Election Reform NEWS for Friday June 9th. PRIMARY REVIEW EDITION

Welcome to the "ERD"

.

I'm going to concentrate on problems cropping un during this weeks earlier Primaries

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.




1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.

2. Post stories using the "Election Fraud and Reform News Sources" listed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x397093

3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.


If you want to know how post "News Banners" or other images, go here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=371233#371391

for MAC users-- IIRC its hold down control- and click on the image to view its source.

Forbes.com



06.08.2006, 04:28 PM

Many of the voting and counting mishaps of the bizarre 2000 general election were not fixed four years later and brand new problems arose, including a rash of fraudulent voter registrations in some areas, congressional investigators say.

A study of the 2004 election by the Government Accountability Office concludes that paper ballots continued to be used extensively by small jurisdictions, many polling places struggled to manage heavy early voting and new federal requirements for voter identification were applied unevenly by local officials across the country. The GAO released the study Thursday.

Altogether, 41 states were granted extra time to meet federal requirements to build statewide voter registration lists, meaning most such lists were not in place for the 2004 vote.

New problems cropped up in 2004. Ambitious get-out-the-vote drives swamped officials with the task of checking applications with their backs against registration deadlines. Incomplete addresses, fictional names and questionable signatures showed up.

The report estimates 5 percent of local jurisdictions handled voter registration applications with fraudulent names.

http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/ap/2006/06/08/ap2803664.html

The Albuquerque Tribune

By Associated Press
June 8, 2006

Posted 2:00 p.m. Requirements for New Mexico voters to identify themselves at the polls - which some worried would prompt confusion - created few problems in the first primary election under the rules, officials say.

But at least one election official sees no need for the state's recently issued voter ID cards.

Denise Lamb, Santa Fe County Elections Bureau chief, said there has never been a documented case in New Mexico of someone going to a polling place and trying to pass himself or herself off as another voter.

"I hate to see the bar raised for voting when we can't get a turnout to start with," Lamb, former director of the state Elections Bureau, said Wednesday,

Santa Fe County "didn't get a single irate telephone call" about the requirement, and she said she did not hear of any problems at polling places.

Two Santa Fe County voters, however, reported their precinct did not ask for any identification. When one voter questioned the poll worker, the worker said the precinct asked for ID only if there was some problem.

Poll workers were told the basic rule was that if voters gave their name, birth date and last four digits of their Social Security number, they could proceed to the voting booth, "no other questions asked," Lamb said.

http://www.abqtrib.com/

Panel seeks voter views on problems at polls
Friday, June 9, 2006 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


CLEVELAND - A review panel charged with investigating Cuyahoga County’s botched primary election is asking voters and election workers what went wrong.

Results from the county’s disastrous first attempt at electronic voting May 2 were delayed six days when roughly 18,000 absentee ballots had to be hand counted.

There also were numerous problems at polling places.

The independent three-member review committee led by veteran Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine is reaching out to voters and election workers through a Web site www.cuyahogavoting.org and a public hearing, scheduled for today.

more-

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=290679&Category=13

June 8, 2006 at 22:36:37

by Jonathan Simon, VerifiedVote2004

http://www.opednews.com

Good Friends of Election Integrity:

THIS IS IT, FRIENDS!! If the Busby race goes unchallenged, it will be replayed in 50 more races in November, scattered all over the country like runaway horses, another "shocking Republican trend."

Right now we have in front of us ONE bucking bronco, a race that may or may not have been stolen but whose vulnerability and lack of procedural integrity are manifest. The machines used in District 50 (a blend of OpScans and HAVA-engendered DREs) were taken home and stored by a variety of poll workers, entirely without chain-of-custody protections. This lack of security of course permits switching of memory cards and any other elementary tampering schemes to go undetected.

The GOOD news is that most of the ballots were in fact OpScan counted and therefore can be RECOUNTED. The purpose of such a recount would be to establish the actual margin of verifiable votes (absentee and OpScan), leaving only the far smaller batch of unverifiable DRE ballots out of the count. Depending on the margin of that recount, it may well bring to light gross disparities in the two sets of votes (verifiable and unverifiable), even a flat-out Busby victory (if the DRE ballots can not make up the victory margin). We have seen such disparities before and we expect to see them again, though by November many districts such as this one may well have gone to all-DRE, all-unverifiable systems. We won't have many chances like this one.

Here's what we should all STOP EVERYTHING ELSE to do:

1) Find out the latest on this race and what's being done about it at Bradblog (Brad's taken the lead in sounding the alarm on this race and fully understands its enormous implications not just for the politics of November but for the Electoral Integrity of November):
URL: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002924.htm and updates.

2) Call Busby's office(s) (phone strongly preferred, follow-up with email) and let them know why further action must be taken by them, including demand for such a recount of the verifiable ballots:

Francine Busby for Congress

Cardiff Office - Main Headquarters
2121 Newcastle Ave.
Cardiff by the Sea, CA. 92007
(760)479-0114

more
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jonathan_060608_friends_of_election_.htm

Cybernews Service

By Sarah Larkins
CNSNews.com Correspondent
June 09, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - Already the source of much Democratic anger over the balloting in the last presidential election, Ohio's new voting regulations are firing up liberal activists all over again.

Among the new rules put forth by Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is a provision that requires anyone registering to vote to return their registration cards directly to the secretary of state's office or county election boards within 10 days of being completed..

Many organizations use paid or volunteer registrars to collect voter registration cards. The workers take the cards back to their supervisors, who review the cards for errors.

Samuel Gresham, an attorney for Common Cause, one of the organizations protesting the new regulations, also complained that people who use photo identification will have to show a correct, corresponding address on the ID and that anyone compensated for registering people to vote must first receive online certification from the secretary of state.

"How many more things do you need to impede the process of people and their legal right to vote?" Gresham said.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200606/POL20060609a.html

Human and machine errors cause voting problems in two counties

Voters at several San Joaquin County polling places were turned away Tuesday because of machine glitches and voting inspectors who failed to show up.


In a handful of Stockton area precincts, polling places opened as much as three hours late after voting inspectors didn't arrive for work, said Debbie Hench, the county's registrar of voters. Voters were sent to nearby polling places where they were allowed to cast provisional ballots.


Hench said she did not know how many voters were affected by the no-shows, but added that the problems began when some inspectors didn't pick up their equipment on Monday night.


Machine problems caused other voters to be sent away without balloting in Stockton, Lodi, Tracy and Morada.


Voters at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Stockton couldn't vote for nearly three hours because the machines broke down twice, poll workers said.

More:


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/06/06/international/i232126D78.DTL&type=politics

The northwestern.com

Posted June 9, 2006

State Elections Board exec also to speak at county board meeting

By Alex Hummel
of The Northwestern


High-tech, touch-screen voting machines may help physically and cognitively disabled people participate in elections.


But having a guaranteed ride to the polling place and a welcoming staff of election volunteers eager to help are even more fundamental.


That's the message advocates for an Oshkosh-based disability organization will convey to Winnebago County Board officials on June 14, when the board gets a trial run and demonstration of controversial touch-screen voting machines proposed to comply with the "Help America Vote Act."


"Our main concern is that people have accessibility to voting," said Lea Kitz, executive director for Arc – Winnebago Disability Association Inc.


"We're not so much hung up on the machines themselves," Kitz said. "If they are generally acceptable and secure, that's great."


Representatives of the Arc and the executive director of the State Elections Board will be on hand at a June 14 demonstration of controversial touch-screen voting machines. The board at the same meeting will consider authorizing the purchase of one machine, manufactured by Diebold Elections Systems, for each of the county's 49 polling places.

http://www.thenorthwestern.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060609/OSH0101/606090419/1128/OSHnews

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_jgideon_060608__daily_voting_news__.htm

Train Wrecks across the country..were the wrecks LIHOP or MIHOP?

Article Last Updated: 06/09/2006 02:57:57 AM PDT
Supervisors opt to buy Oakland firm's product despite resident's pleas to avoid computers
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

After a three-year experiment with Diebold Election Systems and touch-screen voting machines, Alameda County is paying $13.25 million for a new, more paper-based voting system — and still being accused of selling out to corporate election fixing.
"You're completely ignoring every single piece of testimony today," shouted Allen Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater, whose marquee has featured a near-weekly screed against any use of computers in voting.
County supervisors spent a year agonizing over what instruments of democracy to buy for the November elections and beyond. On Thursday, voting activists pressed the county to lead a national protest against computerized voting and rely instead on hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots.
In a split vote, however, supervisors chose a middle-of-the-road system recommended by county officials and supplied by Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems. Sequoia would provide 1,000 optical scanners for most polling place voters and 1,000 touch-screen machines to accommodate voters with disabilities.
Most of the cost will be paid by $8.7 million in state and federal grants, plus $3 million that Diebold is paying Alameda County to buy back the 4,300 touch-screens that the county purchased in 2002 for $12 million. Those monies will cover all but a fraction of the equipment cost, plus $350,000 that Sequoia wants for developing instant runoff voting for Berkeley and other cities.
Alameda County has been a hotbed of resistance to electronic voting, and the presence of any touch-screens made activists livid. It was "shameful," said Gary Crane, executive director of Fair Elections, an East Bay voting group, for liberal Alameda County to entrust votes to software from any private corporation.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_3917699

County

KCBS News

Posted: Friday, 09 June 2006 7:54AM

Oakland, Calif. (KCBS) -- A sheriff deputy had to be summoned to keep the peace as Alameda County supervisors met to select a new voting machine vendor in time for the fall general election.

KCBS reporter George Harris notes that what normally would not be an explosive issue turned in to one with the public expressing concerns over the accuracy of the electronic voting machines. Issues were raised ranging from the "hijacking of our democracy "to hacking.

"We're not really talking about hacking here which is outsiders, the real concern should be with inside tampering," said one man.

"Turn out keeps declining. I think people are losing their confidence that their vote counts or matters," said another resident.

"If you want to continue on this path, let us know that our security concerns are really being addressed," said another voter.

Leslie Wilson said she has no confidence in electronic voting machines. "They're unreliable and we should just go back to old-fashioned voting by hand," she said.

http://kcbs.com/pages/44588.php

Mark Green Fri Jun 9, 12:46 AM ET

A New York Times editorial yesterday discussed Ohio secretary of state J. Kenneth Blackwell's latest attempt to stifle the vote. But his manipulations are entirely consistent with how Republicans like to win close contests: simply keep their opponent's supporters from ever actually getting to the polls. As Michigan Republican State Representative John Pappageorge said in a revealing moment in 2004, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle."

Blackwell's new "emergency" regulations attempt to criminalize the standard methods of voter registration drives. Combined with his behavior during the last presidential election, when he threw out registrations because they were on the wrong kind of paper, this move should disqualify Blackwell from his current campaign for governor--as well as any future government position. Right now, the man is essentially deciding who can and cannot vote in his own race!
Not that this is so different from the notorious actions of Katherine Harris, who during the 2000 election served simultaneously as Florida's chief election official and the Co-Chair of the Bush campaign in Florida. It's now widely acknowledged that Bush won the state--and the presidency--by the margin of her efforts to fiddle with felon disenfranchisement lists, ultimately keeping thousands of mostly African American citizens from voting.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060609/cm_huffpost/022573

original at Huffington Post

findlaw

Despite Predictions that the Roberts Court May Strike It Down
By LAUGHLIN MCDONALD

Friday, Jun. 09, 2006
The House of Representatives is poised to vote on legislation (H.R. 9) to renew the expiring provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). With support from the leadership of both parties, it is likely to pass.

Some have argued - including Richard L. Hasen, in a recent column for this site -- that the Supreme Court may well strike down the renewed Act as unconstitutional, and that Congress therefore should not renew the Act without significant modifications to the statute.

In this column, I'll explain why I disagree. Of course, it is impossible to predict what the Court will do. But in fact, none of its recent decisions casts serious doubt on the constitutionality of a renewed VRA. In addition, a number of Court decisions expressly approve Section 5 of the VRA - the section most likely to be attacked as unconstitutional -- and affirm its importance.

Accordingly, Congress should go forward with the legislation as is. While the renewed VRA will doubtless be challenged in court on constitutional grounds, that lawsuit should fail.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20060609_mcdonald.html

The Miami Herald

Posted on Fri, Jun. 09, 2006
State election officials have proposed new restrictions on testing voting machines in the wake of a test that exposed security flaws in one system.
BY GARY FINEOUT
gfineout@MiamiHerald.com

TALLAHASSEE - Months after a maverick elections supervisor irritated a leading voting-machine company and state officials by conducting unorthodox tests on voting equipment -- and finding security problems -- the state wants to make it harder for counties to check voting machines.

The state is proposing rules that require all 67 election supervisors in Florida to get approval from the state Division of Elections before testing their voting equipment for any problems, including whether or not it has security flaws or if the vote-counting software is working correctly.

The new rule would require county supervisors to submit a ''testing plan'' to the division, as well as to notify the maker of the machine before the test can take place. Any results of the test would have to be sent to state officials.

''The purpose is to make the process more transparent,'' said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Department of State. ``Certainly any supervisor can test any machine. It's just so the department and vendor will be included. In essence, it's so all parties have the same information.''

But Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho says the state proposal is an effort to curtail any future tests of voting equipment. Last year, Sancho allowed computer experts to hack into his county's optical-scan voting machine system, which is manufactured by Diebold, the same company that makes the ATM-styled touch-screen machines used in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/14776132.htm

will cross-post

KTHTV

The secretary of state's office says eight Arkansas counties won't use federally mandated touch-screen voting machines in Tuesday's runoff elections. Deputy Secretary of State Janet Harris said that Desha, Garland, Jefferson, Lonoke, Phillips, Pope, Pulaski and Searcy counties had told her office they won't use the electronic voting equipment on Tuesday.

Pulaski County Elections Director Susan Inman said that the county decided not to use the machines after reviewing the programming code from voting machine vendor Election Systems and Software and discovering errors. ES&S spokeswoman Jill Friedman-Wilson said there were no errors with the programming but said it was a coding problem that could have been easily addressed.

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=29699

Vulnerabilities Affect 27 States

Kansas City Info Zine

Friday, June 09, 2006

Verified Voting released a preliminary* summary of states whose elections are at risk due to newly-revealed security vulnerabilities in Diebold voting systems, including the Diebold TSx, TS, and optical scan machines, as uncovered by computer expert Harri Hursti of Black Box Voting.

San Francisco, CA - infoZine - The summary, which is the first part of an ongoing Verified Voting effort to track voting equipment in use throughout the country from all vendors, was presented yesterday at a Capitol Hill briefing held by Verified Voting and the National Committee for Voting Integrity. The briefing provided technical information on the recently revealed Diebold vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities would allow substitution of false vote totals without any trace or the insertion of malicious software, using the smart card technology and design features integral to the machines.

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/15608/

newratings

Friday, June 09, 2006 3:19:36 AM ET
Wedbush Morgan Securities

NEW YORK, June 9 (newratings.com) - Analysts at Wedbush Morgan reiterate their "buy" rating on Diebold (DBD.NYS). The 12-month target price is set to $50.

http://www.newratings.com/analyst_news/article_1293444.html

NYSE: DBD.NYS at 1.00PM ET $41.58 -0.10 (-0.24%)

KCPW

Jun 09, 2006 by Julie Rose
(KCPW News) Beginning Tuesday, voters can cast a primary election ballot at four Salt Lake County locations. The State Legislature this year passed a law allowing voting up to two weeks before an election. County Clerk Sherrie Swensen hopes it will relieve pressure on Election Day.

snip

Early voting requires a valid ID and registration at least thirty days before the election. For polling locations and hours, visit www.clerk.slco.org.

http://www.kcpw.org/article/892

Yubanet.com

By: Evelyn Pringle
Published: Jun 9, 2006 at 08:20

By late afternoon on November 2, 2004, nationally, all the exit polls showed John Kerry winning with 50.8% of the votes and showed George W Bush with 48.2%, meaning Kerry had a 2.6% lead over Bush.

But when the vote counts came in at the end of election day, Bush had 50.9% of the votes, and Kerry had 48.1%, meaning Bush received 2.8% more votes than Kerry.

According to Dr Ron Baiman, PhD, from the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois in Chicago, who has 16 years of experience teaching statistics to both graduate and undergraduate college students, there would be about 1 chance in 900,000 of that kind of statistical error occurring.

Ohio was the most important state to Bush. He could not win without it. He spent so much time in the state that people began to wonder whether he had left a forwarding address to Ohio.

At his last campaign rally in the state, a mere 4 days before the election, Bush bestowed special praise on a husband and wife team who in hindsight, were more helpful to Bush than any other politicians in Ohio, as far as rigging the election.

"I want to thank my friends Bernadette Noe and Tom Noe," Bush told the audience at the Toledo rally, "for their leadership in Lucas County."

After the speech, Bush and his wife met with Tom Noe and his wife backstage, to thank them for their "work on the campaign," according to the October 30, 2004 Toledo Blade.

As it turns out, Bush had a lot to be thankful for. During the campaign, Noe earned the title of "Pioneer," which means he raised at least $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_37141.shtml

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor

Jun 9, 2006, 00:47

Email this article
Printer friendly page
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Rolling Stone article, Was the 2004 Election Stolen?, takes a needed look back at the many ways the Ohio 2004 vote was sandbagged by more illegal dirty tricks than the mind can fathom. The footnotes that document the article online nearly equal its length. The bottom line is a painful reminder that Ohio was swiped from Kerry, handing Bush the presidential victory. Just as the misdeeds of Katherine Harris, Florida Republicans, and the United States Supreme court swung the 2000 election in Bush’s favor away from Gore.

What do we take from this? First, that the numbers of Democratic voters must be substantially higher than Republican voters, given the depth and variety of thefts to grab votes. Republican fear and greed led to using every dirty trick in the book to nullify the margin. Second, the shameless employment of illegal tactics in two elections iterates the massive illegality of the party in power. Third, being governed by a party that illegally seized the rule of our nation, mandates a response to the Bill of Rights and Constitution to fight today’s despots and one way or the other wrench this would-be American democracy from their hands.

This I realize may seem like a radical view, even potentially violent. Yet the founders of this country faced a similar situation, when only the resort to insurrection and revolution turned the British from taxing them without representation and from refusing to loosen their political and economic grip on the 13 colonies. After much bloodshed, some 25,324 Americans lost, 8,445 wounded, the British departed, leaving this new country to be formed.

Nor did their heirs in the slave trade go away. They forced Jefferson, in order to pass of the Bill of Rights, to eliminate language that declared slaves as people, as anything but chattel, thereby perpetuating the institution to the Civil War, which began on 12 April 1861, with the firing on Fort Sumter, and ended 9 April 1865, with the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. . Despite the repeated entreaties of Lincoln that the Union must hold, and that the institution of slavery must be abolished, the reactionary slave-owning Southerners insisted on seceding from the Union to preserve their aberrant political beliefs.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_890.shtml

Counting continues in close race -- 50% would avoid runoff

San Francisco Chronicle

Christopher Heredia and Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, June 9, 2006

Former U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums maintained his lead in the race for Oakland mayor Thursday as Alameda County election workers counted roughly 2,000 more ballots in a race that remains too close to call.

Those ballots were cast in Oakland and were among 6,000 cast countywide that arrived at the Registrar of Voters office Thursday afternoon, where they were counted after being escorted by a sheriff's deputy from a warehouse where ballots were being held for safekeeping, said Guy Ashley, spokesman for acting county Registrar Dave Macdonald.

The balance of the outstanding absentee and provisional ballots -- about 34,000 -- were taken from the warehouse early Thursday evening to the registrar's office, where election workers tallied votes until 6:30 p.m. Election office officials said a sheriff's deputy will guard the ballots, and they will work through the weekend counting them, but it would be several days before they're all counted and certified.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/09/OAKMAYOR.TMP

Times Record
Fort Smith Arkansas

Friday, June 9, 2006 8:41 AM CDT

Clerk Notes Ballot Errors

By Rusty Garrett

TIMES RECORD

RGARRETT@SWTIMES.COM

WALDRON — Errors in voter registration rolls have left some Scott County residents voting the wrong ballots or being left off the books altogether, according to Scott County Election Commission Chairman Angela Talmadge.

Talmadge made a report on May 23 voting discrepancies before a special meeting of the Scott County Quorum Court Thursday.

Talmadge said she received complaints from Linda Vaughn and Jerry Parker, candidates in the District 4 justice of the peace race, that some voters casting ballots in that race were given ballots that did not list the candidates.

She said the mistakes occurred at voting locations where more than one precinct is voting and are being made because poll workers are relying on incorrect information on voter registration books.

Talmadge said voters who discover the mistake in time can ask have the incorrect ballot “voided” and ask for a correct one. Once they have marked the ballot and placed it in the ballot box, it is too late to make a change, she said.

http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2006/06/09/news/news07.txt

He shouldn't oversee election, they insist
Friday, June 09, 2006
Ted Wendling
Plain Dealer Bureau
Columbus - Ohio Democrats called Thursday for Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to step aside from "overseeing his own election," proposing that someone not running for office serve as the state's elections chief.

Prominent among their recommendations: Republican Attorney General Jim Petro, whom Blackwell savaged on the campaign trail before handily defeating him in last month's GOP gubernatorial primary.

Democrats aren't suggesting Blackwell give up the office, but they do want him to turn over his voting oversight role until after the November election.

Lee Fisher, Rep. Ted Strickland's running mate in the governor's race, said Democrats are asking Blackwell to relinquish his election duties because he has been "deliberately misconstruing the intent of the law" by publishing onerous rules pertaining to voter-registration drives.

"The irony of all this . . . is that we are trying to depoliticize the process," Fisher said. "It has been politicized by the secretary of state."

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1149841896184260.xml&coll=2

The Post Chronicle

Jim Kouri
Jun 9, 2006

Before the June 6 election day in San Diego match up between Democrat Francine Busby and Republican Brian Bilbray -- who were running to fill the vacated congressional seat of disgraced Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- the Democrat Party mouthpieces and their comrades in the news media pushed the idea that the race was significant.

It was significant because, according to their partisan theory, the race would be a preview of the November elections when the Democrats would take control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. So political operatives from both parties were focused on the San Diego race.

Well, the Republican won by five percent of the vote. And the news media's spin was that the race was very close and there was a spoiler who garnered five percent of the vote. And today, the Democrats are telling Americans the race wasn't that important, plus the spoiler took five percent of the vote that may have helped Busby.

That's the spin. Now for the truth. Despite all the naysaying by some on the left and the right, the big issue in that particular race was illegal immigration. Busby clearly blew it on that issue when she signed on to the Senate immigration bill. Then in the midst of the heated congressional race, Busby was recorded advising a crowd she knew were illegal aliens to vote and work for her campaign. She told one illegal immigrant that he didn't need "papers" to vote. In other words, she slipped and revealed the dirty little secret that illegal aliens are being illegally registered as Democrats.

Of course, except for talk radio and the blogosphere, that story was ignored by the news media. When this writer called a reporter for a New York newspaper, I was told that Busby's comments were a local story. So, once again, the mainstream media ignored a story that needs coverage and analysis. How many illegal aliens in the U.S. are voting? How many are registered as Democrats? How many as Republicans?

http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/opinion/article_21222372.shtml

The Enquirer
Last Updated: 5:24 am | Friday, June 9, 2006

BY JON CRAIG | ENQUIRER COLUMBUS BUREAU
COLUMBUS - Democrats - and the New York Times - are hurling charges of voter suppression at Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the Cincinnati Republican running for governor.

Carlo LoParo, Blackwell's campaign spokesman, said the secretary of state is just implementing election rules passed by legislators in House Bill 3, which became law May 2.

"Democrats are now engaging in a hysterical attempt to mislead their traditional urban voting base," he said.

Rep. Ted Strickland, the Democrat running for governor, demanded Thursday that Blackwell step aside from any election duties involving the governor's race. He also asked Blackwell to reverse his office's recent rulings that, according to Strickland, are hindering voter registration drives.

As Ohio's chief elections officer, Blackwell is responsible for issuing rules governing the voter registration process, and refereeing challenges and disputes.

A few activists have accused Blackwell, who was co-chairman of President Bush's 2004 presidential campaign in Ohio, of helping rig that election, a charge resuscitated by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone magazine.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060609/NEWS01/606090357/1056

The Desert Sun
Palm Springs

The Desert Sun
June 9, 2006

Some state lawmakers have decided to make an end run on the U.S. Constitution.
The California Assembly recently approved AB 2948, which calls for California's Electoral College to go to the national popular vote's winner regardless of who state residents prefer. Advocated by the National Popular Vote campaign, their theory is simply: If California and enough other states agreed via a compact to give all their electors to the national popular vote's winner, the college would become obsolete. It's a movement arising from frustration that Al Gore won the popular vote but not the college in 2000, something that has occurred three other times in American history.

The Colorado Senate and a Louisiana legislative committee also have approved the plan. In the California Assembly, John Benoit, R-Palm Desert, and Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, wisely voted against the plan. The California's Senate should follow Benoit's and Garcia's lead and reject this so-called solution.

Disregards voters

The plan attempts to change the U.S. Constitution without going through the amendment process. Critics of the current electoral process realize they do not have enough support to amend the Constitution. So the campaign aims to make the college moot through states ignoring it. Whether or not this effort could stand up in court certainly is questionable. Indeed, Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution prohibits states from entering into compacts without Congress' consent.

http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060609/OPINION01/606090331/1004

Note: Paper accepting comments

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

BY DANIEL NASAW
Posted on Friday, June 9, 2006

More than 20, 000 voters are registered to cast a ballot in more than one county, and in some cases in three or four, an analysis of a new list of Arkansas’ 1. 47 million active registered voters shows.

Election officials attributed the problem, revealed in an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette examination of the new statewide list, to people who registered to vote upon moving to a new county while their old registration remained active.

“It’s going to take awhile for it to get cleaned up good,” said Teri Brown, deputy clerk for voter registration in Saline County. “But it’s been a good start.”

The list, called NOVA for Network of Voters in Arkansas, was rolled out in December at a cost of $ 4. 9 million.
Required by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, the statewide voter list is maintained by the secretary of state’s office using data sent through the Internet by county clerks’ offices.

One of the state list’s primary functions is to allow county clerks to identify and delete duplicate registrations from local voter rolls — a process that takes considerable time and manpower.

Deputy Secretary of State Janet Harris said Wednesday that the presence of duplicate registrations came as no surprise. Harris said election officials have no evidence that the duplicate registrations have resulted in voter fraud, and it is unknown whether any of the 20, 054 people registered more than once cast more than one ballot in the May 23 primary and nonpartisan judicial election.

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/157073/

KCBS

Posted: Friday, 09 June 2006 8:21AM

Oakland, Calif. (KCBS) -- The counting of votes will continue through the weekend in Alameda County where the mayor's race hangs in the balance.

Congressman Ron Dellums as of late last night, was in the lead with 50.2% of the vote.

Oakland City Council President Ignacio de la Feunte remained in second place with an even 33% of the vote.

The men are vying to replace Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown who is running for attorney general and who termed out of the mayor's job.

In order to avoid a run off election, one candidate must get at least 50% of the vote.

Alameda County Registrar of Voters Spokesman Guy Ashley told KCBS Reporter George Harris there are more absentee ballots than originally thought. "We've got about 30,000 absentee ballots that we're going to bring in here to count," Ashley said. "We'll try to get through those as fast as we can."

Ashely can't say for certain how long it'll take to complete the county-wide vote count. "We know that there are a few races in the county that are particularly close. We're going to try to get ballots pertaining to those races dealt with as fast as we can," he said.

http://kcbs.com/pages/44605.php

The Berkeley Daily Planet

Friday, June 9, 2006
9:09 AM

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor


The job of the news media is supposed to be to report on the news as we find it.
But sometimes, some of us in the profession get a little excited and report on the news as we want it to be rather than as it actually is, so that the reporting or editing process itself can push reality in the direction we want it to go. Our good friends at Fox “News” Channel are most often accused of this overeagerness to shape rather than to reflect.

So did our other friends at the San Francisco Chronicle over the way Alameda County chose to count our votes in the other night’s elections.

In case you have not been following these events, Alameda County chose to move to electronic touchscreen voting several years ago, purchasing the machines put out by the Diebold company (the same company whose owner pledged to work for a George Bush victory).

But when a new California law went into effect in January, mandating that all electronic voting machines produce a paper trail to prove that the electronic vote count has not been tampered with, Alameda County was forced to abandon the old Diebold machines, which did not have such a paper trail. Because the county could not purchase the new machines by last Tuesday’s primary election, the county decided to conduct the election with hand-marked paper ballots counted by scanners at a central location in downtown Oakland.

But for some reason, the folks at the Chronicle did not seem to understand—or communicate—those simple facts in their recent election stories.

In a June 2 Chronicle article a few days before the election entitled “Hand Count Of Alameda Ballots Could Delay Election Results,” Associated Press writer Samantha Young wrote that “Alameda county’s return to low-tech voting Tuesday could make for a long evening for poll workers and leave the neck-and-neck Democratic gubernatorial primary undecided overnight.” Ms. Young added that “the county's inability to quickly process paper ballots after shelving its electronic voting machines may make Alameda the determining factor because 5.7 percent of the state’s registered Democrats live there,” and also noted that the county “is in a jam because they do not have enough optical scanners to count the ballots at all polling places.”

http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=06-09-06&storyID=24362

Union-Tribune
San Diego

UNION-TRIBUNE BREAKING NEWS TEAM
9:59 a.m. June 9, 2006
SAN DIEGO – Here are the latest returns in the two still-undecided races from Tuesday's election in San Diego County.
The outcome of Proposition F was left hanging when the dust cleared after most of the ballots were counted early Wednesday. The county Registrar of Voter's office is now counting the provisional and absentee ballots.

Voters in Oceanside, Carlsbad, and Vista had been asked to approve the $596 million general obligation bond to update and expand the hospital and to allow it to meet earthquake standards. It would require a property owner to pay a tax of $23.40 per $100,000 of the property's assessed value.

The measure needed a two-thirds majority to pass, and when the ballot count was released Wednesday, the measure was failing by one percentage point.


Thursday's ballot count showed : .


Another close race is the primary to pick a Republican candidate in the East County's 77th Assembly District. After the Republican and Democratic candidates face off in November, the winner will replace Jay La Suer, who is being forced out by term limits. The district's voter registration is predominantly Republican, so the winner of the GOP primary is strongly favored to win in the general election.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20060609-0959-bn08votes.html

The Wichita Eagle

Posted on Fri, Jun. 09, 2006

HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Associated Press
For 20 years, voters flocked to Virginia Testerman's two-car garage in rural Missouri's Buchanan County. As many as 350 voters would cast their ballots for presidential elections in booths set up alongside Testerman's washer, dryer and deep freeze.

But the polling site, along with others across the country, was officially eliminated this year because of the Help America Vote Act, which requires that polling sites be handicap accessible. It's forcing officials to close, move or reconfigure many voting locations.

And starting this year, the act also requires that each polling site have at least one machine available for people with disabilities. The equipment is pricey, ranging from $6,000 to $15,000 per polling site. Even with help from the federal government, some counties can't afford to buy enough gadgets to maintain all their polling sites.

"I was just very sad," Testerman said of losing her polling site. "But I knew that it was coming. I knew they had to put in the machines, and they couldn't have the machines in every polling place."

In Buchanan County, the number of polling sites will shrink from 59 in 2002 to 35 this fall. Gone are sites in the garages of Testerman and two other residents, and another site in an old school that was heated with a potbellied stove.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/state/14781275.htm

Friday, June 09, 2006
By Diane Fowler
GRANTS - The Cibola County Clerk’s office will canvass Tuesday’s primary election today.

The county commission must approve the totals before official results are announced.

Initial results show some outcomes that cannot be changed by the county canvass. For example, Ken Martinez ran unopposed as the Democratic nominee for state legislature district 69 representative and Jackie Fisher ran unopposed for Division 1 Magistrate Judge. District 6 state representative George Hanosh also ran unopposed for his party’s nomination and Jeff Bingaman ran unopposed as Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Incumbents Bill Richardson and Diane Denish carried the county for nomination for governor and lieutenant governor of the state.

snip


Election problems were reported in three communities. The votes in Milan precinct 17 could not be counted until 1 a.m. Wednesday because the ballot box was handed in to the county clerk’s office very late.

Precinct 15 in Acoma experienced difficulties with paperwork which was not in order and San Rafael precinct 7 required a court order to open the ballot box because the box was opened and then relocked with provisional ballots still inside. All of the problems are considered procedural and no charges of malfeasance have been made.

http://www.cibolabeacon.com/articles/2006/06/09/news/news4.txt

illegal votes in Washington gubernatorial race

MediaMatters
Fri, Jun 9, 2006 11:51am EST

Summary: On MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews failed to question Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman's baseless assertion that illegal votes helped Democrats win the Washington state gubernatorial election.

On the June 7 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews failed to question Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman's assertion that illegal votes helped Democrats win the Washington state gubernatorial election. During a discussion about the race for California's 50th Congressional District, in which Republicans claimed that Democratic candidate Francine Busby had encouraged illegal immigrants to vote, Mehlman said "it sounds like may have been an adviser to that Washington state candidate for governor." Mehlman was apparently referring to Republican accusations that illegal votes had been cast for Democrat Christine Gregoire, who defeated Republican Dino Rossi in the Washington governor's race in 2004. Matthews allowed Mehlman's reference to go unchallenged. In fact, the judge presiding over the Republican challenge of Gregoire's victory found that Republicans had not proved that even a single illegal vote had been cast for Gregoire.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200606090002

Staff and agencies
09 June, 2006



By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer Wed Jun 7, 1:27 PM ET

A former Republican congressman narrowly beat his Democratic rival early Wednesday for the House seat once held by jailed Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a race closely watched as a possible early barometer of next fall‘s vote.

With all precincts reporting, Bilbray had 60,319 votes, or 49 percent, while Busby had 55,578 votes, or 45 percent.

The race — one of dozens of contests Tuesday in eight states — was viewed by Democrats as an opportunity to capture a solidly Republican district and build momentum on their hopes to capture control of the House.

Also in California, State Treasurer Phil Angelides narrowly beat Controller Steve Westly in the state‘s gubernatorial primary. He next faces GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger , who faced no credible opposition in his party‘s nomination.

http://www.localnewsleader.com/kindred/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=193476

Same story runs on
Jackson News-Tribune, WY
Olberlin, KS
Brocktown News, USA
Leading The Charge, Australia
The Kindred Times, Utah

TomPaine Common Sense

Robert Parry
June 09, 2006

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. He is the editor of The Consortium for Independent Journalism , from which this article is excerpted.

At dinner a few weeks ago , a well-placed Republican political operative was oozing confidence about GOP prospects in the November elections, not because the voters were enamored of George W. Bush but because the Democrats and liberals had done so little to improve their ability to reach the public with their message.
By contrast, he described to me a highly sophisticated Republican system for pouncing on Democratic “bad votes” and verbal gaffes and distributing the information instantaneously to a network of pro-Republican media outlets that now operates down to the state, district and local levels.

This huge conservative media advantage contributed to dooming Democratic hopes for snaring the vulnerable suburban San Diego seat of imprisoned Republican congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham. In the June 6 special election, Republicans reported a last-minute surge of support for GOP lobbyist Brian Bilbray after conservative media outlets trumpeted a verbal blunder by Democratic challenger Francine Busby. Near the end of a lackluster campaign in which Busby followed the advice of national Democratic consultants to avoid controversial positions, the candidate blurted out to a mostly Latino audience that “you don’t need papers for voting.” She quickly clarified her meaning, saying, “you don’t need to be a registered voter to help.”

But conservative radio and TV talk show hosts across southern California seized on Busby’s verbal slip and began accusing her of urging illegal immigrants to vote. Busby then spent the last several days of the campaign apologizing and backtracking.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/09/why_democrats_lose.php

Sentiment

Indybay

by New America Media (reposted) Friday, Jun. 09, 2006 at 6:27 AM

Can Republican candidates win on an anti-immigrant platform? And did the immigration protests translate into more Latino voters? Hispanic media, analysts and community organizations say the results of Tuesday's elections mean different things to different people. Elena Shore monitors Spanish-language media for New America Media.
SAN FRANCISCO--Hispanic media and other close observers of Latino affairs are reading Tuesday's elections as a barometer of the public's views on immigration and Latinos' ability to show their power at the polls.

Some in the media say there is no question that the anti-immigrant backlash is alive and well. Others predict the anti-immigration tactic could backfire and Republicans could lose votes from the growing and coveted Latino electorate.

In the closely watched special House race in San Diego to replace convicted former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican Brian Bilbray, running on an anti-immigrant platform, narrowly beat Democratic challenger Francine Busby (with 49 percent to 45 percent of the vote). The two candidates will face off again in November to compete for a full two-year term.

The winner, Republican Brian Bilbray, "ran his entire campaign on (the issue of) illegal immigration," says reporter Hiram Soto of Enlace, the San Diego Union Tribune's Spanish-language newspaper. "It was a test to see if the anti-immigrant stance will bring you votes."

Daniel Muñoz, editor of the bilingual newspaper La Prensa San Diego, says, "Republicans have lost their way" by taking an anti-immigrant position. "It's not the rallying cry they think it is."

But Republicans are reading the San Diego election as a sign that Bilbray's anti-immigrant platform helped him win -- a claim that the candidate himself made -- and may replicate it in other areas.

http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/06/1827805.php

By The Associated Press

GREAT FALLS - County officials must recount all ballots cast in Tuesday’s primary election after staff accidentally forgot to count several hundred absentee ballots, officials said Thursday.

The recount will start at 8:30 a.m., with results expected by the end of Friday, Deputy County Attorney Greg Bonilla said.

The exact number of uncounted ballots was not clear, but the recount could change the outcome of the House District 26 Democratic primary, where Bill Thomas defeated Rod Lukasik by just four votes, Bonilla said.

“Other than House District 26, I think it would be highly unlikely that it would impact any other races, particularly at the county level,” he said. “The disparity is just too large in those other races.”

Lukasik said Thursday he’s confident the election office did the best it could and released the most accurate results.

“I guess we’ll just stay tuned until further notice,” he said.

If the results in that race are still close after Friday’s recount, the losing candidate can ask for a recount after the election results are certified by the secretary of state’s office. A recount under that scenario is paid for by either the candidate or the county, depending on the losing margin.

Election staff discovered the discrepancy when they tried to reconcile the physical number of ballots with the number of ballots tallied by vote counting machines, County Commissioner Joe Briggs said.

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/06/09/news/state/31-cascade.txt

KTVU.com

POSTED: 8:14 am PDT June 9, 2006

OAKLAND -- Former Congressman Ron Dellums held on to the razor-thin margin separating an outright win and a November runoff early Friday, but that advantage was in jeopardy with nearly 30,000 ballot still to be counted including several thousand found in a county warehouse.
Challenge Ignacio De La Fuente told KTVU Friday morning that he was confident he would gain enough votes to force the run off.
"We have to protect everyone's vote," the Oakland City Council president said. "Six years ago, we had an experience in his country that left a bad taste in voters' mouths."
De La Fuente was referring the controversy over the Florida vote that elected President Bush to his first term in office.
To further muddle and already confusing election, workers discovered more than 5,000 uncounted ballots stashed in a warehouse. Those ballots have now been added to the 25,000-plus left to be counted.
As of Thursday night, Dellums increased his lead over De La Fuente, but was still just barely above the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff in November.

http://www.ktvu.com/politics/9346885/detail.html

Des Moines, June 9, 2006 (AP) - Officials across Iowa say low voter turnout on primary day gave them the chance to ease in new voting machines and work out technical kinks before the November general election.

A number of new voting machines were installed this year. That's because of recent federal changes in rules concerning vote-counting methods and handicapped accessibility at polling places.

The most notable technical glitch was in Pottawattamie County. Ballots had to be counted by hand because the ballot-counting machines had been programmed incorrectly.

snip

Roughly two out of every three voters were Democrats voting in their party's gubernatorial primary.

http://www.whotv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5010051&nav=2HAB