Lawsuits, Machine Malfunctions and Missing Absentee Ballots
Among Voting Rights Issues Facing Jittery Election
Court Backs Penn. Voter Rights Suit on Electronic Machines
Arrest of Neo-Nazis in Obama Assassination Plot
a Reminder of Enduring White Supremacist Culture in US
Is a potential Barack Obama presidency bringing white supremacist subculture out of the shadows? Following the arrest of two neo-Nazis for plotting to assassinate Obama, we speak to investigative journalist James Ridgeway, author of Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads and the Rise of a New White Culture.
(continued... includes rush transcript)
Poll: 59% of Early Voters Backing Obama
Election 2008
Five-Hour Election Night Special
and Two-Hour “Morning After” Special
* November 4th
7 PM- 12 AM ET
* November 5th
8 AM- 10 AM ET
Click for more information
Urban legend: Americans voted for change in 2006 by Mark Yannone
Too busy to vote
In reality most Americans were doing something else on election day. In fact, of the fraction who are eligible to vote, only about 39.7 percent did so. The other 124 million Americans who were eligible to vote had something better to do.
Can Dems Reclaim the South? (Excerpted)
Once Solidly GOP, Virginia and NC Emerging as Battleground States
What we’re seeing is a train wreck, where an easily anticipated record turnout across the South, people turning out in record numbers, registering in record numbers, but for some reason, it seems election officials in many of these key Southern states have still been unprepared for the deluge of voters.
This was a reform that a lot of people really pushed for, because they were worried about the long lines. Some people may remember, in 2004, there was a lot of speculation, and some pretty hard evidence, that in a state like Ohio, long lines could have really made the difference.
One estimate has it that up to 129,000 voters in the state of Ohio just walked away, because the lines were too long in places like Cleveland and other major metro areas. And that was a state that’s decided by a few tens of thousand voters less than that. So, this is a sort of thing that can change an election. People don’t understand that long lines and long waits, that’s a voting rights issue.
In Florida in 2005, a Republican-controlled legislature pushed through legislation limiting the number of early voting sites and the hours that they could operate in that state. And a lot of people are saying that that is the reason why we’re seeing the long lines today. So this is a question of policy.
You can avoid these kind of problems if you have the right policy in place to accommodate the voters. And that’s why it took an executive order, the governor of Florida, Crist, Charlie Crist, saying it was a state of emergency; you needed that to change it in the state of Florida. And now you’re looking at other states.
The same issue is happening in Georgia. And right now the secretary of state and the governor are saying that—they’re throwing their hands up in the air and saying they can’t do anything.
--Chris Kromm, Executive Director of the Institute for Southern Studies and publisher of the journal Southern Exposure.
He writes for the blog Facing South
Feeding the Red Meat of Hate
Republicans Trying to Block Votes 9.19.8
Vote Rigging,Suppression, Purging,Manipulation
