Posted on 01/06/2009 2:29:56 AM PST by Man50D
The highly publicized vote recount in the Minnesota Senate race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman is shining a light on Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, the state’s chief election officer.
Ritchie is chairman of the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which on Monday certified that Franken received 225 more votes than Coleman did.
Ritchie gave partial credit for his 2006 election to a liberal 527 group, the Secretary of State Project, which says its goal is to “ensure fair, clean elections” by replacing conservative secretaries of state with liberal Democrats.
“I want to thank the Secretary of State Project and its thousands of grassroots donors for helping to push my campaign over the top,” Ritchie said in a posting on the project’s Web site. “Your wonderful support--both directly to my campaign and through generous expenditures by the strategic fund--helped me get our election reform message to Minnesota voters.”
The SoS Project says it spent a total of $500,000 in seven swing states in 2006 trying to get Democrats elected as secretaries of state. They achieved victories in all but two of those states--Michigan and Colorado--but helped fund Democratic wins in Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota, Iowa and New Mexico.
In 2008, the group had a clean sweep in its targeted states, spending $280,000 to help elect Democrats in Montana, West Virginia, Oregon and Missouri, according to the watchdog group Center for Public Integrity,.
“The Secretary of State Project was created by concerned citizens to provide an easy-to-use, low-cost vehicle for online donations to key Secretary of State races,” the group’s Web site says. Elsewhere, the site states: “A modest political investment in electing clean candidates to critical Secretary of State offices is an efficient way to protect the election. SoS Project donors helped elect reform candidates to the chief elections officer position in 5 key presidential battleground states.”
The group’s Web site holds up former Republican secretaries of state Katherine Harris of Florida and Ken Blackwell of Ohio as the type of people they want to keep out of office. Harris was secretary of state in Florida in 2000, when George W. Bush won the state after a recount, and Blackwell was secretary of state in Ohio in 2004, when Bush won that state narrowly.
Becky Bond and Michael Kieschnick, co-founders of the group, could not be reached for comment Monday after numerous attempts via phone and e-mail.
In addition to backing the election of Secretary of State Ritchie in Minnesota, the Secretary of State Project also backed Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The SoS Project says it spent more than $200,000 ($167,000 directly to the campaign and $30,000 on independent expenditures) to get Brunner elected in 2006.
Brunner made news in October 2008 when she declined to hand over to county election boards 200,000 names on voter registration forms where the drivers license or Social Security number on the forms did not match the name. The SoS project praised her actions.
“What a difference it makes to have a Secretary of State committed to fair and ethical elections,” the Web site said of Brunner. “That’s why our 2008 slate targets clean elections candidates in Montana, Oregon, Missouri and West Virginia. Your contributions help us stand up for candidates who will stand up for fairness.”
SoS isn’t just focusing on the state level. It says in 2008 it also concentrated on electing “reform-minded Democrats to key county-level posts in battleground states,” given the “tremendous amount of influence” that “manipulative county-level elections officials can exert” over election results.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the SoS Project received a total of $102,000 in funding from four members of the Democracy Alliance. This alliance, which supports liberal causes, describes itself as “an investment partnership of business and philanthropic leaders.”
The flow of 527 money into these races highlights the need to depoliticize the office of chief election officials, said Robert Richie, executive director of Fair Vote, which advocates for election reform.
“As long as there are elections for this office, there will be groups that will use every expense to try to elect the person who will do a better job--from their point of view,” Richie told CNSNews.com. “Voters have already made the decision that it should be political in most states. There is a tradition in other countries to establish election officials as civil servants beyond reproach.”
He said Maryland and North Carolina have non-elected officials supervising elections.
Richie said that, overall, he thinks the Minnesota secretary of state conducted a respectable recount.
“A secretary of state can’t just run wild if people believe there is full-fledged cheating going on,” Richie said. “I would hope that when candidates have to face voters again, they would be on shaky ground if they tried to cheat.”
“After the 2000 election, it didn’t take too much observation to see that what a secretary of state does matters,” Richie said. “The office is important and more reporters should be cognizant of that.”
The author is Fred Lucas.
The Secretary of State Project was created by concerned citizens to provide an easy-to-use, low-cost vehicle for online donations to key Secretary of State races.
Becky Bond works for a socially progressive mobile telephone company based in San Francisco. She serves on the board of the New Organizing Institute* and ActBlue.com*.
Megan Hull was a Project Director for Democracy Reform at the Center for Civic Participation*. In 2004, she was a Co-Director of the coalition that investigated polling place problems and vote counting irregularities in Ohio and New Mexico.
Michael Kieschnick is a social entrepreneur based in San Francisco. He is also a board member of the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, the Ballot Initiatives Strategy Center Foundation and Sojourners, among other progressive organizations.*
Gotta get their inside men to make it easier to steal elections. Any time an election on a state level is close enough to recount, the Dem is going to win, period. Also, look for these guys to squash the initiative process. The Oregonian (piss be upon them) had a glowing article a few days ago about how our new Dem SOS and AG are going to “end the abuses of the initiative process”. Translation: stop letting the little people have their small share of the lawmaking pie.
Secretary of State Project
The Secretary of State Project was begun to get Democrats elected to the state-wide office of Secretary of State in the United States.
Politico.com noted in November 2008 that “Democrats have built an administrative firewall designed to protect their electoral interests in five of the most important battleground states. The bulwark consists of control of secretary of state offices in five key states - Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio - where the difference between victory and defeat in the 2004 presidential election was no more than 120,000 votes in any one of them. With a Democrat now in charge of the offices, which oversee and administer their state’s elections, the party is better positioned than in the previous elections to advance traditional Democratic interests - such as increasing voter registration and boosting turnout - rather than Republican priorities such as stamping out voter fraud. Perhaps more important, in those five states Democrats are now in a more advantageous position when it comes to the interpretation and administration of election law — a development that could benefit Barack Obama if any of those states are closely contested on Election Day.” The Secretary of State Project is “affiliated with Democracy Alliance. ... ‘We were tired of Republican manipulation of elections,’ said Michael Kieschnick, a founder of the group who is also the president of Working Assets, a company that provides credit cards and mobile phone services to progressive organizations.”
******
Democracy Alliance was founded by former Clinton Treasury official Rob Stein, Erica Payne and various donors in 2005.
“At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades,” The Washington Post reported in August, 2005.
The Democracy Alliance tries to keep a low profile and its wealthy donors prefer anonymity. According to published reports, organizations funded by Democracy Alliance are asked not to reveal the funding.
“Members of the Democracy Alliance include billionaires like George Soros and his son Jonathan Soros, former Rockefeller Family Fund president Anne Bartley, San Francisco Bay Area donors Susie Tompkins Buell and Mark Buell, Hollywood director Rob Reiner, Taco Bell heir Rob McKay ... as well as New York financiers like Steven Gluckstern.”
Rob McKay of the McKay Foundation and Anna Burger of SEIU are the elected chair and vice chair of the board of directors of the Democracy Alliance.
******
The Board of Directors identified on the Democracy Alliance website (September, 2007) are:
Rob McKay, Chair
Anna Burger, Vice Chair, SEIU
Drummond Pike, Treasurer
William Budinger
Robert H. Dugger
Al Dwoskin
Dr. Gail Furman, ACSW, PhD
Robert A. Johnson
Steven Phillips
Charles Rodgers
Deborah Sagner
Michael Vachon
Rob Stein, Founder
Members of the Democracy Alliance self-identified or identified in published articles include:
Anne Bartley
Fred Baron
Ann Bowers
Mark Buell
Susie Tompkins Buell
Lewis B. Cullman
David Friedman
Chris Gabrieli
Tim Gill
Davidi Gilo
Robert Glaser
Steven Gluckstern
Michael Kieschnick
Gara LaMarche
Norman Lear
Peter Lewis
John Luongo
Alan Patricof
Rob Reiner
Herb Sandler
Marion Sandler
Guy Saperstein
Bernard Schwartz
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
William Soskin
George Soros
Jonathan Soros
Albert Yates
[edit]Staff of Democracy Alliance
The following staff are listed on the Democracy Alliance website (September, 2007):
Jonathan Adler
Chris Bolyai
Kelly Craighead
Kathryn Greenberg
Josh Leffler
Ingrid Renaud
Shannon Roche
Ryan Rodriguez
Frank Smith
Alexandra Visher
Eddie Wong
Felicia Wong
[edit]Funding Recipients
Organizations self-identified or identified in published reports as receiving financial support from the Democracy Alliance include the following:
ACORN
Air America Radio network
America Votes
AmericanForeignPolicy, [5]
Catalist, [6]
Center for American Progress
Center for Community Change
Center for Progressive Leadership
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, CREW
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, [7]
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, [8]
EMILY’s List
Kirwan Institute
Media Matters for America
New Democratic Network, [9]
People for the American Way, [10]
Progress Now
Progressive Majority, [11]
Secretary of State Project
Sierra Club
USAction
VoteVets, [12]
Young People For, [13]
Women’s Voices. Women Vote., [14]
[edit]Related SourceWatch Resources
MoveOn
Campaign to Defend America
Colorado Democracy Alliance
John Podesta
'We want Democrats to be the ones manipulating the system,' said the liberal bagman.
The group was co-founded in July 2006 by James Rucker,
http://www.motherjones.com/radio/2006/10/rucker_265.jpg
formerly director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and Moveon.org Civic Action. “Any serious commitment to wrestling control of the country from the Republican Party must include removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count,” said another co-founder, Becky Bond,
http://www.internettime.com/images/plan04election.jpg
to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2006.
Michael Kieschnick
http://www.workingassets.com/_img/kieschnickMichael_300x200.jpg
Michael teaches a course on social innovation at Stanford University, and previously taught a graduate seminar on financial innovation at the University of California, Berkeley
My contempt for Democrats is profound.
Was it Uncle Joe Stalin who said “It’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes”?
It doesn ‘t matter who votes. It only matters who counts the votes.
Liberals are trying to make sure theirs get counted as often as necessary.
Why can’t conservatives do the same thing?
Prosecute all of these slimes under the RICO ACT!
LLS
I am buying lots of ammo and several 3rd gen nightvision devices. Be prepared.
LLS
They can’t even get ACORN (after all of the teasing that they did just before the election), so why would they go after something that isn’t even illegal?
One acorn activist was convicted this week... read it here yesterday. There is always hope.
LLS
This effort may also have a tactical reason related to Obama. If a state passes a law requiring the SoS to verify the eligibility of candidates for the office for which they are running, that might torpedo Obama’s second, third and fourth term (his plan, not mine). This effort may place a Democrat in the office of SoS. Said Democrat will simply swear that they have verified Obama’s eligibility and never show the evidence to the people. Problem solved for Obama and, for that matter, any other applicable Democrats.
This type of effort doesn't require conservatives -- it requires the GOP, whose motto for the past four years appears to be "We want to die."
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