Cross posted from Docudharma.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:  Link to an important diary on Electronic Voting Machine Hearing TODAY! from TheOpinionGuy.

On the day before leaving for Netroots Nation, I voted for Jim Martin for U.S. Senate in the July 15 General Primary Election here in Georgia.  

At the polling place I was the only voter but there were a dozen or so poll workers.  After voting (on one of those damned Diebold machines) I asked if I'd get a receipt.  In lieu of one I was given a cute little sticker with a graphic of a Georgia Peach with 'I’m a Georgia Voter' printed on it.  I laughed and said that makes me feel better...there were some chuckles.  

I said I wanted a receipt for my vote.  This is what they gave me.

There have already been a few articles and discussions over the past few months about the "Bradley effect", which attempts to "explain" discrepancies between what white voters tell pollsters and how they actually vote when it comes to "non-white" candidates.

And even though a lot of these discussions end up with evidence that dismisses the theory, as the election season heats up, there will no doubt be more of a racial undertone (whether it is blatant or not), and as long as poll samples are intentionally skewed to help McCain, or likely Obama voters are being excluded from the polling samples - there will be more focus on the so-called "closeness" of this race.

This will be a short diary, but I have just heard that Clinton supporters are attempting to unseat Collin County delegates in Texas.  If this is already been diaried, then I'll delete.

The story below the fold...

One person who did not have Florida on her itinerary was Hillary Clinton.

(Cross posted from Docudharma)

We have come to a place unimagined even by Orwell who got so much right.  

(Cross posted from Docudharma)

Any more the bad news comes like the steady downpour of the tropical monsoon.

There is no time to catch one’s breath.

There is no pause to absorb the outrages of the day, no interlude to break the tragedies into digestible chunks, no relief for the overwhelmed between the vicious punches to the gut, the finger jabs to the eyes, the thunder kicks to the groin.

Every now and then, when I get completely depressed about the world as it is today, I take the time to imagine another world.  A world the should have been.  A world with President Al Gore, no Iraq war, no September 11, an amazing Government response to a storm which might not have done as much damage to New Orleans, and a Constitution treated as something more than just an old piece of paper.

And then I think about all of the different reasons why the world is not as it should be.

Bill Clinton's role in this was most pathetic.  

Power of the people is murdered and buried with establishment politics, e.g.,the dem/pug ONE party system. Establishment politics is all about keeping pig, pig rich people, pig, pig rich (the one percent or less). It's other goal is keep us commode-cleaning, cattle consumers and servants of the Greek God-like elites. The ONLY way to change this is to create radically NEW social forms to honor and express the will of the people. It's time for a political Renaissance.

Many Kossacks have diaried on the GOP attempt to steal the 2008 presidential elections by unfairly securing about 20 electoral votes in California for the GOP in November, 2008, by means of ballot initiative 07-0032. Suffice it to say that, if passed, 07-0032 would allocate electoral votes in California on the basis of the winners of each congressional district, rather than on the basis of the overal winner in the state, which would almost certainly guarantee 20 otherwise unattainable electoral votes for the Republican nominee.

Signature gathering for initiative 07-0032 started on September 5, 2007. According to the website of the California Secretary of State (link below), the backers of the initiative have until February 4, 2008, to gather the required 433,971 signatures. (I note that on some websites the deadline has been identified as mid-November or the end of January, and I am not one hundred precent sure as to when the actual deadline is).

Make the jump for a link to the text of the initiative, as well as some other useful links:

  Did the US fiddle with yesterday's Costa Rica election?  Polls that was taken the week prior pointed to a 56 to 60 % NO vote. The Costa Rican government (favoring a Yes vote) claims the proposition passed 52-48.  There is a demand for a hand count/recount by the opposition which had huge demonstrations and much popular sentiment against the CAFE DR bill which would compromise Costa Rican sovereignity and undermine many rights and labor protections the Costa Ricans now enjoy.

   One has to look at what happened to Mexico following the NAFTA arrival
scuttling Mexico's limited protections for its domestic economy. Collapse of the rural economy as US multinational corporations have: 1) dumped commodity corn into Mexicos markets, 2) ruined the ability of farms (more)

Karl Rove is being actively assisted by Congressional Democrats in seeking to cover up massive voter "caging" in the '04 and upcoming '08 elections.  So says investigative reporter Greg Palast.  If you were cynical about your deaf, dumb and blind donkey party before, you might want to sit down:

GP: [Monica Goodling yesterday was] the blondeling underling of the Police State. The lady was trying to tell us something important, but the dim bulbs of the U.S. press and the committee dolts wouldn’t listen. She began by accusing her bosses of perjury. The issue was her allegation that they knew all about “caging.” And no one asked her one damn question about it. Like what is “caging” and why would they commit perjury to cover it up?

JD: Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) asked, and Goodling said, “It has to do with direct mail.”

GP: And that was it. D’oh! It’s not about “direct mail.” Direct mail has to do with Victoria’s Secret and stuff like that. This was all about stealing the 2004 — and 2008 — elections. That’s why she wanted immunity. She was afraid it would all unravel, the caging game…but she had nothing to fear.

George had gathered around himself people of no conscience, no (good) principles, and boundless greed, power-hunger and vindictiveness, people like Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove, who admires Machiavelli tremendously and follows his directions to the letter for stealing/taking over and running a country; "Uncle" Donald Rumsfeld, who never met a right he liked unless it belonged to just him; Dick Cheney, also called "Darth" Cheney, as he would clearly not hesitate to annihilate an inhabited planet – he does seem to be trying to – as an object lesson.  I suppose it would be more accurate to call him "Grand Moff", but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.  Anyway, the appointments came thick and fast, all demagogues or Bush loyalists, all in cabinet positions, on federal courts, in and usually heading regulatory agencies, and everyplace else Bush and Company could think of where they might be useful.  In five and a half years, they have, together, obviated every "right" recognized by the Constitution of the United States so that it is essentially "just a piece of paper", as Bush wanted.  

One passage stands out as especially interesting: in it, Pelosi appears to claim that there is a possibility the Republicans will steal this election. Here's the passage:

"Pelosi cautioned that the number of Democratic House victories could be higher or lower and said her greatest concern is over the integrity of the count -- from the reliability of electronic voting machines to her worries that Republicans may try to manipulate the outcome.

"That is the only variable in this," Pelosi said. "Will we have an honest count?'' "

There you have it in black and white: even the Democratic minority leader believes that Republicans may manipulate the counting of votes.

This is the truth folks:

No, it is not just "a glitch" or some "glitch" or an "irregularity".

Reports from multiple places around the Country in early voting indicate the systematic and repeated switching of vote selections away from the user-chosen Democratic candidate to ... guess?  yep .. the Republican candidate!

The full link is here:  http://www.bradblog.com/...

In 2004, some Democrats alleged widespread voting irregularities in Ohio, including questionable vote-counting and problems with machines in Democratic-leaning precincts. Nonpartisan election experts have said the problems were not so severe to call President Bush's victory, by about 119,000 votes, into question.

... the words chosen here clearly imply that these were baseless allegations made by a few zany Democrats and that the true, objective experts have unanimously agreed that the state was fairly decided. The fact is that hundreds of Ohio citizens testified under oath that their right to vote was, in some way, thwarted. The judiciary committe issued a 105 page report detailing the specific facts, as reported by sworn testimony.

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."


~ Thomas Paine

The struggle has been going on for decades but the first overt blow was delivered by the Supreme Court in 2000 when they stopped the vote recount in Florida.  No true democracy has anything to fear from a recount - that is as true here as it is in Mexico.  Unfortunately true democracy seems to have gone the way of the dodo.  When SCOTUS issued their decree stopping the Florida recount they told the world that democracy doesn't matter any more.  It was an admission that power is no longer allowed to be wielded by the people, but is the sole purview of the ruling elite.

(more below the fold...)

Agent99 posted my first interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Daily Kos, in my "Democracy in Crisis" series - and it probably got lost in the kerfuffle because of when it was posted.  I thank her for that, hopefully this will get more recognition.  This is a series of interviews I'm doing with people that I think are fighting to save our democracy, and the second in the series.  I'm hoping to get suggestions of other people to interview from you all.  I originally posted this at Brad Blog.