Ain't no rules, ain't no vow, we can do it anyhow

Official: Justice Dept. slowed probe into phone jamming

The Justice Department delayed prosecuting a key Republican official for jamming the phones of New Hampshire Democrats until after the 2004 election, protecting top GOP officials from the scandal until the voting was over.

An official with detailed knowledge of the investigation into the 2002 Election-Day scheme said the inquiry sputtered for months after a prosecutor sought approval to indict James Tobin, the northeast regional coordinator for the Republican National Committee.

Oddly enough, voter fraud cases against rethuglicans that ended up being successful were delayed until after the election, but voter fraud cases against Dems, that ended up being unsuccessful were rushed before the election.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

The west is sleeping in a fragile freedom, Forgotten is the price that was paid

(Lee Atwater, center, Ed Rollins, left, and Lyn Nofziger, smoke cigars during the final session of the GOP National Convention in 1984 in Dallas. Atwater's insistence on censuring David Duke split the state Party.
Photo by AP/Wide World Photos)***

Like zombies that wouldn't die, the Republican Election Theft Squad is back:

Veteran GOP consultants said Monday that they were relaunching a drive to change the way California allocates its electoral college votes, aimed at helping the 2008 Republican presidential nominee capture the White House.

Political strategist David Gilliard said he was taking over the ballot initiative campaign, along with strategist Ed Rollins and fundraiser Anne Dunsmore. Consultant Mike Arno will oversee the signature-gathering effort.

"Our budget is going to be whatever it takes to make the June ballot," said Gilliard, who played a key role in getting the recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis onto the 2003 ballot.

The proposed initiative would change California's method of allocating its 55 electoral votes from a winner-take-all basis, which favors Democrats, to a congressional district-based approach. Republicans hold 19 congressional seats, so presumably the GOP nominee could win a similar number of electoral votes.

The effort stalled last month when its original organizers failed to raise the $2 million needed to place the initiative on the June ballot.

Sweet. That's this Ed Rollins:

Following the 1993 elections, during a breakfast debriefing, Rollins admitted to journalists that one factor in the success of Christine Todd Whitman in the New Jersey governor's race against incumbent Democrat Jim Florio had been the distribution of "walking around" money to influential persons in inner-city precincts, including African-American pastors.

According to Rollins, workers who had been hired to help get out the Democratic vote were told, "How much have they paid you to do your normal duty? . . . We'll match it. Go home, sit, and watch television." In addition, Rollins said, "We went into black churches and we basically said to ministers who had endorsed Florio, 'Do you have a special project?' And they said, 'We've already endorsed Florio.' And we said, 'That's fine, don't get up on the Sunday pulpit and preach. . . . Don't get up there and say it's your moral obligation that you go out on Tuesday and vote for Jim Florio.'" Ministers who cooperated, Rollins said, received contributions to their "favorite charities." As a result, Rollins said, "I think, to a certain extent, we suppressed their vote."

And this Ed Rollins:

Republican campaign strategist Ed Rollins has dropped an important clue to the mystery of whether the Reagan-Bush era started in 1980 with an act of treachery that bordered on treason. But it's a clue the mainstream media has misread completely.

In his new book, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms, Rollins recounted a dinner he had with a top Filipino politician in 1991. Over drinks, the man casually asserted that he had delivered an illegal $10 million cash payment in a suitcase from Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos to Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign.

"I was the guy who gave the ten million from Marcos to your campaign," the Filipino told Rollins, who was Reagan's 1984 campaign manager. "I was the guy who made the arrangements and delivered the cash personally. ...It was a personal gift from Marcos to Reagan."

Makes me proud to be an American.

The Constitution says that states are supposed to decide their own election and Electoral College issues, and only 2 states, Maine and Nebraska, use the proportional Elector system, where the number of electors is split like the popular vote. So why not challenge the system is, say Texas, which is dependably Republican?

Because CA has 55 Electors, while TX has only 34. Splitting the vote in CA would possibly deliver 19 Electors to the Republicans.

The minute the other 48 States decide to go proportional, then it will be OK for CA. Until then, not so much. Of course, the GOP has been trying this crap in CA for a long time. Remember back in 2005 when Arnie wanted to gerrymander the state:

If Schwarzenegger stands his ground, congressional Republicans may have the option of supporting a state ballot initiative later this year that would excuse Congress from any mid-decade redistricting effort.

Such a measure was submitted to the state last month by David Gilliard, a Sacramento political consultant who has discussed it with members of the state's congressional delegation. Before it could go before voters, Gilliard's proposal would need to pass review in the state attorney general's office, and then he would need to gather about 600,000 valid signatures.

Why, look! It's the same Dave Gilliard, back again. Like a zombie that wouldn't die.

Bastard.

David Dayen has more here:

The vital stats are this: they have about 3 1/2 weeks to gather about half a million more signatures to qualify for the ballot. The deadline is November 13. I used to think that this will cost so much money from the Presidential nominee that it would be a negative. Now I'm persuaded that this will be fine. We'll crush this if it gets on the ballot, all the while unifying our caucus, and that will slingshot against Republicans for years to come.

***Imagine, censuring David KKK Duke split the Texas Republican Party in 1984. Clearly NOT the party of Lincoln.

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine

Voting systems hacked in test
The successful invasions will be weighed in state's security review.

Teams of computer hackers participating in a first-of-its-kind experiment in California have succeeded in breaking into all three electronic voting machines they targeted.

The systems were invaded in ways ranging from altering votes via a laptop computer to physically breaking into an electronic ballot box with small, concealable tools, the hackers reported to the state Friday.
[...]
The hackers reported successful invasions that could "alter vote totals, violate the privacy of individual voters, make systems unavailable, and delete audit trails."

But Stephen Weir, head of the state association of county registrars, said the hacking was not an accurate portrayal of risk because researchers were given extensive access to the voting machines and their proprietary codes.
[...]
Counties routinely lock up their voting machines to prevent sabotage, keep detailed access records, employ camera surveillance and conduct extensive testing to ensure accuracy, Weir said.

OK, first, if you can delete evidence that the machine was hacked (audit trails) then the hack would be undetectable. Second, Weir is just plain wrong when he claims voting machines are 'locked up':

Practices such as allowing poll workers to take the voting machines home have been widely criticized, Durfee said.
[...]
Regarding precinct workers taking home the machines, Horn added: “The poll workers are not felons. They're volunteers, and we need every one we can get.”

So they let 'volunteers' take the machines home. Maybe they aren't felons ... yet. That's hardly election security, but it is a good way to elect Republicans.




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Just give me your vote, put your cross in the box

"Voter fraud" has become one of the GWBush administration's favorite straw men. Here is Josh Marshall on it:

Since President Bush came into office, the Justice Department has made 'voter fraud' prosecutions a high priority. Yet, not for lack of effort, they've barely been able to find any examples of it. The grand effort has boiled down to a program to send a few handfuls of folks -- mainly black -- to jail for what are in almost every case notional or unintentional voting infractions.

One of the centers of the action for this kind of Republican thuggery was Missouri, and at the epicenter was St. Louis, MO attorney, Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II. (note: His nickname is Thor? WTF? And he's a II? Wow, talk about a sense of importance.)

My friend Brad "BradBlog" Friedman has been all over this, for some time, and he writes today:

After more than two years of banging the drum here at The BRAD BLOG, it looks as if the national MSM has finally picked up on the fraud perpetrated by Missouri's White House operative Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and his high-level democracy-hating GOP scammer pals in Missouri, at the Department of Justice, and in the White House.

In a McClatchy article just out today, reporter Greg Gordon correctly identifies Missouri as "Ground Zero" in the Republican attempt to establish phony claims of Democratic "voter fraud" in order to institute new restrictions at the polls as part of an insidious ploy to Democratic-leaning voters from being able to cast their vote.

Gordon reports on a number of issues out of Missouri that we've covered here over the years, including; the unsubstantiated claims of "voter registration fraud" against ACORN filed just prior to the '06 election in the Show-Me state; the unsuccessful lawsuit brought by the DoJ against MO SoS Robyn Carnahan alleging more voters on the rolls than actual eligible voters; and the unconstitutional Voter ID law as pushed through the MO legislature as drafted by the slime-ball Hearne.

As well, McClatchy finally outs the supposedly "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), as created by Hearne and RNC Communications director, Jim Dyke. We began reporting on ACVR just three days after they went public on March 22, 2005 to testify before then-Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) House Administration Committee on Democratic attempts at "vote supression" during Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election.

Gordon finally exposes the ACVR in the mainstream media for what it actually was: Little more than a well-coordinated, (and still-mysteriously-funded) scam to produce public propaganda to support the GOP's insider push in swing states for voter suppression legislation and tactics by Republican officials.

Here is more on ACVR from PFAW:

In March of 2005, the U.S. House Administration Committee held hearings in Columbus, OH to collect testimony regarding problems with the 2004 election and implementation of the Help America Vote Act or HAVA. However, the committee provided no opportunity for public testimony and no well-known voting rights organizations were among the witnesses.[1]

One of those who was invited to testify was St. Louis, MO attorney, Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II, general counsel for the American Center for Voter Rights (ACVR). According to news reports, Hearne told the committee that ACVR was a “voting rights legal defense and education center committed to defending the rights of voters and working to increase public confidence in the fairness of the outcome of elections.” He then proceeded to identify “massive registration fraud” at the hands of Democrats and progressive non-partisan organizations as Ohio’s key problem.

With its list of lofty sounding goals like “equal access to the ballot” and “defending the rights of voters,” the Center attempts to sound like a non-partisan, expert organization whose sole goal is to help all voters. However, at the time of Hearne’s testimony, his group was barely five days old. An investigation into the backgrounds of its principals strongly suggests that it is little more than a front group for Republican operatives and a mouthpiece for a right-wing partisan agenda.[2]

Indeed. The machine of the right may have its wheels starting to fall off, but it still has momentum as it grinds down the track. Meanwhile, voter suppression activity as practiced by the Right is coming under increasing scrutiny, although clearly not by the administration.


Here's a quote from the McClatchy piece Brad wrote about:

Now, six months after freshman Missouri senator Jim Talent’s defeat handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys show that GOP campaign to protect the balloting was not as it appeared.

In fact, no significant voter fraud was ever proven.

Instead, the Republican preoccupation with voter fraud was part of a wider effort to protect the GOP majority in Congress with a series of measures to dampen Democratic turnout. They included stiffer voter ID requirements, wholesale purges of names from lists of registered voters and tight policing of liberal get-out-the-vote drives.

Few have endorsed the strategy with more enthusiasm than White House political guru Karl Rove, and nowhere has the plan been more apparent than in Missouri.

And of course the Right-Wing wankosphere keeps bleating on the phony "Voter Fraud" issue. Try googling 'voter fraud' and you'll get diatribes from FreeRepublic, Hugh Hewitt, and the rest.

Idiots.