Obama, Romney teams 'lawyer up' for Election Day vote disputes (via The Christian Science Monitor)
Dreading the thought of another Florida 2000 – “hanging chads” anyone? – battalions of Republican and Democratic lawyers have fanned out across the country, prepared to do battle over every last polling place, every vote if necessary. Neither side will reveal the disposition of their legal…
A painting of President Barack Obama that elementary students voted in 2009 to put on their school's wall is now actively suppressing Mitt Romney voters, according to a statement from the Pennsylvania Republican Party.
Numerous complaints from Republicans voting in Philadelphia's 35th Ward began coming in this morning, giving the Pennsylvania State Republican Committee cause to request a judge intervene. The Democratic City Committee of Philadelphia agreed with their complaint, noting that any campaign images inside a polling place are considered electioneering, which is illegal.
Acknowledging the two parties' agreement, a judge in Philadelphia ordered poll workers to cover the mural with paper so that its content is not visible, and they did.
"The Obama campaign is 0-for-2 today in trying to get away with their disgusting attempts to suppress Republican voices in Philadelphia," state GOP chairman Rob Gleason told CBS Philly.
"Whether it’s blocking Republican Election Day workers form doing their job or violating Pennsylvania law by electioneering in the polling place, it is clear the Obama campaign has taken their campaign in the gutter to manipulate this election however they can," he continued. "Based on the Obama campaign’s behavior today, it certainly raises the question: what are Democrats doing in the polls that they are working so hard to shield folks from monitoring this election?"
Elections watchdogs in Philadelphia have also encountered numerous complaints about Republican poll watchers being denied access to polling places, which the city's district attorney is reportedly looking into. A number of other complaints from Democrats arose after signs appeared outside polling places telling voters they must bring a photo ID, which isn't actually the case .
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Photo: Twitter user @Timodc.
Chris Matthews let everyone watching MSNBC's NOW with Alex Wagner know that people who vote for third parties or refrain from voting are "idiots."
“If you don’t vote you’re an idiot,” he began.
"The haters all voted, they always vote. The haters will show up," Matthews explained. "It's the lovers -- oh, I had to check my email, I had to text something, or I thought I'd work out or meet somebody for a drink. Drop it. Vote," Matthews said.
But Matthews went further than simply criticizing those who don't cast a ballot, moving on to lambast people who decline to vote for Republican or Democratic candidates.
"And if you vote for one of these numbskull third or fourth party candidates like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein and say, oh I was so surprised at what happened -- no you shouldn't be, because idiots like you who voted for third and fourth party candidates, and they don't know how the system works. You have two choices."
Johnson is running on the Libertarian ticket, while Stein is the Green Party's candidate.
He argued that "people being so NPR, so PBS, so hoity-toity" by voting for other parties have ruined elections.
Matthews continued, "If you want to participate, go vote. If you want to watch, go to another country, because this is the country you're allowed to vote in."
"People who think they're better than democracy are really a joke on themselves," he said.
Watch the video, from MSNBC on Nov. 6, below.
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An U.S. District Court judge has rejected a suit filed by a Green Party activist alleging that Ohio voting machines were using dangerously vulnerable software that would allow votes to be blocked or altered. According to SFGate.com, Judge Gregory Frost ruled that election activist and Green Party Congressional candidate Bob Fitrakis provided "zero" evidence for his claims, offering instead only conjecture as to how and why the machines could fail.
Fitrakis and his lawyer alleged that software and hardware produced by the Nebraska company Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) contain a "back door" that makes them particularly easy to reprogram and cause to produce inaccurate results. Their suit sought to force Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) to stop using ES&S products and break the state's contract with the company.
Frost weighed evidence from Fitrakis and a software expert provided by the Fitrakis legal team, but found that the evidence "has demonstrated zero likelihood of success based on the evidence presented to this Court."
The judge sided with the state, which argued that discarding the ES&S system and finding and implementing a new system would cause confusion and delays within an already potentially overloaded voting infrastructure.
The ES&S software is not installed on voting machines, but is actually used in counting ballots and tabulating the results.
[Voting machine image via Shutterstock]
In South Carolina, voters are casting ballots on touch-screen machines being audited by the oversight arm of the state legislature, reported the Free Times of Columbia, S.C.
Republican Lt. Gov Glenn McConnell called for the review last year.
One official with the Audit Council said they are investigating whether machines record votes accurately, among other issues.
Last year, a group of computer scientists and election watchers concluded, in an independent review of machines, that thousands of votes disappeared from totals certified by the State Election Commission during the 2010 midterm elections. The commission responded that the differences were never enough to sway an election and that they corrected many of the issues.
South Carolina is also one of 16 states that still uses paperless voting machines, meaning that there is no paper trail to verify votes if a machine malfunctions.
“If those machines malfunction, there’s no way to independently check what the actual voter’s intent was,” the director of the Voting Integrity Program at the nonprofit Common Cause, Susannah Goodman, told the Charleston Post & Courier. “In these 16 states, we’re very vulnerable to miscounts that won’t be caught.”
While some voters in South Carolina reported no issues, many complained of long lines.
On Facebook, one voter claimed she waited three hours to vote and witnessed many others simply giving up. Four of the six machines at her precinct were broken, she said, and "the old people running check-in" also posed a problem.
For the last two weeks, American automaker Chrysler has been trying to make one thing abundantly clear to the public: No matter what Mitt Romney's ads claim, they are not moving production to China. And on Tuesday, they're sending the whole workforce to make that point to Mitt Romney himself.
"Chrysler gave its entire work force the day off to Vote Today!" Ralph Gilles, Chrysler's vice president of production, said on Twitter. "Let's go!"
The move frees up more than 55,000 workers to go to the polls and vote for their candidate of choice. While some are sure to vote for Romney, polling in Ohio -- where many of Chrysler's employees live -- has consistently shown that Obama retains an advantage in the state because he rescued the auto industry.
It's that very rescue that the Romney campaign has been trying to obfuscate on, with the candidate himself claiming that Chrysler's Jeep line is "" Multiple ads on television and radio in Ohio have carried the claim, but calling it "a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats."
Reacting to vocal Romney supporter and reality television show host Donald Trump, Giles too joined in the chorous correcting the claim. "[You] are full of shit!" he exclaimed after Trump told his followers that Obama "bails out Chrysler and now Chrysler wants to send all Jeep manufacturing to China–and will!"
"I apologize for my language, but lies are just that, lies," Giles added later. "Thanks for the support People."
For the record, Giles also credited the United Autoworkers Union for helping get the day off to vote: "Gm,Ford & Chrysler via negotiated terms UAW have had election day off for 15yrs!" he wrote. "Logically extended to salaried workers too!"
From Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans to Cuban Americans, the more than 12 million Hispanic Americans eligible to vote Tuesday could hold the keys to the White House.
"The most important thing is for our voice, the Hispanic voter's voice, be heard, and that the president know he has our vote, and should support us," said Celeste Guerra, 20.
The Honduran American student was casting her first vote for Barack Obama in his race against Republican Mitt Romney, a contest in which Hispanics are expected to show their growing political clout.
A diverse cultural group and the largest US minority tracked by the US Census, Hispanics make up about 16% of the US population. But their votes could gain even greater importance in swing states such as Nevada, Colorado, Florida and Virginia.
Nevada has six electoral votes, Colorado nine, Florida 29 and Virginia 13, and all have sizeable Hispanic constituencies.
Guerra is among the 73% of registered Hispanic voters who recently said they would support Obama, compared to 24% for Romney, according to the poll by Hispanic media group ImpreMedia and pollsters LatinoDecisions.
In Florida, which holds a hefty 29 of the 270 Electoral College votes Obama or Romney needs to win, Hispanics were out in force at many polling stations in Miami-Dade county.
Cuban Americans, who packed polling stations at local schools, make up about 70% of the county's registered Republicans, and especially for older Cubans who arrived in the 1960s, Romney remains their man.
"We need somebody who knows about business, and can get the economy moving," argued Ulises Calzadilla, a 75-year-old retiree.
But Cuban Americans are now less reliably Republican, especially as the first wave of wealthier refugees dies out and is replaced by ordinary Cubans who grew up under the Castro regime.
Those who came to Florida in the past 15 years or so seemed most open to voting Democratic, like Estrella del Sol, 52, who was proudly voting for the first time since leaving the communist-ruled island.
"I came to vote for Obama because I think he is the candidate who will keep and fight for the social programs that are in the interest of most of us: education and Medicare," she said.
Dolores Arrozarena, 64, said she became a citizen just last year "just so that I could go vote today for Obama, the president who represents all Latinos and the middle class."
Arrozarena arrived at 3:00 am and stood in line four hours before casting her vote for the president.
A recent Florida International University/The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald poll showed a very close race in Florida, 51 percent to 47 percent in Obama's favor.
Obama faces different challenges in different states. He scores big with Mexican Americans out west, and with Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in Florida and New York.
"The Hispanic vote nationally is unlike the Hispanic vote in Florida, where Hispanics are much more varied in their party affiliation," said Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida political science professor.
Nothing was going to stop first-time voter Galicia Malone from casting her ballot in Tuesday's US elections -- not even the imminent birth of her first child.
The 21-year-old from Dolton, Illinois, a suburb of President Barack Obama's adopted hometown Chicago, had been in labor since the middle of the night, with contractions five minutes apart.
But she insisted en route to hospital on stopping at her local polling station -- the aptly named New Life Celebration Church -- to cast her ballot, Cook County clerk David Orr said in a news release..
"I never voted before so this made a major difference in my life," Malone told Chicago's WBBM all-news radio station. "And I wanted this to be a stepping-stone for my daughter."
"I was just trying to read (the ballot paper) and breathe, read and breathe," she added. "That's what I kept telling myself: ?Read and breathe, read and breathe'."
Orr, whose office is in charge of setting up local polling stations, said: "My hat goes off to Galicia for not letting anything get in the way of voting. What a terrific example she is showing for the next generation."
Proud voters are already posting photos of their ballots on Instagram—sometimes with the names of their chosen candidates filled in. But before you snap a shot of your vote, you might want to check your state laws. As the Citizen Media Law Project points out as part of their guide to documenting the 2012 election, showing your marked ballot to other people is actually illegal in many states.
Laws against displaying your ballot are motivated by concerns about vote buying, since voters being bribed might need to be prove they voted a certain way.
While laws vary from state to state, the penalties for showing your ballot can be stiff.
“It’s illegal to display your voted ballot and violators could be convicted of a misdemeanor,” Colorado secretary of state spokesman Richard Coolidge told ProPublica. The penalty, according to Colorado law: a fine of not more than $1000, imprisonment in county jail for not more than one year — or both.
In Michigan and Hawaii, voters who show their ballots to other people can, in certain circumstances, have their votes thrown out.
It’s not clear how these rules apply to sharing a picture of your ballot on the Internet, or whether states would actually prosecute voters for an Instagram shot. Officials from Michigan and Hawaii have yet to respond to requests for comment.
“Virtually all of these laws are older laws that predate the current technology,” said Jeffrey Hermes, a First Amendment expert who wrote the Citizen Media Law Project’s guide to ballot disclosure rules.
But, he warned in his guide, “It is easy to imagine situations in which the thoughtless posting of a marked ballot on Facebook could result in negative consequences.”
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, said that taking a picture of your marked ballot is “bad news.”
“Hard as it is to believe, before the secret ballot there was a lot more vote buying and we don't want more of that now,” he wrote in an email.
A North Carolina elections official told WRAL last week that a “criminal vote-buying scheme” in another state had involved cell phone pictures of completed ballots.
Some states simply prohibit using phones or cameras within a polling place.
Allowing voters to publicly display their ballots might also undermine the culture of the secret ballot, Hermes said. Another factor is the fear that voters might be intimated or swayed by seeing other people’s ballots.
“These are legitimate concerns,” Hermes said, “but they only extend so far.”
If voters “want to express what they feel and their experience and the polls, the First Amendment should protect that,” he said.
Josh Stearns of Free Press, a media and technology advocacy group, told ProPublica he did not see much difference between wearing a t-shirt supporting a candidate, and sharing a photograph of your ballot.
“For a lot of people, voting is a really important life event,” he said.
“We can take our kids into the voting booth, but in many places we can’t take a picture of our ballot.”
Stearns said that allowing individuals to photograph their ballots might also be an important way of providing them with a record of their own vote.
Students interviewed this week by the DePaul University student paper had a range of views on posting ballot photos on Instagram, from approval to disappointment that voting had become “just another thing you can tweet.”
At least one state has recently changed its stance on the issue, Hermes said. Maine repealed its ban on voters showing their own ballots in 2011.
Image via Instagram
In a town outside Atlanta, the president of a homeowners association sent an email to residents alerting them that the gates would be closed on Tuesday "to enhance controlled access to the community until we see what (if any) negative repercussions may occur because of the results of the election," according to the New York Times Caucus blog.
Bill Stanley, president of the Cottages of Woodstock, a community for people 55 and over, claimed that he followed the advice of the police chief of Woodstock, Ga.
However, the police chief told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Certainly we would give no one that kind of information.”
Image: New Gated Community With Focus On The Security Gate via Shutterstock
A voting machine in Pennsylvania was "taken out of service" for flipping votes for President Barack Obama to Republican challenger Mitt Romney, MSNBC reporter Zachary Roth confirmed Tuesday afternoon.
RELATED: Oregon election worker fired for altering ballots to straight Republican ticket
The shocking error was revealed by a YouTube video published by user "centralpavote," an account apparently created solely to share this particular video. In a description, the video's author explains:
My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping very closely together to find the ‘active areas’. From the top of Romney’s button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama’s name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein’s button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said “It’s nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.” and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.
There is a lot of speculation that the footage is edited. I’m not a video guy, but if it’s possible to prove whether a video has been altered or not, I will GLADLY provide the raw footage to anyone who is willing to do so. The jumping frames are a result of the shitty camera app on my Android phone, nothing more.
Filming or photographing a ballot is a misdemeanor crime in some states, including Pennsylvania.
Watch the video below:
A glitch in a Florida county elections office placed hundreds and possibly thousands of calls telling people that they had until 7 p.m. to vote -- except the call indicated Wednesday, not Tuesday, as the deadline, reported the Tampa Bay Times.
The mistake occurred in Pinellas County because calls sent on Monday alerting people that they could vote until 7 p.m. "tomorrow" didn't reach about 12,000 intended targets.
The robocalls automatically began again this morning and were sent out between 8:00 and 8:30 until the elections office realized the error and stopped the calls. A spokesperson for the office claims that the number of residents mistakenly told they could vote Wednesday was nowhere close to 12,000 and that they quickly sent a second call correcting the error.
One resident of St. Petersburg, Fla., Kathie Spitzer, claimed that she received a call at 8:07 a.m. When she called the elections office to report the error, officials initially claimed that the error was impossible. "They were very uncooperative," Spitzer said.
Angry woman on phone. Image via Shutterstock
Churches that are also polling places in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota are being accused of displaying political speech well within the designated 100-foot line around polling places within which political speech and attempts to influence votes are forbidden. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's "Whistleblower" blog, some voters are encountering posted prayers against same sex marriage in polling locations that are Catholic churches, while another church polling place spent the morning flying a banner from its main building that read, "Strengthen marriage, don't redefine it."
Stephanie Weiss, a voter in West St. Paul, shot a photo with her phone of a prayer in the form of a letter on Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis letterhead posted 15 feet from the polling place door at West St. Paul's St. Jospeh's Catholic Church.
"Heavenly Father," it began, "Through the powerful intercession of the Holy Family, grant to this local Church the many graces we need to foster, strengthen and support faith-filled, holy marriages and hold families."
Weiss said that she wasn't sure whether the prayer amounted to political speech, but that she found it offensive.
"I thought, this is why you can’t campaign within 100 feet. This is how you disenfranchise people, right here," she told the Star-Tribune. "If it isn’t campaign material, it was still a really insightful experience for me, but I’m shaking."
A spokesperson for the Archdiocese said that he would look into the matter.
In South St. Paul, the St. John Vianney Catholic Community church was displaying a banner this morning that read, "Strengthen marriage, don't redefine it." Desmond Jensen of St. Paul sent a photo in the "Whistleblower," but by the time reporter Maria Elena Baca reached church officials, they claimed that sign has been taken down.
A spokesperson for Secretary of State Pat Turgeon said that her office is investigating the complaints.
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