Electors across US break traditional pro forma ritual to use electoral college to protest election violations

http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/32320/index.php

Press Release

Electors across US break traditional pro forma ritual to use electoral college to protest election violations

Across the US, electors in at least five states, for the first time in
history, turned the heavily scripted and ritualized electoral college
proceedings into a forum for political action. Frustrated by the
relative inattention to widespread real voting violations now
numbering in the tens of thousands, Electors called for congressional
investigation and legislative action.

Vermont electors, on the record and in front of TV cameras and a
number of statewide media outlets, expressed their concerns for our
democracy with "57,000 complaints already received by the
Congressional Judiciary Committee, we call on Congress and
especially our Vermont Congressional delegation to investigate."
They enumerated credible violations affecting hundreds of thousands
of voters across the US, Elector Jeffrey Taylor reports.

Opening the traditional statement of thanks for being introduced at
the beginning of the Massachusetts Electoral College 2004 session,
Elector Cathleen Ashton of Wayland, took the opportunity to
demand "Every vote be counted and every vote count."

As described in local news reports, for the first time in history,
Electors in Maine also went on the record using the voting process to
"call for national voting reforms." Their statement pointed to the
kind of electoral reforms Maine has that lead to more genuine
elections, such as same day registration, allowing ex-felons to vote,
and clean election reforms "but our four electoral votes are held
meaningless if our sister states cannot hold elections that are fair,
accurate and verifiable," Elector Lu Bauer said after the brief
ceremony at the State House.

Most extraordinarily, one elector in California cast his ballot
provisional upon "all votes being counted " provisional, absentee,
under- and overvotes, computerized without paper ballots, even
getting valid votes from those turned away illegally, intimidated,
discouraged by incredibly long waits, etc." This incredible act as a
creative attempt to get this message read on the floor of Congress
when they open the ballots on January 6 to consider whether to
certify the vote.

"Never has such a vote been cast by an elector and without a
parliamentarian to rule it in or out at the electoral college level, we
await whether Congress will acknowledge this type of provisional
vote and address the issues this elector sought to raise or whether
they too will ignore provisional votes," said Grace Ross, an organizer
of the national effort to support electors to take action and a member
of Truth in Elections.

Even in North Carolina where lack of "swing state" status left local
voting violations relatively invisible, Democratic Electors and local
activists spoke out about local problems while Republican Electors
voted inside. Elector Mary Roe spoke of problems she herself witnessed
as an election observer in her own county as well as saying that
"everyone deserves to have their votes counted" while deploring the
4,500 votes NC election officials acknowledged disappeared in a
computerized voting machine crash.

Massachusetts Electors who introduced the motion said they will use
this to lobby Congressional members to take action now such as
objecting to the vote. The motion passed by acclamation called on
Congress to: "Act to commit Congress to investigate all voting
complaints that might have any validity that they receive; Act to
commit Congress to remedy any voting rights violations or electoral
fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts; File in
Congress and commit their resources to passage of systemic
remedies."

In speaking at their Mass. press conference afterwards, one Elector,
Tom Barbera, spoke of personally having his life threatened during
get-out-the-vote efforts. Another spoke of being targeted for
intimidation such as being immediately accosted as an African
American entering a Florida polling place by whites telling her "your
kind is not wanted here", "we don't want your kind voting here",
"leave"; such threatening behavior meant as get-out-the-vote
volunteers they frequently had to follow intimidated voters of color
out of polling places and convince them to reenter and agree to
accompany them through the voting process..

Tom Barbera, in presenting the Massachusetts' Electoral College
motion, acknowledging that many whose voting rights violations
were most widely violated were African American, referenced the
Civil Rights struggle in saying "we believe that as electors, we have a
unique opportunity and obligation to ensure that justice does not
again become so delayed as to be denied (as happened in 2000)" (END)

http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/32320/index.php

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