primary elections

There is a diary at the top of the recommended list on Daily Kos citing voting problems in NYC with some accusations that Hillary's people are disenfranchising black voters. A genuine red flag was raised when it was noticed that a heavily black election district in Harlem was recorded as having zero votes for Barack Obama. This is clearly unlikely and therefore genuinely raised people's concern. And it brings up several important issues regarding voting machines. But one thing this should NOT cause is accusations of fraud on the part of Clinton's campaign. From first hand experience, I can suggest that the problem was not an intentional undercount of Obama voters, but a maintenance problem with the voting machines used in NYC.

In NYC we use very old lever machines that record the votes using mechanical counters inside the machine. It is all mechanical with each vote for a candidate tuning a counter wheel inside by one digit. As long as these machines are properly set to zero before voting begins and the votes in the end are tallied in an open manner, and as long as the machines are not re-set before the vote is properly tallied, fraud can be avoided. Of course you can see how if an election board is corrupt there is room for fraud, but with bipartisan election boards and with a chance for any campaign or local political club to see the backs of the machines at the end of voting and record their own tally, the system seems pretty fair and open.

Northside DFA Canvassing for Mark Pera (Chicago)
Start: 02/03/2008 - 12:00pm
Group: Northside DFA
Cost: free
Address: Pier One Parking Lot, 5306 N. Broadway, Chicago

NDFA Event: Go Door to Door for Congressional Candidate Mark Pera

Mark Pera is running against anti-choice, pro-war machine "Democrat" Dan Lipinski in the February 5th primary election. We will meet at the Pier 1 Parking Lot at 5304 N. Broadway and carpool to our assigned precincts. This is the ground work that gets progressive candidates elected! First timer? We will start with a brief training and the pair you up with an experienced person.

RSVP and get details at: http://www.dfalink.com/event.php?id=26978

Americans like to complain. Grassroots progressives, myself included, in particular like to complain. Sometimes I have seen the complaints become almost an obsession, to the detrement of actually getting things done. Nader is a perfect example of this. I have seen progressive apathy or even antipathy sink some of the most progressive and honest candidates you could ever imagine. This is the danger of being on the forefront of progress. You can get ahead of yourself, ahead of everything and wind up all alone.

Impeachment, Iraq and winning elections. Right now these really are about the most critical things. And these three things are what we really need to work hard at if we want to be a significant force in politics...and in society. I want to discuss some specific examples of people who really need our help and they deserve it because they are taking strong stands for impeachment and/or against the Iraq war. We need them...but they also need us. They need our time and our money to win so that they can fight for what we think is right.

In 2006 an amazing coalition of mainstream moderates and grassroots progressives created a tidal wave of change in Congress. Many have complained that we didn't get what we expected from our new Congress...but don't let the complaints get in the way of appreciating that what we did was amazing.

It was a damned good effort and I am proud to have been a part of it.