Serious problems “continue to plague Virginia”. The following info comes from the 866-OUR-VOTE website (via the Institute for Southern Studies)…
- Dozens of polling places are experiencing varying degrees of machine malfunction. Some polling places are either completely closed or have been closed for hours. Thousands of voters may have been turned away illegally by polling workers.
- Voters have illegally been issued with provisional ballets where machines have been broken.
- Students at Virginia Tech, previously the victims of misinformation, have seen their polling place suddenly and unexpectedly moved six miles to a location with little parking.
UPDATE: RAW STORY has more on “massive voting machine failures and voters being turned away from polls,” and a call to extend polling hours in VA. VA uses 100% unverifiable DRE (usually touch-screen) systems across virtually the entire state. When machines of that sort break down, voters can’t vote, unless there are emergency paper ballots on hand, and officials bother to give them out to voters.
UPDATE II: More on the dirty tricks at Virginia Tech, including a map to the remote pollsite students are being sent to.
Note: This is the same county in VA (Richmond) where the registrar had purposely distributed incorrect information to Virginia Tech students, as we reported back in early September, to warn them they might lose scholarships and ability to be declared dependents on their parents tax forms if they registered to vote there.
The Election is already starting to look like a major voter disenfranchisement project.
I’ve asked the question before–how can the republicans win against more Democrats? Cheat, that’s how. We saw all this in 2004, for anyone who cared to look at the widespread claims of voter caging and disenfranchisement, including the removal of ballots after the election in Cuyahoga County, resulting in the felony convictions of election board employees.
Bradblog.com has massed a powerful position on voting rights issues in the past four years. I’m glad to see it’s powerful array of unfiltered and truthful reporting on vote fraud.
Of course there are powerful forces at work. The forces of democracy–and the people–aren’t behind them. Instead they look to co-opt the voting system through black box voting and other techniques designed to disenfranchise minorities.
A small group of old white men is likely behind the corruption. As America represents more minorities, the primarily white GOP will have to resort to ever bolder cheating in order to win a national election.
I voted this AM in Charlottesville, VA. The line was out the front of my voting location, near the downtown mall. This is longer than I’ve ever seen when voting. However, it moved pretty quickly. New this year was the option to vote paper instead of the electronic touch screen. I chose paper, and after filling in the boxes, they had me feed the ballot into a optical scanning machine. Seemed to go smoothly. Took me about 1/2 hour to vote at 7:15-7:45 am.
Hopefully it will go that smoothly for most Virginians and Obama will get elected.
So many election & gov’t officials are seemingly breaking voting rights laws.
Will the candidates’ lawyers press cases or is this something the citizenry will have to do?
Tim Robbins [the actor] went to vote today … probably Los Angeles?
Anyway – even though he had voted in the primaries his name was not registered on the database. He contested it and got restored to the list. He is Tim Robbins … what if he was just an average citizen?
This unholy disenfranchisement must be stopped.
RAISE HOLY HELL TIM, I know you will!!
Kira, it was in New York. I left a link to a video of him talking about it on the open thread.
Thanks 99!
That 6.5 mile “sudden” move was announced in September, when the precinct containing VT exceeded the maximum number of allowable voters under state law.
More criminal Rethuglican disenfranchisement tactics. It’s really hard to imagine they couldn’t find a place ON CAMPUS that would hold the number of people. I’m sure they didn’t TRY very hard. The people responsible for voter disenfranchisement attempts should be indicted, tried, convicted, and executed after this election. I think THAT would give pause to anybody (Democrat or Rethuglican) trying it again in the future.
http://www.wset.com/news/storie...08/567463.html
This was broadcast on WSET ABC13, Lynchburg, VA, which explains why Lynchburg, VA was lost to Obama. Students from Jerry Falwells, Liberty University skewed the election for the city, and is bragging about it. This constitutes the possibility of dual voting practices supported by the University via absentee ballots as well as University ballots. This happens on an ongoing basis in this neck of the woods, from dual home ownership, at Lakes, Mountain and Sea Shore property.
This is a Classic example also of Church/State violations for Tax Exemptions.