Category: Current Affairs

VOTER SUPPRESSION: A REAL WAY TO HELP — TWITTER AND ALLIES FIND A WAY

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When votes are mangled on election day, when people are turned away, or misled, or intimidated; when names have been purged without notice or challenged illegally, it’s very tough to protect the outcome because it’s so hard to get to the site of the violation in time to fix it before voters give up.  At least it’s always been that way.  And because older machines go to poor, minority precincts, and because mean-spirited efforts to defraud less sophisticated voters often affect Democrats disproportionately, as reported in Rolling Stone, any effort that gets help where it needs to be faster and more effectively can make a big difference not only for for Obama but also for down-ballot races.

A crew of some of the coolest nerds on the Web have come together to harness Twitter and other tools to help.  It’s really simple; you can tweet (or text) violations, line lengths and other info, and use "hash tags" (these  #) so that people following the issue will receive the message on their Twitter readers and send help.  If you don’t want to bother with Twitter, text to 66937 and start your message with “#votereport."  (That’s a "hash tag" — see how simple?)   Bloggers like Nancy Walzman at PoliticsWest, who is based in Colorado where there’s much at stake, and Nancy Scola and Alison Fine at TechPresident can give you more details.  Our vigilance can really make a difference.

Just for fun, here’s a diagram of how it works.  Basically though, you just text or Tweet this the same way you do anything else.  And you should.  I also want to renew my plea (easy for me to say since I’m not a lawyer) for you to make yourself available on election day to protect the process, every committed voter, and, as far as I’m concerned, our country.

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OBAMA VIDEO, AN AMAZING GOOD DEED, MICHELLE OBAMA, THE INTERNET, JOE TRIPPI AND ORSON SCOTT CARD

VIDEO REMOVED FOR TECHNICAL REASONS.  VIEW IT HERE. 

My younger son sent this ad to me this afternoon.  It really is something, isn’t it?  As I write this I’m listening, on MSNBC, to the mean-spirited, spiteful stump speech that now identifies John McCain.  What a difference.   

Then, the much-admired Liza Sabater at Culture Kitchen posted this and tweeted to be sure we’d all see it.  Since we don’t always travel in the same corners of the blogosphere I’m sharing it with you here.

I keep thinking there must be a catch someplace but I hope she’s right – that it’s part of the impact of what we hope will be the political climate of the next four years.  Respect breeds respect. 
Michelle Obama wrote about it on BlogHer. 

Joe_trippi_big_2 She also reminded that there’s only a week left.  With that in mind, today I went to hear Joe Trippi speak with Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of NDN – mostly talking as if the election were over but so interesting about what would/could happen.  My favorite fact:  You know those Obama-produced videos on YouTube (like the one I’ve posted here)?  TechPresident found that people have watched 14.5 million hours worth!  Think what that would cost if you had to buy the time: somewhere around 46 to 47 million dollars, according to Trippi.  And that doesn’t even count citizen/voter-created videos that voters have watched.  Obama got free, on YouTube, views worth the equivalent of half of McCain’s entire federal campaign budget.  And he got it because he, and his team, have figured out how to use the web.

To Trippi, Obama is a real 21st Century candidate and has built relationships with supporters unlike any ever before.  It’s their campaign too.  I’ve always been enamored of the concept of "taking ownership."  Back when I worked at iVillage in its early days the message boards helped to create communities of women who saw the site as theirs, and helped iVillage become the dominant destination for women online.  They were contributing to the content, and its home became their home.  That’s what is happening, says Trippi, with Obama.  All those volunteers, all those canvassers and phone bankers and sign painters and outreach workers – and all the open conference calls and two-way communication created a new kind of electorate.  Think about this – from Orson Scott Card, author of the beloved Ender’s Game.

Those deep hungers for human connection, for the ability to remake ourselves, for a sense of control over our lives and reputations – those are the senses that the web will speak to does a remarkable job of feeding these senses, despite the relatively primitive technology and laughably low quality of most Web offerings, that people sign on and keep signing on.  They aren’t there for the content.  They’re there for each other.  Trapped in an apartment building or suburban neighborhood of strangers, they come to the Web to find their tribe.

Orson Scott Card in Yahoo Internet Life – December 2000 

What says it better than that?   

PROBABLY THE WORST CAMPAIGN (OR ANY OTHER) INTERVIEW I’VE EVER SEEN!

Myrna the Minx of Reno and Its Discontents found this.  It’s a mortifying, cringe-inducing and heartbreaking example of what has happened to much of local news.  How do we ever put the genie who creates this kind of television back in the bottle?  I dare you to watch it to the end without raising your blood pressure.

EMERGENCY! REPUBLICAN VOTER TAMPERING: COULD BARACK OBAMA SEE MCCAIN and PALIN STEAL THE ELECTION ? OH – AND A CHANCE FOR LAWYERS TO DO SOMETHING REALLY GOOD

Rolling_stone_cover_2Could a vast network of voter challenges (here’s help), especially toward young, newly registered and African-American voters (purges of voter rolls, craven voter challenges and other tough-to-prove but disruptive tactics) reduce votes for Barack Obama and endanger a fair election?  Despite their efforts to tar Obama-related registration efforts, it appears that the truly dangerous activities — and those most likely to tip this election away from what appears to be the public will — are emerging from Republican operations.  For example, on Super Tuesday in Las Vegas, "nearly 20% of the county’s voters were absent from the rolls."  As one voting rights expert declared:

I don’t think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights
attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for
impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are
turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to
the GOP in half a dozen states.

There are several "games" and they’re tough to control because they come from so many different points of origin.  Robert Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone,  describe in horrifying detail (and no this is not hyperbole… it really is horrifying), how these vulnerabilities could play out.   You can check on violations in your state here.   Their account of the basics from across the U.S.:

  1. Obstructing voter registration drives:  stringent and unreasonable state laws have intimidated many registration efforts, including those of the non-partisan League of Women Voters.  Oh – and in Florida they’ve ignored the law that food stamp recipients be offered registration opportunities when they apply for benefits.  Those registrations, 120,000 during Clinton, are just 10,000 today.
  2. "Perfect matches"  Suppose I signed my voter registration form "Cynthia K. Samuels" and my driver’s license "Cynthia Samuels."  That’s not a perfect match and in some states I could be disqualified.
  3. Purging legitimate voters from the rolls: "All told, states reported scrubbing at least 10 million voters
    from their rolls on questionable grounds between 2004 and 2006.
    Colorado holds the record: Donetta Davidson, the Republican
    secretary of state, and her GOP successor oversaw the elimination
    of nearly one of every six of their state’s voters.    "  The toughest thing about this one is that you don’t find out you’ve been purged until you get to the polling place, and then it’s tough to get help.  It is wise for voters to check their status with their local election officials in advance of election day,
  4. Requiring "unnecessary" voter IDs:  Young and minority voters (more often Obama voters), according to Kennedy and Palast, often do not have either driver’s licenses or state-issued IDs.  Without them, their legitimacy is often questioned.
  5. "Spoiled" ballots:  Blank spaces, tears that make the ballot tough for voting machines to count, or weird little extra marks can disqualify a voter.  Since minority and less-affluent neighborhoods get the crumbiest, oldest voting machines, they are disproportionately affected by this factor.
  6. Problems with provisional ballots:  If our voter gets to the polls, and is challenged, federal law requires that, rather than being turned away, the challenged voter be given a "provisional" ballot – one that is supposed to be counted once the voter has been determined to be legitimate.  HOWEVER there’s no way to track them – or to be sure they ever entered the vote count. In 2004, according to Rolling Stone, a third of all provisional ballots – maybe as many as a million – were thrown out.

In addition to the Rolling Stone piece, take a look at Salon’s review of hot spots.  For example:

Voter suppression can be difficult to prove. Suppression tactics —
anything from purging voter rolls under suspicious circumstances to
using various justifications to question the eligibility of potential
voters — are often the product of legal gray areas being exploited at
the hands of local partisan officials. To date, no one has presented
evidence of any nationally organized effort by the Republican Party to
suppress Democratic votes. But there is little doubt that at local and
regional levels — in some potentially critical states on the electoral
map — there has been dubious activity that could result in the
disenfranchisement of voters who would likely punch the ballot for
Barack Obama.

This has happened before – and in many ways the Federal law passed in response to the 2000 election debacle makes it easier.  Despite the new commitment in both the young and minority communities, local officials can challenge and prevent election day votes that may never be recovered.  The young, the black and the poor are most likely to be affected – and that, of course, means, largely, potential Democratic voters, usually challenged in ways very difficult to recover.  There is, however, a group called Election Protection providing resources all over the country.  Not much we civilians can do – but if you are an attorney or law student or paralegal, please sign up to help .  Your help on election day could count at least as much as — and in battleground states maybe more than — your vote.
 

FOR THE RECORD: POWELL ENDORSES OBAMA, PALIN YUKS IT UP, THAT RED-BAITING CONGRESSLADY FROM MINNESOTA

Between cooking for holidays, playing hooky at a pumpkin farm with friends and their kids, and work, I’m late writing about this, but it’s such an event that it felt unseemly not to acknowledge it.  Colin Powell is highly regarded, and if you wonder why just listen to the interview with him on the sidewalk outside Meet the Press.  Thoughtful, civil and committed, he related a broad and sometimes moving inventory of the reasons behind his decision.   In addition to this sidewalk news conference, here’s a bit of the statement on Meet the Press itself.  (skip it if you saw it – 3 graphs down) 

"In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn’t have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had. And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He’s crossing lines–ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He’s thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

And I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that’s inappropriate."

 

It’s great that he’s saying it, but it’s also a bit pathetic that it takes a former general and secretary of state to open his mouth and say "cut it out."   I saw that one blogger – and I’m so sorry that I don’t recall who, ran a bit of the Army McCarthy hearings along with this:

Hard to believe that people in America still sound like that, isn’t it?  Back to the Fifties.
It’s this kind of talk that led Secretary Powell to speak as he did today; it’s this kind of talk that has been part of this campaign  for some time.

And Sarah on SNL?  She was funny and a good sport; it humanized and demystified her as a threat.  Good for her, I guess, but she is a threat and she is scary and she says hateful, vicious and provocative things and none of that was apparent in this image-cleansing performance.  It troubles me because the threat of her is in her firm position in the far-right, the scary, nutty, closed-ranks "base" that gets people to yell "Kill him" and "off with his head" and "terrorist" like a citizen in 1984.  She lies, she uses half-truths to build anger and hatred and code words that give people embarrassed to vote against a black man an excuse to do so.  To turn her into a "way hotter in person" cheerleader with a sense of humor is a dangerous, dangerous thing to do.  Rehab by comedy.

My biggest fear right now though, as someone who fears deeply for a McCain-led nation, is what Obama calls "remember New Hampshire."  People for whom voting is a tough logistical effort, or who are waiting in lines that are too long, or who are kind of committed but might decide things are ok without them — that these people won’t vote – will let things falter on overconfidence.   I hope that we all remember that as cute as Sarah Palin might have been, the issues that drove Secretary Powell to do what he did are the issues that will determine the rest of our lives, and those of our children — and those of our country and the world that is watching so intensely to see what we will do.

KEEPING OUR EYES ON THE PRIZE: HEALTH CARE, EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC SECURITY: THIS IS A LIFE OR DEATH ELECTION

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It’s fun to write about politics; this blog has always been about many things but has pretty much been all politics all the time for the past three months.  Even so, once in a while all that handicapping and general outrage and idealism and hope crashes smack into the basic realities of what’s at stake here. 

For example, just this month:

  • I had a medical test which costs money, (and which not all insurance companies cover,) that found and dealt with something that was not important today but, if not detected, could someday have been way more important than I even want to think about.
  • A friend I really admire was diagnosed with Lupus – costly and complicated to treat.
  • Another friend’s child was born a month premature, miles away from home during a vacation.  After some very scary post-delivery bleeding, she and her baby are fine now.  Their health insurance guaranteed easy access to capable, coordinated care.
  • A story appeared, in various forms in several papers, reporting "Many Cancer Patients Forgo Health Care Due to Soaring Cost of Medication" and including these other facts:

"25 percent of families with a cancer patient spent their lifetime savings for the treatment.  The same survey said 10% of these families had to forego some basic needs like food, heat and housing" and

"20% of Americans have big problems paying their medical bills."

  • Another, in newspapers and Scientific American, reported that "the United States has slipped from 24th to 29th in infant mortality rates in developed countries," meaning that 28 "first world" countries are doing better than we are in keeping newborn infants alive.

This is the reality in our country today.  And that’s just one issue in just one month. The same is true for education, climate change and our basic civil rights.  And that doesn’t count Iraq, Guantanamo, candidates who want to ban books, threatened legal access to contraception and other women’s rights issues, the growing income gap and the current terrifying economic crises.

I know you know this.  As my rabbi likes to say, "I’m talking to myself here" but as we monitor polls and the endless talk show and newscast chatter, we need to remember.  As I was awakened by a very lovely nurse offering me cranberry juice, with a view of colorful fall leaves on the trees outside the window of a clean, well-lit recovery room, the first thing that came into my mind was how lucky I was to be there.  This election is about winners and losers and parties in control, yes.  But even more, this time, it’s life and death.

Oh, and if you want to get upset about the campaign itself anyway, try this.