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DC Board of Elections AWOL?

By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Mon Oct 06, 2008 at 01:25:29 PM EST

I moved two months ago and one month ago I sent in a new voter registration form to update my address in Washington, DC.

For the past month, on the DC Board of Elections web site, when I searched for my "voter registration status" I got the following message:

Registered Voter
PENDING APPROVAL PER RECEIPT OF SIGNED APPLICATION
Of course, the signed application is what I sent in a month ago.  I called on Friday to see if perhaps the online database just wasn't updated.  The woman told me it was, but they'd gotten a ton of registrations and would be processing them through the weekend.  "Don't worry," she said, "but call back on Monday to make sure."

Today, Monday, is the voter registration deadline for DC.  I just called.  This time, I got a busy signal at the Board of Elections.

My choices, then, are apparently:

  1. Keep calling the Board of Elections all day
  2. Send another voter reg form that is identical to the first one
  3. Go down to the Board of Elections office some time today, which is quite inconvenient -- and for other folks might be completely unrealistic on such short notice
  4. Just count on the system working smoothly, even though I've been waiting for confirmation for a month

Suffice it to say, none of the choices are satisfying.  I can only imagine that others are in the same boat -- not just in DC, but across the country where a crush of new voters is excitedly planning on taking to the polls on November 4.  Indeed:

As the balloting approaches, voter interest has reached a level that is leaving some state elections offices strained. Nancy Rodrigues, chief elections officer for Virginia, said she had recruited scores of volunteers just to answer phones. One day last week, her office was inundated with 8,000 calls.

"We're feeling a little overwhelmed. Thirty people divided into 8,000 calls -- do the math," she said.
One way to avoid such hurdles to well-intentioned voters would be to enact Election Day Registration so I can be assured that I'll be able to vote when I arrive at the polls.  Another, even better idea would be universal, standard registration for all adults -- so my choice of whether to vote or not is simply limited to whether I feel compelled to cast a ballot on Election Day.

But forcing people to sit in limbo when they've made the effort to register to vote is a stain on our robust democracy.


Tags: washington, dc, election reform, election 08, voter registration (all tags)


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DC Board of Elections AWOL? :: 2 Comments

Is 2008 already fixed?

BBC-TV: "Set up to steal it again." Is 2008 already fixed?

Friday October 10, 2008

"A lot of Europeans wonder: Why are Americans so crazy, they keep reelecting this guy?" Well the answer is, we don't! They keep stealing these elections! And they stole it in 2000, they stole it in 2004,and they're all set up to steal it again!" - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on BBC Television Newsnight.

On Friday at 6pm and 10pm Eastern Time, BBC America will bust open the story of the systematic attack on US voters that could easily cost Barack Obama the White House.

Watch it, beginning Friday night, at www.Gregpalast.com.

Newsnight investigative reporter Greg Palast travels from the Native pueblos of New Mexico to the war-zone of the 8 Mile neighborhood of Detroit to meet some of the three million voters who have been disappeared by a GOP campaign draining voter rolls of the victims of the economic collapse.

In Detroit, Palast is bounced out of the local McCain headquarters - housed under the black flag (literally) of foreclosure profiteers. We meet Robert Pratt, a union worker, who fears he will lose his home - and his vote. Are the Republicans turning a economic devastation into an electoral bonanza?

BBC Reporter Palast follows the path of investigation laid out by civil rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - encountering along the way the Republican Party lawyers, funders - and Karl Rove. The GOP charges that the Democrats have registered five million fraudulent voters, a claim backed by a recent US government report. Palast meets the report's author - who claims her words were turned upside down. And they went to court to stop her from speaking out.

Democrats don't have clean hands either, as Palast discloses: from the Acoma Pueblo, we find Natives (almost all Democrats) who've had their ballots illegally junked by local Democrats.

But whichever party attacks the poor, it's McCain that's the winner.

Newsnight is the British Broadcasting Corporation's premier current affairs show. Broadcast earlier this week in London, it exposed the story of the mass purge of voters in Colorado, re-reported in the New York Times.

The show will be repeated 8am Eastern on Sunday.

***
Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are co-authors of "Steal Back Your Vote" the investigative comic book and voter guide - available at StealBackYourVote.org. Jesse Jackson says "download it - NOW!"

by yvonneloke on Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 04:39:59 PM EST


Questioning the American Bolshevik views

    Questioning the American Bolshevik views
  1. Is wealth redistribution taking money from stockholders and redistributing it to those who don't pay taxes?
  2. Is it more important to make sure that illegal votes are not disenfranchised or making sure that groups like ACORN do not nullify honest votes.
  3. Would premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq grand jihadists a victory and make all of our accomplishments, money spent and lives lost a big waist?
  4. Can this country afford to grant socialist Democrats total control of the government and allow them to sacrifice our safety by cutting the military budget by 25%?
Now comes the big question. How do we stop socialism from ruining our lives?
The answer is simple. Don't vote American Bolsheviks into power and boycott the socialist propaganda media into bankruptcy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjvBEKrGkDI
Cybercorrespondent
http://cybercorrespondent.blogspot.com

by Cybercorrespondent on Fri Oct 31, 2008 at 09:43:42 AM EST


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