What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo.
What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo.
Via Postal Mail - You can post a donation via good old fashion postal mail to: WikiLeaks (or any suitable name likely to avoid interception in your country), BOX 4080, Australia Post Office - University of Melbourne Branch, Victoria 3052, AustraliaFriday, October 23, 2009
"Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now"
You've Seen the Movie -- Now It's Time to ACT!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Friends,
It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"
You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.
Here they are:
FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:
1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.
2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.
3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.
4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)
5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!
FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:
1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!
2. Take over your local Democratic Party. Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected? YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It's time to re-up! Get everyone back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town or county Democratic Party -- and become the majority that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and they will either be happy or in shock that you and the Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you mean business. President Obama's agenda will never happen without mass grass roots action -- and he won't feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his back, whether it's to stand with him, or push him in the right direction. When you all become the local Democratic Party, send me a photo of the group and I'll post it on my website.
3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year -- or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don't have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don't believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on -- and you should be on it!
4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there's more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place "Capitalism Did This" signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)
5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth -- so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here's an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don't fill that void, who will?
FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:
1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.
2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one -- the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.
3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.
4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run. Here's how to do it (more info here). Nothing is more American than democracy, and democracy shouldn't be checked at the door when you enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your workplace is to turn your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone else is to be properly compensated and respected.
5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don't put our own "oxygen mask" on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!
I'm sure there are many other ideas you can come up with on how we can build this movement. Get creative. Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE! Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate you and your community and your nation.
And when you act, send me your stories, your photos and your video -- and be sure to post your ideas in the comments beneath this letter on my site so they can be shared with millions.
C'mon people -- we can do this! I expect nothing less of all of you, my true and trusted fellow travelers!
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Friends,
It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"
You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.
Here they are:
FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:
1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.
2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.
3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.
4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)
5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!
FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:
1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!
2. Take over your local Democratic Party. Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected? YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It's time to re-up! Get everyone back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town or county Democratic Party -- and become the majority that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and they will either be happy or in shock that you and the Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you mean business. President Obama's agenda will never happen without mass grass roots action -- and he won't feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his back, whether it's to stand with him, or push him in the right direction. When you all become the local Democratic Party, send me a photo of the group and I'll post it on my website.
3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year -- or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don't have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don't believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on -- and you should be on it!
4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there's more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place "Capitalism Did This" signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)
5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth -- so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here's an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don't fill that void, who will?
FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:
1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.
2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one -- the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.
3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.
4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run. Here's how to do it (more info here). Nothing is more American than democracy, and democracy shouldn't be checked at the door when you enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your workplace is to turn your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone else is to be properly compensated and respected.
5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don't put our own "oxygen mask" on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!
I'm sure there are many other ideas you can come up with on how we can build this movement. Get creative. Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE! Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate you and your community and your nation.
And when you act, send me your stories, your photos and your video -- and be sure to post your ideas in the comments beneath this letter on my site so they can be shared with millions.
C'mon people -- we can do this! I expect nothing less of all of you, my true and trusted fellow travelers!
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
Sunday, October 11, 2009
TOP 10 PROBLEMS WITH EXPANDING ABSENTEE VOTING
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/top-10-problems-with-expanding-absentee-voting-handout.pdf
(82 KB)
Absentee voting has been expanded in 25 states. This reduces public controls and expands opportunity for election fraud.
Risky electoral conditions are being introduced because someone says "Why don't we just mail ballots?" Election officials are pitching vote by mail as convenient and safe. Journalists don't always obtain an opposing point of view before publishing stories on this risky new trend. Half the USA has now shifted to no-fault absentee voting. Here is an opposing point of view, along with sources and citations for vote-by-mail incidents.
No-fault absentee voting is now enabled in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming; Forced all-vote-by-mail is in place in Washington and Oregon; no-fault vote-by-mail is proposed but not yet passed in Alabama, District of Columbia, Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin. A federal bill (Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act: H.R. 1604) proposes to enforce no-fault absentee voting nationwide.
Areas with need-based absentee voting typically average about 12% absentee voting, including overseas, military, sick and shut-in, elderly, and out-of-towners. Areas with "no-fault absentee" gradually increase from about 25% (early stages) to over 50% (after no-fault absentee used for several years), increasing the size of the at-risk vote pool.
TOP TEN PROBLEMS WITH EXPANDING ABSENTEE VOTING:
1. Absentee voting conceals who actually casts the votes. A real person doesn't show up to vote, eliminating a crucial public control for elections.
2. Absentee voting has difficult challenges for ballot chain of custody. Even locations that claim to use video surveillance sometimes turn off cameras, send them out for maintenance, or decide not to use them while elections are in progress.(1)(2)
3. Absentee voting has a history of inside tampering by election officials.(3)
4. Absentee voting uses unregulated and concealed software to authorize votes. The unregulated "VoteRemote" software purchased by Diebold/Premier was designed by convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean, who spent four years in prison for computer fraud. Court records show that Dean began working on VoteRemote for King County, Washington while still in prison, on a work release program.(4)
5. Absentee voting eliminates ballot privacy when used in combination with ballot tracking or incorrectly designed ballot authentication software. A ballot tracking program used in San Juan County (Wash.) removed voter privacy and altered ballot approvals during the canvassing period and even after the canvassing period had expired, and misreported who had voted and who had not.(5)
6. Absentee voting expansion has a partisan history: Nearly all legislation to expand vote by mail and no-fault absentee is introduced by Democrats, and nearly all sponsors in both state and federal pro-absentee voting legislation are Democrats.
7. Signature comparison isn't what people think: It uses electronic facsimiles, not physical signatures. These can be swapped and altered electronically, and in fact, signatures do not need to match at all! In Lake County Indiana, a set of rejected absentee ballots were simply changed to "accepted" after the matching process.(6) All this requires is replacement of "no" with "yes" in a database, which can be done after signature checks. In Washington State the paw print of a dog named Duncan passed signature checking for two elections in a row.(7)
8. Vote by mail is sold to the public using questionable data. Contrary to what supporters claim, vote by mail does not necessarily increase turnout. According to data from the US Election Assistance Commission, all vote-by-mail Oregon was squarely in the middle of the pack for voter turnout.(8) Also, Oregon reports impossible numbers: Out of 2.5 million ballots mailed in the 2006 general election, Oregon reported zero ballots returned undeliverable, and Oregon says only 54 were received after the deadline.(9)
9. Ballot printers have a history of mailing wrong ballots, omitted ballots, and late ballots. During the crucial 2008 general election, Sequoia Voting Systems reported to Denver County (Colo.) that it had mailed 21,450 ballots, when it actually only mailed 10,364 ballots.(10) Only when voters complained did Sequoia admit that it never sent the ballots. In Sutter County (Calif) Sequoia mailed absentee ballots missing ballot questions, but only for some voters.(11)
10. Absentee voting enables cheat-peeks: Computer logs from Pima County, Arizona show that election workers were printing absentee results before election day; e-mails obtained with public records requests show they were passing early results around like baseball scores, giving unfair advantage to those candidates selected to receive them.
SOURCES:
(1) Scripps Newspaper Group - Aug. 14, 2008, By Elliott Jones: Indian River County elections office security cameras shut down - …The cameras oversee the mail-in ballots, which are kept in a vault. [Public records show that video cameras were out of service for a month.]
(2) Sun Sentinel - Aug. 2008: Elections supervisor installs security cameras - ... The cost for installing the cameras, she said, is estimated at $300,000; [Records requests from Black Box Voting following a ballot snafu in August 2008 elicited the response that they had never installed the system and didn't plan to until after the election.]
(3) North Jersey Conservative Examiner - Aug. 4, 2009, by Mark Impomeni: Campaign workers indicted in election fraud case; " ...At least one of the defendants was in a position to impact elections on a regular basis. Gianine Narvaez worked in the office of the Essex County Superintendent of Elections."
(4) Jeffrey Dean prison papers http://bbvdocs.org/dean.pdf and court transcripts http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/2197/14323.html
(5) Related to this case, a lawsuit was filed by Washington citizens Tim White and Alan Rosato in July 2009 seeking redress on some of these issues. Here is a video as they describe their discovery of theft of voter privacy and alteration of authentications: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=9179686114813589881
(6) WJOB News - May 28, 2007: Lake County Ballots Accidentally Manipulated from Outside System - Lake County election officials say they were disturbed to learn a vendor had altered the status of dozens of absentee ballots after the election. ...The incident occurred May 15th, when an employee of Indianapolis-based Quest Information Systems changed the status of 58 Lake County absentee ballots cast in the May Eighth primary from rejected to accepted.
(7) KING 5 News - June 24, 2007, By Alan Schauffler: Federal Way woman registers dog to vote
(8) Here's the data: www.blackboxvoting.org/EAC2006stats.xls
(9) www.eac.gov/clearinghouse/completed-research-and-eports/electionday-survey-results
(10) Rocky Mountain News - Oct. 24, 2008, by Myung Oak Kim: 'Missing' Denver mail ballots were never sent by vendor - The U.S. Postal Service said Friday afternoon that its Denver mail processing facility received 10,364 ballots on Oct. 16 and delivered them within a couple days. But the California printing company hired by Denver Elections said it delivered 21,450 ballots to the postal facility on that date...Denver Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley said the ballots in question were never prepared by the vendor.
(11) Sutter County Registrar of Voters - Oct. 16, 2008: Printer’s Error On Vote-By-Mail Ballots In Sutter County - A printer’s error has resulted in the printing and mailing of incomplete vote-by-mail ballots to approximately 14,000 Sutter County voters.
* * * * *
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
* * * * *
Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the
instruments of government we have created.
To support our original research and public education efforts: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057
This message was sent by: Black Box Voting, Inc., 330 SW 43rd St Suite K - PMB 547, Renton, WA 98057
Email Marketing by iContact: http://freetrial.icontact.com
To update/change your account click here:
http://app.icontact.com/icp/mmail-mprofile.pl?r=52124610&l=100140&s=QAAE&m=672353&c=325456
Forward to a friend:
http://app.icontact.com/icp/sub/forward?m=672353&s=52124610&c=QAAE&cid=325456
(82 KB)
Absentee voting has been expanded in 25 states. This reduces public controls and expands opportunity for election fraud.
Risky electoral conditions are being introduced because someone says "Why don't we just mail ballots?" Election officials are pitching vote by mail as convenient and safe. Journalists don't always obtain an opposing point of view before publishing stories on this risky new trend. Half the USA has now shifted to no-fault absentee voting. Here is an opposing point of view, along with sources and citations for vote-by-mail incidents.
No-fault absentee voting is now enabled in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming; Forced all-vote-by-mail is in place in Washington and Oregon; no-fault vote-by-mail is proposed but not yet passed in Alabama, District of Columbia, Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin. A federal bill (Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act: H.R. 1604) proposes to enforce no-fault absentee voting nationwide.
Areas with need-based absentee voting typically average about 12% absentee voting, including overseas, military, sick and shut-in, elderly, and out-of-towners. Areas with "no-fault absentee" gradually increase from about 25% (early stages) to over 50% (after no-fault absentee used for several years), increasing the size of the at-risk vote pool.
TOP TEN PROBLEMS WITH EXPANDING ABSENTEE VOTING:
1. Absentee voting conceals who actually casts the votes. A real person doesn't show up to vote, eliminating a crucial public control for elections.
2. Absentee voting has difficult challenges for ballot chain of custody. Even locations that claim to use video surveillance sometimes turn off cameras, send them out for maintenance, or decide not to use them while elections are in progress.(1)(2)
3. Absentee voting has a history of inside tampering by election officials.(3)
4. Absentee voting uses unregulated and concealed software to authorize votes. The unregulated "VoteRemote" software purchased by Diebold/Premier was designed by convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean, who spent four years in prison for computer fraud. Court records show that Dean began working on VoteRemote for King County, Washington while still in prison, on a work release program.(4)
5. Absentee voting eliminates ballot privacy when used in combination with ballot tracking or incorrectly designed ballot authentication software. A ballot tracking program used in San Juan County (Wash.) removed voter privacy and altered ballot approvals during the canvassing period and even after the canvassing period had expired, and misreported who had voted and who had not.(5)
6. Absentee voting expansion has a partisan history: Nearly all legislation to expand vote by mail and no-fault absentee is introduced by Democrats, and nearly all sponsors in both state and federal pro-absentee voting legislation are Democrats.
7. Signature comparison isn't what people think: It uses electronic facsimiles, not physical signatures. These can be swapped and altered electronically, and in fact, signatures do not need to match at all! In Lake County Indiana, a set of rejected absentee ballots were simply changed to "accepted" after the matching process.(6) All this requires is replacement of "no" with "yes" in a database, which can be done after signature checks. In Washington State the paw print of a dog named Duncan passed signature checking for two elections in a row.(7)
8. Vote by mail is sold to the public using questionable data. Contrary to what supporters claim, vote by mail does not necessarily increase turnout. According to data from the US Election Assistance Commission, all vote-by-mail Oregon was squarely in the middle of the pack for voter turnout.(8) Also, Oregon reports impossible numbers: Out of 2.5 million ballots mailed in the 2006 general election, Oregon reported zero ballots returned undeliverable, and Oregon says only 54 were received after the deadline.(9)
9. Ballot printers have a history of mailing wrong ballots, omitted ballots, and late ballots. During the crucial 2008 general election, Sequoia Voting Systems reported to Denver County (Colo.) that it had mailed 21,450 ballots, when it actually only mailed 10,364 ballots.(10) Only when voters complained did Sequoia admit that it never sent the ballots. In Sutter County (Calif) Sequoia mailed absentee ballots missing ballot questions, but only for some voters.(11)
10. Absentee voting enables cheat-peeks: Computer logs from Pima County, Arizona show that election workers were printing absentee results before election day; e-mails obtained with public records requests show they were passing early results around like baseball scores, giving unfair advantage to those candidates selected to receive them.
SOURCES:
(1) Scripps Newspaper Group - Aug. 14, 2008, By Elliott Jones: Indian River County elections office security cameras shut down - …The cameras oversee the mail-in ballots, which are kept in a vault. [Public records show that video cameras were out of service for a month.]
(2) Sun Sentinel - Aug. 2008: Elections supervisor installs security cameras - ... The cost for installing the cameras, she said, is estimated at $300,000; [Records requests from Black Box Voting following a ballot snafu in August 2008 elicited the response that they had never installed the system and didn't plan to until after the election.]
(3) North Jersey Conservative Examiner - Aug. 4, 2009, by Mark Impomeni: Campaign workers indicted in election fraud case; " ...At least one of the defendants was in a position to impact elections on a regular basis. Gianine Narvaez worked in the office of the Essex County Superintendent of Elections."
(4) Jeffrey Dean prison papers http://bbvdocs.org/dean.pdf and court transcripts http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/2197/14323.html
(5) Related to this case, a lawsuit was filed by Washington citizens Tim White and Alan Rosato in July 2009 seeking redress on some of these issues. Here is a video as they describe their discovery of theft of voter privacy and alteration of authentications: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=9179686114813589881
(6) WJOB News - May 28, 2007: Lake County Ballots Accidentally Manipulated from Outside System - Lake County election officials say they were disturbed to learn a vendor had altered the status of dozens of absentee ballots after the election. ...The incident occurred May 15th, when an employee of Indianapolis-based Quest Information Systems changed the status of 58 Lake County absentee ballots cast in the May Eighth primary from rejected to accepted.
(7) KING 5 News - June 24, 2007, By Alan Schauffler: Federal Way woman registers dog to vote
(8) Here's the data: www.blackboxvoting.org/EAC2006stats.xls
(9) www.eac.gov/clearinghouse/completed-research-and-eports/electionday-survey-results
(10) Rocky Mountain News - Oct. 24, 2008, by Myung Oak Kim: 'Missing' Denver mail ballots were never sent by vendor - The U.S. Postal Service said Friday afternoon that its Denver mail processing facility received 10,364 ballots on Oct. 16 and delivered them within a couple days. But the California printing company hired by Denver Elections said it delivered 21,450 ballots to the postal facility on that date...Denver Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley said the ballots in question were never prepared by the vendor.
(11) Sutter County Registrar of Voters - Oct. 16, 2008: Printer’s Error On Vote-By-Mail Ballots In Sutter County - A printer’s error has resulted in the printing and mailing of incomplete vote-by-mail ballots to approximately 14,000 Sutter County voters.
* * * * *
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
* * * * *
Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the
instruments of government we have created.
To support our original research and public education efforts: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057
This message was sent by: Black Box Voting, Inc., 330 SW 43rd St Suite K - PMB 547, Renton, WA 98057
Email Marketing by iContact: http://freetrial.icontact.com
To update/change your account click here:
http://app.icontact.com/icp/mmail-mprofile.pl?r=52124610&l=100140&s=QAAE&m=672353&c=325456
Forward to a friend:
http://app.icontact.com/icp/sub/forward?m=672353&s=52124610&c=QAAE&cid=325456
Thursday, October 01, 2009
How to Brainwash a Nation: by Yuri Bezmenov
Ideological subversion and psychological warfare.
It takes 15 years minimum to brainwash a nation, the time to raise one generation.
This is some Crazy Russian Spook Stuff:
- Demoralization (GW Bush)
- Destabilization (GW Bush)
- Crisis (GW Bush)
- Normalization (Obama?)
Next: Intellectuals will be "lined up against the wall and shot."
