I'm too tired to enjoy this really -- (having had to wake up every two hours to record MSNBC on VHS tape because I couldn't get either my Tivo or my PVR working well enough with my new cable set up to be of much use before the election) -- but I did want to make sure that those still wondering and those abroad knew that there was good news - it looks like they decided not to cheat this time - or at least to pick and choose which races to affect.

How nice to be put in a position of looking like a crazy conspiracy theorist again. It's like waking up after a bad dream or something.

more soon,

lisa

It was very interesting to wake up at 4:50 am to Tim Russert on IMUS in the morning talking about exit polls:

The organization that's in charge of the exit polls used to provide the first wave at noon or one o'clock.

Now, a representative can come from each of the subscribers and come in to a dark room with no windows, no telephone, no tv, and they are "quarantined."

They are put in this room. And no one from the networks can see anything till 5pm.

I stuck in a video tape and reset my alarm.

When I awoke again at 7:15, the reports of voting machine problems were in full swing:

MSNBC On Bogus phone calls giving false information to voters.

MSNBC On Early Voting Problem in Florida

Everything in this post, and more, as a single playlist is located here:
Election 2006 - Same Day Coverage

Election 2006 - Republican's Dirty Tricks playlist

http://video.lisarein.com/election2006/

Please spread the word. There's a bunch of great stuff in there already. I'm still working on making proper posts for it, but the point is that voter machine troubles have been coming in since the early hours and that the Republicans have already been caught making illegal "Robocalls" and using intimidation tactics.

Also of interest is Tim Russert on IMUS in the morning (dabble record) (About 4:50 am, when I had just woken up to start taping), explaining how the Exit Polls were gonna be all top secret now until later in the day, so as to be more sensitive to keeping the data secure, confidential and accurate.

Hey guys, remember that we don't have to have another four years of Arnie!

There IS an alternative: Phil Angelides

People forget that only a year ago, Arnie wasted millions of dollars on a special election we asked him not to have.

I have friends and family that have met him and dealt with him that say he's a real democrat and he'll be better than Arnie. (So that's good enough for me.)

If you feel you just have to vote for Arnie, for whatever reason, you can still vote for John Garamendi as Lt. Governor, to help keep Arnie in check.

Thanks!

OK. Almost time to start rolling everybody. At 8:00 am Eastern tomorrow - the polls are open and the future is up for grabs.

I have 24 two hour tapes that will start rolling at 5:00 am tomorrow morning (and keep going for 48 hours).

Time to charge/replace your camera batteries and make sure the cable's working and all that.

Tomorrow we'll need every one of us to tape as much election footage as they can, from wherever they are, all over the country.

This means BOTH capturing everything we can from the television AND shooting our own interviews with people at the polls and at large about their experiences.

Email me at lisa@lisarein.com, and let me know what you shot or collected.

I'll compile a list of locations, channels and times, and publish the list, and host whatever video people need me to host, and just link to the rest, and then, hopefully, we'll have whatever footage we might need when the time comes to get the word out.

So as not to drive your self crazy, just label the tape or dvd accordingly, turn the tv on, turn to any news channel, hit record, and forget it (like when you leave for work in the morning perhaps? and then maybe another one when you get home...)

Label it like this: Election/CBS/8:00 am

The footage I kept from the 2004 Election proved very useful to a lot of people in the years that followed.

Let's try to document this year even more!

Thanks everybody!

I've posted three clips from last night's HBO broadcast of "Hacking Democracy."

I have made a playlist containing all three clips in order to make it easy to bookmark and send to friends.

Directors - Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels
Producers - Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels
Executive Producers - Earl Katz, Sarah Teale, Sian Edwards and Sheila Nevins
Editor - Sasha Zik
Supervising Producer -John Hoffman

It's really an admirable thing for HBO to do.

I called my cable company and subscribed to HBO last weekend as a good will gesture towards the company (and, of course, so I could receive the program to bring it to you).

I encourage every one of you to do the same. Let's make it good business to bring this kind of programming to people.

There are some other special things that I did for these clips, in the interests of giving HBO and the film makers proper attribution in a way that could travel with the clips as they move around the internet.

1) (and probably the most important thing)

I edited all three clips with the HBO logo and opening credits for the film at the beginning, and the HBO logo again at the end.

2) The filenames all say "hbo-hackingdemocracy" etc.

3) As I mentioned earlier, I am advocating that everyone watching the clips calls their cable company and subscribes to HBO (even if they plan to cancel next month :) as a good faith gesture of supporting broacasting networks that take a chance in distributing content like this that is so important to the future of our country.

4) I am, of course, paying to host the clips myself. So I have not misrepresented to any hosting site that I own the copyright to these clips.

5) I am including complete credit information everywhere the clips are linked.
(Please do the same if you link to these clips from your site.)

My ISP, Ctyme, understands what I'm doing and also believes that it is my fair use right to do so. (Since I am only showing clips, not the complete film, and that this information is critical to get out to people -- preferably during these last few days before election day, so that irregularities can be recognized and duly noted and dealt with accordingly, rather than being swept under the carpet like in 2000, 2002 and 2004.)

Please show your support by subscribing to HBO this month guys!

Thanks!

I'm looking forward to recording as much election footage as I can again this year - as I did in 2004.
Much of that footage became the basis for the new Stealing America: Vote By Vote movie (work in progress) that has been circulating a bunch these last few weeks. (I still have some copies left if you need one.)

Here's a clip from it:

Exit Polls vs. Official Count in 2004

This is a clip from Stealing America: Vote By Vote, a work in progress about voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 United States Presidential Election.

In this sequence, several witnesses discuss the discrepancies between the exit polls and the "official" election results. Also included is news footage documenting the "official" vote count suddenly and inexplicably, changing in the middle of the night.

Included are interviews with: Bob Koelher, Journalist (Times Tribune Services), Jonathon Simon (Attorney, Political Survey Research Analyst), Victoria Lovegren (Mathematician/Data Analyst, Case Western Reserve, Cleveland, Ohio), and Pat Leahan (Director, Peace and Justice Center, Las Vegas, New Mexico).

One of my readers found this for me.

I still have to investigate further, but I didn't want to waste any time passing the info on to you.

At least one such system exists: EIRS from the Verified Voting Foundation. I have no idea how many, if any, poll workers know about it.

866-OUR-VOTE

https://voteprotect.org/

The Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) is an integrated set of computer tools for recording and analyzing information about voting problems before, during, and after elections. Since 2004, hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals in the United States have used EIRS to help protect our right to vote and assure that every vote is counted as cast.

EIRS is a project of the Verified Voting Foundation, in cooperation with other Election Protection Coalition member organizations, including the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and People for the American Way Foundation.

The Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) is an integrated set of tools to assist Election Protection Organizations and their members in carrying out a number of activities, including:

* Collect background and testing information from state & local election officials * Compile and track election irregularity data before, during, and after election day * Organize and manage teams of people and tasks * Dispatch attorneys and technologists rapidly to resolve election day incidents at voting places * Provide an on-line collaborative environment for rapid communication among advocates, attorneys, technologists, election officials, media professionals, and others * Support subsequent research for election policy-making

It seems so obvious, but I hadn't really thought about it until now.

In the Daily Kos:

From the Miami Herald:

Glitches cited in early voting
Early voters are urged to cast their ballots with care following scattered reports of problems with heavily used machines.

The problem is just the "glitches" themselves, but this:

n Broward County, for example, they don't know how widespread the machine problems are because there's no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues and no central database of machine problems.

Do we need to create a central database for such issues...nationwide by state?

Can we do it by Tuesday?

If such a system already exists...do all the pollworks know? Can we organize some kind of reporting process where poll workers can call in errors to those online?

Or set up wireless stations at the polls themselves? (probably not easy since most won't have dsl around)

So back to the phoning into internet stations idea...

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/states/florida/counties/broward_county/15869924.htm

Glitches cited in early voting
Early voters are urged to cast their ballots with care following scattered reports of problems with heavily used machines.
BY CHARLES RABIN AND DARRAN SIMON
dsimon@MiamiHerald.com

After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors -- and a caution against the careless casting of ballots.

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen -- the final voting step.

Election officials say they aren't aware of any serious voting issues. But in Broward County, for example, they don't know how widespread the machine problems are because there's no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues and no central database of machine problems.

In Miami-Dade, incidents are logged and reported daily and recorded in a central database. Problem machines are shut down.

''In the past, Miami-Dade County would send someone to correct the machine on site,'' said Lester Sola, county supervisor of elections. Now, he said, ``We close the machine down and put a seal on it.''

Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

That's exactly the kind of problem that sends conspiracy theorists into high gear -- especially in South Florida, where a history of problems at the polls have made voters particularly skittish.

A poll worker then helped Rudolf, but it took three tries to get it right, Reed said.

''I'm shocked because I really want . . . to trust that the issues with irregularities with voting machines have been resolved,'' said Reed, a paralegal. ``It worries me because the races are so close.''

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

''It is resolved right there at the early-voting site,'' Cooney said.

Broward poll workers keep a log of all maintenance done on machines at each site. But the Supervisor of Elections office doesn't see that log until the early voting period ends. And a machine isn't taken out of service unless the poll clerk decides it's a chronic poor performer that can't be fixed.

Cooney said no machines have been removed during early voting, and she is not aware of any serious problems.

In Miami-Dade, two machines have been taken out of service during early voting. No votes were lost, Sola said.

Joan Marek, 60, a Democrat from Hollywood, was also stunned to see Charlie Crist on her ballot review page after voting on Thursday. ''Am I on the voting screen again?'' she wondered. ``Well, this is too weird.''

Marek corrected her ballot and alerted poll workers at the Hollywood satellite courthouse, who she said told her they'd had previous problems with the same machine.

Poll workers did some work on her machine when she finished voting, Marek said. But no report was made to the Supervisor of Elections office and the machine was not removed, Cooney said.

Workers at the Hollywood poll said there had been no voting problems on Friday.

Mauricio Raponi wanted to vote for Democrats across the board at the Lemon City Library in Miami on Thursday. But each time he hit the button next to the candidate, the Republican choice showed up. Raponi, 53, persevered until the machine worked. Then he alerted a poll worker.

Miami Herald staff writer Linda Topping Streitfeld contributed to this report.

They wouldn't dare do it again. But what if they do? We need a Plan B.

I've been thinking about this for a long time, and trying to choose just the right words to delicately suggest that, despite all of the obvious developments over the last few months, whereby the public has made it perfectly clear that it is ready for a change in this country's leadership, that the Republican's might actually cheat again.

Yes, despite the obviousness of what they'd be doing, and even with the added risk of pulling it off this year while everyone's really paying close attention. The stakes are just too high to just hand their power back over.

And really, why wouldn't they just do it again, when the previous election takeovers were met with such minimal resistance?

Maybe we can be ready for action this year, instead of dumbfounded and scratching our heads, like it seems like we end up every two years, for going on six years now.

So... What if the Republicans did it again this year? What if they stole the election again, right in front of us.

Despite all of the evidence that it can't happen - it happens! What then?

If they steal another election, with everybody watching, can we all agree to do something about right away, the day after?

Could we be in the streets the next morning?

Where? We'll figure that out later. We can just flood the streets, and let the flash mobs figure it out. Right?

Well. As of this evening, I'm really, seriously, asking you about this.

Why now more than ever? Because tonight, Keith Olberman did a piece contrasting the overwhelming numbers across the board in favor of the Democrats taking over with a recording of Karl Rove on NPR explaining how, by his calculations, the Republicans should retain the House and Senate, like always, saying "You may end up with a different math but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to The Math."

And I realized it's not a question of "what are we gonna do if."

It's really a question of "what are we going to do when."

We're not really going to stand for this again. Are we?

Can we become mentally prepared enough over the next 13 days to be ready to take some kind of real action?

Talk to me people.

Here's one of my favorite memories of 2003 - The Jessica Lynch Rescue Hoax

First we heard about Jessica Lynch as a private who was attacked and fought down to here last bullet - even whipped out her knife, because she would not be taken alive!

Then we see the staged rescue where she was supposedly being held captive at the hospital.

Jessica Lynch

The other four people Miller saved

Turns out:

1) She was in a convoy accident/She was never in combat

2) She was being treated very nicely in the Iraqi hospital. There was no need to rescue her.

3) There actually was a hero that day - Patrick Miller - whose story the government decided to cover-up because it made their made up heroics for Jessica look bad.

4) He's such a devoted soldier, he doesn't want to make a big deal about it.

This has all been confirmed by both the BBC and 60 Minutes.

Here's a playlist of these clips so you can see them all easily, whenever it's convenient for you.

If those files are too large for you for some reason, I have them broken down into two and/or three parts here.
Patrick Miller

Hey I finally got my package of Stealing America DVDs.

Write me again at lisa@lisarein.com with your address, ok? I might have lost it already if you wrote me two weeks ago.

As I mentioned earlier, I am not making copies of Dorothy Fadiman's DVD and handing them out. I am choosing to send you one of the stack of copies I was given for my participation in the film.

I'm about to put up a bunch of clips from the movie too.

Let's start figuring out what we're going to do about it this year, if the disenfranchisement happens again.

I've created a bevy of playlists on the Foleygate scandal, so you can watch them in order or skip around to the coverage from different days, or browse by show, or whatever.

I have Foleygate playlists for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart's Daily Show and Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report, and for different variations on all three shows, by date mainly. These three are the only shows really covering what happened and who was involved.

What's going on, of course, is even worse than was originally believed. It turns out that numerous people went to House Leader Dennis Hastert and told him about Foley's ongoing problem with sending pages both sexually explicit emails and emails that were just kinda creepy (but you got what he was getting at).
The Republican Leadership had known about it for years, and were covering it up for political reasons.

Here are all the Foleygate Playlists

I'm about to add a bunch more clips from this last week over the weekend.

I had a great time guest co-hosting with RU Sirius and Jeff Diehl on this week's RU Sirius show. (MP3 - 26 MB)

We talked about election fraud (what a surprise) and interviewed Dan the Automator (Dan's myspace page).

Photos are forthcoming, but I hate to hold up posting for anything these days, because I seem to never get back to it...

Nice Diebold Playlist on Dabble of 8 videos on the subject.

Check out all the other cool playlists I've been making at Dabble, and sign up and make one yourself!

Here's a good one by Ed Felten and friends on their latest one minute diebold hack.

So a lot is going on lately. There's so much going on, that I don't know where to begin in explaining it. So I'll just start putting stuff up...

It's all good, in different ways. On the creative musical and video front, I've been preparing a lot over this last month that I'm ready to start rolling out over these next few weeks. On the Dabble front, we're ready to roll out some new features and are adding a ton of new content collections from all sorts of cool websites. On the Wide Hive Records front, we have a number of new releases, and I sing background vocals on three different tracks on one of them: Salsa Blanco.

On the political front, I finally made time for a political fundraiser last Friday night, to meet a number of Congressional Candidates in this upcoming election, and I was instantly rewarded when none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stopped by to say hi.

I'm quite a fan of Bobby's lately, as he has been one of the few people to speak out about the 2004 Election irregularities in two different Rolling Stone articles (Was the 2004 Election Stolen? and Will the 2006 Election Be Hacked?), and on numerous television programs.

It was great to be able to hand him a copy of Stealing America. (There are a several clips of him included in the film.)

It was also a big reminder of the unprecedented attack on the environment by the Bush Administration - another critical reason why we have remove this administration and all the professional crooks that are running it at our earliest opportunity.