This Is The Nail IN The 2008 Election?

from http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/v-print/story/19982.html

Posted on Wed, Sep. 26, 2007
Ohio, Florida laws could dampen Democratic voting Greg Gordon | McClatchy
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last updated: September 26, 2007 07:19:57 PM

WASHINGTON — Ohio and Florida, which provided the decisive electoral votes
for President Bush's two razor-thin national election triumphs, have enacted
laws that election experts say will help Republicans impede
Democratic-leaning minorities from voting in 2008.

Backers of the new laws say they're aimed at curbing vote fraud. But the
statutes also could facilitate a controversial Republican tactic known as
``vote caging,'' which the GOP attempted in Ohio and Florida in 2004 before
public disclosures foiled the efforts, said Joseph Rich, a former Justice
Department voting rights chief in the Bush administration who's now with the
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Caging, used in the past to target poor minorities in heavily Democratic
precincts, entails sending mass mailings to certain voters and then using
the undelivered letters to compile lists of voters for eligibility
challenges.

As the high-stakes ground war escalates heading into next year's elections,
Republicans have led the charge for an array of revisions to state voting
rights laws, especially in key battleground states. Republican political
appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division have endorsed
some of these measures.

Over the last three years, the Republican-controlled state legislatures in
Indiana, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have passed laws
requiring every voter to produce a photo identification card — measures that
civil rights groups contend were aimed at suppressing minority voting.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider a constitutional challenge to
Indiana's ID law on grounds that it unfairly affects poor and elderly
voters. Gubernatorial vetoes or court rulings have nullified legislation in
the other four states. A federal judge in Georgia, however, recently upheld
a new photo ID law that imposes fewer obstacles to obtaining one.

In Ohio, which swung the 2004 election to Bush, new Democratic Secretary of
State Jennifer Brunner said in a phone interview that an election law passed
last year and signed by former Republican Gov. Bob Taft effectively
``institutionalized'' vote caging.

The law requires that the state's 88 county election boards send
non-forwardable, pre-election notices to all 7.8 million registered Ohio
voters at least 60 days before the election. Undelivered letters are public
record, she said, meaning that effectively, ``now the counties are paying
for'' the data needed to compile challenge lists.

In addition, Brunner said, the law toughened voter ID requirements and
``took away rights of some voters to be heard about whether or not their
registration was valid.''

In the past, Ohio voters were entitled to an official notice and a hearing
before an election board could declare them ineligible, but the new law says
that the board can make that decision without notice. A disqualified voter
who shows up at the polls must demonstrate that he's fixed any eligibility
problem or opt for filing a provisional ballot that may not count.

Brunner said the new law has left her feeling ``like being in a sword fight
with one hand behind your back.'' She said she's sought, ``while working
within the framework of preventing fraud,'' to make it ``as easy as possible
for people who are eligible to participate.''

``We feel the eyes of the nation are on us, no matter what we do,'' Brunner
said.

A 2005 Florida law, approved by the Justice Department under the Voting
Rights Act, stripped the state's 10.5 million registered voters of the right
to contest challenges at the polls. Now a challenger need only swear to a
"good faith belief" that a voter is ineligible to force the voter to file a
provisional ballot.

At the same time, the law reduces from three days to 48 hours the deadline
for challenged voters to produce evidence that they're eligible to vote in
their precincts.

Another Florida law imposed a $250 penalty on voter registration workers for
every registration application they fail to turn over to county registrars
within 10 days. After the League of Women Voters sued and a judge blocked
its implementation, the legislature cut the fine to $50 per infraction.

Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Florida Republican Secretary of State Kurt
Browning, said there has been no sign of a large caging operation.

"We don't see a significant number of challenges of voters in Florida,'' he
said.

But former voting rights chief Rich said Ohio's and Florida's new laws
``make one wonder whether there will be new efforts to have massive
challenges in the future.''

A federal court injunction has barred the Republican National Committee for
25 years from engaging in racially targeted vote caging, but it doesn't
extend to state parties.

Asked whether they might employ vote caging in 2008, Executive Director
Jason Mauk of the Ohio Republican Party and spokeswoman Erin VanSickle of
the Florida Republican Party said they couldn't discuss election strategy.

Chandler Davidson, a Rice University sociology professor who has studied
voter suppression, said the new laws are questionable because ``there has
been virtually no evidence presented that there has been wide-scale voter
fraud in the United States.''

Pointing to a Yale University study showing that mail is less likely to
reach residents of low-income neighborhoods, he said mass mailings of
non-forwardable mail will ``discriminate in a pretty straightforward way''
against poor people and minorities.

A study to be released Thursday by the liberal-leaning group Project Vote
noted that Minnesota — with bipartisan support — altered its election law in
2005.

The law prohibits political parties from bringing in challengers from out of
state and from using non-forwardable mail to compile challenge lists.

``The fundamental question,'' said Democratic Secretary of State Mark
Ritchie, ``is do you want to make sure everyone can vote, or do you want to
make sure some people can vote and other people have a harder time voting?''

McClatchy Newspapers 2007

SIEGELMAN SPEAKS! EX-GOV CALLS '02 ELECTION "STOLEN" BY THE WHITE HOUSE! EXCLUSIVE TO NEWS FROM UNDERGROUND

from Mark Crispin Miller Author of "Fooled Again"

Here is some amazing video: a very candid interview with Don Siegelman, who spoke to Julie Sigwart of Take Back the Media on Sept. 13, 2004--months before the Governor was finally put away on trumped-up charges by the Alabama GOP.

As he himself makes clear, Siegelman's ordeal began back in 2000, when he came out early on, and publicly, against the presidential bid of his fellow governor, George W. Bush, and backed Al Gore instead. It was a move that Karl Rove never did forget, and never would forgive, says Siegelman.

Rove's long drive to destroy the Alabama governor resulted in the theft of the 2002 election for Republican Bob Riley. Here Siegelman describes that theft--which took place primarily in Baldwin County--and also talks about his handling of that matter.

So far, the mainstream press coverage of Don Siegelman's ordeal has pointedly ignored the theft of the 2002 election. Clearly, Siegelman himself does not regard that theft as a side issue, but as a major crime, and one that is quite relevant to his whole story.

Today, the Alabama governor is not allowed to speak up on his own behalf. He's locked away inside a federal prison cell, and, for good measure, has been silenced by the Alabama courts. As Scott Horton has so aptly put it, Don Siegelman is the Man in the Iron Mask.

So let's do everything we can to get this interview played far and wide, so that his fellow citizens can finally hear him, and see him, talk about the criminal campaign against him.

PART ONE





PART TWO

Fredrick Douglass on Flatulent Freedom Fighters

Vanishing Bees Movie

WWW.VANISHINGBEES.COM

Sean Penn and The K Man

Rove investigator erases his PCs - to kill computer virus (not very likely)

Outside firm performs seven-level wipe
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco → More by this author
Published Saturday 1st December 2007 00:00 GMT
The Register Desktop Support Seminar . Live & Online 11th December (10am PST)
A US official overseeing a probe of former Bush aide Karl Rove has been called on the carpet after it was discovered he hired a private computer-help company to erase all the hard drives belonging to him and two deputies.

Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch bypassed his own agency's computer technicians and instead hired an outside firm to perform a seven-level wipe, all but guaranteeing the files could never be restored. Although the official said he contracted the work after suspecting his computer was infected by a virus, a manager with the private firm said a wipe that thorough is an unusual way to treat a malware infection. The receipt for the work performed makes no mention of a virus.

Bloch's office is investigating whether Rove and other White House officials improperly used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans running from Congressional seats. In turn, Bloch has been the subject of a White House-ordered probe into whether he improperly retaliated against whistle-blowers in his own staff and dismissed cases brought to his agency.

Following the revelation of the computer wipes, federal investigators have requested Bloch turn over copies of personal files that he saved to his America Online account before his hard disk was scrubbed. Bloch has refused, saying the data, which included medical information, messages to his personal attorney and pictures from his son's tours of duty in Iraq, don't involve his official work.

Bloch also says no documents relevant to any investigation have been purged. He has denied retaliating against whistle-blowers, characterizing the investigation, which began in 2005, as a "fishing expedition."

Coverage from the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post is available here and here. ®

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119621772122306160-BnQpG8biokxRSJRwL5QXkrYGhHE_20081127.html