Well, it's not all bad–anytime there is as much evidence of criminal activity as there is against people like Cheney and Gonzales, I'm happy to see them get indicted for anything.  Hell, Al Capone had to be brought down on tax evasion charges.  But as you can see from the screencap attached to this post (check out the original article on CNN.com from earlier today), Cheney and Gonzales are being:

indicted on separate charges related to alleged prisoner abuse in federal detention centers, Willacy County, Texas, District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra told CNN Tuesday.

The indictment stems from Cheney's investment in the Vanguard Group –
an investment management company that reportedly has interests in the
prison companies in charge of the detention centers, according to The
Associated Press. It also charges Gonzales halted an investigation into abuse at the detention centers while he was attorney general.

NICE.  Well, not the best thing that could happen to two men who will hopefully be remembered as two of the luckiest horrible men to live in modern times.  Not Hitler-level-horribleness, but almost as amoral.  So, yay Willacy County, Texas, District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra!!  Take these bastards on and please don't let this be a reason for the next AG to not bring Cheney and Gonzales up on all sorts of other charges, too–at the very least these guys should be put on trial for stuff like domestic wiretapping and all that fun enemy combatant stuff.

Oh and can I just say that "Juan Angel Guerra" is one of the coolest names I've ever heard?  Translated into American, that's "John Angel War."

Seriously cool name.

Posted by email from thepete’s posterous

Mayank Dhingra, one of the guys behind Kwippy.com, asked me to put together a post that encapsulated my thoughts on Barack Obama as president of the USA and as someone who impacts the rest of the world. He was kind enough to post it on his blog:

Let the change begin.

After living in America for 8 years under the rule of George W. Bush, it’s funny to find myself trying to be hopeful. I keep having to remind myself of the amazing thing we Americans did the other day. A great many of us were expecting a neck-and-neck battle to last for days or even weeks, but in the end, American voters really, reeeeally wanted change right now. Perhaps, once Bush has abdicated the Oval Office and Obama takes his oath, I’ll have an easier time accepting that things have changed.

But what does change really mean to the US and to world?

Check out the rest of my piece over at Mayank’s blog.

Sorry about the lack of blog posts since Tuesday on the topic of voting irregularities–I needed a couple days off after all the election fun. I still have to do my election recap-post and talk about a few things I got wrong. It’s nice being wrong once in a while :) But that’s for another post. Here come the latest stories of irregularities, most of them from BradBlog.com. I did do find a few non-BradBlog-based stories that I found actually a little disturbing. Let’s get to those first:

Voting Problems Minimal on Election Day
For all of the worrying over voter fraud, voter suppression, and voting machine meltdowns, this year’s presidential election went surprisingly smoothly. That’s not to say that there weren’t any problems, but that simply problems weren’t widespread or severe enough to cause any doubt about the winner of the election.
www.switched.com/2008/11/07/voting-problems-minimal-this-election-day/
Switched.com is some sort of gadget blog–I’ve never heard of them before today, but they’re part of AOL’s network of blogs, so they’ve got to be reasonably accurate, I suppose. Sadly, this post, while factually accurate plays down the very problems it reports in the first paragraph of the post (excerpted above). So, voting problems not that big of deal? Then why are you covering them? I love this odd contradiction–there’s no story here, they just wanted to let us know that there was no story. Too bad there is a story here. And not everything is about the presidential races. Nice of the post to admit that there is still work to be done, though. Funny how he fails to mention the undecided races still out and about.

Again, this is about more than just the president.

Recount Reverses Results in Kent County District 29 Race
State Rep. Pamela Thornburg, a Republican lawmaker from Hartly who thought she lost her District 29 seat on election night, was told Thursday evening that she won.

Wright also noted that it seems that the problem with the scanners only occurred in the District 29 race and not with any other districts in the state.
www.wboc.com/Global/story.asp?S=9310325
See? It’s not just presidential elections that can suffer because of ballot machines gone screwy–and you should note that this story is about optical scanners–not touchscreen computerized voting. This is about the machine that scans the ballots and counts the votes. Yeah–if this kind of machine is fallible, can I just ask what’s so wrong with hiring people to do this counting? Sure, humans are fallible, too, but hiring people to count creates jobs and then we can hire an extra couple people to recount what the counters just counted. Sure, it will take longer, but that’s OK. As I’ve said before, I think our democracy is worth it.

Officials: State Experienced a Few Glitches on Election Day
Secretary of State’s Office reports county elections officials experienced no more problems than usual on Election Day despite worries about “vote flipping” on touch-screen voting machines.
www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=46508
Wow, start your article up with a blurb like that and your readers won’t keep reading! Why should they if there were “no more problems than usual”? And what the heck does that even mean? “no more problems than usual”? So, usually votes don’t get counted and it’s cool? No big deal? What about in tight races like the Franken/Coleman race in Minnesota? Coleman is ahead of Franken by 239 votes. Certainly the usual number of votes uncounted in an election wouldn’t matter in a case like that, would it?

RNC May Challenge Integrity of ‘Computerized Voting’
On Tuesday, Forensicon, a Chicago computer forensic company, said that it was contacted last week by a security firm last week to assist the Republic National Committee (RNC) in challenging cases of “computerized voter fraud.”

The move seems to indicate a future move by the RNC to challenge certain voting results, in some contradiction to past RNC actions regarding electronic voting, which includes recent legal actions in Pennsylvania.
www.pubrecord.org/component/content/470.html?task=view
This is interesting considering that the more prominent electronic ballot machine companies are owned by Republicans. The head guy in charge of Diebold, back in 2004, got in trouble for actually admitting in a campaign fund-raising letter that he was determined to deliver Ohio to George W. Bush. Odds are he meant “by raising a lot of money” but it does seem like a bad idea to put it the way he did when you’re running a company that provides computerized ballot machines to a buttload of America.

‘Daily Voting News’ For November 05, 2008
As we suspected tabulation of ballots has revealed problems with voting systems from all of the vendors. Hillsborough Co Florida is rethinking their contract with Premier/Diebold for $6M after having big problems counting votes. Manatee Co Florida also had a problem with Premier. Palm Beach Co had bad memory cartridges from Sequoia. Counties in Pennsylvania and South Carolina had problems with their ES&S system. We also have a run-off for senator from Georgia and a recount for senator from Minnesota.
www.bradblog.com/?p=6639
The post goes on to touch on a HUGE number of problems from various corners of the US.

Al Franken’s Razor-Thin MN Senate Race Counted on Flawed Optical-Scan Systems
PLUS: Details on ‘What in the Hell Happened in Alaska’ and Georgia and Oregon…
www.bradblog.com/?p=6641
This is the story I touched on above–only this BradBlog post is a couple days old. And yep, those optical scan machines are the same kinds of devices that went wrong in the Kent County story above. The added fun here is that when Franken was still on Air America Radio, he was the only AAR host who didn’t want to talk about voting irregularities. Two words: eye ronic.

All Diebold Touch-Screen Systems Impounded by Judge in PA County
Straight-Party Ticket Votes Failed to Allow Voters to Review Names of Presidential Candidates Before Casting ‘Ballot’
Same Flawed, Hackable, Unverifiable Machines Being Used in GA Senate Race, Elsewhere…
www.bradblog.com/?p=6643
I’ll just take the first paragraph from the post since it explains things just right:

All 185 of the completely unverifiable Diebold touch-screen voting machines used in Northumberland County, PA’s election were ordered impounded by a judge Tuesday night after complaints from both the Republican and Democratic parties. Officials from both parties had filed requested action following reports from voters that straight-party ticket votes were not showing voters the names of their selection for President on the summary screen near the end of the 100% faith-based touch-screen voting process.

Weeeee…?

SOMETHING SMELLS VERY FISHY IN ALASKA
Turnout Rate Reported as Lowest Ever in State, Down 11% From ‘04 Even With Both Palin and Obama on the Ballot
Hanging in the Balance in the Diebold State: Felon Ted Stevens’ U.S. Senate Race, Corrupt Don Young’s House Race & Much More…
www.bradblog.com/?p=6644
Check out this excerpt:

In Alaska, more people voted for George W. Bush in 2004 than for Sarah Palin on Tuesday despite an identical 61-36 margin of victory. Yes. Only four years ago 54,304 Alaskans got off their sofas and voted for Bush, but decided to sit home and not vote for Palin in 2008.

In turn, I have to ignore the 30,520 Alaskans who felt progressive enough in 2004 to vote for John Kerry, but weren’t inspired enough to get out and vote for Barack Obama.

It goes on, too–calling this “fishy” is understating it seriously. I’m going to try and keep an eye on this story–it seems like Alaskans got seriously shafted here.

BradBlog.com is the single best place to learn about election irregularities. Don’t wait for me to cover them–just head over there!

Those are all the stories I have for now. I’m sure there will be more.

So, I hope you have a good idea of why voting irregularities are still important things to pay attention to. In a presidential election like this one, with a massive landslide, it’s easy to see what the intent of voting Americans is. But in tighter races where every last vote counts, we need to have a system that does a much better, and much more reliable, job of counting votes.

Thanks for reading! Please pass this on to others!

QUICK NOTE:

IN CASE YOU HAD TROUBLE VOTING ON ANYTHING YESTERDAY, PLEASE CALL ONE OF THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS: 877-GOCNN-08, 866-OUR-VOTE, 866-MYVOTE1 and then make sure to tell others about your experience!

OK, now, on with the post!

Wow, well, as I’ve already said, it’s great that Obama won, but we have a HUGE landslide to thank for that. If 7 million American voters weren’t so motivated to demand change, we’d be having a different conversation right now. However, the conversation about our very fallible election system still needs to be had.

What happens in 2010 or hell, even today with a few races still left undecided at this point? It seems like Al Franken is pretty close to losing or winning (more on this in a bit) and Prop 8, out in California, is still up in the air (more on this, too). The point is, when things are tight–when you have either two lame candidates (as in 2004) or two really good ones, the American people often end up splitting right down the middle. This means that every last vote needs to be counted–especially yours! And you know who I’m referring to–YOU–every damn YOU out there deserves to have a vote that is counted.

All that given, let’s have a look at some headlines and links to stories about voting irregularities that I’ve found at a couple of my favorite web-based digs:

Felony Disenfranchisement and the Right to Vote: Democracy Now!’s Mike Kimber Casts a Ballot for the First Time
As tens of millions head to the polls today, we take a look at the issue of felony disenfranchisement, the practice by state governments of barring people convicted of a felony from voting, even after they have served their time. What many don’t realize is that while a few states have permanent felony disenfranchisement laws, many allow those with a felony record to eventually rejoin the voter rolls. Democracy Now!’s Mike Kimber discusses his experience casting a ballot for the first time in his life after realizing he was allowed to vote in New York.
www.democracynow.org/2008/11/4/felony_disenfranchisement_and_the_right_to
I took a law class in high school that taught us that when you are convicted of a crime all of your rights go out the window–including the right to vote. Apparently, that’s not true in many states. It’s this very gray area that often ends up being a source of disenfranchisement for voters around the country. If you have a criminal record, don’t assume you have no voice!

50,000 Report Voting Problems
Overall, more than 50,000 voters called the Election Protection hotline Tuesday to report problems at the voting polls.
www.democracynow.org/2008/11/5/headlines#6
This is just DN reporting on the same story 866ourvote.org reported on yesterday (I reported on it, too!).

FEENEY FLAMES OUT
FL-24 Congressman, Election Integrity Enemy, Defeated
www.bradblog.com/?p=6628
This is a very important (and GREAT) thing to note, so here’s a longer excerpt from this post at BradBlog.com:

Congressman Tom Feeney, rated by nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (C.R.E.W.) as one of the “most corrupt members of Congress” for three years straight, has been defeated in Florida’s 24th district. Regular Brad Blog readers know Feeney as the man who allegedly asked computer programmer Clint Curtis to write vote-flipping software in 2000 and escaped all accountability in an investigation stacked with Jeb Bush loyalists.

Yeah, pretty crazy, huh? What’s hilarious is that Curtis ran against Feeney for his seat and lost. GEE, I wonder how THAT HAPPENED! (Could it be the software Curtis wrote for ya, Tom?) Oh, and it’s not “allegedly” since Curtis testified under oath that Feeney asked him to make the vote-flipping software–Curtis even passed a polygraph.

Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap
Glitches, Problems and Irregularities, Oh, My
Obama Won, But that Doesn’t Fix Our Broken Electoral System
www.bradblog.com/?p=6631
This post at BradBlog.com (written by BB guest-blogger Jim Cirile) covers reports of voting irregularities from all over the damn place: Vermont, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Iowa, Florida, and California. These reports cover everything from screwy ballots, to Republicans harassing voters, to Ink-A-Vote “machines” being stolen in Los Angeles.

Franken Good Enough, Smart Enough
And Gosh Darn It, About Half the People Like Him
UPDATE: AP ‘UNCALLS’ RACE, NOW ‘TOO CLOSE TO CALL’, WILL TRIGGER AUTOMATIC RECOUNT…
www.bradblog.com/?p=6634
So, remember how comedian Al Franken was running for office in one of those “real” America states? Well, in the senate race between Franken and Norm Coleman in Minnesota is apparently in a dead heat. The AP actually reported that Franken had lost, but because he had lost by less than half of a percentage point, by law, a recount must now be done–so they un-reported the Franken loss. This is a classic example of why our election system needs to be solid. In cases like this, where it’s neck and neck, it is excruciatingly obvious why every last vote matters.

How’s this for ironic:

VIDEO: Actor Tim Robbins Denied Right to Vote
Seeks Judge’s Order to be Returned to Roll After Being Purged in NY…
www.bradblog.com/?p=6636
Yep! After being Mr. Super-Hyper-Democrat-Liberal-Activisty-Guy, Tim Robbins gets purged incorrectly from the voter rolls. This is just going to make us hate him more because he is right when he whines about how our vote being precious and that anyone of us could fall prey to this kind of disenfranchisement. Hell, I got disenfranchised back during the primaries in February. If this citizen blogger (yours truly) can be a victim and so can that big Hollywood-liberal-elite-espresso-man, how do you know that YOU are safe?

Ah, fear-mongering is fun! Too bad it’s justified…

And finally, the most depressing story of the day, Prop 8 has yet to LOSE.

California’s Prop 8: Too Close To Call!
While the Yes on 8 Hate Mongers Declare Victory, No on 8 Campaign Understands Need to Wait For Complete Vote Count
Marriage Rights Hang in the Balance
www.bradblog.com/?p=6637
This is a HUGE deal because it’s effectively a ban on gay marriage, so here’s an excerpt from that post at BradBlog.com:

California’s proposition 8 currently has more “yes” (to discrimination) votes than “no” votes tallied, 52.2% to 47.8%, according to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s website. This represents a difference of 434,830 votes. But according to the No on 8 campaign, three to four million votes remain uncounted.

Gotta love that, man. I wish I had known about Prop 8 sooner or I would have added that to my mix of topics here at ThePete.Com. You can bet I’ll be blogging on it soon.

Regardless, this is a great example of why every vote counts. If this law fails, gays across the state of California will still be able to get married. If it passes, gays across California will NOT be legally recognized by the state as being in a spiritual/domestic partnership with another person. Regardless of which side of this issue you fall, isn’t it obvious how important it is to count all the votes?

Of course, laws should be about protecting rights, not removing them.

Just my 2¥, as always!

Wow, things have kind of gotten busy. I’ll just get straight to the headlines and links in the order in which I find them in my browser tabs:

Votes being tallied in Williamson County
Williamson County election report error
WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) - Williamson County Elections is reporting an error that could affect the outcome of the election. An error in electronic poll books for Election Day means some voters got the wrong ballots. There are reportedly 16 precincts impacted so far.
www.kxan.com/dpp/home/Williamson_County_election_report_error

City Voters Face Long Lines, Great Stakes
The city expects a record voting turnout today, as voters elect a new president and will determine which political party will dominate the State Senate.

Another voter, who identified herself as Michelle from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, e-mailed NY1 to say that she arrived at the poll at 6:15 a.m., waited 45 minutes and then encountered faulty voting booths.
www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/88343/city-voters-face-long-lines–great-stakes/Default.aspx

Over 1,000 calls from Georgia
As of 12 p.m., Georgia Election Protection has received 1,034 phone calls from voters. The most common problems are issues with the registration rolls - such as voters being told they are not on the rolls - and polling place problems.
blog.ourvotelive.org/?p=274

50,000 calls to Election Protection
We just passed a milestone: today alone, 50,000 voters have called the Election Protection hotlineWe are receiving many reports from frustrated Ohio voters who have been inexplicably dropped from the lists of registered voters.

after voting from same address for years, they suddenly have disappeared from the list at polls
they received a voter registration card/notice of registration and precinct, as recently as this fall — yet are not on the poll registry
they are on the statewide database (DB) but not on the poll registry
www.866ourvote.org/newsroom/news?id=0154
That sounds seriously shady…

Breaking news from Georgia: Federal observers sent to monitor controversy over college student registrations
Election Protection is working in Bleckley County, Georgia to ensure that students at Middle Georgia College are able to vote today after voting officials apparently extended, then suddenly withdrew, a deadline that would have ensured students were registered in time to use a regular ballot.

The controversy stems from a registration drive by the Obama campaign at the college, where 90% of the students are African-American.
www.866ourvote.org/newsroom/news?id=0149

And here are a couple more stories from BradBlog:

VA: ‘Massive’ Machine Malfunctions, Illegal Provisionals, Last Minute Pollsite Moves ‘Plague’ Voters
Groups Calls For Extended Voting Hours Due to Voters Turned Away from Polls
Virginia Tech Students Sent Miles to Remote Location to Vote…
www.bradblog.com/?p=6622
Wow–this one is a big post. Seems like Virginia is a mess–scores of folks are being turned away from polling places due dead ballot machines and students at Virginia Tech are apparently getting maps that direct them away from their polling place.

AR: Pre-Election Tests Not Performed Correctly on Touch-Screens, Not Enough Paper Ballots, Voting Delayed
Voting Machines were not zeroed out after testing leaving votes on them
www.bradblog.com/?p=6623
YAY, MORE INCOMPETENT ELECTION OFFICIALS!

OK, that’s all for now. Sheesh…

It’s approaching late morning here in the east and CNN has yet to change their mobile news page to reflect any updates in the polls. COME ON, CNN–we already know Dixville Notch went to Obama–why not reflect that in your electorals count???? ;) Still, seems stupid of CNN to just leave it at “0%” for 10 hours.

OK, so here’s what’s up–I was up. That is, I was up until 3am last night trying to work out and implement a way for me to deliver streaming video to my site without wasting space with a giant Flash player that does nothing when I’m not streaming live. And guess what! I pulled it off! The baby logo on my site is now a Flash player in itself that will just display a short movie of the baby face over and over but will be replaced once I start streaming live video–pretty sweet, huh?

So, I wicked overslept, and I apologize. Here’s what I’ve missed:

Things actually do seem a little calm right now. The Black Box Voting forums field-report section is fairly quiet (here: www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/73.html?1225811945 ) and BradBlog.com hasn’t updated since last night. TheMSM isn’t saying much (though that proves nothing) beyond talking about long lines in some areas. But aside from that, not much going on. I’m going to go to jump in the shower real quick and then go vote, myself. I’ll be streaming LIVE from inside the booth. So watch for it!!

All day I’ll be watching broadcast TV and CNN’s stream online while hitting as many news sources I can find watching for voting irregularity stories. Around 6pm, I’ll be breaking from coverage and heading down to Times Square–I’ll be on a short quest for free coffee from Starbucks, a free donut from Dunkin Donuts, and free ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s–though if the lines are long I’ll just stick to Starbucks where I’ll use their wifi to liveblog from. At 7pm I’ll be watching DemocracyNow.org until 10pm when a special hour-long Daily Show will be broadcast on one of the giant screens in Times Square. I’ll be live streaming during that, too.

OK, better get the day underway now that I’ve overslept!! :P

In the meantime, check out the video TheWife shot this morning as she voted:

I can’t believe the day is finally here! More soon!

OK, in a nutshell, with the election a day away, here’s what you should do if anything goes wrong with your vote or if you see something weird when you vote:

1) Shoot video of as much as you feel comfortable with, check out VideoTheVote.org to find links on how legal it is to shoot in your polling place.
2) Call one of the following:

877-GOCNN-08
866-OUR-VOTE
866-MYVOTE1

The above numbers are also listed at the top of my right sidebar on every page of the blog at ThePete.Com.

3) Go to all or one or all of the below sites and describe your experience voting:

bbvforums.org
866ourvote.org
Bradblog.com

4) If you did shoot video and witnessed anything but a smooth process (voting problems, long lines, machine breakdowns, etc), please visit VideoTheVote.org and upload your video! If you didn’t shoot video, check out the site anyway and see if it jogs your memory of anything that you may not have realized was wrong (this happened to me during the primary vote).

5) Do you MicroBlog? Do you use Twitter.com, Jaiku.com, Kwippy.com, Rejaw.com, etc, to express yourself? Be sure to post about your voting experience but make sure to include correct hashtags for your issue:

* #votereport
* #EP{two-letter state code} - e.g. EPNY for New York, EPOH for Ohio (for serious legal issues only)
* #machine - use this tag to signal a problem with a voting machine
* #registration - use this tag to signal problems with the registration process, people being turned away for paperwok reasons
* #wait:time - use this tag to signal a long wait. Add a colon and the wait time in minutes - e.g. #wait:30 for half an hour, #wait:120 for two hours

(source NotMyGal.com is.gd/4oiS )

A hashtag is a word preceded by a “#” that search engines use to spot microblog posts about specific topics. You can also check out TwitterVoteReport.com to read Tweets about the vote from around the country.

6) BLOG ABOUT IT. Don’t have a blog? Why not start one? Don’t want to start one? Please comment here, at ThePete.Com, or at some other blog that talks about voting problems–preferably BradBlog.com

For news about voting irregularities, don’t trust the mainstream news! They were wrong about the 2004 election so it’s possible they’ll be wrong again. Just go to BradBlog.com for news on election irregularities or just come here. I’ll be liveblogging election irregularity news all day (as I’m sure Brad Friedman will be at the BradBlog).