The new documentary, ‘Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas,’ proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years. This empowering film gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas of people taking back the reins of power and governing their own communities. ‘Beyond Elections’ is a road map for social change, drawing from communal councils in Venezuela and social movements in Bolivia to participatory budgeting in Brazil and worker cooperatives in Argentina.” The film gracefully succeeds in demonstrating that these grassroots examples of people’s power can be applied anywhere. Particularly as activists in the US face the challenges of an Obama administration and an economic crisis, this timely documentary shows that the revolution can start today right in your own living room or neighborhood.

Read The Full Interview with film producers Michael Fox and Silvia Leindecker, talking about how the film was created, what its aims were and what the film’s impact has been among viewers in the US.

UnCommon Sense TV - “What Happened In Ohio” An interview with Ohio election auditors Eve Roberson & Joan Quinn, a former California election official and court attorney respectively. They report on the voting irregularities and possible evidence of voter suppression and vote fraud, if any, which took place in the election in 2004. Their research was presented to the Rep. John Conyers congressional committee investigation on voting problems in December in Columbus. Key portions of the committee’s 108-page report filed in January of 2005 were a result of their research.

God help us if they pull this off again. This is a tremendously important story, with certain facts we first broached on USTV back immediately following the last presidential election. Of most note is the article’s practical guide to what people can do to help secure their vote during the election.

There is also information about Michael Connell, a name which should be front and center in all discussions about this election and go down in the annals of American political history.

Last Friday, a federal court judge in Cleveland, Ohio, ordered Michael Connell, an information-technology consultant to the McCain ‘08 campaign, to give a deposition in a court proceeding. Mr. Connell, whose firm, GovTech Solutions, built Ohio’s 2004 election results computer network, was in a position to have knowledge about the alleged manipulation of electronic voting results in that presidential contest (a technique known as “flipping”) in order to switch the winner in Ohio from Sen. John Kerry to President Bush. The deposition is scheduled to take place today, November 3, one day before the 2008 general election.

Connell is a former associate of Karl Rove, who is believed by those familiar with the events in question to have engaged in witness intimidation to prevent testimony about what happened in Ohio in 2004. They also believe that IT companies associated with the Republican Party have redeveloped the capacity to manipulate electronic voting results in Tuesday’s election, both within Ohio and outside, including Pennsylvania and other key battleground states such as Colorado and New Mexico. One such firm, Triad GSI, is managing voter registration databases in 55 of Ohio’s 88 counties and is hosting 25 of those databases.

All this has led to speculation that the McCain campaign’s insistence that they can win Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other states, despite being (in some places, significantly) behind in most of the polls, could be prompted by having been informed about planned cyber interference with electronic voting results. The reality is that a successful cyber attack only requires a few skilled IT experts with an in-depth understanding of digital security. Election returns in many states are presently emailed from local databases for statewide consolidation, without even the standard safeguards routinely used by banks and corporations. In other words, voting data can be relatively easily hacked.

Read the Full Report by Cynthia Boaz, Ange-Marie Hancock, David McCuan, Mark Crispin Miller and Michael Nagler.

The Onion News Network has the scoop with their breaking story in this video report… Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

And in related election coverage from The ONN, here’s this insightful story.

This is a gem. One lawmaker, many votes. The Texas Legislature in action. I wonder how much this happens in other states as well? Funny how these so-called representatives try to crack down on ‘voter fraud’ and then casually and repeatedly commit the very same offense in their daily business.

This is an amazing blog entry submitted to The Brad Blog by Stephen Heller, the man who helped expose Diebold fraudulently peddling knowingly defective and inadequate (to be charitable) electronic voting devices to states around the country. Though this man is held to account for his public service and made a felon for exposing felonies committed by this corporation, he responds with this must read tour de force of an argument/accusation against all the criminals currently running free thanks to the patronage of the GOP.

In brief, I became known to some as the “Diebold Whistleblower” when, in January of 2004, I stole and exposed legal documents [PDF] proving that Diebold Election Systems, Inc. was using and planned to continue using illegal, uncertified software in their California voting machines. (By the way, Diebold recently changed its name to Premier Election Solutions, but don’t let that fool you; it’s still the same bunch of idiots)…..

The punishment for my crime has nearly bankrupted my wife and me, while Lewis “Scooter” lied to a grand jury and was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury and gets to walk away from his crime without a scratch because, like so many others, IOKIYAR…

Read The Complete Post

This video, “More Dead Cause of Ohio”, is based on a Neil Young song, making the quite logical ties to the theft of the election in Ohio in 2004 with the ever-increasing casualty rates amongst US service personnel. It includes scenes from the new David Earnhardt movie “Uncounted”. Earnhardt is a supporter of The Ohio Election Justice Campaign, who recommend the movie.

See the video Here

An update on the e-voting election fraud issue from Dr. Bob Fitrakis, whom has been a bulldog on this from the start. He ranks as one of the most informed and knowledgeable individuals in America regarding the highly dubious history of electronic voting (and who has appeared on UnCommon Sense TV discussing this very topic, in which we predicted what would happen in Ohio and elsewhere if the flagrantly problematic issues of e-voting were not addressed. Events which, though warned about, sadly came to pass).

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush’s re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio’s “official” Secretary of State website - which gave the world the presidential election results - was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Read The Full Report

Defining the vote outcome probabilities of wrong-precinct voting has revealed, in a sample of 166,953 votes (1 of every 34 Ohio votes), the Kerry-Bush margin changes 6.15% when the population is sorted by probable outcomes of wrong-precinct voting.

The Kerry to Bush 6.15% vote-switch differential is seen when the large sample is sorted by probability a Kerry wrong-precinct vote counts for Bush. When the same large voter sample is sorted by the probability Kerry votes count for third-party candidates, Kerry votes are instead equal in both subsets.

Read the revised article with graphs of new findings:

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

PowerPoint Version…
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/vote_switching.ppt

- Posted by JQ

Pointing out the obvious of what many have known since the advent of the use of electronic voting machines…

Paperless electronic voting machines used throughout the Washington region and much of the country “cannot be made secure,” according to draft recommendations issued this week by a federal agency that advises the US Election Assistance Commission.

The assessment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the government’s premier research centers, is the most sweeping condemnation of such voting systems by a federal agency.

There were already many reputable folks trying to tell them this for the past four years (who were mostly ignored, disregarded or worse, disparaged and smeared as ‘luddites’ or ‘conspiracy nuts’). That said, I’m glad they did come to this conclusion and not allow their agency to be used as yet another bucket of whitewash for the cabal of cronies pushing this highly expensive junk onto the American political system.

Read The Article