Free Republic

SCOTTISH MASONS' MYSTERIOUS SIGNATURES IN STONE TO BE RECORDED By 24 Hour Museum Staff 08/02/2008 Courtesy Historic Scotland Mysterious symbols carved into Scotland’s medieval churches, castles and bridges are to be studied and recorded in a new scheme supported by Historic Scotland. Masons’ marks are enigmatic signatures cut into stone wherever they worked, and hold clues as to dates of construction as well as the craftsmen who worked on the structure. However, little is known about the identities and life stories of these men who played such an important role in creating the country’s most cherished buildings from the Middle...

Mike Huckabee has always been the most vocal about Romney 'buying' his support. At Ames, he accused Romney of buying his support, at CPAC, the same thing. Now apparently Huckabee has taken up the practice of buying support himself and he is now trying to hide it. On Monday the website Too Conservitive had a post by a Vincent Harris, who is officially "coordinating Governor Huckabee’s petition drive in NOVA," promising to pay those who would work for Huckabee to obtain signatures 50 cents per signature. Just hours later however as the word spread, the language promising to pay money...

HARTFORD, Conn. - Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman , warily watching his primary challenger advance in the polls, must soon decide whether to start collecting signatures for a possible independent bid this November. "I am not going to close out any options," the senator recently told reporters. But any effort to gather signatures before the primary would be a sign of weakness, indicating that Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, fears that he could lose to businessman Ned Lamont. The effort also would rile Democrats who already question Lieberman‘s party loyalty and his perceived closeness to President Bush ....

Came across this and thought I'd pass it along. If it's happening here, there are probably similar organizations in other states and areas. This is from their Web site: "Report Right Wing Signature Gathering Activity - Add A Button to Your Site Yesterday, I wrote the following: Progressive activists should be on the lookout for signature gatherers collecting signatures for Initiative 917 and other right wing initiatives. If you see petitioners collecting signatures for any right wing initiative, please use Permanent Defense's new reporting tool to tell us about it so we can more efficiently organize and mobilize. Permanent Defense...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday turned in thousands of petition signatures supporting ballot measures he wants to put before voters in a November special election. But Schwarzenegger said he is still interested in reaching compromise solutions with Democratic leaders before a mid-June deadline for calling the election. "Our doors are open for negotiation," he said. The move comes as Schwarzenegger's popularity has hit new lows and Democratic opposition to his proposals have grown in strength. The governor and his supporters are pushing three constitutional amendments that would put new limits on state spending, lengthen the time...

SACRAMENTO – A labor-backed coalition announced a signature-gathering drive yesterday for an initiative that would increase business property taxes by an estimated $2.8 billion a year to aid schools, transportation, local public safety and senior citizen tax relief. The drive, funded by the California Teachers Association and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, is part of a scramble to ready measures for a possible special election this fall. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, calling this the "year of reform," has business backing for four proposals that would control state spending, create new legislative and congressional districts, change public employee pensions and switch...

<p>Josh Wander is the first to admit his signature is "a scribble."</p> <p>It looks like an A without a middle bar or an open J.</p> <p>Wander, 33, a businessman, has been signing his name like that for years. It's on his driver's license and credit cards. He's also a notary public who, among other things, verifies that a signature is genuine.</p>

<p>SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) - Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and his allies aren't the only ones getting headaches from the Republican-led recall drive that could qualify for the ballot this week.</p> <p>The recall is also creating burdens for elections officials in California's 58 counties, who have the task of counting more than 1.6 million signatures submitted by proponents, verifying them through a random-sampling process, and reporting totals to the secretary of state by Wednesday.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - Republican activists aiming for the first recall of a sitting California governor scrambled Friday to ship their last petitions, promising to have up to 1.6 million signatures in the offices of county elections officials Monday.</p> <p>Third District Court of Appeals justices in Sacramento, meanwhile, took no action Friday on a lawsuit filed Thursday by a pro-recall group to make elections officials count faster. The Recall Gray Davis Committee is accusing Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, a Democrat, of letting counties count signatures slowly to stall the election until next March.</p>

LOS ANGELES - Organizers of a Republican-led effort to oust Democratic Gov. Gray Davis (news - web sites) declared Tuesday that they have 1.4 million signatures — more than enough to force a recall election in the fall. "An election's going to happen here pretty quick," said Tom Hiltachk of Rescue California Recall Gray Davis. The effort needs 897,158 valid signatures — 12 percent of the number of voters in the previous California election — to get on the ballot. The signatures collected will be sent to county election officials to be verified. They will report the results to the...

Sitting at a card table outside a Thousand Oaks office building, state Assembly candidate Mike Robinson queried passers-by in the rapid-fire staccato of a mulish machine gun."Recall Davis?" "Recall Davis?" "Recall Davis?" "Sure, I want to be counted," said Debra Cheli, a store manager from Ojai. "Why not?" said Michael Lee, an account executive from Northridge. "Tsk, tsk, tsk," said Sandy Emberland, a Thousand Oaks computer trainer. "I'm going to talk to the manager of this building. This isn't right." In the first half-hour Thursday, Robinson had 14 signatures to recall Gov. Gray Davis. They came from Republicans citing the...

Davis recall effort now at 389,337 signatures By Erica Werner Associated Press The Republican-led campaign to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis has collected nearly 400,000 signatures, close to half the number needed to put it on the ballot, elections officials in California counties reported Monday. Recall proponents have claimed they were well on their way to collecting the 897,158 needed signatures, but Monday's deadline for counties to report totals to the secretary of state was an important date for them to prove they actually were. The submitted signatures were those collected as of June 16. Many counties said they'd collected...

<p>CONTRA COSTA ELECTION officials have boosted the Gray Davis recall campaign's claim that the signature-gathering effort is being carefully conducted.</p> <p>Only registered voters' signatures count. So, recall backers said, they were at first slow to turn in signatures because they were checking names against voter rolls.</p>

WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of thousands of Californians are signing petitions to kick Democratic Gov. Gray Davis out of office, spurred on by a campaign bankrolled by a Republican congressman who wants to take his place. Rep. Darrell Issa, a conservative whose multimillion dollar fortune comes from the car-alarm business he built, has so far contributed$645,000 to the effort. He says it is "not a means to be governor. It's a means to eliminate a bad governor." At the same time, he acknowledges, "I'd be very interested in being governor. I've made that clear." Democrats who are increasingly worried about the...

Organizers of the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis said Thursday that they had gathered more than 400,000 signatures statewide as of midweek, roughly a third of the total they need to make the ballot in the fall. And, said David Gilliard, director of Rescue California, one of three recall committees, a little less than half that number have been turned in to the county registrar of voters. Gilliard said groups turned in 160,000 names Wednesday night, after turning in 18,590 in mid-May. The Secretary of State could not independently verify Thursday the new filing of 160,000. The claim of...

Website sees over 10,000 sign-ups in 1st 4 days Californians fed up with Democratic Gov. Gray Davis are taking to the Internet to express their disgust, as the website dedicated to an effort to recall the governor collects thousands of supporters' names. "In the first 96 hours since the Recall Gray Davis effort was launched, over 10,000 Californians have signed up to join the recall campaign at the official recall website, http://www.RecallGrayDavis.com , " former Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, statewide chair of the Recall Gray Davis Committee, announced yesterday. In a statement, the recall organization said those signing up on the...

Board removes George from primary ballot 221 signatures, addresses were falsified, body says By JESSICA McBRIDE and LINDA SPICEof the Journal Sentinel staff Last Updated: July 31, 2002 The Wisconsin Elections Board voted 7-1 Wednesday to remove state Sen. Gary George's name from the primary ballot for governor, saying "clear and convincing evidence" showed at least 221 signatures and addresses had been falsified or were not valid on George's nomination papers. Gary George Removed Photo/Erwin Gebhard Gary George leaves the Elections Board meeting Wednesday after being removed from the ballot by a 7-1 vote. What Happened The state Elections Board...

<p>Essentially, Massachusetts legislators decided yesterday that direct democracy doesn't work for them.</p> <p>So lawmakers, in a procedural maneuver, canned a ballot question that had drawn more than 130,000 signatures, but still needed legislative approval to appear on the 2004 ballot. If passed by voters, the measure would have banned same-sex marriage as well as some domestic partnership rights.</p>

Freeper Question of the Day: If there is an effort to throw a legitimate statewide candidate off the ballot because of minor technicalities in the number of signatures they collected, is this good or bad? If ANOTHER's party's candidate for the same office says they support removing the other candidate because he could take votes away from him, is this good or bad? According to many Libertarians, it seems, this is: *Good during the 2000 Massachusetts Senate race...and Carla Howell was absolutely right to support it. *Absolutely wrong and tyrannical during the 2002 Illinois Governor's race...and Jim Ryan must be...

American Original Ward Connerly is expected to turn in signatures on his racial privacy ballot initiative in Sacremento today.If passed by voters in November, it would prohibit the state from collecting data based on racial, ethnic or gender catagories.The Sacremento Bee's Dan Smith looks at the soft money donations fueling the signature drive.