Come on, it's time to speak up on this.

To whom? numbers? emails? etc?

after net neutrality, this should be the next netroots apollo project!

before 2008. Fix HRJ 28, pass it; single standard; early voting; paper trail; no diebold; somebody must sue diebold for vote supression

why even tuesday? it's on tuesday because of horse drawn carriages in farm country took a day of travel to get to polling places with enough of a week left over to get the crop to market by friday... in the 1840s.  perhaps move it to wednesday? make it a holiday?

i don't think we're going to have an election in Nov that doesn't compete with holiday shopping and airtime for ads. we gotta deal with it. it might be okay -  it shouldn't take all day to vote, people can shop after that. 'after you vote, come to bob's mattress discounters'  

or what if there was a movement to get early voting in many states. say, maybe, ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT, NY, PA, MD, WV, OH, PA, IL, WI, MI, MN, NM, CA, OR, WA, FL, MO, IA - and the dems stress it as the stop gap fix until we have a President who believes in fair elections.

for staying with this

WYNN: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.  In fact, they're still counting, but we're quite optimistic. And I did take a  couple pages out of Lyndon's book, so if I win, it can be attributed to Texas  know-how.
(LAUGHTER)
(UNKNOWN): Did you (inaudible)?
BARTON: I hope  not. I hope you win fair and square.
(LAUGHTER)
WYNN: A win is a win.  

Wow. In this political environment, that's like going to an airport and saying 'I have a bomb! <cackle>' loudly. I guess it's true that the run-of-the-mill evil people (below the Cheney rung) don't know when to keep their mouths shut.

This exchange will surely feature prominently in the forthcoming lawsuit from Edwards's folks, should they decide it's worthwhile to file one.

and you just know that some republican operative is going to save this quote as 'proof' that all election tampering is democratic.

Sounds to me like the FBI should get involved. I strongly suggest the Edwards campaign file a coplaint with the FBI and ask the  to get off their asses to investigate this. Either that or thew Public Integrity section of the Justice Department.

Matt,

What are the action items?
What can be done?

I can't stream audio presently but I think this is the hearing where this exchange occured. Can anyone listen to the webcast & verify this?

Maryland's State Prosecutor has jurisdiction to prosecute cases of public corruption.  Since this is a federal election, the U.S. Attorney's office and FEC have jurisdiction as well for criminal prosecution, if this was more than a joke.

Judicially, a suit could be filed in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court (where the state BOElections is located) to petition for a reversal of the result.  Federal court might have jurisdiction also, but that is touchy.  A final order of BOE - something final beyond administrative review - is required.  I am a Maryland attorney and would consider volunteering pro bono as 3rd chair (NOT 1st and really not 2nd, am not qualified) or, better, a member of a team of ad hoc associates to help with this fight.  Am not an "election attorney."

Politically, I suggest bumperstickers with "Wynn Lost" and "Wynn Did Lose" and "Donna Won."  I will be following up on my site in Maryland, but must return to the joy of billable hours now....

Ugh, it's revolting to see a corrupt slug like Joe Barton congratulating Al Wynn on the spectacle of winning an election by questionable means.

We've got a great candidate running against Joe Barton, by the way. Show David Harris, TX-06 some love at:

http://www.actblue.com/page/defeat-exxon -pac-incumbents?refcode=bartonmydd

One other thing we can say: Donna Edwards will start off the 2008 cycle as the netroots' earliest enthusiasm, for a House primary.  

Wonder what Nancy will say about this.

He's gotta go. He's gotta be kicked outta the caucus. Letter sent to my congresswoman, all I can do, but he's gotta go and he has to be stripped of his seniority, his committees and, of course, he's gotta be investigated.

Holy f-in' spit. Are any of these bastards not corrupt?

I posted this in a similar topic over at Kos as well. I'm reposting it here as I'm really curious, as I've never paid attention to MD politics before.

Why are MD Democrats opposing Ehrlrich's call to return to paper ballots?

Is this because of local machine politics?  Shouldn't we all get on the phone and ask the MD Senate President (Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr ((D-Calvert)) and the House Speaker (Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel)) to pull their heads out of their collective asses and adopt paper ballots so that this mess doesn't happen again in Novemeber.

If they don't, perhaps we should make sure they have a progressive running against them next time the come up for election.

It would be nice if the Edwards campaign lawyers(surely there must be some legal help) can come up with a checklist of things gone wrong and inform us what is being done to get on Wynn's case and what we can do, as readers, to apply pressure on whoever.

Right now, I am outraged, but with no clue how to channel it.

CommonCause is trying to position themselves as the go to group on this.  But I'm not buying it. BS.

Why?  their whole strategy for getting it right before 2008 - www.commoncause.org/getitstraight

the page is nothing but a fundraising 'ask for.'

i cannot tell you how furious I am at these formless campaigns. it's like, "hey democrat, you feel passionate about this issue - use your passion to write a check to me so i can buy a nice bag."

where is their plan?  what is their legislation? who is sponsoring it? nevermind that the movement building materials (the badges, videos, speeches, jpgs, letters to editors forms) are non existent -  WHO is standing in the way? how can we knock them over? what question should I ask candidate X so his handler goes to this website for future talking points and signs up as a supporter? how do we use power?

i don't see any evidence that they knows how to use power.

nothing.

they write reports.  big deal. before D-Day, there were reports about where on the Normandy Coast the germans had guns.  Somebody had to come up with a damn battle plan and show us how to storm the effing beach!

on the other hand, moveon showed members the red-handed ad, showed how effective it was, showed the polls that supported it, showed the districts they were targeting, appealed to people's sense of strategy (reason) and then asked for money to get it on the air.  much better.

why would i give money to some opaque "we believe in that too!" plea?  F that S.

Hardly the most important aspect of this post, but Barton can't even get the most famously close election in his state's history correct. LBJ "won" by 87 votes, not 54.

Hardly the most important aspect of this post, but Barton can't even get the most famously close election in his state's history correct. LBJ "won" by 87 votes, not 54.

Maybe Barton has some inside info on that race that Robert Caro and Robert Dallek were not privy to? LOL!

This is a good example of why too many DC Dems have been as AWOL as the GOP when it comes to election reform.

Like corporate corruption, election theft is bipartisan "business as usual".

I wonder which pages he took from LBJ's book. Could it be these?

Unlike Stevenson, Johnson had prepared for a close race, and besides having his men watch the voting stations for stuffing or withholding, he asked election officials that supported him, like boss George Parr, to withhold their vote totals until the official results were announced. Stevenson was no amateur; he realized Johnson might try to pull something. But he made a mistake in instructing his supporters to only watch the voting stations on Sunday.(32) Johnson ordered his men to watch the stations the entire week. According to H.Y. Price, a Johnson campaign insider, LBJ went so far as to tap Stevenson's phones. Anytime Stevenson or his men called the stations and asked for votes, LBJ immediately called his watchmen and told them to be on their toes.

After the "official" results were announced on Thursday, the real conspiracy began. Early on Friday, September 3, election officials in a little southern Mexican-American town, dominated by George Parr, announced that the returns they released earlier in the week were incorrect. Officials in Alice, said they found an additional 203 ballots in their "Box 13." Of these 203 ballots, 202 were for Johnson, leaving only one for Stevenson! Officials from another Parr-dominated county-Duval-also announced that they had some ballots that were not included in their tally from earlier in the week.(33) After these votes had been counted, LBJ had 87 more votes than Stevenson with a final tally of 494,191 to 494,104.
[emphases mine]

The GOP isn't even concerned about covering up their criminality.  That's how comfortable they are that the fix is in.

It's beyond fixing via elections, op-eds and clever blogs.  It's time for people, lots of people, in the street.  It was enough to end the War in Vietnam, which was our last big experience with the profiteering hogs like Haliburton at the Trough of War.

Think: General Strike, Civil Disobedience, etc.

And I do mean "etc"

Maybe it's in this video:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/ram/ 09192006_full.ram

That's of the House Energy & Commerce Committee meeting on Sept 19. Is that where this quote is from?

Jump all over Wynn if you want.  I'm all for it.  But now is long past time for blogtopia to get serious about electronic voting and admit that there is a huge problem there that it only getting exponentially worse every day it is ignored.  

Ehrlich is calling for paper ballots in time for November.

In PA there is legislation sitting in the General Assembly that will provide PA voters the option to vote on paper this fall.  The legislators are doing nothing about the bills saying that "it's too late" do get anything done.  That's bullshit.

Taking on Wynn would be great but he's one guy.  The MD and PA battles must be won.

And we simply must wake up to the reality that as long as we're voting on unsecure and unverifiable machines, we are disenfranchised.  blogtopia owns a part of that disaster and owes it to the country to get working on fixing the problem.

Anyone interested should check out "Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, An American Political Tradition -- 1742 - 2004," by Tracy Campbell, c. 2005

From George Washington to George Bush, this country may never have seen an honest election.

Both political parties have the same aims, to represent themselves rather than represent the people. For both political parties, winning isn't everything, it is the only thing.

When I was younger someone told me that if the pieces on a chessboard were suddenly to become conscious, they wouldn't see two grandmasters battling for the world championship, they'd see two people collaborating to push them around, exploit them, and possibly wipe them off the board. If we were to suddenly gain consciousness, we might see political parties in the same way.

Our Constitution says that our representatives are to be elected by we the people, not by political parties. It makes no mention of political parties. By dominating the electoral process, political parties have become an obstacle to democracy.

Read the book. Both parties have always cheated. Their goal is to win and maintain power without any regard for the will of the people.

How pathetic is it for us to have to beg and plead with our elected representatives in hopes of getting them to represent us? If we had free and fair elections, only people who had already shown that they represent us would ever get elected. But we don't have free and fair elections, and we never have. So we can push for modest reforms in a system that is rotten to the core, or we can scrap it and get a better system.

Direct democracy sounds like a good idea to me, where everyone gets to vote on everything. On paper ballots which everyone can watch being handcounted at the precincts. Would an employer hesitate to fire someone who wasn't doing the job they were paid to do? Our representatives aren't doing the job we pay them to do and if we want that job done right, we're going to have to throw the bums out and do it ourselves.