Free and Fair Elections

We don't have them.

We have private companies purging vote rolls inaccurately with no consequence, and getting paid tax dollars to do it.
We have Diebold and optical scan and no paper trail.
We have an inadequate number of polling places, poll workers and election judges, leading to long, long lines, lines that last for hours.
We have misleading ads, misleading letters, misleading politicians, the great fat perception management that is the war on terror and little independent media to investigate our rigged and tampered election process.


COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) - A Colorado Springs woman who sported a button reading: "Grandmothers for Peace" as she cast her ballot early this week says she was pitched from the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder's Office.

Election officials say 63-year-old Rita Ague violated a law against campaigning within 100 feet of a polling place when she tried to vote Monday.

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Montana Newspapers Delivered to Subscribers Wrapped in Political Ads Published: October 31, 2006 11:50 AM ET

HELENA, Mont. Some newspaper subscribers in Montana will find their Election Day papers wrapped in a political advertisement. The National Rifle Association said Monday it is buying plastic bag "wrap" advertising in seven or eight Montana newspapers to show support for Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, who is in a tight race for re-election. Only some of those newspapers will be wrapped in the advertising on Election Day and others will be delivered earlier with the ad wrapping, said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

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New Documentary Exposes Vulnerability of Electronic Voting Machines

There is a week to go before millions of voters cast their vote in the mid- term elections. Many are calling this the most high-stakes election in recent years with the possibility of a Democratic takeover of Congress. But since the contested Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, more people have been raising concern about the integrity of our voting system. Today, we spend the hour looking at the state of voting in this country.

We start by looking at electronic voting machines. There have been widespread reports of malfunctions and security lapses even though these machines count 80 percent of the votes cast in America today. Last month, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich called for the state to scrap its electronic voting system and revert to paper ballots in the upcoming election. He cited technical glitches that occurred during the state's primary election. In that election, electronic voting machines that were built by the Diebold corporation, repeatedly crashed. Ehrlich said that the voting situation is "approaching crisis proportions." But the problem is not limited to Maryland - a report released earlier this year by the group Common Cause found that Maryland was only one of 17 states nationwide whose voting system is at "high risk" for a compromised election.

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DENVER -- In Congressional District 7, former state senator Ed Perlmutter is strongly criticizing Republicans over a piece of direct mail that was designed to look like a sex-offender notification. The brochure accuses Perlmutter of being soft on crime.The mailing was paid for by the state Republican Party, not by Perlmutter's opponent, Rick O'Donnell. O'Donnell said he had no control over the brochure.

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Republicans See Edge
From Early Voting

Democrats Question Specific Claims and Believe
They Are Catching Up With the Trend

By JOHN D. MCKINNON and ERIKA LOVLEY
October 31, 2006; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- Down in the polls and with their majorities in Congress at risk, Republicans say they have some good news in early-voting statistics that suggest their voter-turnout machine is providing an edge in some tight races.

If the trend holds, it could mean that early voting is growing -- and continuing to benefit Republicans, who exploited the practice in the 1990s. Experts say early voters could be a bigger factor this year when overall voter turnout could be lower than in 2004, a presidential-election year.

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