•William Rivers Pitt, who broke the story that yesterday's hearing in DC would occur and made the initial suggestion that we lobby C-SPAN to televise it, covered the event for truthout.org. He kept a blog while he was there and then wrote a summary report.
•The Free Press, out of Columbus, OH, continues to provide some of best coverage and original research on what went wrong in Ohio's 2004 presidential election.
•Richard Hayes Phillips does the math on how the withholding of voting machines from urban, predominantly democratic precincts cost Kerry upwards of 17,000 votes.
•Steve Rosenfeld, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman provide an overwhelming list of disturbing voting irregularities in the state of Ohio.
•At the hearing, Ralph Neas, President of People for the American Way (PFAW), spoke about what was learned by Election Protection volunteers at the polling places, over the phones on national toll-free voters' rights hotlines and on the websites for reporting voting problems. In partnership with the NAACP and the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, PFAW has issued a preliminary report, Dispenses the Myth of “Smooth” 2004 Elections: Shattering The Rose-Colored Glasses detailing some of their findings.
•Common Cause has come out with their own Report from the Voters: A First Look at the 2004 Election Data/Common Cause Agenda for Reform, as above, assimilating data from the Election Protection drive.
•On Tuesday, to celebrate the release of their report, Common Cause held a conference with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and The Century Foundation, a day long series of panels with speakers from many parts of the electoral reform and civil rights communities who created and implemented the impressive Election Protection infrastructure.
•On Tuesday night, Common Cause held house parties around the country to report on the proceedings at that day's conference and answer questions. On the phone were Executive Director Chellie Pingree and John Bonifaz, the founder and general counsel of the National Voting Rights Institute. Common Cause has posted a digital recording of the 30 minute call [mp3] on their site.
•If you end up spending some time on the The Century Foundation website, note that in addition to their resources on electoral reform and other issues there, they have just launched a new website, Immigrationline.org, which "features the Foundation's work on immigration and related civil liberties issues. Created for an audience of journalists and the public, the site aims to present current news, research, and analysis of complicated immigration issues in a manner accessible to non-experts." I haven't given much time immigration issues at Hungry Blues. I have, however, been talking about recent Republican efforts to revive racism in our country. Immigrants, especially those from Mexico who are fueling our economy with cheap labor, are a major target. If you don't know about Arizona's Proposition 200, follow the link and learn about it right now! This is anti-immigration legislation very similar to California's 1997 Proposition 187, which was found unconstitutional. Proposition 200 passed and is now under litigation from the the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Expect to see more legislation of this kind in other states.
Update: I can't believe I forgot to mention Keith Olbermann's coverage of the Conyers hearing. Olbermann discusses the possibility that some of the emerging evidence of irregularities may be deemed an adequate basis for members of the House and the Senate to formally challenge the legitimacy of Ohio's electoral votes. This possibility was raised explicitly—and with great eloquence—by Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.
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