Truth in Elections*
49 Francesca Ave.,
Somerville, MA 02144
617-625-3166
econhmnrts (at) aol.com
*In conjunction with United Progressives for Democracy
and Massachusetts Coalition Against Election Fraud
For immediate release Contact: Grace C Ross 617-642-0312
Across the US electors in at least five states, for the first time in history, turned the heavily scripted and ritualized electoral college proceedings into a forum for political action. Frustrated by the relative inattention to wide spread real voting violations now numbering in the tens of thousands, Electors called for congressional investigation and legislative action.
Vermont electors, on the record and in front of TV cameras and a number of statewide media outlets, expressed their concerns for our democracy with “57,000 complaints already received by the Congressional Judiciary Committee, we call on Congress and especially our Vermont Congressional delegation to investigate.” They enumerated credible violations affecting hundreds of thousands of voters across the US, Elector Jeffrey Taylor reports.
Opening the traditional statement of thanks for being introduced at the beginning of the Massachusetts Electoral College 2004 session, Elector Cathleen Ashton of Wayland, took the opportunity to demand “Every vote be counted and every vote count.”
As described in local news reports, for the first time in history, Electors in Maine also went on the record using the voting process to “call for national voting reforms.” Their statement pointed to the kind of electoral reforms Maine has that lead to more genuine elections, such as same day registration, allowing ex-felons to vote, and clean election reforms "but our four electoral votes are held meaningless if our sister states cannot hold elections that are fair, accurate and verifiable," Elector Lu Bauer said after the brief ceremony at the State House.
Most extraordinarily, one elector in California cast his ballot provisional upon “all votes being counted – provisional, absentee, under- and overvotes, computerized without paper ballots, even getting valid votes from those turned away illegally, intimidated, discouraged by incredibly long waits, etc.” This incredible act as a creative attempt to get this message read on the floor of Congress when they open the ballots on January 6 to consider whether to certify the vote.
“Never has such a vote been cast by an elector and without a parliamentarian to rule it in or out at the electoral college level, we await whether Congress will acknowledge this type of provisional vote and address the issues this elector sought to raise or whether they too will ignore provisional votes,” said Grace Ross, an organizer of the national effort to support electors to take action and a member of Truth in Elections.
Even in North Carolina where lack of “swing state” status left local voting violations relatively invisible, Democratic Electors and local activists spoke out about local problems while Republican Electors voted inside. Elector Mary Roe spoke of problems she herself witness as an election observer in her own county as well as saying that “everyone deserves to have their votes counted” while deploring the 4,500 votes NC election officials acknowledged disappeared in a computerized voting machine crash.
Massachusetts Electors who introduced the motion said they will use this to lobby Congressional members to take action now such as objecting to the vote. The motion passed by acclimation called on Congress to: “Act to commit Congress to investigate all voting complaints that might have any validity that they receive; Act to commit Congress to remedy any voting rights violations or electoral fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts; File in Congress and commit their resources to passage of systemic remedies.”
In speaking at their Mass. press conference afterwards, one Elector, Tom Barbera spoke of personally having his life threatened during get-out-the-vote efforts. Another spoke of being targeted for intimidation such as being immediately accosted as an African American entering a Florida polling place by whites telling her “your kind is not wanted here”, “we don’t want your kind voting here”, “leave”; such threatening behavior meant as get-out-the-vote volunteers they frequently had to follow intimidated voters of color out of polling places and convince them to reenter and agree to accompany them through the voting process..
Tom Barbera, in presenting the Massachusetts’ Electoral College motion, acknowledging that many whose voting rights violations were most widely violated were African American, referenced the Civil Rights struggle in saying ”we believe that as electors, we have a unique opportunity and obligation to ensure that justice does not again become so delayed as to be denied (as happened in 2000)”
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Thank you for the article on the Electors protest. I will send it to my Congressperson and other Democrats in Congress.
Trying to decide which Republicans are not so very corrupt as to ignore such as Rep. Feeney now also on the Judiciary Committee. A computer technician had the courage to put his name on an affadavit accusing Rep. Feeney of asking him to write a computer program to steal votes when both were working for Yang Computer firm.
This should be getting a lot more press and although I heard about the affidavit on Pacifica Radio’s broadcast of Rep. Conyer’s ad hoc Forum on Voter Fraud, I think it is on Congressman Conyer’s website.
C-SPAN had a large ALERT in yellow at top of webpage about a week ago and when clicked on the yellow button that said “Digital, Unconstitutional, Unfair.” there was a long article about how the FCC headed by Adam son of Colin Powell was trying to shut down C-Span by asking them to do the impossible to have two tv stations at the same time one digital and one analog which C-SPAN could not afford and which the cable provider did not have space for
and when I tried to complain to Mr. Powell, got message that email did not go through though when I had complained about Sinclair around the “Election” my email to Mr. Powell did go through and I received a complaint number.
When I went back to C-Span to check the technical facts, they no longer had the alert and I sent an email to their “temporarily” downed Community Forum.
And I wonder if this is a part of a censorship pattern, I read on Election Fraud that PBS was now erasing any comments about bush and AOL after hearing about the punitive suit, posters started complaining that bush posts were being deleted and wondered if the AOL Time Warner deal with the government not to pay fines for a separate issue was dependent on their erasing anti-bush statements from posters to their messageboard and of course Kerry’s Blog suspiciously went down on “Election” night around 3 am because “Moderators were taking a break” and aside from about 45 minutes on Nov. 3 around 9am Kerry’s Blog never came back up though it was filled with people posting.
Even then the results and other things that were happening were suspicious, like Bush and cronies calling for Kerry’s concession even before the Western states had reported, vast differences between exit polls and Zogby’s projections and the results that were coming in and Iowa STOPPING THE COUNT ON ELECTION NIGHT “BECAUSE THEIR WORKERS WERE EXHAUSTED”.
For a Presidential election they should have had a second shift and it was known that there would be many more voters than usual because of the massive interest in this election. There were more volunteers for every aspect of the election that they could have tapped, if they knew that the whole state of Iowa did not have enough poll workers to count the vote ON ELECTION NIGHT.
Iowa took 3 days to count the vote (Their workers must have been very exhausted…HA!!!) to manipulate the vote to give Bush a 10,000 vote “win”. This very suspicious state of IOWA behaviour alone should be investigated by Congress.