The retail company Target just gave over $150,000 to buy ads supporting a far-right Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota.
That's bad enough. But the stakes are much higher than one candidate and one company. If we don't push back hard, this will just be the tip of the iceberg. Other corporations will learn that they can pour money into elections to buy the outcome they want. So we're sending a message to Target's CEO that we won't shop there if Target continues spending money on elections.
Please join MoveOn and other local groups tomorrow (Tuesday morning) to demand fair election funding.
Karen Bernal and others will be speaking at the event in Sacramento and if you have friends in Santa Rosa, please let them know that Norman Solomon will be speaking at the event there. There is also an event at Lungren's office in Gold River. Over 60 people have already RSVP'd to the Sacramento rally!
If you think there is a fundamental problem with government that only listens to the wealthy super-elite and corporate lobbyists, then please turn out for a rally on Tuesday, Aug. 10 at 11 a.m. in front of the federal courthouse in downtown Sacramento. This rally will be to support a new campaign called “The Other 98%” being organized by Move On.
The premise of “The Other 98” is simple. Federal elected officials and candidates are asked to sign a pledge with three components.
The candidate will work to overturn the recent Supreme Court decision which allows corporations to channel unlimited amounts of money into federal elections.
The candidate pledges to support the Fair Elections Now Act (Common Cause initiated) proposed federal legislation which evens the playing field for candidates who are supported by numerous small donors.
The candidate pledges to support legislation which stops corporate lobbyists from showering federal officeholders with gifts like free meals and travel to exotic locales, and ends the revolving door between federal officials and the higher-paying corporate world.
Chicago-To the cheers of thousands of rank and file activists, AFL CIO head Richard Trumka accepted the nomination of the newly formed US Labor Party for the Presidency of the United States. Trumka will make his run as the standard bearer of a party fielding a full slate of candidates from the local and state to federal levels, running with the support of all major national and international unions, many peace and environmental organizations, and millions of economically and politically disenfranchised Americans.
Addressing a packed convention center a stone's throw from Chicago's haymarket, Trumka's remarks evoked labor's fallen heros and rekindled themes of radical trade unionism long thought vanquished after generations of hostility to organized labor fomented by right wing think tanks, mainstream media outlets and an army of pro-business lobbyists in Washington.
BREAKING: Clay County, KY Election Officials Found Guilty of Election Fraud, Vote Buying
Convicted high-ranking officials include a circuit court judge, county clerk and school superintendent
Each face up to 20 years in broad conspiracy that included manipulation of electronic voting machines...
Posted By Brad Friedman On 25th March 2010 @ 15:24
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7765
All eight defendants in Clay County, Kentucky's election fraud trial have been found guilty today by a federal jury. Six of those eight were high-ranking election officials, including the county clerk, a circuit judge and the school superintendent. The conspirators were charged with having manipulated federal elections in 2002, 2004 and 2006 by buying and selling votes and manipulating electronic voting machines.
Anna Molander, Kerri Asbury & Jo Souvignier
cordially invite you to a House Party in support of
Debra Bowen
California Secretary of State
Help Debra kick-off her reelection campaign, and
learn more about what the Debra is doing to ensure
California’s elections are fair, secure and accurate!
Risky electoral conditions are being introduced because someone says "Why don't we just mail ballots?" Election officials are pitching vote by mail as convenient and safe. Journalists don't always obtain an opposing point of view before publishing stories on this risky new trend. Half the USA has now shifted to no-fault absentee voting. Joan will tell us why this trend is dangerous....
Here are just 3 of the reasons Vote-by-Mail can compromise an election:
1. Absentee voting conceals who actually casts the votes. A real person doesn't show up to vote, eliminating a crucial public control for elections.
2. Absentee voting has difficult challenges for ballot chain of custody. Even locations that claim to use video surveillance sometimes turn off cameras, send them out for maintenance, or decide not to use them while elections are in progress.(1)(2)
3. Absentee voting has a history of inside tampering by election officials.(3)
Sequoia Voting Systems plans to publicly release the source code for its new optical scan voting system, the company announced Tuesday — a remarkable reversal for a voting machine maker long criticized for resisting public examination of its proprietary systems.
The company’s new public source optical-scan voting system, called Frontier Election System, will be submitted for federal certification and testing in the first quarter of next year. The code will be released for public review in November, the company said, on its web site. Sequoia’s proprietary, closed systems are currently used in 16 states and the District of Columbia.
Join the ACLU in urging the Governor to protect the voting rights of all of us.
AB 742 is necessary to correct ill-conceived administrative procedures that remove all individuals who have been convicted of a felony from the voting rolls. It would not change who is eligible to vote, but it will safeguard against voter disenfranchisement.
Voting is a fundamental right that should be protected for every eligible citizen. It should not be denied due to poor administrative procedures.
'Major typos' seen by reader in paper's editorial on Iran election...
By Brad Friedman on 6/15/2009 12:25PM
The New York Times has an unbylined editorial today, headlined "Neither Real Nor Free" which blasts the Iranian election, alleging that "it certainly looks like fraud."
Our friend Michael Jay, a former delegate to the California Democratic Party who amended their party platform to include language encouraging Democratic candidates to not concede until every ballot is counted, took the opportunity today to riff on our weekend comparison of Iran '09 to Ohio '04 with a letter to the NYTimes editors which begins as follows...
Major typos in "Neither Real Nor Free"
To The Editor:
I'm afraid your spell check software got the better of you in preparing "Neither Real Nor Free," (Editorial, June 15, 2009.) It appears both the country and a key political party were misidentified.
I've included a corrected, and abbreviated, version. Too bad the Times, and other news outlets, didn't publish such editorials following our 2004 election.
See Michael's "corrected" version of the piece, sent with his letter to the Times editors, below...
June 15, 2009
EDITORIAL
Neither Real Nor Free
There is no transparency or accountability in (many United States elections,) so we may never know for sure what happened in the presidential election (in 2004.) But given the (main stream media's) even more than usually thuggish reaction, it certainly looks like fraud.
SACRAMENTO – Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced she has withdrawn state approval of Premier Election Solutions’ Global Election Management System (GEMS) version 1.18.19, which contains serious software flaws.
Premier GEMS 1.18.19 contains the “Deck Zero†anomaly, a software error that can delete the first batch of optically scanned ballots under certain circumstances without alerting elections officials to the deletion.
In addition, the system’s audit logs fail to record important events and “clear†buttons permit deletion of key records, both of which violate federal standards.
The Secretary of State’s office conducted an independent investigation into the GEMS 1.18.19 system and held a public hearing on the matter March 17, at which a Premier representative said the company had no objection to discontinuing the system’s use in California. Secretary Bowen reached her decision after analyzing the investigation findings and evaluating the written and oral public testimony on the system.
“Clearly, a voting system that can delete ballots without warning and doesn’t leave an accurate audit trail should not be used in California or anywhere,†said Secretary Bowen, California’s chief elections officer.
“I am putting together a comprehensive plan to examine the audit logs of other voting systems to determine if they suffer similar problems. Having a reliable audit log is critical to ensuring that every Californian’s vote is counted as it was cast.â€ÂÂÂÂÂÂ
Secretary of State Debra Bowen said today the state will get $3.25 million after she settled her department's lawsuit against Election Systems & Software Inc., the electronic voting machine manufacturer.
After paying for attorneys' fees, the remaining $2.93 million the state will get from Election Systems & Software will be used to improve and strengthen the integrity of California's electoral system, Bowen said.
"Californians have the right to know the systems they use for voting have met the legal standards for security, accuracy, reliability, and accessibility," Bowen said in a statement announcing the settlement.
Please read the email from JoAnn Fuller below and call and/or send an email to the Sacramento City Council. You can send an email to all of them at once by copying the emails below and pasting them in the To: field of your email.
Sacramento City Council is poised to repeal the Fair Elections ordinance that allows people to run for office even if they aren’t wealthy or don’t want to take special interest money. They also plan to weaken the limits on campaign contributions so their donors can give big bucks to their campaigns.
To stop this, we must act quickly! The Council has scheduled these extensive revisions without time for public comment for their Tues. March 31st meeting and plan to vote on them on April 7th. Before then, we must let them know we think this action is premature and that we need substantial community input before they vote.
Diebold subsidiary Premier Election Solutions admitted in a California state hearing last week that its voting machine software can lose votes and fail to log the fact that the votes were lost.
The admission, reported on Wired's Threat Level blog, is significant. For years, the company has touted the quality of its electronic voting machines amidst mounting criticism that they were prone to errors and tampering.
Thanks also to Assembly Members Jones (AD-09), Ma (AD-12), Ammiano (AD-13), and Portantino (AD-44) along with State Senators Yee and Hancock who voted NO on SCA 4. And, for the record, Democratic Assembly Members Chesboro (AD-01), Skinner (AD-14), Blumenfield (AD-40), Brownley (AD-41), and Perez (AD-80) were either absent or did not vote.
Submitted by Airpower on Sun, 03/22/2009 - 10:42pm
The Northern Solano Democratic Club has posted five resolutions on their web site that will be submitted for approval at the state convention next month.
The full text of each is below the fold and can be adopted by local clubs by inserting your club name in the "Resolved" clauses at the appropriate place.
Please join MoveOn and other local groups tomorrow (Tuesday morning) to demand fair election funding. 
AB 742 is necessary to correct ill-conceived administrative procedures that remove all individuals who have been convicted of a felony from the voting rolls. It would not change who is eligible to vote, but it will safeguard against voter disenfranchisement.