Thursday, November 30, 2006

APN [GA] Exclusive: Election Integrity Advocate To Run For State Party Chair

Check out this Exclusive Breaking Very Cool Report from Matthew Cardinale of the Atlanta Progressive News:
Donzella James, a former Georgia State Senator, US Congressional candidate, and elections integrity advocate, has decided to run for Chairperson of the Democratic Party of Georgia [DPG], Atlanta Progressive News has learned in an exclusive.

In related news, Carlotta Harrell, who recently ran for School Superintendent and was considering the DPG Chairpersonship, has decided not to run, in part because she did not want to oppose James, APN has also confirmed with Harrell.

James received national acclaim recently for her lawsuit against the State of Georgia for certifying an election based on unverifible, unmeaningful electronic voting results.

James contends there is absolutely no way of knowing whether we can currently trust any E-voting results without a paper trail.
You may recall ... or maybe you won't ... Never mind; it doesn't matter.
James [has] recently joined the VoterGA lawsuit as well.

The VoterGA lawsuit wants an injunction against Georgia elections until they comply with the law [for instance, the word “ballot” is in the Georgia Constitution and a vanishing electronic record is not a ballot]. This lawsuit has also been covered extensively by APN.
I love that they're using "the letter of the law" here. It's beautiful in its simplicity.
One Georgia blogger, Andre Walker, who according to James used to volunteer for James’s campaign, applauded the VoterGA lawsuit in a recent post.

Walker questioned in the same post whether James should have joined the VoterGA lawsuit because the margin of James’s apparent loss couldn’t be accounted for by E-voting glitches.

However, James argues her case is not simply a matter of counting up the known errors to see if they’re greater than the margin of her apparent loss to US Rep. Scott.

What’s even more troubling, James says, is we’d never know if additional errors were occurring because there’s no meaningful way of knowing votes are being counted at all.
EXACTLY!! That's what your frozen scribbler has been saying all along. It doesn't matter how close or how lopsided the "results" appear to be, because you've got your "known errors" and your "unknown errors"...and as long as there are any "unknown errors" there can never be any meaningful corrections ... um ... or meaningful elections, for that matter. Therefore...

Three cheers for Donzella James and best wishes to her in her quest for a leadership position at the state level in her party.

Yo! Donkeys!! We need more like this young woman right here!

Are you listening, Rahm?

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chairman, Israeli Defense Force vet, and ballet dancer Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois withheld campaign financing from several Democratic House candidates who were running on platforms that were not "vetted" and approved by his coterie of the Democratic leadership. The withholding of funds by Emanuel has been reported to WMR by unsuccessful Democratic House candidates across the country. The Emanuel strategy was at loggerheads with that of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean whose strategy was to fight a 50 state campaign against the GOP with support for all Democrats.

It is now clear that Dean's strategy was the correct one and that of Emanuel and his fellow Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) anti-Dean partisans (James Carville, Simon Rosenberg, Joe Lieberman, Al From, etc.) was off-base and cost the Democrats an even wider margin of victory in the House and possibly the Senate as well.

For example, take the Florida 15th Congressional District in which retired Air Force Lt. Col. Bob Bowman ran against entrenched Republican Dave Weldon. Bowman, who won an impressive 44 percent in a strong Republican district, did not receive one cent from the DCCC or the Florida Democratic Party. Weldon raised $727,000 in his campaign while Bowman had a scant $91,279. Another candidate who was ignored by Emanuel was Florida 24th District candidate Clint Curtis, the former programmer who was asked by his opponent Tom Feeney to write a program to flip votes on voting machines in Florida. Curtis beat the favored Democratic candidate -- Andy Michaud -- in the primary. His punishment by the Emanuel clique was no money. Feeney had $1,295,000 in his war chest while Curtis had a mere $44,356. Yet Curtis almost fared as well as Bowman in the strongly Republican district -- he won an impressive 42 percent -- with not one dime from Emanuel's coffers.
...
It is clear that the DLC did not want certain issues brought to the Democratic House caucus, including 911 Truth (Bowman), pre-911 screw ups (Rowley), voting machine fraud (Curtis), and congressional pederasty (Patty Wetterling, 6th Minnesota district). One can only wonder why the DLC would want to eschew candidates who the Bush administration would find extremely uncomfortable. The answer is simple -- the Republicans and DLC are basically one and the same. Similar foreign and domestic policy goals put them in bed with one another. Its no more complicated than that.
Another very unpopular point of view with which I happen to agree entirely: the Republicans and DLC are basically one and the same... which is why I believe we're in a mess we won't be able to vote ourselves out of.

I'm not trying to minimize the importance of electoral integrity. I firmly believe it's absolutely necessary. But clearly it's not going to be sufficient. We have to attend to a lot of other things too.