election 2006

I have been pushing some candidates in California for a couple of weeks, mainly Progressive Majority endorsed candidates. In the June 3rd primary election, those candidates did very well.

First off is a race for Superior Court Judge (office 125) where I covered the rather shocking news that a white supremicist, Bill Johnson, was running for judge as a Democrat. The good news is that Bill Johnson lost. His opponent, James Bianco, won with more than 73% of the vote. The main down side is nearly 25% of DEMOCRATIC voters in the district voted for a white supremicist. This in no way suggests those voters are white supremicists. It shows that so few people actually pay attention to the judicial races that they cluelessly vote for a white supremicist probably because they liked his name better. This is why you will find me publicizing judicial races as often as I can using as much information as I can: people need to know more about who they are electing as judges.

Now we come to the Progressive Majority endorsed candidates. They did well. Of the nine candidates, two lost, one outright won, and six advance to a runoff. Here are the full results:

State Representative

Bob Blumenfield
State Representative - District 40

I wrote about this yesterday, but I am revisiting it with the smoking gun letter uploaded rather than just linking as a PDF. I want to emphasize that this is a scan of the letter sent by the company that makes the voting machines Sarasota County used warning of a glitch. This warning was ignored by Kathy Dent, the Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections. The result was an election with an unprecedented, and HIGHLY suspicious, 18,000 vote undercount for Congress and that undercount is believed by election experts to have changed the outcome of the election, essentially stealing the election from Democrat Christine Jennings. Here's the letter:

This letter suggests a specific action...which the Sarasota election board NEVER ACTED UPON. Furthermore, posters were sent by the company that were meant to be posted at each polling place to warn voters of the delay. The posters were never posted. Finally, and probably criminally, Kathy Dent never released this letter when Christine Jennings' legal team filed a letter of discovery. That essentially is a cover up.

You can help Christine Jennings fight this by donating here. Anyone who felt disappointed that John Kerr

We all saw with horror as yet another Florida election was mired in uncertainty and missing votes. A whopping 18,000 votes for Congress in the FL-13 Congressional race disappeared, mostly from Democratic districts. This is an almost unprecedented undervote that raises red flags that SOMETHING went seriously wrong with that election. This is further evidence that touchscreen voting machines are just too unreliable. And many elections experts agree that the results of the election were affected by this undervote and, had those votes been properly recorded, the Democratic candidate, Christine Jennings, would have won.

But...it looks like the Florida election board had full warning there was a problem and were even offered a patch but IGNORED IT. Then they tried covering it up.

According to a letter dated August 15th (PDF from the Christine Jennings campaign) from the company that made the machines used in FL-13 to the Florida elections board, a problem had been identified that gave a slow response time on the computer, slower than what a voter would expect. The letter claims that this would not affect the integrity of the vote (covering their asses) but it is likely that this kind of delay could lead to a voter being out of sync with the computer and would be exactly the kind of thing that could lead to an unrecorded vote. If the computer takes too long to respond, and the voter has moved on, then a vote will go unrecorded. It warrants further investigation to see if the delay is the cause of the undervote.

Recently I posted about the overwhelming support for the Democrats from Jewish, Asian and young voters this year. I was contacted by the Republican Jewish Coalition who wanted to claim a much higher Republican vote from Jews (based on their own exit polls) than was claimed by the National Jewish Democratic Council claimed (based on independent exit polls). I reported both polls also added a note from the Philadelphia Jewish Voice newspaper indicating that while there are many Jews running for office or elected to office as Democrats, there are very few Jewish Republicans in office or running for office.

The National Jewish Democratic Council and Republican Jewish Coalition differ on their claims of what percentage of the Jewish vote went Democrat this year, but they are both partisan organizations and therefore biased. I can now add that the non-partisan, unbiased American Jewish Committee's analysis of the 2006 election takes the same numbers that the National Jewish Democratic Council does:

If Lieberman’s nominally independent candidacy tested (and largely won) the party loyalty of Jewish Democrats, the community was less conflicted in other contests. In fact, exit polls showed Jewish voters overwhelmingly returning to form in this election – as reliable supporters of Democratic candidates. Over the years, Republican fortunes have risen and fallen among Jewish voters; in his 2004 re-election, President Bush was reported to have

There are three Congressional races that still need out attention to round out the 2006 election year. All three are critical because all three address fraud on some level. FL-13 represents a major battle in the fight for election integrity and could lead to one more pick up for Democrats in the House. LA-2 represents a chance to replace an extremely corrupt poltiican who is likely to go to jail with an honest politician. NC-8 is a case where the Republican is trying to prevent the counting of all ballots, including those from areas where military families live. The Republican is just barely ahead and the Democrat picks up more votes each time a batch of uncounted ballots is finally counted. So whether you want to fight election fraud or more run-of-the-mill fraud, these three races deserve your attention.

All three races (described in detail below) can be found on my Final Races for 2006 Act Blue Page.

Christine Jennings Recount Fund

Jennings is running to replace Katherine "Stolen Election" Harris who prevented the 2000 recount in Florida and was rewarded by the Republican Party with this House seat. Harris tried moving on to the Senate, but failed. Jennings is locked in a neck and neck race to replace Harris. But Harris' legacy of election fraud continues as electronic voting machines in this district gave strange results, leading to an unusually large undercount. This suspicious behavior on the voting machines' part could cost Jennings the election. This one race could be the smoking gun that will discredit the eVote machines that do not have a legal paper trail.

Some time back I discussed a relatively rare case of blatant corruption withing the Democratic Party. Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana was basically caught red-handed taking a bribe. You can read more about Jefferson's Republican-level corruption here.

But one key contrast I draw between Republican Corruption and Democratic corruption, other than the fact that Republican Corruption is much more widespread, is that Democrats actually fight against their own corrupt members while Republicans just cover it up like the did for six years after finding out that Republican Congressman Foley was a sexual predator. To emphasize this difference, I want to highlight the DEMOCRATIC led effort to oust Congressman Jefferson.

Democrat Karen Carter is running against corrupt Democrat William Jefferson and their battle has gone to a run-off. Here is our chance to show Republicans how to handle corruption. Rather than re-elect corrupt politicians the way Missouri Republicans did with Congressman Blunt and New York Republicans did with Congressman Fossella, we need to vote corrupt Congressman Jefferson out of office.

I urge you to donate to Karen Carter's honorable efforts to defeat the corrupt William Jefferson. Because it is the right thing to do!

So, here is a round up of predictions for today. Can't take the time to do a more detailed prediction but here is what people think (barring fraud) is going to be the outcome: (in all of these, Lieberman is counted as a Democrat because I suspect he will maintain his ties to the Democratic Party even though he kisses Bush's...er...lips)

Election Projection website (Republican Cheerleaders):

Senate: Dems gain 6
House: Dems gain 25

But, the person who runs this site, a pretty blindly Republican kind of guy, has the following caveat and personal predictions:

I predict the GOP will lose a net 11 seats in the House and a net 3 seats in the Senate. At most, I say the GOP loses 18 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate. That's where I stand.

So let's add this even more Republican biased prediction:

Senate: Dems gain 3
House: Dems gain 11

Electoral vote.com (Democratic biased):

Senate: Dems gain 6
House: Dems gain 36

Another Democratic biased calculation (no website, this was emailed to me from a DFA linkup group):

Senate: Dems gain 7
House: Dems gain 19

My personal predictions: (and I am trying to include the possibility of fraud)

Senate: Dems gain 4
House: Dems gain 21

Now...let's see what happens! I am soon off to NY-13 to help add one to all of the above House predictions.

Well, it looks like a Republican in Minnesota is joining with the Republican candidates in AZ-8 (who was endorsed by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke) and VA Senate (using racial slurs in public) and other Virginia Republicans in embracing racism. In this case the raism is fairly blatant in ads the Republican candidate for Minnesota's Attorney General position is airing.

From the Indigninous Democratic Network:

INDN’s List Condemns Republicans Racist AD in MN!
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Our mission and our message is continually undercut by latent prejudice and blatant misunderstanding. Politicians and the press portray Indians as crooks, gamblers, or alcoholics that either actively exploit government or as dupes fooled into supporting the spurious activities of others. In Minnesota, the Republican candidate for attorney general Jeff Johnson produced a television ad in which a fraud is foiled by the candidate’s ID theft legislation. The villain is a sinister-looking Indian. Elsewhere in Minnesota, a state house campaign is sending recorded phone calls warning that voters’ “skyrocketing property taxes” are directed toward the “increased welfare demands from the Red Lake Reservation.”

The Republicans recently conceded that they will lose many Senate seats and decided to entrench, or as they called it, build a fire wall at three states: Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia. Barbara Boxer, the excellent Senator from California, is challenging all Democrats to help break through that Republican firewall. Here is her challenge, including some good info on the three Senate races.

The Republicans have drawn their line in the sand and are making their last stand in 3 "firewall" states to desperately try to hold on to their narrow Senate majority. This Republican firewall is the only thing left standing between us and a Democratic Senate -- and we've got 18 days to break through.

Contribute to the 3 Senate races that will ensure a Democratic victory -- break down the Republican firewall now!

Yes, there is an almost unanimous view (with that pillar of integrity Karl Rove dissenting) that the House and the Senate are poised to swing to the Democrats this November.

So now the Republicans have started to circle the wagons around their most threatened Senate seats. They have admitted pulling money out of other states where they are trailing badly to try to build a firewall around these three seats: Tennessee, where Bill Frist is retiring; Virginia, where George Allen has been imploding; and Missouri, where Jim Talent has consistently rubber stamped President Bush's extreme right-wing agenda.