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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (35091)	7/12/2004 12:27:09 AM
From: Richnorth	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 81568

Prove it! As far as I am aware, to date no one has been able to refute what's in Fahrenheit 9/11. (BTW, I saw this movie twice with friends. We were all very impressed with Moore's presentation. And fair, too. Even Britney Spears (the sex-pot much worshipped by teenagers was shown saying she has great faith in Bush.) By the way, I heard that the Bush-Cheney camp might explode a "dirty" bomb come election time, blame it on Al-Qaeda, impose emergency/marshal rule and shut down the country for at least a week, and call off the elections indefinitely, thereby spoiling things for the Kerry-Edwards camp and their faithful supporters. Not likely, you may say. Ah! But then we are living in very interesting times when anything, however inconceivable, might happen!

To: longnshort who wrote (35091)	7/12/2004 7:43:19 AM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

U.N. won't monitor U.S. votes Lawmakers, including Rep. Barbara Lee, requested oversight of election By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER oaklandtribune.com United Nations elections observers take to the war-torn and disenfranchised corners of the world, from Kosovo to Burundi and Rwanda to East Timor. In Mexico City recently, they taught elections to Iraqis. Thirteen U.S. House Democrats, led by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson and including Oakland's Rep. Barbara Lee, say it's time the United States joined the list, "given the troubling events of the 2000 election and the growing concerns about the lack of necessary reforms and potential for abuse in the 2004 election." Writing to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, they pointed to higher rates of ballot rejections for black voters in Florida in 2000 and drew on a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report last April concluding that "the potential is real and present for significant problems on voting day that once again will compromise the right to vote." "We are deeply concerned that the right of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections is again in jeopardy," the lawmakers wrote. They pointed as well to the "danger" that paperless, electronic voting machines, such as the touchscreens used in Alameda County and 10 other California counties, "could become a standard to be exported and emulated ... should be of concern to the United Nations and the international community as a whole." The United Nations politely turned aside the request last week. "The policy and practice is that the United Nations responds to requests made by national governments, and not the legislative branch," said U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe. In the days since, the State Department has suggested domestic elections are not a federal but a state and local matter. The Justice Department plans to monitor counties subject to earlier civil-rights settlements (there are a handful in California). Conservatives flooded the airwaves with accusations of hypocrisy and worse. The request alone undermines U.S. sovereignty, demoralizes American servicemen who are fighting to build democratic governments abroad and sends the message that the United States is nothing more than a third world nation unable to police itself, Kilgannon said. Joe Mariani of GOPUSA.com said that if the Democrats were inviting the likes of North Korea, China and Cuba to observe U.S. elections, "We may as well dissolve the Union now and save ourselves the pain of watching it done for us." To WorldNetDaily.com columnist Joseph Farah, the United Nations is "an unaccountable band of international busybody elitists ... a totally un-American concept." "Now let me put the kindest face on this action by Johnson and her colleagues: It's high treason," Farah wrote. All this brings a head-shaking sigh from DeForest Soaries Jr. A pastor of a 7,000-member Baptist church and former New Jersey secretary of state, Soaries chairs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, charged with overseeing the post-2000 transformation of voting in America. Congress was a year late creating the commission and gave it so little funding that staff went to other federal agencies. The commissioners started work six months ago. Soaries thought about quitting. "I appreciate the concerns" of Johnson, Lee and their colleagues, he said. And the federal civil-rights commission correctly pegged some "flaws" in systems slated for use in November. But Soaries is optimistic about restoring some confidence in America's elections. This week, the commission will release guidelines for state and local elections officials for November. Some are simple. Counties still using punch cards should not follow Florida's poor example in 2000 and fail to maintain their equipment. They should sharpen the styli used to punch the cards, clear out old chads and replace old parts. Many Florida punch card counties used 35-year-old equipment and never replaced the parts needed for clean chad removal. For states and counties using electronic-voting machines, the election commission will advise a close examination of the voting software inside and ask voting-machine vendors to register their software in a central, national library. Soaries also has shown interest in a California requirement called "parallel monitoring." State officials will pull a few touchscreen machines off-line in every county and run a behind-the-scenes election, casting carefully scripted votes under the eye of a video camera, then examine the results to be sure that at least a random sample of the machines are recording ballots accurately. Parallel monitoring doesn't rule out e-vote tampering or software bugs entirely. But it could deter some forms of tampering and detect some of them on or soon after Election Day. Soaries suggests those and other measures will build confidence in the November elections.

To: longnshort who wrote (35091)	7/12/2004 6:44:57 PM
From: Richnorth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

US may postpone polls if terrorists strike No sooner had I written my post siliconinvestor.com to you last night when I saw the following article this afternoon. Coincidence or what? You decide. US may postpone polls if terrorists strike Proposal under study as no agency can change date WASHINGTON - In what would be an unprecedented move, United States officials are reported to be considering postponing November's presidential election in the event of a terrorist attack during the polls. A Homeland Security Department spokesman confirmed a Newsweek magazine report that legal questions about the matter have been referred to the Department of Justice, CNN reported. Spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told CNN that Homeland Security officials were worried terrorists could attempt to disrupt the election in the same way the Madrid train bombings created unrest three days before Spain's general election in March. Newsweek said the discussions about whether the Nov 2 election could be stalled started with a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge from chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission DeForest Soaries Jr. The commission was set up after the disputed 2000 presidential vote, to help states deal with logistical problems in their elections. Newsweek reported that Mr Soaries was worried that no federal agency had the authority to postpone an election and asked Mr Ridge to ask Congress to give his commission the power. Mr Ridge warned last week that Al-Qaeda terrorists were planning a large-scale attack on the US 'in an effort to disrupt the democratic process'. He said he had no specific or credible information about threats to the political conventions. The four-day Democratic convention kicks off on July 26 in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Republican National Convention begins on Aug 30 in New York City. Mr Ridge also said the nation's colour-coded terrorist threat level would remain at yellow, or elevated. The news that such discussions have taken place raised eyebrows in Washington. 'I don't think there's an argument that can be made, for the first time in our history, to delay an election,' said Californian Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, an Intelligence Committee member. 'We hold elections in the middle of war, in the middle of earthquakes, in the middle of whatever it takes. The election is a statutory election. It should go ahead, on schedule, and we should not change it.' But Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Mr Christopher Cox of California, told CNN that Mr Ridge's request was part of a prudent effort to plan for 'doomsday scenarios'. 'We don't have any intelligence to suggest that it is going to happen, but we're preparing for all of these contingencies now,' Mr Cox said. Noting that New York election officials were able to postpone their Sept 11, 2001, primary election, after terrorists slammed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, Mr Cox said 'there isn't any body that has that authority to do that for federal elections'. WASHINGTON - In what would be an unprecedented move, United States officials are reported to be considering postponing November's presidential election in the event of a terrorist attack during the polls. A Homeland Security Department spokesman confirmed a Newsweek magazine report that legal questions about the matter have been referred to the Department of Justice, CNN reported. Advertisement Spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told CNN that Homeland Security officials were worried terrorists could attempt to disrupt the election in the same way the Madrid train bombings created unrest three days before Spain's general election in March. Newsweek said the discussions about whether the Nov 2 election could be stalled started with a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge from chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission DeForest Soaries Jr. The commission was set up after the disputed 2000 presidential vote, to help states deal with logistical problems in their elections. Newsweek reported that Mr Soaries was worried that no federal agency had the authority to postpone an election and asked Mr Ridge to ask Congress to give his commission the power. Mr Ridge warned last week that Al-Qaeda terrorists were planning a large-scale attack on the US 'in an effort to disrupt the democratic process'. He said he had no specific or credible information about threats to the political conventions. The four-day Democratic convention kicks off on July 26 in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Republican National Convention begins on Aug 30 in New York City. Mr Ridge also said the nation's colour-coded terrorist threat level would remain at yellow, or elevated. The news that such discussions have taken place raised eyebrows in Washington. 'I don't think there's an argument that can be made, for the first time in our history, to delay an election,' said Californian Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, an Intelligence Committee member. 'We hold elections in the middle of war, in the middle of earthquakes, in the middle of whatever it takes. The election is a statutory election. It should go ahead, on schedule, and we should not change it.' But Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Mr Christopher Cox of California, told CNN that Mr Ridge's request was part of a prudent effort to plan for 'doomsday scenarios'. 'We don't have any intelligence to suggest that it is going to happen, but we're preparing for all of these contingencies now,' Mr Cox said. Noting that New York election officials were able to postpone their Sept 11, 2001, primary election, after terrorists slammed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, Mr Cox said 'there isn't any body that has that authority to do that for federal elections'. straitstimes.asia1.com.sg