There are 34 days to go until the national referendum on the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the _resident, the VICE _resident AND their full partners,i.e., the shameless pollsters, craven propapunditgandists, complicit news room editors, mercenary producers, besotted anchormen and corporate overlords of the US regimestream news media...Here are NINE important stories. These stories are powerful evidence of the Electoral Uprising coming at the Ballot Box on November 2, and of how the Triad ( i.e. the Bush cabal itself, its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party and their sponsors, in the US regimestream news media) will try to thwart it…Please read them and share them with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote. And, please, remember that the USregimestream news media does not want to inform you about this presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you…
Agence France Press: Billionaire financier George Soros announced that he was traveling to dozens of US cities and will be mailing two million brochures to voters, trying to convince them to vote against the re-election of President George W. Bush.
Five weeks ahead of the November 2 US presidential vote, Soros, a Hungarian born US citizen, also announced he was launching an website (www.GeorgeSoros.com) where he promises to answer questions by undecided voters.
He said he was running two-page ads in several US newspapers on Wednesday.
"I am eager to reach Republicans who might vote for Bush out of party loyalty," Soros said at a Washington press conference. "I also intend to reach out to the business community, especially among the traditional conservatives."
According to Soros there are many Republicans "who are quite distressed about the policies of this administration."
Editors & Publishers: On the eve of the Vote for Change tour, which has sparked controversy in newsrooms where reporters have been ordered not to attend the pro-Kerry fundraisers, Bruce Springsteen, one of the stars of the concerts, has a few words for the press.
In a wide ranging interview in the just-published Oct. 14 issue of Rolling Stone, Springsteen says, "The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that....The job of the press is to tell the truth without fear or favor. We have to get back to that standard."
Overall, while there has been some great reporting in the press, it has fallen far short, Springsteen tells Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner: "Real news is the news we need to protect our freedoms. You get tabloid news, you get blood-and-guts news, you get news shot through with a self-glorifying façade of patriotism, but people have to sift too much for the news that we need to protect our freedoms....The loss of some of the soberness and seriousness of those institutions has had a devastating effect upon people's ability to respond to the events of the day."
He also knocks the media for allowing the White House to get away with the "disgraceful" policy of refusing "to allow photographs of the flag-draped coffins of the returning dead."
KENNETH CHANG, New York Times: While Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and other rock stars sing on a "Vote for Change" concert tour, another disgruntled group - this one of scientists - will crisscross the well-worn landscape of battleground states over the next month, giving lectures that will argue that the Bush administration has ignored and misused science.
The group, Scientists and Engineers for Change, another addition to the flood of so-called 527 advocacy groups that have filled this year's election discourse, announced its existence and plans yesterday in a telephone news conference. At least 25 scientists will give talks in 10 contested states: Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Among the headlining lecturers are 10 Nobel Prize winners, including Dr. Douglas D. Osheroff, a professor of physics at Stanford; Dr. Peter C. Agre, a professor of biological chemistry at Johns Hopkins; and Dr. Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health…
At the news conference, Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, one of the architects of the Internet in the 1960's and 1970's and current chairman of Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, said, "Science counts, and it has not counted sufficiently in this administration."
Dr. Cerf said he was a registered Republican, but that he joined the group "in the hope that we bring debate, science and technology, into the political debate so that the electorate understands the importance that it has in our society."
Dr. Cerf said the United States was "at risk of losing the edge" in technology because the Bush administration was cutting basic research budgets at the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
JOHN EISENHOWER , Union Leader: THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3½ years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.
ow more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we “always have.” We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.
As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
The fact is that today’s “Republican” Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republican” has always been synonymous with the word “responsibility,” which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.
Reuters: The newspaper in President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry.
The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare.
"The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry."
Robert Tanner, Associated Press: New voters are flooding local election offices with paperwork, registering in significantly higher numbers than four years ago as attention to the presidential election runs high and an array of activist groups recruit would-be voters who could prove critical come Nov. 2.
Cleveland has seen nearly twice as many new voters register so far as compared with 2000; Philadelphia is having its biggest boom in new voters in 20 years; and counties are bringing in temporary workers and employees from other agencies to help process all the new registration forms.
Some examples, from interviews with state and county officials across the country:
- New registered voters in Miami-Dade County, a crucial Florida county in 2000, grew by 65 percent through mid-September, compared with 2000.
- New registered voters jumped nearly 150 percent in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in Ohio, one of the most hard-fought states this year.
And that's with weeks left until registration deadlines fall, beginning in October.
Oklahoma officials said they had 16,000 new Republican registrations, 15,000 new Democrats and 3,500 new independents. In Oregon, where new registrations grew by 4 percent from January through Sept. 1, Democrats outregistered Republicans two-to-one.
Mark Naymik and Julie Carr Smyth, Plain Dealer: The result is a flood of new registrations and address changes in the biggest counties, nearly double the number submitted in 2000 that voter advocates worry will lead to confusion and lost votes on Election Day. The scramble is expected to intensify this week, as the Oct. 4 registration deadline nears.
"We think this will be the sleeper issue in this election," says Kay Maxwell, national president of the League of Women Voters. "Plenty of people can fall through the cracks."
Any Election Day confusion could be most worrisome for Democrats: The New York Times reports today that the bulk of new registrations in Ohio have been in heavily Democratic areas.
Election boards across the state have hired extra staff members, extended working hours, or both. Some boards are processing cards 24 hours a day.
"It's like Florida 2000, only before the election," said Dan Tokaji, an election-law specialist and assistant law professor at Ohio State University.
The big counties seem to have it worst.
At Cuyahoga County's elections board, Ohio's largest, about 20,000 cards sat in small bins last week, waiting to be checked and entered into computers. Director Michael Vu said the board will spend about $175,000 on extra workers to process the cards. He expected to eliminate the backlog over the weekend.
John Williams, Hamilton County's elections director, said the Cincinnati area's backlog was still about 5,000 last week - down from 14,000.
"This is an election unlike anything 30-year pros have seen," he said.
Jim Bebbington and Laura Bischoff, Dayton Daily News: Voters-rights advocates are criticizing two recent decisions by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell that they say will unfairly limit some people's ability to vote Nov. 2.
Blackwell's office has told county boards of elections to follow strictly two provisions in Ohio election law:
• One requires Ohio voter registration cards be printed on thick, 80-pound stock paper.
• The other ordered boards to strictly interpret the rules regarding provisional ballots, the ones cast by voters who move before the election but are still registered in Ohio.
The paper-stock issue is frustrating Montgomery County Board of Elections officials, who have a backlog of registrations to complete. If they get an Ohio voter registration card on paper thinner than required, they are mailing a new card out to the voter. But if they still have the backlog by the registration deadline, Oct. 4, voters will not have another chance to get their correct paperwork in, said Steve Harsman, deputy director of the Montgomery County board.
"There is just no reason to use 80-pound paper," Harsman said.
Andrew Gumbel, Independent: What makes the troubles facing the two men particularly sinister is that they are declared Kerry supporters, with the power to bring in hundreds if not thousands of votes for the Democratic Party. The investigations are being conducted by the state police, known as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), which reports directly to Governor Jeb Bush, brother of President George Bush.
The Republicans, naturally, deny the investigations are politically motivated. But even they acknowledge that a chill has spread through Orlando's overwhelmingly Democratic black voting community after a flurry of unannounced visits by armed state police to at least 52 homes whose mostly elderly residents had signed up for an absentee ballot with Mr Thomas's help.
The Republicans have been hard put to explain what exactly the two men have done wrong. The media has aired official allegations ranging from vote fraud to campaign finance irregularities to racketeering, but no charges have been brought, despite exhaustive investigations. A grand jury examining allegations concerning the firefighters' union concluded that no laws had been broken, which has not deterred the FDLE from pursuing the case.
Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040928/ts_alt_afp/us_vote_soros&cid=1506&ncid=2043
Billionaire George Soros intensifies his anti-Bush campaign
Tue Sep 28, 2:45 PM ET U.S. National - AFP
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Billionaire financier George Soros announced that he was traveling to dozens of US cities and will be mailing two million brochures to voters, trying to convince them to vote against the re-election of President George W. Bush (news - web sites).
Five weeks ahead of the November 2 US presidential vote, Soros, a Hungarian born US citizen, also announced he was launching an website (www.GeorgeSoros.com) where he promises to answer questions by undecided voters.
He said he was running two-page ads in several US newspapers on Wednesday.
"I am eager to reach Republicans who might vote for Bush out of party loyalty," Soros said at a Washington press conference. "I also intend to reach out to the business community, especially among the traditional conservatives."
According to Soros there are many Republicans "who are quite distressed about the policies of this administration."
Soros said he was willing to spend "between 2 and 3 million (dollars) on this campaign," adding that if he increases the amount he will announce it later.
Republican House of Representative speaker Dennis Hastert recently suggested in a television interview that Soros may be making his billions off illegal-drug related activities. Soros wrote to Hastert demanding an apology.
"There is no way to avoid a smear campaign," said Soros. "It's in full swing. All I can do is get my message out and try to have people listen," he said.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000642981
On Eve of Big Tour, Springsteen Says Press Has 'Let The Country Down'
By E&P Staff
Published: September 27, 2004 8:00 PM EDT
NEW YORK On the eve of the Vote for Change tour, which has sparked controversy in newsrooms where reporters have been ordered not to attend the pro-Kerry fundraisers, Bruce Springsteen, one of the stars of the concerts, has a few words for the press.
In a wide ranging interview in the just-published Oct. 14 issue of Rolling Stone, Springsteen says, "The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that....The job of the press is to tell the truth without fear or favor. We have to get back to that standard."
Most of his criticism, however, is aimed at TV coverage, and he reveals that as "a dedicated" New York Times reader he has gained "enormous sustenance" from columnists Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman.
The problem, according to Springsteen, is that "Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power." In this regard, he finds The Washington Post and The New York Times admitting mistakes in their initial reporting about Iraq "very revealing."
Overall, while there has been some great reporting in the press, it has fallen far short, Springsteen tells Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner: "Real news is the news we need to protect our freedoms. You get tabloid news, you get blood-and-guts news, you get news shot through with a self-glorifying façade of patriotism, but people have to sift too much for the news that we need to protect our freedoms....The loss of some of the soberness and seriousness of those institutions has had a devastating effect upon people's ability to respond to the events of the day."
But Springsteen mainly aims barbs at cable news, mocking the "enormous amount of Fox impersonators among what you previously thought were relatively sane media outlets across the cable channels."
He also knocks the media for allowing the White House to get away with the "disgraceful" policy of refusing "to allow photographs of the flag-draped coffins of the return
ing dead."
Even the scripted political conventions deserved more coverage than they got, especially since they were often upstaged by reality TV shows. "No matter how staged they are," Springsteen says, "I think they're a little more important than people eating bugs," although he hastens to add, "If you want to watch people eating bugs, that's fine, I can understand that, too."
________________________________________
E&P Staff (letters@editorandpublisher.com) .
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/politics/campaign/28policy.html?ex=buzzflash
28, 2004
SCIENCE
Scientists Begin a Campaign to Oppose President's Policies
By KENNETH CHANG
hile Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and other rock stars sing on a "Vote for Change" concert tour, another disgruntled group - this one of scientists - will crisscross the well-worn landscape of battleground states over the next month, giving lectures that will argue that the Bush administration has ignored and misused science.
The group, Scientists and Engineers for Change, another addition to the flood of so-called 527 advocacy groups that have filled this year's election discourse, announced its existence and plans yesterday in a telephone news conference. At least 25 scientists will give talks in 10 contested states: Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Among the headlining lecturers are 10 Nobel Prize winners, including Dr. Douglas D. Osheroff, a professor of physics at Stanford; Dr. Peter C. Agre, a professor of biological chemistry at Johns Hopkins; and Dr. Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health.
Compared with more prominent 527's, like MoveOn PAC and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the scientists' group will operate on a modest budget of $100,000, which will mainly pay for lecturers' travel expenses.
The group has no direct ties to the campaign of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, but 9 members were among 48 Nobel laureates who signed a June 21 letter endorsing Mr. Kerry. Several of the scientists have also signed a statement from the Union of Concerned Scientists that accuses the Bush administration of manipulating scientific findings to support its policies. The union opposes the administration on numerous issues, including the environment and energy.
At the news conference, Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, one of the architects of the Internet in the 1960's and 1970's and current chairman of Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, said, "Science counts, and it has not counted sufficiently in this administration."
Dr. Cerf said he was a registered Republican, but that he joined the group "in the hope that we bring debate, science and technology, into the political debate so that the electorate understands the importance that it has in our society."
Dr. Cerf said the United States was "at risk of losing the edge" in technology because the Bush administration was cutting basic research budgets at the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, disputed that opinion. "I don't know where their accounting is coming from," Mr. Hopkins said. "The president has been a strong and generous supporter of science, increasing federal R&D budgets 44 percent to a record $132 billion."
The administration's policies on energy and global warming prompted Dr. Osheroff to take part. "I am not a Democrat and I have never played a significant role in politics," he said. "We must begin to address climate change now. To do so, we must have an administration that listens to the scientific community, not one that manipulates and minimizes scientific input."
Dr. Osheroff, who is scheduled to give the first lecture tonight at the University of Oregon, said he did not plan to explicitly urge his audience to vote for Mr. Kerry.
"At the end of my talk,'' he said, "I think people hopefully will be convinced that this administration is not doing an adequate job, that they're just not listening to scientists on these issues, that it's basically business as usual. I think people can decide how important that issue is, by themselves."
Dr. Cerf interjected: "Well, actually, Doug, let's be honest about this. The name of this group is Scientists and Engineers for Change. Now, what do you imagine we want to change?"
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=44657
Columns - September 28, 2004
Another View:
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By JOHN EISENHOWER
Guest Commentary
THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3½ years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.
Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we “always have.” We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.
As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
The fact is that today’s “Republican” Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republican” has always been synonymous with the word “responsibility,” which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.
In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the United States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush stayed within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying an entire nation.
Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, “If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both.” I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today.
The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of the economy allowed it to do so. The Eisenhower administration accomplished that difficult task three times during its eight years in office. It did not attain that remarkable achievement by cutting taxes for the rich. Republicans disliked taxes, of course, but the party accepted them as a necessary means of keep the nation’s financial structure sound.
The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small business. Today’s Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for the loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in the direction of a society of very rich and very poor.
Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will vote for him enthusiastically.
I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely because it carries the label of the party of one’s parents or of our own ingrained habits.
John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the White House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing “The White House Years,” his Presidential memoirs. He served as American ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine books, largely on military subjects.
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Bush's Hometown Newspaper Endorses Kerry
Tue Sep 28, 2004 01:19 PM ET
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - The newspaper in President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry.
The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare.
"The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry."
It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country."
Bush spends many of his weekends and holidays at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.
The Iconoclast's publisher and editor-in-chief, W. Leon Smith, said the newspaper is sent to Bush's ranch each week. "But I don't know if he reads it," Smith said.
The Kerry campaign welcomed the endorsement in an email to reporters.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4519775,00.html
Flood of New Voters Signing Up
Tuesday September 28, 2004 10:31 AM
By ROBERT TANNER
AP National Writer
New voters are flooding local election offices with paperwork, registering in significantly higher numbers than four years ago as attention to the presidential election runs high and an array of activist groups recruit would-be voters who could prove critical come Nov. 2.
Cleveland has seen nearly twice as many new voters register so far as compared with 2000; Philadelphia is having its biggest boom in new voters in 20 years; and counties are bringing in temporary workers and employees from other agencies to help process all the new registration forms.
Nationwide figures aren't yet available, but anecdotal evidence shows an upswing in many places, often urban but some rural. Some wonder whether the new voters - some of whom sign up at the insistence of workers paid by get-out-the-vote organizations - will actually make it to the polls on Election Day, but few dispute the registration boom.
``We're swamped,'' said Bob Lee, who oversees voter registration in Philadelphia. ``It seems like everybody and their little group is out there trying to register people.''
Some examples, from interviews with state and county officials across the country:
- New registered voters in Miami-Dade County, a crucial Florida county in 2000, grew by 65 percent through mid-September, compared with 2000.
- New registered voters jumped nearly 150 percent in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in Ohio, one of the most hard-fought states this year.
And that's with weeks left until registration deadlines fall, beginning in October.
Curtis Gans at the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate said a clear national picture won't emerge until more applications are processed next month. And Kay Maxwell of the League of Women Voters cautioned that some years that promise a boom in new voters turn out to be duds on Election Day. The danger is that new voters may not be as committed to showing up at the polls as longtime voters.
``Turning people out to vote is tougher than getting them to register,'' said Doug Lewis, who works with local election officials as head of The Election Center, a nonprofit group.
Rural areas, which trend conservative and Republican, aren't necessarily reporting the same growth as urban, more liberal and Democratic strongholds: Brazos County, Texas, hasn't beaten its 2000 numbers so far, though officials said applications are now rolling in. The state of Oklahoma, however, saw new registrations in July and August increase by 60 percent compared with four years ago.
Oklahoma officials said they had 16,000 new Republican registrations, 15,000 new Democrats and 3,500 new independents. In Oregon, where new registrations grew by 4 percent from January through Sept. 1, Democrats outregistered Republicans two-to-one.
Lewis and others say that no matter what the partisan breakdown, the registration boom is real - driven by a swarm of organizations such as Smack Down Your Vote (a professional wrestling-connected campaign), Hip-Hop Team Vote, traditional groups like the League of Women Voters; party-aligned groups such as America Coming Together, made up of deep-pocketed Democrats; and many, many more.
``There seem to be hundreds of them,'' Maxwell said.
The groups' focus is on states where the vote was close in 2000, but even in several states where the election isn't as competitive, officials say they are seeing new voters register in higher numbers. Officials in El Paso County, Texas, Maryland's Montgomery County, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and California's Los Angeles County said registration numbers are on pace to be higher than 2000.
In many jurisdictions, administrators complain that the crush of new registrations is overloading staff.
Clerks have hired extra workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. Philadelphia borrowed employees from other city agencies and started working overtime two months earlier than the usual post-Labor Day push.
In Greenbrier County, W.Va., deputy clerk Gail White said she's never seen so many people register in her 10 years working elections, and despite extra staff she's still behind on processing new and absentee voters. ``I get them all typed up, and the next thing I know, here comes another pile,'' she said.
The reasons seem clear - groups on all sides were energized by the close election of 2000, which proved to doubters that a handful of votes can swing an election. In 2000, 9 percent of voters, roughly 9.5 million people, said that was their first time casting a ballot, according to AP exit polls.
``It's the high-growth areas, the suburban and exurban areas in those battleground states,'' said Scott Stanzel of the Bush-Cheney campaign. ``There are opportunities there because there are so many new residents to register.''
The GOP has launched a volunteer, precinct-by-precinct effort in swing states, with separate help from a Republican-aligned group, the Progress for America Voter Fund.
Democrats, who've consistently made turnout efforts the foundation of their campaigns, are devoting huge amounts of resources, too. America Coming Together focuses solely on registering and turning out voters.
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law has boosted efforts, too. It cut off unlimited ``soft'' money to the parties, diverting some of that cash to community-based groups.
In Missouri, the result is that what used to be a mostly volunteer-driven voter-registration effort by the Missouri Citizen Education Fund has blossomed into a bigger, paid-staff operation, said executive director John Hickey. Funds jumped from a few thousand dollars a year to $250,000.
Focused on poor, black neighborhoods in St. Louis, mid-Missouri and rural areas, his staff went from registering a few thousand new voters in 2000 to at least 50,000 so far this year, Hickey said. In 2000, George W. Bush won the state by less than 80,000 votes.
^---
On the Net:
Federal Elections Commission voting turnout site: http://www.fec.gov/elections.html
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1096191056165960.xml
Election boards overwhelmed
New registrations straining resources
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Mark Naymik and Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer Reporters
For the armies of canvassers registering Ohio voters, citizen interest this election year is a dream come true. But to election boards across the state, inundated with tens of thousands of new registration cards, it's turning into a nightmare.
So crucial is the Buckeye State in this year's presidential campaign that groups from the Republican Party in tiny Brown County to the national mobilization effort America Coming Together are stepping over each other to locate every unregistered Ohioan.
"Ohio's the subject of such a national focus that we're almost drowning each other," said Josh Gildrie, state coordinator for the New Voters Project. "It's absolutely amazing what's going on."
The result is a flood of new registrations and address changes in the biggest counties, nearly double the number submitted in 2000 that voter advocates worry will lead to confusion and lost votes on Election Day. The scramble is expected to intensify this week, as the Oct. 4 registration deadline nears.
"We think this will be the sleeper issue in this election," says Kay Maxwell, national president of the League of Women Voters. "Plenty of people can fall through the cracks."
Any Election Day confusion could be most worrisome for Democrats: The New York Times reports today that the bulk of new registrations in Ohio have been in heavily Democratic areas.
Election boards across the state have hired extra staff members, extended working hours, or both. Some boards are processing cards 24 hours a day.
"It's like Florida 2000, only before the election," said Dan Tokaji, an election-law specialist and assistant law professor at Ohio State University.
The big counties seem to have it worst.
At Cuyahoga County's elections board, Ohio's largest, about 20,000 cards sat in small bins last week, waiting to be checked and entered into computers. Director Michael Vu said the board will spend about $175,000 on extra workers to process the cards. He expected to eliminate the backlog over the weekend.
John Williams, Hamilton County's elections director, said the Cincinnati area's backlog was still about 5,000 last week - down from 14,000.
"This is an election unlike anything 30-year pros have seen," he said.
Judy Gallo, head of the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition, said backlogs cut into the time that boards have to correct mistakes made by voters, canvassers or election employees.
Confusion about where to vote on Election Day could force more people to use the controversial "provisional ballots" - the special ballots given to voters who go to the wrong polling places.
That is worrisome to voting-rights advocates because an Ohio law, which continues to be challenged, could result in many provisional ballots being tossed. Provisional ballots will be issued only to voters who, after giving their address, appear to be in the correct precinct but don't show up in registration rolls.
Voting-rights groups had hoped that Ohio would be more liberal about accepting ballots from voters in the wrong precincts. Poor communication with new voters, they say, will jeopardize the votes of thousands of Ohioans who may not know what precinct they are in.
If errors on registration forms aren't fixed by Oct. 4, some new registrants may find themselves confused - or, worse yet, ineligible to vote - because of the processing delays, said Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Dan Trevas.
"How do you vote if you're a first-time voter and you've never been told where your polling place is?" Trevas asked. "Do you just go around looking for American flags stuck in the ground?"
Normally, elections boards quickly alert new voters of mistakes or missing information by mail, giving them a chance to return a corrected card. This year, boards have flagged hundreds of cards with errors that voters don't yet know about.
Some cards confirming a person's registration and directing them to a new polling place have been delayed by the backlog.
"Our biggest concern is that so many people haven't received a confirmation card, leaving them wondering if their registration is valid," Gallo said.
Dennis Lieberman, the Democratic Party chairman in Montgomery County, said surveys show that most of the new voters appear to be Democrats. Volunteers have called a significant number of the 25,000 newly registered voters in Montgomery County, and three-quarters have identified themselves as Democrats.
"On newly registered voters, if we can get them to the polls, it is a big asset for Democrats," he said.
The New York Times found that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations from January through July rose 250 percent from the same period in 2000. In comparison, the Times reports today, registrations increased just 25 percent in Republican areas.
The Times surveyed 60 ZIP codes mostly in the core of big cities like Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown, where people voted two to one or better against President Bush four years ago. New registrations in those ZIP codes have tripled since 2000, to 63,000 from 17,000.
Democrats in the state legislature have blamed Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican, for contributing to the backlog of more recent registrations. They say he has issued too many last-minute orders, some of which appear to conflict with each other, to county boards and has not adequately informed citizens how to properly register.
Believing that more new voters will be Democrats than Republicans, State Sen. Teresa Fedor, a Toledo Democrat, accused Blackwell of politicking.
"Blackwell's provisional voting directive is off the mark and amounts to nothing more than cooking the vote," she told reporters last week.
Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Blackwell, said the secretary's directives have sought to clarify concerns raised by the presidential campaigns, political parties and advocacy groups.
"If you look at the directives, we've liberalized standards," he said. "We're steering toward voter enfranchisement and the even-handed administration of Ohio election law."
Some local election officials say voter groups bear responsibility for the registration backlog because they have turned in too many cards that are duplicates or incomplete, forcing the boards to track down the voters.
In Cuyahoga County, for instance, Project Vote and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, worked together to submit the most cards. But they also produced the highest percentage - about 15 percent - of incomplete cards.
Candy Roberts, ACORN's voter registration coordinator, said the organization had problems at first but tightened its procedures to reduce errors and possible fraud.
"We can't tell when we meet someone on the street if they're not being honest with us," she said.
Republicans have been critical of Project Vote, ACORN and other groups that pay canvassers to register voters, many in Democratic-leaning areas.
Jason Mauk, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said sloppy work by the groups has overloaded election boards. He also said the barrage of cards has opened the door to fraud.
"Our concern is that cases of fraud will slip through," he said. "This could raise challenges to ballots and wreak havoc on Election Day."
Meridith Imwalle, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State, said voter registrations are at unprecedented levels around the nation. But despite the hassles, elections officials strive to increase participation, she said.
"As long as people are getting in by the deadline, they'll be processed and I think everything will run smoothly," she said.
To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:
jsmyth@plaind.com, 1-800-228-8272
mnaymik@plaind.com, 216-999-4849
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092904W.shtml
Ohio Secretary of State Blocks New Voter Registrations
By Jim Bebbington and Laura Bischoff
Dayton Daily News
Tuesday 28 September 2004
Boards of elections told to strictly follow two provisions.
Dayton - Voters-rights advocates are criticizing two recent decisions by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell that they say will unfairly limit some people's ability to vote Nov. 2.
Blackwell's office has told county boards of elections to follow strictly two provisions in Ohio election law:
• One requires Ohio voter registration cards be printed on thick, 80-pound stock paper.
• The other ordered boards to strictly interpret the rules regarding provisional ballots, the ones cast by voters who move before the election but are still registered in Ohio.
The paper-stock issue is frustrating Montgomery County Board of Elections officials, who have a backlog of registrations to complete. If they get an Ohio voter registration card on paper thinner than required, they are mailing a new card out to the voter. But if they still have the backlog by the registration deadline, Oct. 4, voters will not have another chance to get their correct paperwork in, said Steve Harsman, deputy director of the Montgomery County board.
"There is just no reason to use 80-pound paper," Harsman said.
In Montgomery County there is a backlog of around 4,000 registrations, Harsman said. A few hundred could be affected by this provision, he said.
Cuyahoga County board of elections officials are ignoring the edict because they have already had an avalanche of new registrations submitted on forms printed on newsprint in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.
"We don't have a micrometer at each desk to check the weight of the paper," said Michael Vu, director of the Cuyahoga County Board.
Blackwell's office has given the Cuyahoga board a special dispensation to accept the newsprint registration forms. The requirement is because the forms are designed to be mailed like post-cards and must be thick enough to survive mechanical sorters at the U.S. Post Office, according to Blackwell's spokesman Carlo LoParo.
"Our directive stands and it is specifically in place to protect new registrants to make sure the forms are not destroyed," LoParo said.
Confusing the matter further is a national registration form available off the Internet at the federal Elections Assistance Agency. That form must be accepted by Ohio boards regardless of what it is printed on, Blackwell has said.
The heavy-weight paper was a requirement when the cards were kept for years, were used to keep track of when a person voted, and were the main way to check signatures to combat voter fraud and verify petitions. But many boards, including both Montgomery and Cuyahoga, scan the signatures into a computer database and no longer record voting history on the cards.
The League of Women Voters of Ohio on Thursday called on Blackwell to clarify his position. League national president Kay Maxwell said she knows of no other states that are requiring the 80-pound paper stock for voter registration cards. "This is the first I've heard of it," she said on Thursday in Columbus.
The other directive forbids poll workers from giving a provisional ballot unless the person can prove they live in that precinct. Peg Rosenfield, spokeswoman for the league, said she interprets federal to be less restrictive. Rosenfield says people who show up at the wrong precinct should be given a ballot and allowed to vote on the non-local races.
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Jump to TO Features for Wednesday September 29, 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=566037
Politics and sleaze envelop Orlando
As the presidential campaign approaches its showdown, the Republicans in the state run by George Bush's brother are up to their tricks again. Andrew Gumbel reports from the heart of Florida
27 September 2004
In Orlando, the Florida home of Disneyworld and a vital political battleground, the campaign for the November presidential election is getting sly, nasty and very, very personal. Normally, at this stage of the proceedings, Ezzie Thomas, a well-known character on the predominantly African-American west side of town, would be out chatting to the people, registering them to vote before the 4 October deadline and helping them with absentee ballots if they do not think they will have time to make it to the polls on election day. But the 73-year-old Mr Thomas, an affable ladies' man, is staying out of public view for fear of exacerbating what is already a highly controversial - and highly political - criminal investigation of his election-related activities.
A similarly low profile is being taken by Steve Clelland, the head of the local firefighters' union. Last week, he did not even dare attend a local appearance by John Kerry, the candidate he is supporting for President, in case it added to the legal troubles facing his own organisation. The firefighters are also subject to a criminal investigation, the chief allegation - for which no evidence has been produced - being that they colluded with City Hall to set up an illegal slush fund for political campaigning.
What makes the troubles facing the two men particularly sinister is that they are declared Kerry supporters, with the power to bring in hundreds if not thousands of votes for the Democratic Party. The investigations are being conducted by the state police, known as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), which reports directly to Governor Jeb Bush, brother of President George Bush.
The Republicans, naturally, deny the investigations are politically motivated. But even they acknowledge that a chill has spread through Orlando's overwhelmingly Democratic black voting community after a flurry of unannounced visits by armed state police to at least 52 homes whose mostly elderly residents had signed up for an absentee ballot with Mr Thomas's help.
The Republicans have been hard put to explain what exactly the two men have done wrong. The media has aired official allegations ranging from vote fraud to campaign finance irregularities to racketeering, but no charges have been brought, despite exhaustive investigations. A grand jury examining allegations concerning the firefighters' union concluded that no laws had been broken, which has not deterred the FDLE from pursuing the case.
It is impossible to understand what is going on without considering the broader political picture. Orlando is slap-bang in the middle of the so-called "I-4 corridor", the line of Florida cities running along Interstate Highway 4 from Daytona Beach on the Atlantic coast to Tampa Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. The I-4 corridor is regarded as the hinge on which the outcome of the presidential election in Florida will swing, and Orlando - with surrounding Orange County - is considered the corridor's bellwether city.
So this is the key swing city in the key swing region of the key swing state that will determine whether or not George Bush wins another four years in the White House. Little wonder passions are getting heated. Given the unholy electoral mess Florida produced in 2000, and given the state's sordid history of vote fraud and systematic disenfranchisement, especially of black voters, both parties find themselves voicing the suspicion that the other side will try to steal Florida if only they can figure out how. "It's a blood sport," said Joe Egan, a prominent Orlando lawyer who represents both Mr Thomas and the firefighters.
One added wrinkle is that Orlando's mayor, Buddy Dyer, is one of only two prominent Democratic public officials along the I-4 corridor. Clearly, if he is discredited, the Democrats will be deprived of a vital figurehead in the run-up to 2 November. As it turns out, he is directly implicated in both of the FDLE's investigations. The intrigue began with Mr Dyer's election last March. It was a two-round election, but Mr Dyer finished with just over the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a run-off. His closest opponent, a Republican called Ken Mulvaney, cried foul, saying the 234-vote margin putting Mr Dyer over the threshold was fraudulent.
Since Mr Mulvaney's campaign manager was a prominent local talk-radio host called Doug Guetzloe, his allegations had a wide airing. But most of them, if not all, were demonstrably untrue. Mr Guetzloe claimed illegal absentee votes had been faxed into the elections supervisor's office, but the office accepts only originals. He also said people had been paid for their votes, but offered no evidence of this.
The greatest suspicion fell on Ezzie Thomas, because he had personally witnessed applications for 270 absentee ballots, a figure big enough to force a run-off election if it could be shown the votes were fraudulent. The city attorney's office cross-checked the signatures on the absentee ballots with the original application forms and concluded they were valid. Intriguingly, the FDLE did the same thing and stated, in a letter written to the state attorney in Orlando in May, that there was "no basis to support the allegations" and that the case should be considered closed.
"They've been trying to explain away that letter ever since," said one senior city employee who did not wish to be identified. Something caused the FDLE to chDISange its mind, because in early June uniformed officers began knocking on doors and asking threatening questions of dozens of black voters who had been in contact with Mr Thomas. Several said the FDLE officers took off their jackets and exposed their firearms while questioning them. In at least one case, the officer crossed his legs and tapped a 9mm pistol sitting in an ankle holster while he asked detailed questions about the interviewee's reasons for voting absentee. (Absentee voting is a choice under Florida law, so one can wonder about the line of questioning.)
"I felt threatened, embarrassed and like I was being accused of being a criminal," one interviewee, Willie Thomas, wrote in a statement. Many others told Joe Egan later that they no longer wanted to vote absentee because they felt it was somehow illegal.
Although the FDLE's public statements have been less than transparent, it appears to have relied on a paragraph in the Florida statute books which says it is illegal to receive or offer "something of value" for absentee ballots. Mr Thomas and his organisation, the Orlando Voters' League, have not been accused of paying for votes, but they have acknowledged paying the 37-cent postage for some people's absentee ballots. Mr Thomas, who received $10,000 from the Dyer campaign for his get-out-the-vote efforts, has also acknowledged paying his volunteers between $100 and $150 for petrol and other expenses over the campaign season.
The allegations seem particularly absurd because such practices are absolutely par for the course for both parties. "A 37-cent postage stamp is a very interesting definition of racketeering," Mr Egan said. "Now, it's well known that most absentee ballots come out of the white community ... I seriously doubt the police would behave in the same way in a white community."
As it happens, Mr Thomas had been been hired before by Republican candidates to perform exactly the same services he provided for Mr Dyer, without falling foul of the law. Among his past clients are two names with particular resonance in the 2004 presidential race. One is Mel Martinez, the Bush administration's outgoing Housing Secretary who is now running for the Florida Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Democrat, Bob Graham. (Mr Thomas helped Mr Martinez run for chair of the Orange County commission a few years ago.) And the other is Glenda Hood, who was mayor of Orlando for 12 years before being appointed Jeb Bush's Secretary of State, the office responsible for running Florida's elections.
And Mayor Hood, not Mayor Dyer, allowed the firefighters' union to spend up to $40,000 a year in city funds on political activities. In those days, the firefighters were considered allies of the Republican establishment in Orange County and had endorsed George Bush for President in 2000. But Mr Clelland and his members were deeply disappointed by the White House's failure to follow through on promises to put an extra 100,000 firefighters on American streets and update their equipment. So, in early June, they joined a statewide union vote endorsing Mr Kerry for President in 2004.
Days later, the FDLE, with television cameras in tow, raided City Hall, seized several computers and announced that the union and its so-called "leave bank" were being investigated. The beefy Mr Clelland said he was scared to death in his interview with the FDLE supervisor in Orlando and was told he might be slung into jail if he insisted on having his lawyer present. He duly asked Mr Egan to leave the room.
Like the black absentee voters, Mr Clelland also noticed the officer tapping the 9mm pistol in his ankle holster as he let loose his barrage of questions. "You would think these investigators were going after John Gotti [the late Mafia don]," he said bitterly. "Their actions have gutted this organisation locally." After the grand jury ruled that the union leave bank was legal, Mayor Dyer asked Florida's attorney general for a ruling to get the FDLE off their backs. But Mayor Dyer's bad luck was that he had run for the office of attorney general in 2002, and his successful Republican opponent, Charlie Crist, was not about to cut him any slack. Mr Crist has refused to offer an opinion either way.
Such is the incestuous nature of politics in Orlando, and in Florida generally, all of it poisoned further by the governor being the President's brother. Mayor Hood was regarded as a consensus-building moderate for much of her time in Orlando, but became more ideological on such issues as gay rights and abortion as she cast around for a new job. Most Democrats believe that, as Secretary of State and as a direct appointee of the governor, her mandate is not to guarantee a free and fair electoral process so much as to do everything in her power to clinch a Bush victory, much as her notorious predecessor, Katherine Harris, did in 2000.
Orlando is also in a state of major flux. For years, the big citrus farmers, as well as the land developers who came in Disneyworld's wake, made it a reliable Republican stronghold. Then an influx of low-wage service workers, including a growing tide of immigrants from Puerto Rico, changed its complexion.
The Republicans were shocked when Al Gore beat George Bush in Orange County in the presidential race in 2000, and vowed not to be taken by surprise again. The party identified the Puerto Ricans - many from middle-class backgrounds back home - as the key constituency and set to work to win over as many as possible.
The Democrats try to attract the Puerto Ricans with bread-and-butter social justice issues (an increase in the minimum wage, better health care, and so on), but the Republicans have appealed to their aspirations to material self-betterment as well as their generally conservative views on social issues such as homosexuality and abortion.
Although the demographics still favour the Democrats in November, the Republicans, by common consent, have done an excellent organising job, keeping particularly close tabs on Orlando's Spanish-language churches. The ballot in Orange County will have Hispanic Republicans running in every state and local race from US Senate (Mr Martinez) to county commissioner, and more than a few of them are likely to win. That could have a positive knock-on effect for President Bush.
With workers from both parties rushing to register as many voters as possible while there is still time, the race remains nerve-rackingly close, close enough that the votes controlled by Ezzie Thomas and the firefighters might just make the crucial difference.
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