Three Final Congressional Races for 2006: Fight the Fraud!
There are three Congressional races that still need out attention to round out the 2006 election year. All three are critical because all three address fraud on some level. FL-13 represents a major battle in the fight for election integrity and could lead to one more pick up for Democrats in the House. LA-2 represents a chance to replace an extremely corrupt poltiican who is likely to go to jail with an honest politician. NC-8 is a case where the Republican is trying to prevent the counting of all ballots, including those from areas where military families live. The Republican is just barely ahead and the Democrat picks up more votes each time a batch of uncounted ballots is finally counted. So whether you want to fight election fraud or more run-of-the-mill fraud, these three races deserve your attention.
All three races (described in detail below) can be found on my Final Races for 2006 Act Blue Page.
Christine Jennings Recount Fund
Jennings is running to replace Katherine "Stolen Election" Harris who prevented the 2000 recount in Florida and was rewarded by the Republican Party with this House seat. Harris tried moving on to the Senate, but failed. Jennings is locked in a neck and neck race to replace Harris. But Harris' legacy of election fraud continues as electronic voting machines in this district gave strange results, leading to an unusually large undercount. This suspicious behavior on the voting machines' part could cost Jennings the election. This one race could be the smoking gun that will discredit the eVote machines that do not have a legal paper trail.
This may be a defining moment in the fight against electronic voting machines and election fraud. Jennings is challenging the cout as recorded by the machines and the challenge is to the machines themselves. But this will be a costly battle. Anyone who is concerned about the integrity of our elections should be on board with this one. Or, as they put it at Daily Kos, all "Black Box Activists should put up or shut up". I wouldn't go so far, but this could be THE case that will stop the rush to unreliable, unverifiable electionic voting machines. Please give to help Jennings fight for fair elections, starting with FL-13. This could be precedent setting and we don't want to lose due to lack of money.
Karen Carter Runoff Fund
The incumbent Democrat in LA-2, William Jefferson, was caught red-handed taking bribes. This is one of those cases of Democratic corruption I occasionally have to report while I am reporting on the far more prevalent Republican corruption. But Jefferson is still running for re-election. In Louisiana each race is a non-partisan scramble, and if no one gets over 50% the top two candidates go into a runoff. This year two Democrats made it to the runoff: corrupt William Jefferson and honest Karen Carter. As someone who yells alot about Republican corruption, I really want to emphasize that we need to keep our own house clean. So please help Karen Carter show the Republicans that Democats know how to deal with corruption better than they do. Republicans embrace corrupt Republiacns. Let's show them that Democrats reject corrupt Democrats.
Larry Kissell Recount Fund
In NC-8 the Republican is trying to prevent the counting of provisional ballots and trying to suppress in the counties surrounding Ft. Bragg (that's military families, of course!) Larry Kissell is trying to get every vote counted and it is costing him money. This could be another pickup for Dems if we gain just 2 votes per precinct! Let's fight to get every vote counted.
Please donate to one or more of these three final races.
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2006 Elections | Accountability | Corruption | Election Monitoring | Elections | Politics | Scandals | Sleaze
Yep
Submitted by mole333 on 17 November 2006 - 10:45pm.
I was, against my will, impressed with Murtha's Park Slope appearance. He made a lot of sense. But corruption is not good where ever it comes from.
Jefferson makes our local corrupt machine look like cinderella. He needs to be slapped down hard and we are on our way to doing it.
And the voting irregularities need to be nailed down hard in hopes that they will stop.
I have to admit I am not up on Hastings. Please fill us in because I am following too much stuff these days. I am near collapse from the volume of emails I get from campaigns and groups from around the country.
As to Israel, let's face it. Both parties know that Israel is our ally. As long as Israel doesn't go too insane in it's siege mentality, it will have out support...and should have our support.
But eventually both nations need to exist as well. Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine, Pro-Peace.
Alcee Hastings
Submitted by Bouldin on 18 November 2006 - 12:20am.
...is set to take over the chair of the intel committee instead of one Jane Harman. The problem with the two is, respectively, that Hastings was impeached as judge for corruption, while Harman is a disloyal Fox News Democrat and illegally solicited money from AIPAC to help buy her way into the chair spot. There's currently an FBI investigation into the details.
However, since Harman is on board with illegal wiretapping, and Hastings isn't, the latter is the better of two flawed choices. It appears that AIPAC and The New Republic are furious.
Hastings v. Harmon
Submitted by Gatemouth on 18 November 2006 - 1:06am.
As I said, my preference is not ideological, although I think you may be painting Harmon further right than she is. Moreover, there are rumours of an ethically uncompromised compromise candidate (Reyes of Texas).
I read the details of Hastings case this morning, and they were pretty sordid (lots of circumstantial evidence of consciousnes of guilt); once I get sober, I'll search them out and post them (if I remember to do so).
Remember, the chief prosecutor of Hastings' impeachment case was one John Conyers; which should tell you that someone who is a demon for due process, and not inclined to take racial matters lightly, found the accusations against Hastings too serious to ignore.
Forget AIPAC (which might prfer Harmon to Hastings, but probably prefers Hastings to Reyes)and remember that this is not the time to take lightly the appearance of impropriety.
Hastings
Submitted by Gatemouth on 18 November 2006 - 1:18am.
Missing Bill Maher to post this; not what I was looking for, but it will do (from Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post):
"It's impossible not to like Hastings. But as someone who covered his impeachment and Senate trial, I can't get past the facts of the case, which convince me that Hastings did indeed agree to conspire with a close friend, a prominent Washington lawyer named William A. Borders Jr., to solicit the bribe. Borders was convicted of the bribery scheme in a separate trial, and he served additional time for contempt rather than testify in the congressional proceedings.
The evidence against Hastings is circumstantial, but it's too much to explain away: a suspicious pattern of telephone calls between Hastings and Borders at key moments in the case; Borders's apparent insider knowledge of developments in the criminal case; Hastings's appearance at a Miami hotel, as promised by Borders as a signal that the judge had agreed to the payoff; a cryptic telephone conversation between the two men that appears to be a coded discussion of the bribe arrangement.
Consider: Hastings, a federal judge, gets word from Borders's lawyer that Borders has been arrested for conspiring to bribe him and that the FBI wants to interview him. Instead of calling the FBI agents whose names and numbers he's been given, Hastings leaves his hotel without checking out and heads to the airport outside Baltimore instead of National, where there's an earlier flight. At BWI, Hastings calls his girlfriend, has her call him back at a different pay phone, then asks her to leave the house to call him from a pay phone, then calls her back from a different pay phone. He doesn't speak to the FBI until they track him down at the girlfriend's house later that night.
Speaker-in-waiting Pelosi: This is not the behavior of an innocent man -- or of an intelligence committee chairman."
Sorry Bouldin, but this is not the way to send a message concerning zero tolerance of corruption. And, as i said, I like Hastings.
Good.
Submitted by Inflamatory on 19 November 2006 - 3:39am.
I hope Dems keep a strong stance on corruption as that is the major thing that brought down the Reps.
I'm very curious as to how much will be reported about the machine delimma and the efforts to protect the vote. It always seems that the media at large doesn't give a shit 'til it's time to vote again and it's too late to change anything.
Media
Submitted by mole333 on 19 November 2006 - 10:05am.
Why would the media report on it when it matters? They seem to be the tame lap dog of the Republicans, so election fraud (through unreliable machines that only have problems in Democratic districts, voter intimidation, not enough machines in minority areas, etc.) is part of their plan.
Democratic corruption is lower scale than Republicans...but it still exists. And we need to fight it.
Corruption
"As someone who yells alot about Republican corruption, I really want to emphasize that we need to keep our own house clean. So please help Karen Carter show the Republicans that Democats know how to deal with corruption better than they do. Republicans embrace corrupt Republiacns. Let's show them that Democrats reject corrupt Democrats."
Well, we already did when we beat Murtha, and maybe we'll do the same with Hastings (who, as one of the CBC's foremost supporters of Israel, I happen to be quite fond of). But, by all means we should put Jefferson in the deep freeze (where he can be close to things he holds most dear).