Election 2008 - The difficulty stealing it this time

October 10, 2008

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New 2008 Democratic Primary Voters Are The Key to Election Protection

Michael Collins
"Scoop" Independent News

(Wash. DC) There's one major obstacle blocking a theft of the 2008 presidential election. It's highly significant and challenges even the most devious minds. That obstacle is the "net new" Democratic primary voters" in 2008. "Net new" Democratic primary voters represent the difference between primary turnout in 2004 and 2008. More on that in a moment.

If you think that 2000 and 2004 were free and fair elections and that the idea of election fraud is specious, that's fine. You might want to review some of the following.

Al Gore won the 2000 election by over 500,000 votes. He did not become the president and was denied a recount by the court that made Bush the president. Stolen election. Case closed.

2004 was not a "red versus blue" election and the winner is still in the U.S. Senate. The red segment of the total vote (the rural U.S.) was down from 23% of the vote in 2000 to 16% in 2004, with two million less Bush votes, in actual terms, in 2004. Bush "won" 2004 through a fictitious increase in "big city" voting ("big cities" are defined in the exit polls as those with greater than 500,000 population).

Bush lost rural ("red") votes, his base, yet won the election. At the same time, we're asked to believe that there was a 66% increase in "big city" turnout in 2004, with Bush doubling his vote total there compared to 2000. This is absurd (the real figure is closer to a 13% to 15% turnout increase for "big cities" according to actual results). But that 66% "big city" turnout increase is what the exit pollsters, sponsored by the major media consortium, had to do to make Bush's reported vote count consistent with the final exit poll reported the day after the election. (See Election 2004: The Urban Legend and Notes from the Underground)

The same people who stole those two elections just took $840 billion of your money and are giving it to their Wall Street donors. They're the same people who started a war with Iraq based on documented lies and who continued it for five years, with a combined death toll of over one million Iraqi civilians and thousands of U.S. soldiers. They are the people who won't correct the lie and insist on more of the same. These people resolutely ignore the looming climate changes to the planet that forecast death to tens of millions and the likelihood of multiple scenes like those after Hurricane Katrina.

Here's the problem for the election thieves. Their strategies all rely on keeping people from registering, keeping those registered away from the polls, and the magic of electronic voting and tabulation. It won't work this time. But first, here's a quick look at the strategies in place.

The most effective and enduring is the disenfranchisement of ex-felons, citizens who have served their time and are no longer charged with anything. Florida, Texas and Virginia account for nearly 1.5 million citizens, largely poor and black who were denied the right to vote. They paid their debt to society but they can't participate as citizens because their vote is stolen by the remnants of a racist inspired post reconstruction movement in both the former Confederate states and cooperating state legislatures across the country.

Voter suppression also includes tactics like false notices announcing changes of election dates; police cruisers at intersections near voting places; threats that voter will be challenged; poorly trained poll workers who send registered voters away; special identification requirements proven to reduce the vote (e.g., photo identification); and much, much more.

The newest rage is "cleansing" centralized registration database. The Florida pre 2000 voter registration purge of tens of thousands of minority voters cost Al Gore the election and inspired federal policies supporting registration cleansing around the country.

Then there are the seemingly endless examples of electronic voting machines improperly recording and counting votes plus security problems. There are no real methods of checking electronic voting. Even if you could and proved fraud, state recount laws are very difficult to invoke and highly restrictive. In Virginia and Florida, for example, it is illegal to recount the paper forms for optical scan voting machines as part of a recount.

What a total mess and a complete mockery of the democracy that we deserve. But when you add up all of these strategies, based on past performance, they work at the margins - maybe a 3-4% shift in votes to the Republican candidate.

"Net New" Democratic Primary Voters

There will still be election fraud at multiple levels in 2008. It's a national tradition dating back to the Whig Party chasing off immigrant voters in the early 1800's. But in terms of outcome, this election can be an accurate reflection of the wishes of a majority of voters even with the typical switched votes and varieties of voter suppression.

The solution to election fraud and the best policy for election protection is voter increases accounted for by those "net new" Democratic primary voters. The voter turnout in the presidential primaries was extraordinary in many states. In some cases, like Virginia, the total voters in 2008 more than doubled the total from 2004.

The surge of voter turnout in the primaries began in the mid Atlantic states and carried on through the southeastern seaboard. In addition, swing states showed the same extraordinary trend, a trend that helped Obama win with "net new" primary voters.

At the same time, turnout in the contested Republican primaries was paltry by comparison. Clearly, Republicans were not motivated.

For example, look at the mid and southeastern Atlantic results, the states that gave Sen. Obama a clean sweep.

Click to enlarge
There were 4.9 million voters in the 2008 Democratic Primary and 2.6 million in 2004. That's 2.3 million "net new" Democratic primary voters for 2008. + North Carolina had state caucuses in 2004. The 2004 Democratic primary figure is an estimate.
(Source CNN 2004, 2008)

In the mid and southeastern Atlantic states, there were nearly 4.9 million Democrats voting in primaries compared to 2.2 million Republicans. With the exception of Delaware and Maryland, the states above are traditionally Republican states. Democrats dwarfed Republicans in 2008 primary turnout. In addition, Democratic turnout nearly doubled from 2004 to 2008. Democratic primary votes increased from 2.6 million in 2004 to 4.9 million in 2008 (using the estimate for N.C. 2004), an increase of 2.3 million "net new" Democratic primary voters.

Let's look at the critical swing states. A similar, somewhat less dramatic pattern emerges. The one exception to the pattern is Florida. The Republican state legislature moved the Florida primary back to late January. The Democratic National Committee warned that the election could not be used to select delegates to the national convention. This substantially suppressed turnout by Democrats. While Florida Democrats doubled their 2004 turnout, they were nearly equaled by Florida Republicans who faced the same restrictions on the early primary.

Click to enlarge
There were 5.8 million voters in the 2008 Democratic Primary and 2.7 million in 2004.
That's 3.1 million "net new" Democratic primary voters for 2008.
(Source CNN 2004, 2008)

These four critical swing states all went Republican in the last two presidential elections. But they show a pattern similar to the trend begun in the mid and southeastern Atlantic states. These primaries saw 5.8 million Democratic primary voters compared to 3.9 million Republicans. The Democrats more than doubled their 2004 primary voter total, 2.7 million voters, to 5.8 million in 2008. That's a 3.1 million increase in Democratic primary voters. These figures are in line with the mid and southeastern Atlantic states.

The critical factor is that these "net new" Democratic primary voters were not turned away from the polls by the traditional election fraud strategies. They're on record as voting in the most recent election, and they're highly likely to turnout for the general election, without any real impediments to vote. It's axiomatic that primary voters do just that.

Newly Registered Voters Increase Substantially But They're Not Enough

One more factor to consider is voter registration in these states. There were major voter registration drives in the southeastern Atlantic states. The least likely Obama state, South Carolina, has seen 240,000 newly registered voters. That figure could approach 300,000. North Carolina has 600,000 new registered voters with 48% Democrats, 21% Republicans, and 31% Independents. There's a strong tilt toward black voters and the 18-24 age group. Georgia voter registration drives have been intense as well. A pattern similar to North Carolina is emerging in Georgia with one county, Bibb, reporting a 20% increase in black voter registration compared to 1% for whites. Of Georgia's 400,000 newly registered, there's an almost even split between black and white registrants. Adding Maryland and Delaware, these states have about 1.7 million newly registered voters. They also have 3.1 million "net new" 2008 Democratic primary voters.

Virginia is now a key swing state. Northern Virginia and the state's major cities statewide are solidly Democratic. Overall, Virginia has 300,000 newly registered voters with 42% under 24 years of age. Ohio has over 660,000 newly registered voters, with 19% living in counties that Kerry won (140,000) and 1% in Bush counties (5,000). There are almost 800,000 new voters in Florida and Democrats predominate, trailed by Republicans, and Independents. The youth vote of registered voters has increased from 4% in 2000 to 14% in 2008. Missouri will have over 200,000 newly registered voters. Combined, these swing states have about 2.0 million newly registered voters and 3.1million "net new" 2008 Democratic primary voters.

These registration trends, particularly in the critical swing states, offer some hope regarding election fraud. Somewhere around 65% of newly registered voters actually turn out to vote. But they're not enough to solidify a majority victory in the reported vote count for the majority voting.

The Net New Democratic Primary Voters Represent the Ultimate Election Protection

Voter registration in the swing states and throughout the country are up significantly and they favor Sen. Obama's candidacy. But there were also significant increases in voter participation and new registrations from 2000 to 2004 with an emphasis on the youth and minority voters. This is very good news since it shows an expansion of citizens exercising their fundamental rights. The 2008 shifts in demographics in the newly registered will benefit Obama's campaign. However, this is an existing trend, not a new wave of voters who can be assured of voting; voters who will face few if any impediments getting into the voting booth.

It is those extraordinary increases in primary voting that represent the new element in the election process. These voters were not seen in the 2004 primary. They were on the rolls for the 2008 primary and, without question, eligible for the 2008 general election. Who are they? We don't know for sure but the simple answer is, they're citizens who were motivated enough to vote in this primary cycle, elections frequently ignored by large numbers of voters.

The swing states had 3.1 million net new primary voters in 2008 and an aggregate 2.0 million increase in newly registered voters. There may be some overlap but the primaries took place at the start of the year in these states and the registration drives for the general election took off after the primaries. So they should be viewed as largely discrete figures.

These net new primary voters create problems for election thieves. If we assume a 20% turnout increase in the four swing states considered, that comes to a total of 23 million voters. The 3.1 million net new primary voters represent 14% of that total. They can all vote. They're all registered and they all voted in the most recent election. They can't be turned away easily. They will be unlikely to become confused or intimidated by the traditional voter suppression tricks.

The only fraud strategies available are through electronic voting machines and outright changes in vote totals. Thus, with fewer tools (disenfranchisement and suppression are out for this group); election fraud would need to wipe out 14% of the estimated vote.

That's to obvious and that's why the "net new" voters from the Democratic primaries in these four key swing states, the mid and southeastern Atlantic states, and any other state fitting this 2008 primary voting pattern represent the best assurance against election fraud available.

Internet researcher anaxarchos made the point in blunt terms in a communication to the author:

"It is not enough to steal votes. You need a place to stuff them. You can sell cocaine but in the end you have to explain how your Starbucks franchise brings in $80 million per year. There will be widespread fraud and caging and suppression but, as of today, I see no possible place to stuff it. It was hard enough in 2004 and that was 'close'."

It's as though the people are looking at the election thieves and saying, "Go ahead. Make my day."

END

This article is dedicated to TruthIsAll, anaxarchos, Mark Crispin Miller, Richard Hayes Phillips, Michael Keefer, Jonathan Simon, and all the other independent election fraud researchers and the election protection activists who exercise their rights as citizens tell the truth about our election system and results. Also, special thanks are extended to Alastair Thompson and all those at "Scoop" Independent News for their years of support for democracy in the United States.

~ Scoop ~

 

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.

It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.

The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.

It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress.

Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.

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'St John's Wort plant as effective as Prozac for treating depression', say scientists

It has long been a happy alternative for those reluctant to pop pills for depression.

But the herbal extract St John's Wort now has more than just cheerful converts to testify to its mood-lifting powers.

In what is billed as the most thorough study of the plant, scientists have found it is just as effective as Prozac at treating depression. 

[ ... ]

Experts do not know exactly how the plant lifts depression, although most believe it probably works by keeping the chemical serotonin, which is linked to positive moods, in the brain for longer.

The study's lead author, Dr Klaus Linde, from the Centre for Complementary Medicine in Munich, pooled data from 29 studies involving 5,489 patients with mild to moderately severe depression.

'Overall, the St John's Wort extracts tested in the trials were superior to placebo, similarly effective as standard anti-depressants, and had fewer side effects than standard anti-depressants,' he said.

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Top US generals reach out to Russian General Staff to avert global war

Reports circulating in the Kremlin today are stating that three of the United States Top Generals met with Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov in Kazakhstan in a meeting chaired by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who stated that the Americans were not trying to 'undermine' Russia and urgently requesting Russian Military assistance to avert a Total Global War.

Secretary Rice, these reports say, told Minister Serdyukov during this meeting that the United States was under an 'economic 9/11 attack' engineered by British and Israeli hedge funds controlling over $60 Trillion of the Western World's wealth and threatening to collapse the entire World's financial and economic structure. The goal of these attacks, she continued explaining, was to avert the dismantling of Israel's present borders to their pre-1967 war lines but which could only be accomplished by the total destruction of Iran, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt in a Total Global War.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has echoed Secretary Rice's warnings during an emergency meeting he held with Prime Minister Putin in pleading for Russia not to side with Iran and Syria by supplying them with advanced weapons to repel the expected Israeli Military invasions believed planned for within the month.

Prime Minister Olmert has further attempted to persuade his citizens that Israel must return to its pre-1967 borders or face total isolation and economic blockades over its growing system of apartheid towards the Palestinian peoples in a brutal system that also brought down the government of South Africa in the 1990's.

Prime Minister Olmert's warning to his people, however, has gone unheeded and his resignation was forced by the right-wing factions of his own party led by the former Mossad agent Tzipi Livni who is expected to replace him as the leader of the Jewish state.   

Hamas leaders have also warned of these events going even further than Olmert by stating that the Jewish Lobby in America "controls the U.S. elections and defines the foreign policy of any new administration in a manner that allows it to retain control of the American government and economy."

Russian Military Analysts report that the right-wing factions in Israel are increasingly bringing pressure upon Washington to allow it to start World War III, but the Americans are continuing to resist it by refusing to allow the Israelis to attack Iran, and as we can read:

"According to a Monday report on Israel's Channel 10, unnamed Israeli sources said the presence of US troops in Iraq spoils chances of an Israeli strike on Iran, arguing that any military action would leave US forces stationed in Iraq vulnerable to Tehran's retaliation.

Tel Aviv has threatened to launch air strikes against Iranian nuclear installations under the pretext that Tehran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has plans to develop nuclear weaponry.

This is while, in its latest report on Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that it could not find any 'components of a nuclear weapon' or 'related nuclear physics studies' in the country.

In response to war threats, Iran has warned that it would not hesitate to target 'Israel and 32 US bases' in the region, should the country come under attack.

An Israeli official accompanying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on a visit to Moscow, however, declined to comment on the Channel 10 report. According to a senior Israeli official, Olmert is in Russia to persuade the country into not selling S-300 missile defense system to Iran.

Late in September, The Guardian quoted EU diplomatic sources as saying that US president George W. Bush in a one to one meeting with Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert on May 14 rejected the idea of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Bush not only ruled out the idea but insisted that his view would not change, according to The Guardian.

The Monday report comes as several Israeli military and Mossad officials, in an unexpected move on Sunday, endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama."

This US refusal, however, has not stopped the fears of an attack upon their Nation by Israel to which Syrian Leaders have ordered their military forces to the Lebanonese border. Nor has it assuaged Russian forces, and who have increased the number of their warships in the Mediterranean in support of their Syrian ally.

So catastrophic have these events become, and as we had previously reported on in our September 18^th report "Economic World War Has Begun, Warns Russia" wherein the US Federal Reserve Chief stated that the Americans had 'lost control' over their economy, that in the past year alone the United States has lost nearly one quarter of its wealth as over $18 Trillion has been wiped out from their collapsing stock markets.

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US debt clock runs out of digits

The US government's debts have ballooned so badly the National Debt Clock in New York has run out of digits to record the spiralling figure.

The digital counter marks the national debt level, but when that passed the $10 trillion point last month, the sign could not display the full amount.

The board was erected to highlight the $2.7 trillion level of debt in 1989.

The clock's owners say two more zeros will be added, allowing the clock to record a quadrillion dollars of debt.

Douglas Durst, son of the late Seymour Durst - the clock's inventor - hopes to replace the Manhattan clock with its lengthier replacement early next year.

For the time being, the Times Square counter's electronic dollar sign has been replaced with the extra digit required.

For its part, the digital dollar symbol has been supplanted by a cheaper version - perhaps a sign of the times for the American economy.

Some economists believe the $700bn bail-out plan for ailing US financial institutions could send the national debt level to $11 trillion.

~ BBC News ~

 

Is Google making us stupid?

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they've been widely described and duly applauded. "The perfect recall of silicon memory," Wired's Clive Thompson has written, "can be an enormous boon to thinking." But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I'm not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they're having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. "I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader," he wrote. "What happened?" He speculates on the answer: "What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I'm just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?"

Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. "I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print," he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a "staccato" quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. "I can't read War and Peace  anymore," he admitted. "I've lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it."

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Musical Innerlube: Sweet Georgia Brown accompanied by a tractor

Three guitars and a tractor.

Senate slips huge $488 billion Pentagon war funding bill under the radar

By Tommy News

The Senate has acted against the will of the American people and caved to the Bush Administration yet again. US Senators donned their Harry Potter invisibility cloaks and under the cover of darkness late Saturday night, with the smoke and mirrors distraction of the Wall Street bailout, quietly voted on and passed a huge, outrageous spending bill that gives an additional $488 Billion dollars to the Bush Administration and The Pentagon for funding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There has been a near media blackout of this vote, and we need to get the word out that this outrageous warfunding is quietly continuing while the news media is being distracted by the gigantic and horrendous Wall Street bailout bill.

While we have all been preoccupied with the staggering $700 billion bail-out of wall street, boggled with the size of the dollar amount, having to raise the National debt limit and borrow money from foreign nations to fund it, late Saturday night the Senate passed a bill of a comparably huge dollar amount which made little news, but gives $488 Billion to the Pentagon for the continued funding of the the war, There has been a near media blackout of this vote, and we need to get the word out that this outrageous warfunding is quietly continuing while the news media is being distracted by the gigantic and horrendous Wall Street bailout bill.

The Pentagon is in line for a record budget. In addition to $70 billion approved this summer for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department would receive $488 billion, a 6 percent increase. The spending bill was bundled in with a bill which also offers aid to victims of flooding in the Midwest and recent hurricanes across the Gulf Coast. The total cost of the spending legislation exceeds $630 billion.

Such a huge bill usually would dominate the end-of-session agenda on Capitol Hill. But it went below the radar screen because attention focused on the congressional bailout of Wall Street.

The bill was quietly rushed to Bush's desk to be signed into law, and John McCain rushed quietly back out of Washington and yet again avoided having to vote on another controversial spending bill. When the roll call on final passage occurred, McCain was at his campaign headquarters in Crystal City, Va., only five miles from the Capitol. McCain has missed a staggeringly huge number of Senate votes.

With the election fast approaching, I want to give you a breakdown of the 78-12 Senate vote as recorded in the Congressional Record. I urge you to take this outrageous spending vote into strong consideration when you cast your votes on November 4th.

*From the Congressional Record:*

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?
congress=110&session=2&vote=00208

Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Stop Funding The Occupation of Iraq!

Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers

Tommy News is an internet peace and equal rights activist in New York.

~ Organic Consumers Association ~

Paris Hilton gets presidential with Martin Sheen

Paris seeks the advice of the most esteemed fake president of our generation.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

'Apathy, ignorance, sloth, and cheap malt liquor'

So when Chris gave the Dixie Chicks documentary a glowing review, I put it at the top of my list. "Shut Up and Sing" is an account of the controversy from The Comment, and the ordeal the trio went through on their journey back to the top of the charts. While playing a show in London during the run-up to the Iraq War, Maines mentioned to the crowd that she was "ashamed that President Bush is from Texas," the home state of all three Dixie Chicks. The crowd cheered, but as soon as The Comment was reported in the world press, rednecks everywhere lost their shit.

I wrote a column about the controversy a year and a half ago, when the Chicks won a butt load of Grammys for their album "Taking the Long Way," and how it was a major vindication for their artistic integrity, as well as a big score for freedom of speech.

But that was before I saw the movie. The cameras followed the women and their families around for three years as the Chicks endured everything from a boycott by country radio, to mass CD smashings and a chilling death threat delivered to Maines on the eve of their Dallas concert. Holy Zapruder, Batman!

Barb and I always had thought that country radio refusing to play the Chicks' music was a major overreaction to a throwaway comment made onstage, but when we saw the hatred, the vitriol, the saliva-flecked bellowing coming from the mouths of conservatives and war-mongering knuckle-draggers over this, we were blown away. But I also noticed that these flag-wrapped rednecks who decried The Comment and demanded that the Dixie Chicks' music be wiped from the airwaves displayed more than a little hypocrisy in their patriotic fervor.

[...]

Toby Keith, by simply acknowledging the Dixie Chicks and voicing his displeasure about their refusal to fall into lock-step with the bomb-Iraq-to-the-stone-age crowd, became the de facto standard-bearer for the backlash. His smug countenance was suddenly everywhere, on talk shows and entertainment shows, bragging about how he wrote that "boot in your ass" song all by himself, and that Natalie Maines "isn't a songwriter." But this film had me seeing the ex-wrestler-turned-faux-cowboy in a whole new light.

Even though Toby Keith's sub-hat doo-rag may be a bit too tight, causing an imbalance of air pressure in his head, he just might be exactly what this country needs in the White House during these turbulent, divisive times.

Obviously, more than half the country didn't mind the way Bush/Cheney was having their way with us and the Constitution in their first term, and reelected them for a second. These voters were like a woman in a shitty marriage, who's getting constantly slapped around by her unemployed husband who drinks too much and is screwing the landlady. But she's decided that it's just too much trouble to start over with somebody else. So it would seem that rational thought has become less and less a part of the election of a new president.

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