Guest blogged by Winter Patriot
Clint Curtis needs your help. The computer programmer who says he wrote a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000, at the request of Florida Congressman Tom Feeney, has a chance to oppose Feeney in November’s general election. The prospect of such a race — and the publicity that would flow from it — has election-integrity advocates all over the country licking their lips in anticipation, but it won’t happen unless Curtis wins next month’s primary.
His opponent, Andy Michaud, has been virtually invisible. He hasn’t really been campaigning; he’s hardly even been raising any money! But Curtis takes no comfort in these odd facts. He knows he’s vulnerable — to the machines! (Do you want to see how a vote-rigging program works? Click here to download one; try it yourself and see how easily our democracy can be subverted.)
There is reason to hope for a fair outcome, however. And the reason — believe it or not — is at least as ingenious as the vote-rigging software Curtis prototyped for Feeney six years ago.
Curtis has set up a website where voters can register their intention to vote for a particular candidate. Using this system, if a candidate can collect enough information about how many people intend to vote for him, and where they live, he will be in a position to tell whether the numbers from any given precinct have been flipped in favor of his opponent. And if such flipping occurs, the “losing” candidate would have reliable evidence to support a challenge.
Some voters have already registered, but many others don’t yet know about the system, and they will have to be contacted by phone. Here’s where you come in. Curtis needs volunteers to make phone calls. He can give you all the details; he can even arrange things so you can make the calls for free.
All in all, it sounds like a much more convenient way to support your democracy than waiting for another election to be stolen, going out into the streets, and trying not to be shot at.
As Curtis phrases it: “The democracy of this country and possibly the fate of the world rests on your shoulders. You can actually do something about it.”
But here’s the big question: WILL YOU? Will you help? Will you donate a few minutes of your time? Will you make a few phone calls in support of transparent, verifiable elections?
Did you say “Yes”? Good! I thought you would!
Please click here and offer Clint Curtis some support. It’s really the least you can do for your country, and for your children, and for my children too.
I just signed up to volunteer to phone bank. The process– painless. In the notes I mentioned I’m a brag blog reader. Anyone want to join me? This could be an interesting adventure 🙂
That is a genius idea, Clint. I was trying to think of something along those lines with the McKinney/Johnson runoff. That would be a great one to prove fraud, because there wasn’t millions of voters. I was going to post, “Could McKinney just call all the voters, because there were so few voters?” This is a better idea. It’s a genius idea, Clint.
There were 70,000 voters in the McKinney runoff. Is it private information who voted? Could some organization just start calling people and ask who they voted for? The McKinney one would be perfect, because it was small, and likely to be hacked because she was outspoken about 9/11 & fraud, and there were only 70,000 voters (supposedly).
But Clint’s idea is doing something “ahead of time”. Fantastic idea, Clint.
Beauty way to go, Clint! The telecoms here already have their grubby hands deep in my pockets, but if I could man the bank from Prague without paying for it, I’d love to. I was even taught how to be polite, once upon a time. Please keep up the great work, sir. I admire your courage, perspicacity, and honesty. Thank you for your service, and consider me at yours…
Andy Michaud = Hank Johnson.
What if Michaud makes a website and has a bunch of fakesters register?
I tried to vote for my Ohio guys Sherrod Brown and I hope we can vote for gov on this too. Strickland. But they want a registration # thats on our voters card. My husband and I don’t have a voters card. What’s going on with this ? Someone please explain this to me. Do I call the DNC to see what our numbers are?
I signed up to make calls for Clint.
How many voters in his district?
How many callers does he need?
Can someone keep a running tally on the home page?
I agree ….. this is a key race where proof of fraud could actually be acquired and used.
Remember, the FL Supreme Court actually decided the Bush v. Gore case in favor of counting the votes.
Winter Partiot – Thank You for Your Great work to Prolong Freedom in America!
I tried the program, but it’s not flipping the vote. Clicking in all the appropriate corners, but nothing is happening. Anyone else try it?
If you live in the Seattle area you can also support Clint Curtis by attending his upcoming fundraiser this Thurdsday, August 17, 7:00 pm at the Seattle Labor Temple, 2800 First Ave. He will be there in person and we will show the Clint Curtis story documentary “Murder? Spies & Voting Lies” (also starring the one and only Brad Friedman). Curtis will also be receiving the BACKBONE Award for his courage in exposing corruption and speaking truth to power. Please support Curtis and attend this fundraiser. If you can’t attend, you can contribute at http://www.clintcurtis.com. AND MAKE THOSE PHONE CALLS!
um… maybe I’ve just never been given one, but I went to the Votenow2006 site and to vote on line you have to give your “voter card number” I’ve never been given a “voter card” so I don’t have a number. I’m in California. Has anyone elsewhere gotten a voter card?
Dredd’s Law: Power corrupts followers of politicians in power at least as much as it corrupts the politician, and will if unchecked, result in absolute corruption of both.
Duverger’s law (link here) and the power structure of the US Congress (link here) is understood by at most 30% of Americans.
Some astute legal professors in law school do not understand, and therefore confuse, Duverger’s law as it would apply in the US (link here).
If you want to be an astute blogger, therefore, learn this:
That is because the Congress about that time, a very disturbed time in American history, decided it that way. And it was never fixed.
Nowadays the majority party (any party having the most members in the Senate and/or House of Representatives) takes all committee chairmanships and the majority vote in each and every committee. The minority party gets ZERO chairmanships and ZERO majority votes on any committee.
And committees have the power in the US Congress. They decide the fate of bills, oversight, subpoenas, and witnessess in the plethora of things they have jurisdiction over.
Thus, as has been presented on this blog ad nauseum, in the US one either takes into consideration the effect on majority status a political tactic or strategy has, or on the contrary, one is a political buffoon in place of being a political scientist.
So Mr. Curtis, if you do not win the Democratic primary (I sure hope you do!!), will you become corrupt by power as Joe Lieberman did, or will you support the opposition to Feeney?
Anyone got some answers for Joy, tom and Donna? Sounds like they are experiencing a new voter disenfranchisement scheme.
It seems if you don’t get some obscure number revealed to you by those in control of the voting process you can’t vote by mail in CA.
Good questions here, folks, and I can’t answer most of them. But I’ve sent an email to Clint and I imagine he will try to help us as soon as he can.
Sandy D in #7 asked a few questions that I can answer:
It’s a Democratic primary and it’s a closed primary too; there are no crossover voters. The turnout is expected to be low, so Clint really only needs to contact the die-hard Democrats in the district. And he says there are about 8000 of them.
He says they’re about 30% covered. So that would leave 70% of the 8000, or 5600 voters still to be contacted. At five phone calls per day, and with three weeks left to go until the primary, I’m guessing he might need 50 or 60 volunteers.
Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. If Clint can keep me posted, then I can try to keep you posted. Or something like that! Let me see what arrangements we can make, ok?
Thanks a zillion to those who have volunteered so far; and to the rest of you:
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
You might never have another chance to do something so important with so little effort. Please don’t pass up this opportunity to help carry the burden of democracy.
It may be messy sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be corrupt all the time. YOU can make a big difference here.
Please click here and do a little bit of volunteer work for your country … for your future … for all of us!
Thank you very much.
I signed up Sat., to make phone calls for Clint, and I am waiting to hear from them. I don’t have to pay long distance fees, so I’m cheap! if I don’t hear from his staff tomorrow, I’ll re-apply, OK?
Here are some answers to your questions, courtesy of Clint Curtis:
Any more questions? Ask ’em if you got ’em!
Nana #15: sounds like a good idea to me!
Hey,
I tried go back to the site and lookup my name after registering. There was not a logon or find my info link. I did stumble upon the test drive link where it appears that an attempt to find my information would be made if I could fill in my information. However the text fields appear to be locked.
Thanks
I had a similar idea for a website here, but would have included having people pay a dollar to register their vote. That way, everybody who voted would have a receipt generated through the banking system.
Then you could throw a barbecue with the money collected to belay any complaints about raising money and get interested people together to talk and organize.
Larry that’s a fabulous idea! and it gives me a chance to say: Clint is onto something similar. But in his case it’s a $5 bill.
If you go to his website and click on the $5 bill, you can make a little bit of a difference to his “war chest” without making a big difference to your wallet, and every $5 drop in the bucket makes a difference. Thanks to Clint for doing what he’s doing and thanks to you for helping him.
Winter Patriot, I would donate in a heartbeat to Clints campaign, but I haven’t had any income since April. I’ve decided not to accept unemployment insurance so that I can try to harass Republicans for a while longer.
I’ve been a pretty decent Philanthropist for my favorite hero’s during the Bush occupation, but I have had to cut it off in favor of surviving.
No problem, Larry. We’re all doing what we can.
in comment #18, Anonymous asked:
I asked Clint about this and he wrote:
I hope this helps. If not, ask more questions.
HAVE YOU VOLUNTEERED TO HELP CLINT CURTIS YET?