The Progress Report.

A year later: My grandfather and the election.

Almost a year to the day that my grandfather passed away, just after reaching 100 (which I wrote or rambled about here and here), comes this year's Presidential Election. Between the fact that this year it falls on my grandfather's birthday and then hearing the sad news that Barack Obama's beloved grandmother had passed away, it is impossible not to think now of him again.

And to wonder about how he would have reacted to this election, and how he would have voted.

For you see, my grandpa Lou was a lifelong, well, what I'd call an FDR Democrat (and he could certainly remember FDR -- in fact, he could vividly remember Coolidge and Harding!) He couldn't stand nor trust most Republican leaders, and up until the last few months of his life maintained a keen sense of interest and active engagement in political affairs. I sometimes felt his abject hatred of George Bush was one of things that kept him going in his final years. (In fact, I swear I think one of his final active physical movements from his deathbed was to shake his fist at the TV screen as CNN showed the president from the Rose Garden.)

But for a long time he also seemed to have a bit of a paternal racist side, not, alas, uncommon among older Jewish retirees in Florida. Feelings about African-Americans in particular, while not at all spiteful, were definitely of the patronizing variety. My dad loves to tell the story of us driving around Golden Gate Park during one of my grandparents visits to San Francisco, and my grandfather from the passenger seat noticing one of the street names in the park, Martin Luther King Blvd. "I see they made a concession to the coloreds, eh?" And the rest of us sinking down as low as we could into our seats, my poor grandmother digging her nails into my knees -- though she often did that to represent her terror at whoever was, and how they were, driving. On the other hand, my grandfather also spoke respectfully at other times about MLK and what a great man he was. It was like that -- the occasional disrespect at African Americans followed by a surprising statement to show he appreciated their contributions.

And so here we have this year's model, an African-American presidential candidate, of mixed race to be precise, versus a "maverick" Republican whom I'm pretty sure my grandfather couldn't stand. We joked that if he was still alive this year, this election would've killed my grandfather anyway.

I'll never know how he would've voted in this one, had he been both still alive and capable of voting, but I like to use an anecdote I heard today from Miles Gerety (volunteering down in Florida), as reported on Huffington Post:

Sometime after 2:30 a man with a Jamaican accent called me and asked me to help an elderly man who was "fading." The elderly man, George McLain (85), father of a police officer and of a speech therapist and grandfather of twelve, looked very tired. It was obvious he needed to sit down. So I walked Mr. McClain across the grass (avoiding the longer sidewalk path) and into the library and found him a seat. The system was that someone in the line would have to act as Mr. McClain's placeholder. Mr. McClain had laughed when I'd softly said I thought Obama would be our next president and he responded "a black man can't be president." He looked frail, I didn't want him to be kept waiting too long inside, so rather than having the Jamaican man act as his place holder, I asked a group of women closer to the front of the line to claim Mr. McClain as their own.

Sometime later, I saw Mr. McClain leaving the polling place. He had voted. I said."Mr. McClain can you tell me who you voted for?" He looked up (I noticed he had a cataract growing in his right eye), tilted his head close to mine, and whispered "Barack Obama, who did you think I'd vote for."

In the last months of my grandfather's life, as his health faded, he was cared for by a lovely Jamaican man whom I had the pleasure of meeting when I had to go say my goodbyes. I saw pictures of the man's family, and heard stories of how he patiently fed my grandafther, gave him liquids when he couldn't eat, even held his hand when he was in pain. As his life slipped away, I heard and then I saw how my grandfather grew to appreciate, even, I think, love the man who helped care for him and could care less about the color of his skin. Some people, as they get older, get even more stubborn with their racist tendencies, clinging to them as if a tattered security blanket. But I think even more people let go of such pettiness. 

I will never know how my grandfather would have voted this year if he had the chance, but that anecdote from Florida and my own experience at the end of his long, long life make me think he would've whispered "Barack Obama" and quietly voted for him, too.

How Social Media Has Been Used to Monitor Election

Simon Owens pointed me to a really interesting piece he wrote on how this election is being monitored via Web 2.0 tools like Twitter, YouTube, Voter Suppression Wiki and others.

Citizens, Media Use Social Media to Monitor Election

In a YouTube video uploaded on October 24, a husband and wife couple from Oregon sit at their kitchen table and fill out their mail-in voting ballots for the 2008 election. The wife explains to the camera that Oregon has had mail-in voting for "about the last 10 years," and the two walk the viewer through the entire voting process, at one point announcing that Barack Obama was their "candidate of choice."

The video was created for Video Your Vote, a joint project between PBS and YouTube that encourages citizens across the U.S. to document their own personal experiences at the voting booth by shooting and then uploading the video onto YouTube (not to be confused with Video the Vote, a similar project). The effort is just one of many examples of citizen journalists utilizing crowdsourcing and Web 2.0 tools to monitor the voting practices -- and problems -- from an on-the-ground perspective. The groups that are monitoring campaigns said they will help create a much more transparent voting process, and in doing so, hopefully target and solve any voting problems before it's too late to fix them.

Read the whole piece.

Election Day Tips.

1) I think every employer nationwide should give employees the day off or as much of it as they need if they still need to vote. Especially with lines in some places reportedly hours long.

2) Vote today (Monday) if you can. Lines are still long in places but wait should overall be less than tomorrow.

3) If you've voted already, and have some spare time, volunteer to go down to a populous voting location and give out drinks and snacks, give out umbrellas, etc. Whatever it takes to keep spirits up!

4) Do not become discouraged if you are in a long line. It is an historic election beyond all proportions. Do not leave your place if you are in line. Bring an iPod or a book or a fully charged cell phone that you can keep yourself entertained with. (And of course bring a checklist for voting for all the other things you have to vote on besides President.)

Bring your ID, too, just in case. Most states don't require it but many do now. Don't give problematic voting precincts any reason to question you as a legit voter. Shove your ID in their face and VOTE.

5) If you encounter any difficulties in voting - challenges to you or others around you: Election Protection Coalition (1-866-OUR-VOTE). Or report them here.  Make sure you get at least a provisional ballot. You can also report voting issues to the Obama campaign, too.

And TWITTER any voting problems, too! The Twitter Vote Report is urging those with Twitter accounts to report voting issues by adding #votereport to a Twitter update. The resulting tweets flow to the site's home page, and will also be plotted on a Google map

More good advice here:
If you experience any problem or confusion while voting report the situation to one of the poll workers or election officials immediately. Do not wait until you have finished voting. If the election officials at the polling place are unable or unwilling to help you, the problem should be reported directly to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. There are no special forms to use or procedures to follow--just call the Civil Rights Division toll-free at (800) 253-3931, or contact them by mail at:

 

Chief, Voting Section
Civil Rights Division Room 7254 - NWB
Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20530

6) Share your voting experiences with HuffPost.

7) Appreciate that we have the right to vote and that you are a part of something possibly historic.  Make it happen.

And lastly, here's everything in a nutshell in a short attention span video -- keep this in a safe place.

7 Ways to Steal Back Your Vote

The following is an excerpt from the Steal Back Your Vote! investigative comic by Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. available as a free download at www.StealBackYourVote.org

1. Don't don't don't Mail In Your Ballot -- unless...

For those of you who mailed in your ballot, please tell me, what happened to it? You don't know, do you? I can tell you that officially, three-fourths of a million absentee ballots were never counted last time, on the weakest of technical excuses. And you won't even know it. Furthermore, tens of thousands of ballots are not mailed out to voters in time to return them -- in which case you're out of luck. Most states won't let you vote in-precinct once you've applied to vote absentee. Every time I hear of a voter going "absentee" to avoid computer screens, I want to "go postal" myself.

But for gosh sakes -- don't throw out your ballot if you have a mail-in. Either mail it in, making sure to include ID if required (you first-time voters) or, better, WALK it into your county clerk's office.

2. Vote Early...very early

Every state now lets voters cast ballots in designated polling stations and at county offices in the weeks before Election Day. Do it. Don't wait until Election Day to find out you have the wrong ID, your registration's "inactive," or you're on a challenge list. By Election Day, there's little to do but hold up the line.

3. Register and Register and Register

Think you're registered to vote? Think again. With all this purg'n going on, you could be x'd out and you won't know it. Check online with your Secretary of State's office or call your County Board of Elections. Then register your girlfriend, your wife, your mailman and your mommy. Contact the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the League of Women Voters, and your local party organization, and commit to a couple of days of door-to-door registration, especially in minority neighborhoods or at social service agency offices. And if you've served the time, you can sign: in almost every state, ex-cons can vote.

4. Vote Unconditionally, Not Provisionally

In 2008, they'll be handing out provisional ballots like candy, especially to Hispanic voters. If your right to vote is challenged, don't accept a provisional ballot that will likely not get counted no matter what the sweet little lady at the table tells you. She won't decide; partisan sharks will. Demand adjudication from poll judges on the spot; demand a call to the supervisor of elections; or return with acceptable ID if possible. And be a champ: defend the rights of others.

If you've taken Step 1 above and voted early, you have Election Day free to be a poll watcher. Run into trouble ­-- you've been caged or purged or challenged -- call Election Protection at 1-(866) OUR-VOTE. Then challenge the challengers, the weird guys with Blackberrys containing lists of "suspect" voters. Be firm, but  no biting.

5. Occupy Ohio, Invade Nevada

The revolution will not be podcast. Let go of that mouse, get out of your PJs and take the resistance door-to-door--to register the vote, to canvass the voters, to get out the vote. Donate time to your union (if you're not in a union, why not?) or to the troublemakers I've already listed here and on our site. This may seem a stupendously unoriginal suggestion, but I know of no other method more effective for confronting the armed and dangerous junta that has seized the White House.

6. Date a Voter

Voting, like bowling and love, should never be done alone. As our sponsor, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, says, make a date to 'Arrive with Five.' And keep this comic book in your holster - with our 800 numbers and your photo ID in your hand. And Bobby, make sure your ID says, "Robert Kennedy JUNIOR" or your vote is toast.

7. Make the Democracy Demand: No Vote Left Behind!

I have this crazy fantasy in my head. In it, an election is stolen and the guy who's wrongly declared the loser stands up in front of the White House and says three magic words: "Count the votes." You can have all the paper ballots in the world, but if you don't demand to look at them, publicly, in a recount, you might as well mark them with invisible ink. Democracy requires vigilance The Day After. That's when you check in at www.stealbackyourvote.org one more time.

Nation Institute fellow Greg Palast and election law expert Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are authors of an investigation of vote suppression in Rolling Stone.

Go to www.StealBackYourVote.org to download the guide for free or pick up print copies of the investigative comic book by Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Every donation you make for copies of the comic allows us to send more out to low income groups in states like Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado. Get the guide now - all copies will be sent out via priority mail. If your group would like to distribute the Steal Back Your Vote guide please contact keri (at) gregpalast.com for special rates.

Bush wants Mukasey to suppress votes in Ohio.

(From Credo:)

Bush wants Mukasey to suppress votes in Ohio.

This year, there are over 600,000 newly registered Ohio voters, but President Bush has asked Attorney General Mukasey to investigate as many as 200,000 of them. Why? Because Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner won't let voters be disenfranchised simply because of a typo in a state database.

Secretary Brunner has refused to challenge voters based on faulty database matching because  it would erroneously deprive tens or even hundreds of thousands of Ohioans of their right to vote.

Now, President Bush is trying to end-run the Supreme Court by getting the Department of Justice to intervene. On Friday, October 24th, Bush reportedly asked Attorney General Mukasey to investigate whether as many as 200,000 voters need to reconfirm their registrations before November 4th.

This is hugely problematic, and we need to fight back.

President Bush is doing his best to politicize the Department of Justice and suppress the rights of Ohio's voters, but Attorney General Mukasey doesn't have to bend to this insidious tactic. With the election only days away, the time to act is short.

Keeping tabs on voting worries.

More ballot confusion and voting worry stories:

Confusing North Carolina Ballot Leaves Off Votes for President:

The ballot design flaw disproportionately impacts three groups who are likely to be heavily represented in the election this year: new voters, the poor, and the elderly. On the internet, poll workers in the Tar Heel State have "twittered" for help in explaining the ballot on election day. Some less sympathetic bloggers have replied that if people can't understand the ballot, they shouldn't be voting.

"Elections are held to get instructions from the public, they are not literacy tests," said Norden. "If something confuses people and it can easily be fixed, then it should be."

Time Magazine: Seven Things That Could Go Wrong on Election Day

As it stands, the American voting system is a worrisome mess, a labyrinth of local, state and federal laws spotted with bewildered volunteers, harried public officials, partisan distortions, misdesigned forms, malfunctioning machines and polling-place confusion. Each time, problems pop up on the margins; if the election is close, these problems matter a great deal. Republicans and Democrats predict record turnouts, perhaps 130 million people, including millions who have never voted before. The vast majority will cast their votes without a hitch. But some voters will find themselves at the mercy of registration rolls that have been poorly maintained or, in some cases, improperly handled. Others will endure long lines, too few voting machines and observers who challenge their identities. Long a prerogative of local government, the patchwork of election rules often defies logic.

One thing you can do is VOTE EARLY.

Another is to report any voting issues to 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) to get advice on what to do.

You can also tell WIRED Magazine about it.

Obama Campaign Will Not Be Pushed Around on Voters' Rights

(Thanks to Direct Democracy for this link)
(Bob Bauer, general counsel to the Obama campaign, speaking on MSNBC:)

BAUER: I think it's important to put it in the broader context of the kind of negative, unprecedentedly vicious and negative campaign that the McCain-Palin campaign is currently running. Wherever you look, at every level you see the tactics they use. Now, this toxin entered in the justice department, not too long after the administration promised to clean up after the U.S. Attorney dismissal and scandals. What we are seeing here is Im afraid to say evidence that on another level, again, along with the robocalls and negative ads and all the negative activities, we now have legal tactics being used of a vicious nature, and they threaten to poison the Department of Justice and the impartial nature of the law. Were acting, Mukasey came to the department of justice to clean up after the attorney scandal to take the action necessary to remove this matter from frankly political hands and put them in independent hands. You pointed there's a prosecutor who could easily take this on and make it part of her expanded responsibilities.

OLBERMANN: Can you connect the dots for me. Explain how and why crackdowns on voting fraud would reduce Democratic votes disproportionately to Republican votes?

BAUER: Well, there's an attempt here at all phases of this campaign to smear. And this is a smear on voters. Its an attempt to discourage people from voting, to drive them away from the polls. And theres a variety of ways voters are discouraged and subject to these smears. You have to see it as part of the piece. Whether its the robocalls that even today, by the way, that Republican senator Susan Collins asked the McCain campaign to take down in the state of Maine, or the sleazy legal tactics repudiated today by an unanimous Ohio Supreme Court, or the senior justice department officials now engage apparently in colluding for partisan political purposes in violation of department policy. At every single one of these levels you see this behavior taking place. So, I think, now, with the report of these officials who you point out knew what they were doing was wrong, told the reporters what they were doing violated departmental policy. Its time for Attorney General Mukasey to do what other Republicans of good conscience and independents have done, which is to repudiate this negativity and start to entrust government to responsible people and politics, quite frankly, kept out of it.

OLBERMANN: What would the smoking gun be here, sir?

BAUER: Well, what you have is the newspaper article. By the way, less than 24 hours after John McCain thundered about vote fraud threatening the very fabric of our democracy, right there after, almost precisely as you would expect, the Republican National Committee and the McCain-Palin campaign to plot it, lo and behold, senior department officials admitting they were violating departmental policy announced an investigation of fraud was underway. This is an astonishing repeat of the kind of toxic intrusion of politics into the lawful administration of justice that we saw during the U.S. attorney scandal. We are seeing a repeat of that. As I said, Mukasey came to clean the department of justice out. He has a chance to purge this toxic from the system. The way to do that is take it to a special prosecutor. She would be in a position to investigate the coordination of the campaign, this illegal campaign, this disreputably negative campaign that the administration of justice. She would be in a position to collect information about who the officials were and we would begin hopefully to have government entrusted to people who would do their responsibility.

The Politico has a copy of Bauer's letter to the Bush Justice Department, for those interested in reading through it.

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While we're at it, don't forget to pick up Greg Palast's Comic Book "Steal Your Vote Back." And tell a friend.

Election Protection Wiki / Worries about Stealing the Vote

The Election Protection Wiki is a non-partisan, non-profit collaboration of citizens, activists and researchers to build a one-stop-shop for reports of voter suppression and the systemic threats to election integrity. We collect just the straight facts that are fully referenced to external, verifiable sources, and we need your help.

The Election Protection Wiki >>

The GOP is now trying to paint voter registration fraud on the part of the Dems/left, which is ludicrous, if also clever. They have made it sound like ACORN is corrupting the process when ACORN itself was the one to question some of the registrations that came through them; there's suspicion that the illicit or duplicate registrations actually came from Republicans. Whatever the case, either way, diligence and reportage, that's what it will take to make sure we have fair elections.
--

Along those lines, the following is written by my dad but thought it worth sharing here:

It is looking more and more like the Republicans have only one way of winning this election and that is by stealing it.

I'm not usually paranoid but there have already been so many legitimate reports of efforts to disenfranchise voters that it is no longer a question of paranoia.  As just one example, in Colorado the Republican Attorney General took action to remove as many as 1/5 of the eligible voters.

Please check out these websites.

http://www.gregpalast.com/obama-doesn’t-sweat-he-should/

http://www.stealbackyourvote.com/

http://www.866ourvote.org/

And BTW, Greg Palast is no crazy. He is a very, very smart savvy guy who has done incredible investigative journalism.

Please alert anyone you know in any of the states that are still up for grabs.

Apart from what it would mean in terms of who leads us, a clearly stolen election could lead to violent responses in various parts of the country and also provide an opening for police state like actions. Again, you know I am not an alarmist, but in this case I think some fear is justified.

Great diligence is needed.

What you can do to prevent another stolen election.

What YOU can do to prevent another stolen  election
By Mark Crispin  Miller

There's really only one way to prevent another stolen race,  and that's to focus national attention on the revelations of whistle-blower  Stephen Spoonamore, who's lately been revealing all we need to know about  the Bush regime's conspiracy to rig the vote from 2000 to the present. Spoonamore knows all the principals in this conspiracy, has been dealing with them for some time, and has a trove of emails, etc., to back up what he  says.

There have been several other whistle-blowers on this front,  but none is as compelling as he is--not just because he knows about the  whole plot overall, but also because he is (a) a Republican, (b) an  erstwhile member of the McCain campaign (he quit some months ago, when he  discovered what they have planned) and (c) a prominent and well-respected  expert on computer fraud. Detection of such fraud is, in fact, his  specialty.

Spoonamore has named the man who was Karl Rove's IT guru  from 2000 until sometime last year: Mike Connell, a pro-life zealot who told  Spoonamore that he had helped the Bush regime subvert elections "to save the babies." (The actual nuts and bolts of the election fraud machinery are  largely in the hands of Christianist fanatics, who have done whatever Karl  Rove asked them to.) Connell's fingerprints are thick on every dubious  election of the last eight years--not just the presidential races, but Gov.  Don Siegelman's stolen re-election in Alabama in '02, Sen. Max Cleland's in  Georgia that same year, and many others.

Spoonamore's testimony is  the driving force behind a RICO lawsuit in Ohio. The lawyers handling  it--Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis--are terrific, and they have a game plan  that provides us with some hope. They intend to order depositions of Karl  Rove, Connell, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney and all the other major perpetrators  of Bush/Cheney's (and McPalin's) fraud. Since this is a civil case, those  guys can't weasel out of it (cf. Paula Jones); and in any case a number of  them (including Connell, whom Rove has lately threatened with reprisals if  he doesn't take the rap) want to testify. Also, the judge happens to be  highly principled, which is a godsend.

So the best thing we can do is  help to spread the word about what Spoonamore knows, first of all, and, no  less, to get those depositions out there once they're taken.
What I urge  people to do is to donate whatever they can spare to Velvet Revolution, the  non-profit that is managing the suit. It was VR's Brett Kimberlin who got  Spoonamore to open up, and he also has other sources with a lot to say. In  order to conduct these depositions, and to fight off all of the inevitable  legal challenges thereto, they're going to need as large a war chest as  possible. So if you can donate to that, it would be great. (I've had some  fair success in raising funds for them so far, but they need  more.)

For more, as well as instructions on how to donate, go to  http://www.rovecybergate.com <http://www.rovecybergate.com/> <http://www.rovecybergate.com/> .
Authors Bio: Mark's new book, Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008, a collection 14 essays on Bush/Cheney's  election fraud since (and including) 2000, is just out, from Ig Publishing.  He is also the author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform,  which is now out in paperback from Basic Books, with over 100 pages of new  material. He may be reached through his blog at markcrispinmiller.com. A  movie based on his off-Broadway show, A Patriot Act, is available on DCD at  www.patriotnation.com.  <http://www.patriotnation.com <http://www.patriotnation.com/> . />   

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UPDATE: More from Chelsea Green:

Stephen Spoonamore has been working in the technology field for 20 years. In this time he has worked extensively with electronic credit card security, bank security, corporate security, military security, and voting security. Lately, Spoonamore has been working in the political technology field. He is a Republican, a McCain supporter, and a man who cares about a clean vote.

In a recent interview, Spoonamore asserts that not only have elections been stolen in the past (2000 and 2004, duh), but the election will be stolen again in 2008.

Spoonamore’s advice for securing the vote? Paper. 100% paper, 100% hand-counted. “Sometimes the best technology is old technology,” he says.

Must read: Democracy Now! discussion on the proposed bailout.

This is a transcript from the Democracy Now program's discussion on the proposed bailout. Absolute must read.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Robert Scheer and Dean Baker on the Proposed $700 Billion Bailout of Wall Street, the Largest Government Bailout of Private Industry in US History

Here's an excerpt, with Robert Scheer, veteran journalist, syndicated columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, and editor of the political website, Truthdig. He is the author of several books, most recently, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America:

Scheer: Yeah, well, the point is, when Bush and McCain and Paulson, who was head of Goldman Sachs before he was head of the Treasury, say they don’t know how this happened, they designed this system. We had a regulatory regime in place ever since the Great Depression to prevent this kind of meltdown, and that said that stockbrokers, insurance companies, banks, investment banks, commercial banks, could not merge. And in 1999, they passed legislation, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Gramm is the guy who McCain supported for president in ’96. He was co-chair of his campaign until he complained about the whiners out there, meaning the public. And that legislation is what caused this. It allowed the swaps and everything else.

And then, in 2000, hours before the Christmas break, Gramm introduced legislation. I’m holding it in my hand. This smoking gun is available on the internet; you can read it. And what it said is that the swaps is defined in the Financial Service Modernization Act, meaning that instead of going into a bank and somebody said, “OK, we’ll give you a loan, and we expect you to pay it over thirty years. We know your house has the equity. We know you have the means to pay it”—that was the traditional way—instead, they allowed these mergers, and as a result, they could buy insurance on it, they could do these swaps, they could do what they call hybrid instruments. And it is legislation that was never discussed, was—never had hearings or anything, says that all of this stuff is exempted from all previous regulation. The SEC cannot regulate it, the Commodity Futures Board cannot regulate it.

So they gave these institutions, of which Goldman Sachs was critical—so was Citigroup, where Robert Rubin, who was Clinton’s Treasury secretary, he had also come from Goldman Sachs. And, by the way, even though this is Republican-led, there were plenty of Democrats, in fact, a majority of Democrats, who voted for this. And Robert Rubin, who unfortunately is advising Barack Obama—I don’t know how this guy can wake up and—you know, and not be embarrassed and how he can appear on television—and Lawrence Summers, these are the two guys in the Clinton administration who teamed up with Phil Gramm to pass that atrocious legislation.

And now, you know, it seems to me, in terms of the bailout, why don’t they do what Hillary Clinton said during the primaries: just put a freeze on foreclosures? Start out with helping the homeowners and say, “OK, we’re not going to foreclose your house for the next year. We’re going to force the banks to work out reasonable payments. We’ll try to help you hold on to it.” That would have stopped the bleeding here much more effectively than throwing $700 billion at these bandits.

Transcript >>