Washblog

Tonight's event was pretty good. My girlfriend said we had a "balast with palast". Haha.

I estimate 250 people attended. (I didn't count this time.) The evening was being taped. I forgot them who they were. If anyone has links, please post.

Mike McCormick of Mind Over Matters on KEXP Sunday mornings started things off. Mike's great.

Ed Mays, a long time maven of independent media and the producer of Pirate TV, was honored. He got up and spoke for a bit. Talked about the first time he brought Greg Palast to town. (Ed Mays was also taping.)

A guy from independent bookstore Elliotte Bay Books spoke. Greg Simmerson?

Holly Jacobson, co-director of Voter Action was honored. They fight the purchase and use of electronic voting machines. For instance, they successfully got New Mexico to switch from touchscreens to precinct-based optical scanners. New Mexico is where Palast and Jacobson first met.

Like the last time I saw him, Greg Palast was pretty good. He's grown on me. His humor is great.

Most of the material I had heard before. Like the broken radar on the Exxon Valdez being the real reason it crashed. Exxon was too cheap to fix it for two years.

Palast has gotten a lot of the inside baseball on Bush's Folly in Iraq. He makes the case that the plan was always to choke off the oil supply so that oil prices would go up. He details the history of that policy in the region, ever since the British grouped all the oil fields together and called it "Iraq".

To which I guess my answer is "no shit". We're building permanent bases over there. How many? 14? I assume the plan is to stay.

Of course, Palast thinks the 2000 and 2004 elections were rigged. He explains how the new provisional ballots are used to surpress the minority vote. HAVA doesn't specify that provisional ballots actually have to be counted. Palast esimates that almost 1.1m of the 3m provisional ballots in 2004 were note counted. 98% of which are from minorities.

It's all pretty disgusting.

by zappini on Thu Jun 08, 2006 at 11:46:18 PM PST

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Dear Voter Action Friends and Supporters,

On Monday evening we sent you a copy of the USA Today article featuring Voter Action's legal work. We also sent you an alert about Voter Action Co-director Lowell Finley's interview on CNBC's Morning Call on Tuesday. Both the print story and the video are now available on our web site www.voteraction.org.

Today we would like to let you know that Lowell should be appearing on Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN tomorrow, Friday, June 9, 2006 at 6 PM EDT (3PM PDT).  Kitty Pilgrim and Lou Dobbs have been taking an in-depth look at the issues of electronic voting and election privatization and have pledged to continue to investigate the problems associated with outsourcing and privatizing our democracy.

CNN tracked down Lowell in California at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting to vote on purchase of a new elections system.  Lowell was there to state:  "Voter Action applauds Alameda County for its apparent decision to drop Diebold electronic voting machines. However,
to replace Diebold with another insecure, unverifiable e-voting machine from a different
manufacturer does not solve the problem.  If the Board of Supervisors decides to buy the Sequoia electronic voting machines, Voter Action will go to court to block the purchase."

It is clear that citizen oversight and legal action remain vital to making our elections more transparent and accountable to the public.

Meanwhile, we are gearing up for discovery in the pending lawsuits in Arizona, California, and Colorado. Your support will be crucial to the success of these endeavors. Please help as you
can and share this plea with your friends.
http://www.voteraction.org/donate.html.

Tuesday's primaries demonstrated again the value of optically scanned paper ballots.  The reports of machine failures around the country are reminders that, unlike machines, paper ballots not only create a lasting and permanent record of the voter' s true intent; they also don't break down or fail to boot up.

Thank you for being an important part of this work.

Most sincerely,
Holly Jacobson
Co-director,
Voter Action
www.voteraction.org

Voter Action is a non profit project of the International Humanities Center, a 501c3 organization.

by zappini on Thu Jun 08, 2006 at 11:48:13 PM PST

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