Word is Humboldt County had a Diebold OpScan fail this morning in Fields Landing. Seeking details...

vote for the fighting dems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Dems

90% of them think the Iraq war is a screw up.

I went to see Greg Palast last night as he kicked off his world-wide book promotion tour for ARMED MADHOUSE here in Portland, Oregon. I was ready to be depressed on multiple levels --- anticipating a small crowd and then listening to endless stories about how we were doomed.

Well, for starters, the crowd was great --- completely filled the venue to bursting; it was a church, and we were so full they put overflow in the choir section BEHIND the speaker. Gee, I thought, if I were him I'm not sure I would want that many people behind my back where I couldn't see them (CIA poison darts and all) but then, I guess, the neo-cons would have to be total idiots to kill somebody like Greg because it would just guarantee that his book would go from 100,000 sales to 10,000,000, and the very last thing these people want is for this information to get past their media filters and into the hands of Americans.

Anyway, he was incredibly upbeat. He said they stole 3,000,000 votes/ in 2004 and they want to steal 5,000,000 in 2006 and 8,000,000 in 2008. He explained how they were going to do it and admitted that given Democratic apathy and/or complicity, there was not much chance of stopping it.

BUT (and it is a BIG one): He gave us this parting instruction: MAKE THEM HAVE TO! If they steal 5M, bring 10M new voters to the polls. If they steal 10M, bring 30M new voters to the polls. Make it impossible for them to successfully win just by stealing the votes. Their own lack of popularity and any real ideas or plans will eventually backfire and the issues they think are "wedge" issues will turn on them the same way their blatent hypocrisy in the Schiavo case worked against them.

He ended on a very upbeat and hopeful note, even as he documented evil and conspiracy at depths I hadn't even imagined.

So, KEEP ON FIGHTING. Print out the RFK, Jr. article from rollingstone.com and leave it "laying around" where people can find it and read it. Buy copies of ROLLING STONE and give them to friends who don't "get it." Give ARMED MADHOUSE and FUBAR and LAPDOGS and HOSTILE TAKEOVER and, of course, FOOLED AGAIN to friends and enemies alike or donate it to reading rooms.

THERE IS HOPE --- there has to be. These people are EVIL, and their karma will destroy them.

Charlie L
Portland, OR

Any state that insists on electronic voting machines does not care about the integrity of the election or our democracy. These machines are not reliable, nor can they guarantee fair elections. It is disgusting.

So, here’s how elections work in Ventura County, California. We have new voting equipment, Sequoia Optech Insight optical scanner. It reads a paper ballot that is a fill-in type format, and the software can be hacked before installation to flip votes by any of several algorithms, and the hack automatically deletes itself when the memory cartridge is connected to the main tabulator after the voting is over. But that’s not enough for the crooked bastards here. Besides the parties who have slates in this primary, we have a “non-partisan” registration, and those who register as “non-partisan” can vote any party slate that allows it. In this case, Republican, Democrat, American Independent Party or “Non-Partisan.” We received an ample number of “Non-Partisan” ballots, and an ample supply of “Declined to State” Republican ballots (N-P voters can vote these slates, but cannot use the regular party ballots. They must use “Declined to State” Republican, Democrat, AIP ballots.) But we received NO “Declined to State” Democrat or AIP ballots, which means that N-P voters who wish to vote the Democrat or AIP primary slate can only do so by provisional ballot. In fact, we were given no instructions on how to handle this situation, so even that may be wrong. This means that N-P voters who vote the Republican primary slate go to the head of the line, while those voting the Democrat or AIP slate get an extra 5-10 minutes of paperwork AND must produce a picture I.D. And these ballots may not even be counted, because even if there is a protocol for these votes, we weren’t given it. When queried regarding this situation, our “roving inspector” (ironic title, no?) initially stated that the county elections director had determined that we had no N-P voters eligible to vote the Dem or AIP slates, so no “Declined to State” ballots were sent for those two parties. We were later informed by the same inspector that “Declined to State” ballots for Dems and AIP not only weren’t sent out to any polling place in the county, they weren’t even printed. Which means that somebody is bullshitting somebody. The reason I volunteered as a poll clerk this election is that last election I saw poll clerks turn voters away for the slightest of reasons, the main reason seeming to be a Mexican name. Eventually, enough voters demanded that these people be given provisional ballots that they were allowed to cast votes, though many of us heard a poll clerk remark, “OK, give them provisional ballots…they’re not going to get counted anyway.” If this shit flies in the primaries, bet your ass we'll see it in the rest of our elections as well, and God only knows what kind of programming got loaded into those scanners before they got sent out. I'm beginning to believe Malcolm X was right about ballots.