The great patriots comprising Occupy Wall Street demonstrations across the nation hardly need my input on the “demands” they continue to try and narrow down and achieve consensus on. I’m quite sure they’ve got more than enough folks out there making their case for all manner of “demands” given the past 30 years (or more) of utter neglect, corruption and abuse the good citizens of this nation have otherwise been forced — up until now — to accept as “politics as usual.”
Nonetheless, I’ve been meaning to ring in on this (and did so recently in a brief comment), so perhaps I should do so quickly here, where it’s likely to catch a few more Occupied eyeballs.
I offer the following simple “demand” for consideration by OWS, as this one likely underscores almost every other. Or, at least, without it, all other demands may ultimately be rendered moot.
Here it is. One demand that seems simple enough — and is as non-partisan as can — for your consideration:
Please help spread this to the Occupiers if you agree its important. For example, Tweet it (or a link to this article) like mad (with #ows in the text), and/or spread it via Facebook and/or print it out and take it to a General Assembly at an Occupation near you!
Thanks!
YES! I am having so much fun posting this to Occupy sites! Thanks!
Remember, post easily get lost in Facebook so many post about this will be great and help reinforce the message.
“Every U.S. citizen 18 years of age or older who wishes to vote, gets to vote. Period. Those votes, on hand-marked paper ballots, will be counted publicly, by hand, on Election Night, at the precinct, in front of all observers and video cameras”
Indeed!
I completely agree, Brad and will share this liberally.
Thanks for helping to spread the word guys! And hope you’ll share at dKos, GreyDog! Thanks in advance!!!
Prof. Robert Jensen to MSM at Occupy Austin teach-in:
He later adds,
Right on Brad! Here’s my Occupy The WORLD piece…
Crux of the Problems
WHOLE WORLD
take a good hard look at
forces applied to all.
Underneath and within governments
using violence, even subtle.
Domination when professing
DEMOCRACY.
Where’s sunshine laws for
WORLD BANKING BOOKS?
Banks come clean.
ENERGY flow
for the GOOD OF ALL
not just 1%.
Keep the critical mass uniting. No more secret government books either!
All the OWS supporters should consider that on election day Occupiers across the nation should organize to bring to a hault ALL VOTING in all the STATES that have passed draconian “Neo JIM CROWE” state legislation designed to suppress the vote of American Citizens. We have a year to organize, locate primarily Republican district voting sites, block access with family cars, and people should accend and occupy until we are allowed to vote; AND NOT ALLOW ANYONE TO VOTE, until such time. If Republicans are legislating us out of the voting process, we will prevent them from voting as well. OCCUPY VOTING BOOTH.
HA HA! GOOD ONE BRAD!!! The right to vote! Ha!
You know the 17th and 14th Amendments regulate the Right to a privilege don’t you?
That is the whole point of your sordid (small “c” citizen) existence here on the WWW isn’t it?
The Kids are waking up Brad. Tunga will see to that if you won’t.
Voting, a privilege? Bite your Tunga!
Advocating a simplistic Luddite scheme — that has many problems — and not looking to see what can actually be done with technology today smacks of the same kind of unthinking, dogmatic and potentially manipulated behavior that Brad Blog often rails against.
Tunga, “the Right to a privilege”? How does your head not implode from cognitive dissonance?
I wish you’d get off this insistence on hand counting the paper ballots at the polls. As wonderful as that would be, It is impractical and will not be adopted widely, if at all.
As a more practical method, I wish you’d work for good statistical audits of the machine counted paper ballots.
OWA’s Grandparents – the right to vote:
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/history-right-vote
So, in the mind of Please Stop @10, Democracy’s Gold Standard — hand-marked, paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at each precinct on Election Night, as they now do in many New Hampshire towns — is “a simplistic Luddite scheme?”
Yeah, you’re right, Please Stop. Application of Democracy’s Gold Standard “has many problems” — at least for those who would prefer to game elections on 100% unverifiable e-voting systems.
“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” – Joseph Stalin
Oh, and Paul Stokes, you are mistaken when it comes to practicality. The New Hampshire towns that now hand-count paper ballots at the precinct level complete the task long before many of their machine-counting counterparts.
They wouldn’t let me share the link to your blog, but I copied this post for a Daily Kos diary: http://www.dailykos.com/blog/uid:20107
Also posted this in the FRIDAY READ at my blog: http://99getsmart.com/?p=731
And bradblog is feature in my article WANTED: ELECTION INTEGRITY @ http://99getsmart.com/?p=210
I frequent the OCCUPY livestreams and will post there as well. 🙂
I’snt that what we insist on, for verification of elections in other countries?
Would be to eliminate any kind of organizational money in U.S. Federal elections–including corporate, union and PAC money–and to instead fund U.S. elections using only Federal money and the contributions of individual citizens.
The main benefit would be that we could then elect legislators based on their ability to serve us rather thanon who has the most expensive information misrepresentations sytem paid for by corporate and institutional shills.
This should only cost about $5 Billion a year, and would probably save tens if not hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, since politicians could concentrate on deciding on which programs serve their constituents, instead of just voting for entitlements for their huge contributors.
Here’s a very good summary of five different constitutional or legislative remedies to the Citizens United decision.
Citizens United Remedies/Amendments
Clarification:
The BETTER Constitutional Amendment for reforming the election system, (from which we could then get legislators who would support verified voting legislation), would be:
Would be to eliminate any kind of organizational money in U.S. Federal elections–including corporate, union and PAC money–and to instead fund U.S. elections using only Federal money and the contributions of individual citizens.
This should only cost about $5 Billion a year, and would probably save tens if not hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, since politicians could concentrate on deciding on which programs serve their constituents, instead of just voting for entitlements for their huge contributors.
Here’s a very good summary of five different constitutional or legislative remedies to the Citizens United decision.
Citizens United Remedies/Amendments
Steve,
I absolutely agree. If you can get a small percentage of a jurisdiction’s electorate to sign a nomination petition, your campaign effort should be publicly funded. No other money should be allowed in the campaign.
I have no idea how you keep people from gaming this, but it has to be the starting point.
And let’s count the votes in a way that 99% of the population can trust.
Please Stop @ 10 said:
Really? I’ll bite. What are those “many problems”?
Um, you’re serious? You don’t think I’ve been “looking to see what can actually be done with technology today”? Seriously? Of course, I have. For about the last 10 years. Which is why I’m advocating the system mentioned in the original article above.
Actually, it’s becuase of the “potentially manipulated behavior” that I recommend the system mentioned above. But do tell me what I’m missing. Or you can just stop on by and drop useless turds into the punch bowl again.
Paul Stokes @ 12:
What’s impractical about it?
Of course, if you decide it “will not be adopted widely”, I’m sure it won’t be. Neither will restoring a fair tax structure that doesn’t widen the income gap and plunge our country into debt, neither will restoring our justice system so that it applies equally to all, neither will any of the things the OWS folks are demanding. So yes, by all means, don’t take your country back from the private corporate entitites that have stolen it from you. Because, after all, it won’t be adopted widely, if at all.
Why? They can be easily gamed and cost much more than hand-counted paper ballots. So why would we want to do such a thing?
GreyDog @ 15:
Thanks for posting it, but, um, what???
Whaddaya mean “they wouldn’t let me share the link to your blog”???
Please explain. Thanks!
Jim Buchanan @ 17:
Sorta. But not really. What we insist on (or, at least the Carter Center insists on, before they will agree to observe an election in some country) is that the system be standardized and open to observers — if not the full public.
Carter has said, however, that his center wouldn’t observe elections in the U.S. because they do not meet the standards they require for democracy in other countries.
Steve @ 18 & 19:
While I have no quibbles with what you are calling for, and agree its necessary, I wouldn’t call it “BETTER”, in that, even if you had it, you’d still need the system I’m calling for above in my recommended OWS “demand”.
An electoral system without corporate money is a must, but we still need to have a system of casting and counting ballots that the citizenry can actually participate in and fully oversee.
I posted the link to bradblog at the end of the diary. When I previewed the diary, a warning came up saying the link was not an approved and it instructed me to go back and edit, which I did.
I am not at all surprised that DailyKOS would not approve a link to BradBlog.
DailyKos has a long history of ignoring and denying the dangers of electronic election machines, despite the downright mathematically impossible and statistically improbable results they produce, and numerous US university studies that show that they can be easily rigged.
When Brad Friedman directly talked with DailyKOS found (and CIA-linked) Markos Moulitsas Zuniga about it, Markos stonewalled and denied the reality and legitimacy of the issue. In fact, one-time-fascist-sympathizing Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who suddenly positioned himself as a progressive, was downright insulting towards Brad Friedman.
Marcos’s hero is Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, though, it sure looks to me like his family paid to assassinate him. Find out more here:
http://truth-about-kos.blogspot.com/
GreyDog @ 26:
Um, WTF?! Have now tweeted @Markos as much right here. Let’s see what he says in response.
Thanks! (And feel free to ask the powers that be over there yourself WTF as well!)
While my website currently is being revised (for 2012 as an NPA candidate for Congress… former Dem Nominee in Central Fla. twice) I think that you’ll recall Brad conversations that we had several years ago when I was contest my election results in 2006 regarding this very issue because we found significant variance between what the official results said vs what the voters said.
I agreed to officially contest my election results was because the results found when we polled the people as to how they voted w/ very well constructed survey afadavits developed by Atty Mark Adams demonstrated a 14% flip of votes cast by voters for me but instead being tabulated for my opponent, Ginny Brown-Waite.
Since that time I have advocated for hand counting of paper ballots, while also working to restore the civil rights of ex- felons. I have a detailed policy on the issue of election reform which I developed based on my experience as a candidate.
Since any meaningful restoration of the civil rights of these citizens will never occur, I will revise my policy to include the tenet that unless you are incarcerated on election day or on felony probation concurrent with election day, you should be permitted to register to vote and cast your paper ballot to be hand counted by the public at the precinct where it was cast so long as you are a legal U.S. citizen. Mention of my election contest occurs on page 375 of Mark Crispin-Miller’s revised edition of “Fooled Again.” Thanks… But what took you so long? John Russell, Dade City, Fl.
Brad, I finally found another Google news search item other than BradBlog that mention Occupy Wall Street and Paper Ballots together:
http://www.hidesertstar.com/opinion/article_f5bfacce-0203-11e1-9757-001cc4c002e0.html
In Ohio, a vast majority of folk are planning to oust anti-union legislation on voting machines that awarded a second term to GWB43 . . . Are we sure that the voting machines are not programmed to wholesale ignore all ballots cast for repealing this law?
Richard Adlof @ 31:
The direct answer to your direct question, unfortunately, is: No.
That, of course, underscores why I posted this original article in the first place.
This comment on the fraudulent nature of Ohio’s elections is from one of the most prominent verified voting advocates in the country, who I will not name, since I didn’t have time to get her permission. However, this is consistent with what I saw in Columbus in 2004 during the presidential election, and with what Richard Hayes Phillips, in his book Witness to a Crime, confirms with his evidence that includes, among other pieces, the photographs of over 12,000 altered ballots, in which, in many cases, Kerry’s name was pasted over and Bush’s name was punched out.
“I was up in Ohio during 2007. All of the elections in Ohio from 2004 through 2007 (and probably after that, but I only dealt with issues from those years) were fraudulent. Unfortunately the Judge did not concur with the findings. Even more sadly, the State made a witch hunt out of the two (black) attorneys who protested this. Both have had their licenses suspended over trumped-up nonsenses by the same vigilante (white) prosecutor.
Watch this and weep:
http://www.ohiochannel.org/MediaLibrary/Media.aspxfileId=129857
Here is an excellent article by Merv Ritchie that pertains to this topic:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-CLEAR-SOLUTION-TO-THE-by-Merv-Ritchie-111019-311.html?show=votes
He the news service managing/publishing editor of http://www.TerraceDaily.ca
Adam8 (unjustly banned and slandered by RawStory)
Guess what. Bradblog.com articles are not showing up properly on Google news searches yet again. Only the latest article or two shows up, but slightly older ones have vanished, eg selecting the “past week” option of a Google news search.
I would only add a 2-day weekend voting period!
… and now we have another slogan: 100% Votes!
We should also make clear ALL elections in the US are subject to these same regulations: City, County, State, and Federal; only in that way can we be sure the democratic will of the people is heard at all levels.
We should make such voting mandatory too, subject to a small fine, as they do in Australia, where they also have a ‘Donkey’ choice, or ‘None of the Above’, so people do not feel forced into choosing from a number of poor choices.