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November 25
Following up from yesterday, Salon has followed the election fraud stories, and has an article specifically on the votes that went missing in the touchscreens in Sarasota County, Florida. Apparently the recount consisted of looking at the machines' first report again because that's all there is, and this "recount" was the reason for state officials, all Republicans, to certify the Republican as the winner. The good news is the voters managed to pass a county ballot measure requiring paper ballots in time for the 2008 election.

Salon also reported that other Florida counties using the same machines had the same problems with undervotes. The statistical oddity is that while other counties in the 13th district had a two percent undervote in that race, Sarasota had thirteen percent.

Though this race is the only one where the touchscreens are known to be the issue, the stress goes on known. There were reports elsewhere of these machines switching votes, and just like in 2004 the switch is consistently Democratic votes switching to Republican. But again, that's what was reported. If the machines malfunctioned in ways not obvious, or if they were hacked with more alacrity than the visible switching of votes, there is no way to know. There were of course lots of incidents of other sorts of cheating, like robo-calls and intimidation, and Salon has put together a well-named cheat sheet.

Despite the cheating, it was still a decisive win, and all the more so for the swamping needed to overcome the fraud, the disinformation, and the gerrymandering. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian put it well:

The ugly American mark two is dead. Overnight six years of glib European identification of "American" with rightwing fantasism is over. The gun-toting, pre-Darwinian Bushite, the tomahawk-wielding, Halliburton-loving, Beltway neocon calling abortion murder and torturing Arabs as "Islamofascists" has been laid to rest, and by a decision of the American people. Another McCarthy raised its head over the western horizon and has been slapped down. It is a good day for level-headed Americans.
Though I'm not sure I agree with the headline, "Republican defeat means the Iraqi insurgency has won." The acting president's strategy so far has worked great for the insurgents. I don't see why they would welcome a change.

November 24
Why has there been so little coverage in the major news media about the election fraud this year? Probably several causes, like the Democratic win is the big story and overshadows all else, plus the Democratic wins seem to belie the argument that fraud occurred. I also think back to how we heard for more about 2000 and 2004, when the presidency was at stake, than about 2002. In fact, some what we know about alleged fraud in 2002 has only recently come out. Even in the presidential years, it took months before we had a really complete picture. Let's also hope one of the causes for less coverage is that there really was less fraud. We can suspect some of the best fraud is held back for presidential years, but I would hope that all the efforts of the last six years, especially the last two, to expose and prevent the fraud has indeed cut down on it, for if it hasn't been reduced, that's discouraging. My personal impression is that the dirty tricks like robocalls are as bad as ever, but the actual funny vote counting was better, and the heavy Democratic vote overwhelmed a lot of the cheating. I repeat that this is an impression: I can't quantify it, but I expect quantifying will get easier. Now that we have not just subpoena power in Congress, but more state legislative chambers, more governors, attorneys general, and secretaries of state, investigations are coming.

For the moment though there are recounts, and the most interesting situation is in --- you'll never guess --- Florida. This is the race I wrote about previously, where earlier this week Florida's election officials declared the Republican the winner, and remarkably these officials are Republicans themselves. The Democratic candidate, Christine Jennings, who presumably would win if the votes from the Democratic areas of the district could be counted, is trying to get a recount or another election. A recount will be tough with touchscreens. I heard something about the chance of looking at images of the ballots. That's a long shot at best. Instead we have exhibit A of what's wrong with paperless voting. I heard anecdotally the Republican voters also saw their votes disappear form these particular machines, so maybe it was an honest malfunction, not fraud. However, those of us opposing these machines have said all along that if they have a problem, we'll never know, or least not be able to recover the accurate result. May I be very optimistic, and take her willingness to fight this as another sign the Democrats have developed a backbone? I will anyway. I also donated to her recount fund. You can too. Say, looking at the rest of that Yahoo story, isn't odd how all these tight races have the Republican ahead? And they're in states with histories of election problems? There might be nothing to that. I'm just noticing.

I also noticed exhibit A for the use of optical scanners with paper ballots. Joe Courtney, now known as "Landslide Joe", won the 2nd district of Connecticut by 91 in a recount made possible by the use of optical scanners.

So what is it worth to have accurate, auditable elections? Let's cut out the nonsense and just institute a national standard on optical scanners with random audits.

November 18
City Pages sent reporters to some election night parties, and some Republicans made some revealing statements. This one for example:

8:35 p.m.: In the Navigators bar on the hotel's ground floor, a group of five revelers expounds on race relations. "There's a difference," explains one of them. "It depends on what kind of blacks you're talking about. There's the light-skinned blacks and the dark-skinned blacks. And they're different. But you can't just say that."
Was the next sentence, "And we just don't get why they won't vote for us!"? Here's a similar gem:
12:44 a.m.A GOP partisan, frustrated by slow late-night returns from St. Louis County, says to no one in particular: "What are they? A bunch of Iron Range hicks?"
By odd coincidence, the iron range has a pronounced tendency to vote DFL (Democratic Farmer Labor Party), and calling people "hicks" hasn't improved matters. Also, lest anyone think the Republicans were oblivious to what was coming only on a national level, reading the whole article gives the impression they really didn't know how things were going to go. I'm sure there was the cheerleading, the bucking up of morale expected on election night and which we did too at the DFL party, but it seems they really refused to believe what was obvious for weeks if not months. Karl Rove was the poster boy for delusion when he told NPR that he had polls telling him different things than the public polls, and while the interviewer had his math, Rove claimed to have "the" math. Locally though, the state secretary of state grabbed that role by refusing to concede until 1:36 a.m. for a race that was clearly over as soon as precincts started reporting.

The delusional way they've governed seems less surprising now.


So why was gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch the one statewide candidate not to win? It seems conclusive at this point. It wasn't the gaffes. Partly it was Tim Pawlenty's ability to get voters to split a ticket for him because they like him, and he did do better than other statewide Republicans, especially in his base in the southern suburbs. The other part though was Independence Party candidate Peter Hutchinson. The Independence Party doesn't like hearing that, as Jack Uldrich made clear, but it turns out that outside the metro area, Hatch did as well as the other DFL candidates for constitutional offices in a year where voters picked by party to an unusual degree. Hatch even did just fine in ethanol producing areas, indicating it wasn't Judi Dutcher's E85 gaffe or Hatch's reaction to press coverage of it. That's the conclusion of a study of election results by the Star Tribune, and a similar study by the Pioneer Press. Hutchinson's support, though only about 6.5%, came almost entirely from wealthier areas of the inner cities. These are areas that lean liberal and are usually safe for the DFL, as well as high turnout, but enough voted for Hutchinson that although Hatch won those areas handily, it wasn't the margin Democrats hope for in those precincts and which other DFL candidates received. That means Hutchinson's vote came out of Hatch's hide, and split the anti-Pawlenty vote.

So I ask the Independence Party, why? In race after race, you run candidates who are moderate to liberal, and appeal to potential DFL voters, effectively splitting the rational vote. You say you want Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), but so does the DFL. The one party that doesn't want it? The one you keep electing, the GOP. So the governor job stays with the guy who spent the trust funds, kicked uninsured people off MinnesotaCare, and won't fix the roads. The sixth district US House seat goes to a nut because IP candidate John Binkowski takes about 8% of the vote with liberal positions not significantly different from Patty Wetterling. Without him, that race becomes a squeaker.

It's not that I don't respect the right of anyone to run for office and anyone to vote for them. I supported Ralph Nader in 2000 because the Democrats had become Republican-lite and needed to come back to the base. However, I also knew Al Gore would win Minnesota. If I realized how awful Bush would be (which I regret I didn't figure out until the Florida recount) I would have pleaded with other Nader supporters in close states to support Gore (though I still think Florida would have been stolen regardless of the Nader votes). So what I'm suggesting is some reasonableness from the IP, and also the Greens. Run your candidates but, when we're in October and a candidate can't pick up support and clearly won't win, as Hutchinson never varied from 6-8%, give an endorsement of someone who can win and whom you can support, even if they aren't perfect.

"You don't care about me."
16 year old Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, when he realized the Canadian agent he thought had come to take him out of Hell and home to Canada was just another interrogator.

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at his pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose."
Abraham Lincoln in 1848, during the Mexican War, expressing why allowing a president sole discretion to decide when to invade another country is dangerous to the liberty of his own country.

"The OPR [the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility]also has been far behind in producing required annual public reports summarizing its activities. Last month, it released its report covering fiscal year 2005. That means many investigations undertaken during the tenure of former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales remain under wraps."
LA Times reporter Richard B. Schmit, in an article written in July 2008, on how the OPR is hiding the results of investigations --- assuming they actually are investigating.

"Mr. Chairman, I think the number's actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth — was 25, 26, 27."
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, on the number of detainees killed in Bush's prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and locations still secret.

"Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations."
James Hansen, on the 20th anniversary of his testimony before Congress where he informed them global warming was now certain, and how little time remains to prevent catastrophes.

"Who will chair the commission investigating the secrets of warrantless spying, years from today? Will it be a young senator in this body today? Will it be someone not yet elected? What will that senator say when he or she comes to our actions, reads in the records how we let outrage after outrage after outrage slide, with nothing more than a promise to stop the next one? I imagine that senator will ask of us, 'Why didn't they do anything? Why didn't they fight back? In June 2008, when no one could doubt anymore what the administration was doing---why did they sit on their hands?'"
Sen. Chris Dodd, in his speech on the Senate floor opposing the FISA bill and retroactive immunity.

"We had the worst natural disaster in the history of this country Katrina, and there wasn't a drop of oil spilled."
Sen. Norm Coleman, proposing more offshore oil drilling. There was actually enough oil spilled to match the Exxon Valdez. Whether Coleman is lying, or ignorantly repeating Republican talking points, is unknown.

"I'll go back to square one on this: We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us."
George Carlin, in an interview with Salon, on how he became a disappointed idealist.

"To date, seven long years after we scooped up our first detainees in Afghanistan, not a single one of them has faced evidence, his accusers, or anything remotely resembling a legal court hearing on his guilt or innocence."
Joseph Galloway, military correspondent for McClatchy, on how responsibility for war crimes goes right to the top, despite efforts to confine consequences to the bottom, in light of the recent McClatchy series on detainees.

"As I was leaving the UN food distribution center in Damascus, Layla Atiya, the widow with seven children, touched my arm. 'Can you tell me one thing?,' she pleaded. 'Why did America do this to us? What did we do to America to make her hate us so?'"
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink, writing about her visit to Iraqi refugee camps.

"So we're sitting here and, for example, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who said that he wanted to be a martyr on 9/11, make no mistake about it --- he said that he just couldn't get a visa --- launched into a description of what kind of psychotropic drugs he's taking here at the prison camp, or being given here at the prison camp. And the media monitors hit the white noise button. We didn't get to hear what exactly he's being given and we didn't exactly hear his explanation about why he's on medication.

And one of the escorts here explained that this was HIPAA protection, the Health and Information Protection Act on a place where the Bush Administration says the Constitution doesn't apply."
Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, on the restrictions placed on the press and mistreatment of detainees.

"If the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court was really concerned about fairness, it could have simply asked the Florida Supreme Court to devise a universal standard, appoint a judge to enforce it, and then extend the state's meaningless 'safe harbor' deadline to make it possible to complete the recount. It did not do so because it was not interested in counting the votes. It wanted George W. Bush to win."
Gary Kamiya, Salon writer at large, in a review of the HBO's "Recount", on how the Supreme Court stole the election for Bush.

"Convicting and imprisoning Paul Minor on corruption charges could be a powerful way to curtail contributions to the local Democratic Party."
U.S. House Judiciary Committee report on political prosecutions by the Bush DOJ. Minor was a vital contributor to the Mississippi Democratic Party.

"Where does the madness end? Where do words lose their meaning? Al-Qa'ida is not being defeated. Hizbollah has just won a domestic war in Lebanon, as total as Hamas's war in Gaza. Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza are hell disasters — I need no apology to quote Churchill's description of 1948 Palestine yet again — and this foolish, stupid, vicious man is lying to the world yet again."
Robert Fisk, columnist and resident of Lebanon, responding to remarks by Bush that show he hasn't the least understanding of the region he's mucking up.

"The short version: Republicans in Congress, McCain included, have slashed the United States budget for wind energy since Carter was president, which is why McCain has to speak at a Danish turbine manufacturer instead of an American one."
Mother Jones reporter/blogger Jonathan Stein, noting that McCain made his climate change speech in a Danish wind turbine factory after repeatedly cutting funding for wind development here.

"We get off on warfare."
Rev. Rod Parsley, McCain's spiritual advisor, who calls for mass murder, in a snippet of a sermon in a video by Mother Jones and Brave New Films. That line of Christian charity comes about 1:25 into the video.



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This letter has been read by the acting president and approved as within his definition of national security.