THIS question:

SUPPOSE BOXER HAD SIGNED AND NO SENATORS BOTHERED TO STAND UP AND SPEAK AT ALL?

Lets take our victory to the streets. We have support and have C-span archives and the official document to prove our point. For Wyden's official statement go here:

http://wyden.senate.gov/media/speeches/2005/01062005_electoral.html

I'm pretty sure Boxer knew no one was going to vote with her. She HAD to vote for herself. I'm not sure if she had to legally, but imagine the field day they would have had if she hadn't. She wasn't looking to throw out the votes. She wanted a discussion about election reform. We got that, and I was grateful to every single senator who stood up and spoke in support of her.

As I said in another thread, I think on that day, the election fraud issue went from "conspiracy theory" to "possibility". The next logical (to me, anyway) step is "probability". We're just beginning to see little articles now. It was a baby step, but a BIG baby step.

And called on them both to lead a bipartisan effort to address the problems and see to it that the Four Billion Dollars authorized gives us what we paid for. Let me know if they ask the question. I'm working right now.

Will there be a formal investigation of all the fraud allegations coming out of Ohio and elsewhere?

just talking about health care, social security, tort reform,

Where is the raw data? Why are they "right" in the Ukraine and in Palestine and Mexico and EVERYWHERE ELSE BUT HERE?????????

HE SAID HE IS PROUD THAT GORDON SMITH (REPUKE) stood with HIM and supported VOTE BY mail.

He said we are going to continue election reform.

HE SAID...........WE NEED NATIONAL VOTE BY MAIL .....like Oregon did. We had MORE participation during this vote than ever before.

ridiculous. Smith and Wyden joined together to take a stand against this. Not sure when this was; it was awhile back. Wyden's aide told this to a group that talked to him in November.

More investigation is required into this.

I believe it may have some serious flaws, from some rumblings I have caught about it.

There are NO problems.

What have you heard otherwise?

But I can't remember the specifics. I'll look it up.

On edit: Here's one:

http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003311.html

and another:

http://nj.npri.org/nj97/12/voter.htm

and one more:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Bill/sizemore1.htm

Thanks.

*sigh*

i'll get over it one day :cry:

I won't - It is criminal

referred to his senate speech last Thursday. Talked about need for paper trail. Got lots of applause when he said this. Said we should take Oregon vote by mail system nationwide. More applause. Smith also talked about HAVA favorably. Looks like they are finished with election issues.

We need to research it.

issue with any system except hand counting, that you need to ensure security of tabulators. Australia has open source software.
The main criticism I hear about vote by mail is about trusting the post office but we can take ballots to our BOE or our county library and put them into one of those locked boxes. Vote by mail sure minimizes voter suppression and discrimination, unless they manage to throw out boxes of ballots that come from certain precincts. Damn. Is there any method that is relatively foolproof if you have partisans wanting to rig it?

But until you know something about it, why criticize it? It works better than anything else we've got. And I might add, Oregon was a swing state, with gay marriage on the ballot. That KEPT all our Nader voters and Dem voters from 2000, AND kept the 39-50 bracket that other states lost. In other words, if there was fraud, they didn't manage to pull it off here AT ALL.

certainly aware of the dangers of e-voting.

Oregon has had VOTE BY MAIL for about 5 years. No problems. We don't have research it "ad-nauseum" because it has been proven effective. Just ask Oregonians.....we KNOW.

The only problem with vote by mail for me is remembering to send it in. Then again, that's only when the issues or candidates are forgettable.

Did you read them? I'd like to know what you think.

But first, Carolab, did YOU read them?

The first one comes from what appears to be a right-wing political blog http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003311.html in Washington state, and the bloggers there make the case that there is widespread absentee voting fraud in King County (referred to by one clever wag as "Kiev County"). Notice how all the posters save one are Rossi supporters. The original poster purports to show that it is easy to vote multiple times. Sort of reminds me of the folks who post bomb-making recipes and how-tos on cooking meth. There's no evidence other than an anecdote that some dead kid's mom got his absentee ballot in the mail after he was killed in a car crash.

The second one is an opinion piece by Nannette Moffett, a member of that beacon of liberty known as the Voter Integrity Project, and is a member of the Carson City Republican Women. The VIP was caught last fall shitcanning Democratic voter registrations and keeping the Republican ones in Nevada. There's voting integrity for you. Nannette can be seen seated at the left (behind the ELEPHANT) at the 2002 Spring Board Meeting of the Nevada Federation of Republican Women. The piece you linked from her, by the way, was published in 1997.


Your third reference was great, you saved the best for last. It's an article written by Oregon's own beloved Bill Sizemore, the 1998 Republican candidate for Governor (he lost). Mr. Sizemore has also been the driving force behind numerous regressive ballot measures in this state. His political career is now over due to his having been successfully sued for over $2.52 million by the Oregon Education Association for racketeering, conspiracy, fraud and forgery. Now there's a guy qualified to speak out against voter fraud.

Why is it that only Republicans seem to have issues with vote-by-mail?

Carolab....the "way it is"

Don't know why she wouldn't take it from an Oregonian who's voted EVERY election since we started the vote by mail that there are NO problems that have been publicized. Oregon had the BIGGEST turnout of voters this last time I think in our history.

Rest of the states should put VOTE BY MAIL to a trial. You will like it! Folks.....study Oregon's VOTE BY MAIL stats before you put us down also.......

I've voted in EVERY OREGON ELECTION since 1974.

At first, I was skeptical of VBM, thinking I would miss the blue-haired ladies down at the precinct and the ritual of the first Tuesday in November, or whatever weird primary date was set.

Then, I realized that I could take my time, discuss issues with my family, and fill out my PAPER BALLOT at my kitchen table and take two weeks to personally turn it in at my county elections office.

I think there was another agenda here, but who knows. :shrug:

But seriously...Bill Sizemore? HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

There has been a movement by certain OR repubs (can't remember if he was in on it, but it would be a typical move for him) to replace vote by mail with E-voting! Vote by mail is far more difficult to corrupt.

we have law banning paperless voting systems in Oregon.

Oregon Revised Statues:

254.535 Preservation of certain materials; retention of records. (1) Except as provided in subsection (3) of this section, each poll book, tally sheet, return sheet and ballot return identification envelope shall be preserved for two years after the election to which it relates.

(2) Except as provided in subsection (3) of this section, the county clerk shall destroy the ballots, ballot stubs and written challenge statements not sooner than the 90th day after the final day permitted for a contest of the election, unless otherwise ordered by the court.

(3) In accordance with 42 U.S.C. 1974, any ballot, voter registration records and any other materials relating to any election at which a candidate is nominated or elected to federal office shall be retained for not less than 22 months following the date of the election. <1979 c.190 §275; 1999 c.410 §62>

motives?

a civil war or a revolution in order to get our votes counted.

harder.

here and show us how it is done!... Just a joke... I know... we need to do it ourselves.

We'll see.

I think that we need to praise as well as educate and pressure. We need criminal investigations now and then...

Hand count?
Open source machines?
Federal election authority?

What are requests that we think that we can get beyond investigations...

It should NOT be thought of as the perfect system or a panacea for the whole nation to adopt.

I made my living as an auditor back in the days when professional accounting was an honorable profession (before conglomerates and offshore corporate registration and international consolidations) e.g. before those corporations became so big their power exceeded the power of government bodies and they could not be regulated.

Here are the problems I have identified with vote-by-mail:

• 1. Like with all other systems (except hand-counting), the votes are tabulated centrally at either county or state level in computers where the software is proprietary. This is often the first count taken of the actual votes Vote switching can take place, ballots can be nullified, etc. (or just "disappeared") and there is no way to know or prove it. No one is going to do enough random hand recounts to prove anything. Remember, it would only have required changing an average of something like 11 votes per precinct in Ohio to change the result by about 100,000 votes. If a random hand recount found 11 errors in a single precinct it would not be considered significant.

• 2. There are no batch controls originating at the precinct level that would show how many votes were cast, because obviously no one knows how many ballots were mailed in. You might think you COULD do batch controls on the locked drop boxes IF a count was taken of the number of envelopes contained in each pickup. It still would not mean anything because people from any precinct can use any drop box, even drop boxes not in their own county. (wonder what happens to those? -- supposedly they get forwarded later to the right county and become an adjustment item after Election Day) Common example would be college student ballots where their permanent address and registration is in a different Oregon county than the county the college is in.

I am not worried so much about ballots being stolen at a post office and such.

I worry about how much of the Oregon system is based on pure trust of election officials and election workers and of course pure trust in secret computer code. I think for the most part Oregon has good people in charge of each county, but that could change if we elect bad people as county commissioners who then do the appointments. We actually DO elect our Secretary of State (some states do not). We could still end up with a Blackwell clone in there somewhere someday.

The second problem I mentioned is true for all of the Absentee Ballots in any state's system, but that is usually a relatively small number of ballots. In Oregon, it is the whole ball game.

• 3. Because of the centralization of everything now, Oregon is going through a systematic consolidation of precincts. I was co-ordinating GOTV for a rural precinct in Lane that was huge in physical size. It was actually what had been 5 precincts which were all significantly different in character and voting history. I can no longer look at the reported results of the whole new precinct and say, "those results are about what I expected." Before the consolidations I and others would have been able to spot results that looked "unusual", "questionable" or "just plain cock-eyed." We sure can't do that now.

Don't get me wrong. I love the convenience of all-mail voting. It is great that there is no possibility of outside intimidation of voters. The home-bound can vote without worrying about getting a ride or extra help. There is plenty of time to scrutenize and think about your ballot and do extra research on a candidate, etc. You don't have to worry about being in town on a particular day or if your car will run or be available on a particular day, etc.

But I have become convinced that the only workable honest elections are the ones with local control. Raw counts of ballots (all the counting of each race and ballot measure done with witnesses) after the polls close right at the polling places. The number of separate ballots counted must reconcile with the number signatures in the poll book. The detail results publicly posted and reported to the media at the same time the results are reported to the county. Sure, there will be adjustments, but you have got raw counts to start from and everybody knows what the raw numbers are.

Each precinct needs to be small enough (say, no more than 1000 expected voters -- most will be around the 300-600 voter level on normal turnouts) to pretty easily get the job done in a couple of hours or less.

After that the county can tabulate them in those computers, make adjustments for the Absentee and Military Ballots, etc. but they cannnot stray very far from those base raw numbers without arousing suspicians. Any differences have to have an explanation.

The American people lost control of their elections when HAVA was passed by Congress. Do not let any senator or congressman say otherwise. The "paper trail" bit does not solve the problem. It really doesn't, because it is in the tabulators where the real fraud can take place and leave no trace.

The system I suggest is the one used in Canada and in almost all other countries that are considered democracies. Most use local volunteers for the counting process. It is considered a civic responsibility and is often done by respected members of the community, not politicians or political junkies or people just pulled off the streets. Responsible high school students could well be a part of the mix.

Standard ballot across the country. Not all these different kinds of ballots like we have in the US.
And as I keep saying, OR definitely needs to work on the tabulator issue.

About this one thing Remember, it would only have required changing an average of something like 11 votes per precinct in Ohio to change the result I'd like to point out that 11 votes per precinct only needed to be dropped. If the votes were actually changed, 6 per precinct would have done the job nicely.

-Hoot

I remember the "11 votes" but forgot if it was "changed votes" or "dropped votes." Obviously finding only around 6 "missed" votes in a random recount would REALLY seem inconsequential. Would not make any waves at all.

What else do you know about the Canadian system? You make some excellent points. As I said, I know we need to work on the tabulator issue. I was not aware of what you said about the precinct issue. Excellent points.

On the whole, I do think the OR system is far less corruptable than e-voting.