Free Republic

James O’Keefe and Project Veritas are back for more. In the aftermath of James O’Keefe’s shock video showing a young white man strolling into a polling place in Washington DC and promptly being offered Attorney General Eric Holder’s ballot, the District of Columbia Board of Elections acted … by condemning O’Keefe. Board chairwoman Deborah Nichols railed: “I have directed our attorneys to conduct a thorough investigation and refer all evidence to law enforcement authorities for appropriate action. Our polling places are open to the media and observers who want to legally document our procedures for checking in voters. There is...

A U.S. elections officer who served in voting districts that partnered with a controversial online voting firm recently retired from his government position to work for the firm in question, the foreign-headquartered company SCYTL. WND reported yesterday that SCYTL has faced questions about the security of its electronic voting technologies, which are now set to be deployed in 900 U.S. jurisdictions. The firm already provides balloting for overseas U.S. military and civilian voting in nine states along with elections technologies in several districts. Concerns have also been raised about SCYTL’s ties to the Spanish government and to international venture capital...

Postal closings’ value questionedDozens turn out in Springfield to air concerns about a plan to close a processing center By Saul Hubbard The Register-Guard Published: Midnight, Dec 29, 2011 First-class next-day delivery could be a thing of the past, and a letter mailed in Eugene would travel 100 miles up and down Interstate 5 to Portland before arriving at its local destination, if the U.S. Postal Service moves ahead with a proposal to close its Gateway processing center in Springfield. Where will that leave veterans and seniors who rely on mail-order medical prescriptions, small businesses who require prompt mail delivery...

(AP)WASHINGTON — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has failed to qualify for Virginia's March 6 Republican primary, a development that complicates his bid to win the GOP presidential nomination. "After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10K signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary," the Republican Party of Virginia announced early Saturday on its Twitter website. Perry also fell short of the 10,000 signatures of registered voters required for a candidate's name to be on the primary ballot, but former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul will be on the...

That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that Perry and Gingrich, either one of whom could still become the Great Grassroots Hope against Romney, might not have qualified either. You need 10,000 signatures to make the ballot but 15,000 are recommended since a bunch are bound to be thrown out as false or duplicative as the petitions are scrutinized. You also need at least 600 signatures from each of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts. Romney submitted 16,026 and Ron Paul submitted 14,361. Perry’s total: 11,911. Gingrich’s: 11,050. If they end up getting bounced, the Republican primary ballot for...

The scary truth about voting machine hacking risk (exclusive video) By David Gewirtz | October 23, 2011, 9:28pm PDT Summary: In this exclusive interview, ZDNet’ Government’s David Gewirtz sits down with Dr. Jon Warner of Argonne National Laboratories for a deep dive into voting machine hacking. A few weeks ago, I wrote a column here on ZDNet Government entitled, Four outrageous political stories that will make you scream. In it, I discussed a number of outrages, but one in particular caught my eye: research by the scientists at Argonne National Labs showing the ease at which voting machines could be...

The most significant obstacle to restoring liberty by way of the electoral process is the fact that so many Americans know so little about civics or civic responsibility. When it comes to getting government right, ignorance is not bliss. It follows, then, that there is a dearth of qualified candidates who are able to articulate the difference between Rule of Law and rule of men, who instead get lost in the high weeds of lesser political issues.

Right on schedule, allegations that somebody committed voter fraud or other election illegalities in yesterday's Wisconsin Supreme Court balloting are being heard this afternoon in a county that voted heavily for incumbent conservative Justice David Prosser. Pundit Press, which closely followed the election balloting yesterday, offers this analysis: "As if the situation in Wisconsin wasn't tense enough, it appears that one county in particular is going to a new extreme. This comes after word that there may have been voter fraud in the nonpartisan State Supreme Court election yesterday between incumbent

As if the situation in Wisconsin wasn't tense enough, it appears that one county in particular is going to a new extreme. This comes after word that there may have been voter fraud in the nonpartisan State Supreme Court election yesterday between incumbent David Prosser and JoAnne Kloppenburg. For some reason one of the counties in the state is destroying ballots that 'were not counted' yesterday. Apparently this is a very bizarre and egregious move. There is now a call for an injunction to preserve the 'discarded' ballots: I have filed a Wisconsin Open records request with the City of...

Two former leaders of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing a total of nine felonies for allegedly forging election paperwork to get fake Tea Party candidates on November’s ballot.

It’s now almost three weeks since election day. Thanksgiving is right around the corner. All of the ballots in the NY25 congressional race have been counted and Ann Marie Buerkle has won the election. Republican Ann Marie Buerkle leads in the 25th District by about 567 votes. The tally among Wayne County absentee ballots was 790 for Buerkle, 521 for Maffei. Maffei has so far not conceded the race. More than 160 ballots were challenged by either campaign for a judge to examine, but that doesn’t appear to be enough for Maffei to bridge the gap, even if they all...

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Republican Party of Minnesota took the governor's race to the state Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking to shrink the ballot pool in the undecided contest between Democrat Mark Dayton and RepublicanTom Emmer before a recount begins after Thanksgiving. A person with direct knowledge of the filing told The Associated Press that the GOP was asking the high court to force election officials to remove ballots in all precincts statewide where more votes were cast than the number of voters recorded.

In what has become one of the stranger twists in an already bizarre Governor's race, a bag of uncounted ballots was found in Bridgeport Thursday night. Republican officials were approached by Democratic operatives and told about the surprise ballot bag, according to Bridgeport GOP Chairman Marc Delmonico. “It adds to the inconsistencies from the Democratic Party in Bridgeport. It just keeps adding to it,” said Delmonico. “There’s nothing odd about it; there’s certainly nothing missing about it,” said Ed Maley, a representative for the Democratic Party. Delmonico said Democrats asked to have several people deputized to count the uncounted ballots,...

GOP claims bag of uncounted ballots found in Conn.By Susan Haigh, Associated Press – 2 hrs 39 mins ago HARTFORD, Conn. – The Republican candidate for governor in Connecticut says a bag of uncounted photocopied ballots has been found, further throwing into question the outcome of the race. Tom Foley says the bag was found during the counting of ballots in Bridgeport, where a shortage Tuesday night forced officials to photocopy ballots. Foley says it's unclear where the ballots originated and whether they are valid. He wants them impounded. Foley and Democrat Dan Malloy have claimed victory in Tuesday's election....

The Minnesota governor's race is so close it has come to this: another recount appears almost certain. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, DFLer Mark Dayton leads Republican Tom Emmer by less than one half of 1 percent -- 43.67% to 43.24%. For any race where the margin is less than one half of 1 percent, there is an automatic recount, as happened two years ago in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race. "It looks like it's recount part II: And this time it's personal," said state Republican Party Chair Tony Sutton.

A record number of voters have cast early ballots for a midterm election. The total number of early votes has topped 16 million, according to one preliminary analysis, and is on track to be slightly shy of the historic number of early ballots cast in the 2008 presidential election. "It's going to easily beat any midterm we've had," said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University government professor who has tracked early voting for several election cycles and estimates that 29 percent of midterm votes have been cast in the days and weeks before Election Day. All 50 states have sent...

Millions Of Calif Vote-By-Mail Ballots UnreturnedNov 1, 2010 2:00 pm US/Pacific SACRAMENTO (AP) - Millions of Californians have not yet returned their vote-by-mail ballots, and county election officials say the flood of returns expected on Tuesday could delay results in tight races. As of Monday morning, many counties had received only about half of the absentee ballots they had mailed out. More than 7.6 million absentee ballots were requested statewide for the general election. In some counties, vote-by-mail is expected to exceed in-person voting. That means a huge number of last-minute returns will not be counted on election night, and...

I am an American citizen living in Israel. I sent my and my wife's absentee ballots in to the St. Louis County Board of Elections this past Tuesday. I sent them using international express mail because I needed the ballots to be at the Board of Elections by this coming Tuesday. On the 25 or so previous occasions that I have used express mail to mail to the US, the mail would never take more than four business days to arrive at the destination. I could track it on the internet. It would leave Israel within 24 hours of sending...

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan has thrown out nearly a quarter of ballots cast in last month's parliamentary elections because of fraud, but it is still far from clear whether the public will accept the results as fair. The full preliminary results from the Sept. 18 poll were released Wednesday after multiple delays as election officials struggled to weed out results from polling stations that never opened, along with bunches of ballots all cast for one candidate, or suspiciously split 50-50 between two people. After last year's fraud-marred presidential election, the government wanted to prove to the Afghan people and international...

Counties Miss Overseas Ballot DeadlineThe Secretary of State's Office announced seven counties will have to take military ballots until Nov. 8. Posted: 9:42 PM Oct 18, 2010 (WIBW) - Three northeast Kansas counties are among seven statewide that failed to send their overseas and military ballots on time. The Secretary of State's Office announced the counties Monday. The delays means clerks in Jackson, Marshall, and Wabaunsee counties, as well as Stevens, Finney, Hamilton and Ellis, will have to accept military ballots until November 8th, the 45th day after they were sent. That is also six days after Election Day, which...

Share a NiteCap and an interview with HonestConservative and Mr. Jed Babbin former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, Jed Babbin is a bestselling author and contributor to RealClearPolitics , The American Spectator, BigPeace and BigGovernment. and is the author of best selling books, "In The Words of our Enemies" and "Showdown, Why China Wants War with the United States". We of course will discuss the impact and results of the upcoming congressional elections on National Security. Our number is 646 478 5613.

This is a national disgrace. The Illinois State Board of Elections has been lying about the status of military absentee ballots and a lazy Department of Justice has allowed itself to be duped. In an e-mail exchange between the Illinois State Board of Elections and the Department of Justice’s Voting Section shows the State has been misleading DOJ for almost a month.

Chicago election officials say crews will work overtime to reprogram thousands of electronic voting machines that mistakenly list a gubernatorial candidate's name as "Rich Whitey" instead of Rich Whitney. Chicago elections board chairman Langdon Neal said 530 machines being used for early voting and an additional 4,200 destined for the Nov. 2 election will be reprogrammed and retested. The mistake in the Green Party candidate's name appears on a review screen that allows voters to double-check their selections and not on the screen where the vote is registered. It also is not on paper ballots, Neal said. He said the...

The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as "Whitey" on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards -- about half in predominantly African-American areas -- and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day. The misspelling turned up on touch-screen machines in 23 wards overall. Whitney's name is spelled correctly on the machines' initial screens showing all of the candidates' names, but it is misspelled on review screens that later show a voter his or her choices, said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections. "This is a difficult...

GOP prods Justice on military vote A group of Republican lawyers and law students called Tuesday for the Obama administration to do more to ensure that members of the military are able to cast ballots in the Nov. 2 elections. David Norcross, chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association, said in a statement: “The MOVE Act was passed last year to ensure that these brave men and women would have a voice in this fall’s elections. It’s unacceptable that any state would fail to meet that obligation. The Obama administration must act swiftly to guarantee that every service member receives...

Sen. Charles Schumer blasted Board of Elections officials Monday for blowing a deadline for sending ballots to troops overseas - putting their chance to vote at risk. "Our troops sacrifice their lives to protect our freedoms. They should never, ever be denied the right to vote," Schumer said. There are approximately 50,000 New York City residents serving overseas - and 320,000 statewide. Elections officials were originally supposed to ship the ballots to troops by Sept. 17. Because New York primaries were held Sept. 14, the federal government granted local officials an extension until Oct. 1.

NY service members don't have ballotsShannon Ross Posted by: Emily Lenihan Updated: Monday, 11 Oct 2010, 8:55 AM EDT BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Only 22 days remain until Election Day, and more than 300,000 New York service members and overseas voters still don't have their absentee ballots. Fox News reports that Albany has failed to send the ballots to military voters more than one week after the deadline, a violation of the "Move" Act.

When ballots of our troops serving overseas were trashed in the 2000 election, it was a disgrace that we hoped would never be repeated. If all the military votes had been counted, the Florida result might not have been so close, and the nation might not have had to wait weeks to discover who our new president would be. Now we are engaged in a war, and our troops are risking death and disability daily. We not only hope that their right to vote will be respected − we demand it. But in a severe case of déjà vu, once...

The failure of military ballots to be mailed out in a timely manner during the 2008 election inspired Congress to enact legislation requiring a minimum of 45 days between the mailing of ballots and election day. It was believed that this would provide enough time for most overseas troops to cast votes that could be counted. The Obama dministration, however, just granted an exemption to the state of Wisconsin—allowing military ballots to be sent only 32 days prior to election day. Attorney General Eric Holder defended the exemption calling the “effort of state election officials to conduct elections as they...

HAWLEY, Mass., March 23 (UPI) -- Officials in a small Massachusetts town said a deadline passed without a single resident filing to run in the May 3 election. Hawley Town Clerk Cyndie Stetson, 62, who also serves as a justice of the peace and a notary in addition to substitute teaching, said the March 15 deadline passed without anyone submitting the required 25 signatures to run for positions including selectmen and a tree warden in the town of 336 residents, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday. Stetson said the town will vote write-in only May 3, with candidates needing at least...

Coakley Campaign To Sound Alarm On Reported Ballots Pre-Marked For Scott BrownEric Kleefeld | January 19, 2010, 5:34PM The Martha Coakley campaign just sent out a media advisory, announcing a press conference at 5:30 p.m. ET, alleging irregularities in the special Senate election. The press conference will involve reports of voters who received ballots that were already marked for Republican candidate Scott Brown. It should be noted that the Coakley campaign will have on hand as an attorney one Marc Elias, who was previously the head recount lawyer for Al Franken in Minnesota, a legal drama that lasted for eight...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8, 2010 – Servicemembers and overseas voters shouldn’t assume they automatically will receive ballots for the 2010 elections just because they have in the past. Previously, voters would receive absentee ballots for up to two cycles following their request, Bob Carey, Federal Voting Assistance Program director, said yesterday during the 2010 election year kick-off. He said new laws require voters to submit federal postcard applications for absentee ballots on a yearly basis. In the coming months, Carey and his team will travel worldwide to train voting assistance officers at embassies, consulates and overseas military facilities to ensure voters...

Afghanistan election run-off will be logistical nightmareGrowing Taliban power, inaccessible terrain and non-existent infrastructure makes the Afghan run-off a huge logistical challenge. By Ben Farmer in Kabul Published: 9:22PM BST 20 Oct 2009 A fleet of 3,500 trucks will be needed to carry voting materials to the polling stations and 3,000 donkeys to get people to remote areas. Afghanistan's 94,000 soldiers and 84,000 police, backed by 100,000 Nato-led forces, will be on duty to protect polling stations, but hundreds more will be judged too dangerous to open. Around 6,500 polling stations were opened for the Aug 20 poll, but many...

Some scholars squabble about the particulars, but there is no question that democracy's roots go back at least 2,500 years to practices developed in the Greek city-state of Athens. But the adoption of a key pillar of democracy — the secret ballot — came far more recently. In England in the 1830s, disenfranchised working-class men and sympathetic members of Parliament launched the Chartist movement. The most crucial of its six objectives was universal suffrage for all men over 21, but not far behind was the secret-ballot provision. It took decades, but eventually the secret ballot became the democratic norm —...

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), then based in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, vigorously lobbied for Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, the Cuban-style Marxist regime that shot its way to power in 1979. Today, WOLA pretends it is concerned about the rule of law in Honduras after the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court supported removing the leftist president for defying its constitution. WOLA and Jim Wallis' publication Sojourners have teamed up to spin Honduras' defense of its democracy as another example of a U.S.-supported, imperialist military coup. The constitutional coup in Honduras was...

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The judges in the Minnesota Senate trial have identified the first of what could be many wrongly rejected absentee ballots that they say must be included in the final count. The judges' order Tuesday means that 24 supporters of Democrat Al Franken whose absentee ballots were rejected will see their votes counted. Republican Norm Coleman wants the judges to count about 4,700 other rejected absentee ballots, and his lawyer says their decision means they're more likely to take that step. Franken has a 225-vote lead over Coleman, not including the 24 votes at issue Tuesday.

In a ruling that keeps alive Republican Norm Coleman's chances of overturning Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount, a three-judge panel on Tuesday allowed him to bring evidence to trial that as many as 4,800 absentee ballots were wrongly rejected and should now be counted. The decision expands the evidence that can be considered in the recount trial

Master Sgt. Louis Carter, 321st Air Expeditionary Airlift Squadron combat aviation advisor, performs a pre-flight inspection on an Iraqi C-130E here Feb. 2. The C-130 was one of two aircraft on its way to pick up Iraqi election ballot boxes. Sergeant Carter is deployed from the 550th Special Operations Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. Photo by Staff Sgt. Tim Beckham. SATHER AIR BASE — Members from the 321st Air Expeditionary Airlift Squadron did their part in assisting Iraq in the election process Feb. 2. While many service members were watching the final moments of Superbowl XLIII, Maj. Scott...

Minnesota State Canvassing Board review of challenged ballots in the U.S. Senate race HERE

Tomorrow the Canvassing Board presiding over the recount convenes to consider challenged ballots that were excluded because of their disputed status from the recount. At the urging of the Canvassing Board, both the Coleman and Franken campaigns are reducing the number of ballots they have challenged. The Canvassing Board consists of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie -- the Man from ACORN and George Soros -- and four judges (including Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson). Last week the Canvassing Board unanimously adopted Al Franken's playbook for the recount, taking action that threatens...

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- We're nearing the end of the historic Senate recount between Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken. Election officials are now turning their focus to the absentee ballots. Starting this morning, volunteers will begin to count how many absentee ballots were wrongly rejected due to an administrative error. Then it will be up the state canvassing board to decide whether or not to include those ballots into the recount. The board is scheduled to meet on Friday. For the moment, Coleman leads Franken by 687 votes.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court on Friday threw out about 1,000 provisional ballots that had been improperly filled out by voters in a tight congressional race. In a 4-2 decision, the court struck down Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's directive that said the votes should be counted. Voters had improperly filled out the outer envelope on the disputed ballots, which had been among about 27,000 left to be counted in the undecided 15th district congressional race between Republican Steve Stivers and Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy. The decision allows Franklin County voting officials to count the other remaining...

The search party looking for 133 missing ballots in the Minneapolis elections warehouse found some ballots all right, but not the ones they wanted. This morning, an envelope of 12 unsealed but apparently uncounted absentee ballots were found in a box filled with stacks of plastic-wrapped unused ballots. Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reichert speculated they were put there by a confused elections judge on Election Day and undiscovered until now, the final day of the historic U.S. Senate recount. The ballots will be submitted to the state Canvassing Board, said city spokesman Matt Laible. Still eluding the searchers was their...

On Dec. 8, 2000, supporters of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush burst into cheers in the rotunda of the Leon County Courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla. They had just learned of a judge's ruling that absentee ballots cast in pro-Bush counties would not be thrown out. They taunted supporters of Democrat Al Gore with the song that baseball fans sing when an opposing pitcher is knocked out of the game. "Na-na-na-nah, hey hey, good-bye!" they chanted. Bush was pronounced the winner of the state of Florida, and the presidency, four days later, and the preservation of those "absentees" was a...

Things may not be going as well as Al Franken hoped in the recount, but don't tell that to Nate Silver. The numbers junkie behind FiveThirtyEight.com predicts that Franken will win the recount — once all challenges are resolved — by 27 votes. (Related: Franken losing ground to Coleman on DFL turf How'd he come up with that number? It's little complex — OK, that's an understatement — but Silver basically did a regression analysis using recounted precincts where there were few or no challenged ballots (Franken has done well there) and projected it across the rest of the state....

A correspondent writes: Just returned [from Crystal]. We counted the last three precincts without incident. Then the City Clerk made the announcement that she had found some absentee ballots that had not been processed yet from another previously closed precinct, Ward 4 Precinct 2. Apparently Friday afternoon she was given the order by SOS [the Secretary of State] to release the names of voters who had their ballots rejected. While canvassing the absentee ballots she found 8 ballots bound together that had not been processed on election night. She claimed they were valid ballots that had been filled out by...

After local county elections officials verified 2.9 million votes in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's lead over DFL challenger Al Franken shrank to a whisper, the difference settling Monday at a mere 206 votes. Elections officials in Minnesota's 87 counties had until Monday to finalize their results, which will now be forwarded to the state for approval. After that, one of the most closely watched recounts in state history will get under way, even as maneuvering over the recount — and the rhetoric surrounding it — continues to escalate. The Coleman campaign on Monday accused Franken...

One thing is certain: the final margin in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race is not certain. On Wednesday morning Sen. Norm Coleman led Al Franken by 725 votes. By Wednesday night the lead was 477 votes. By Thursday night it was 336. As of Sunday night, it's 221. Coleman's campaign manager has called the changes "statistically dubious and improbable." But Hamline University professor David Schultz says the changes are not unusual because counties are double checking for errors right now. "If you look at past elections in Minnesota, the difference of what happens on election day and what's eventually certified can...

A Ramsey County judge has denied a bid by lawyers representing Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign to delay the opening of 32 absentee ballots from Minneapolis. Last update: November 9, 2008 - 7:31 AM A Ramsey County judge on Saturday denied a bid by lawyers representing U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign to delay the opening of 32 absentee ballots from Minneapolis. The request touched off a fresh war of words in a Senate race where 221 votes separate Republican Coleman and DFLer Al Franken in unofficial tallies. The 32 Minneapolis ballots were part of the normal delivery of absentee ballots late...

My husband and I have been trying to get my husband's missing absentee ballot for weeks now. His home town is in the tank for Obama (city in Michigan) my husband usually votes Republican and his hometown is so small they know the absentee voters by name. Can you believe they finally sent my husbands ballot 10/31 and we received it today 11/3/08. I called the Clerk's office and she said it had to be there by 8pm 11/4. I gladly paid $16.50 to send my husband's ballot by 12pm tomorrow someone will have to sign for his mail and...