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
Category Archives: Election 2006 – Paying Attention
Some Playlists On The Day’s Events
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
Where All My Video’s Going For This Election
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.
Californians – Remember to Vote For Phil Angelides and John Garamendi
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!
Get Ready For Tomorrow – Batteries, Tape, Cameras, Cable – Ready Set Go!
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!
Clips From HBO’s Hacking Democracy
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!
Stealing America: Vote By Vote – Here’s a clip on the Exit Polls versus “official” results
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 System We Could Find For Elections Error Reporting
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
Electronic Voting Machines Already Malfunctioning In This Year’s Election – No System Or Centralized Process In Place For Tracking Problems
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…
Plan B – Getting Ready for this Year’s Stolen Election
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.