tom_thinks

I've been doing some canvassing with MoveOnPAC recently and I've come across a few people who don't want to share who they are voting for. I can understand that as a tactic to get the guy at the door to just go away, but I feel we all need to be discussing our votes a lot more than we do. With that in mind here is how I voted today when I went to vote early (which I highly recommend):

President: John Kerry (pretty obvious)

U.S. Senate: Betty Castor (Dem)

Congressional Rep: Corrine Brown (I love her)

State Attorney: Bill Cervone (a Republican! This guy has come to the defense of protestors on many occasions and his challenger has very very poor qualifications)

State Rep District 23: Ed Jennings Jr (Dem)

Alachua County Sheriff: Bill Davis (Democrat, and the current sheriff is horrible, authoritarian and power hungry, I could go on for quite a while, but lets just say Steve Oelrich sucks and he's got to go)

Supervisor of Elections: Pam Carpenter (Dem)
Alachua County Commission District 1: Mike Byerly (Dem)
Alachua County Commission District 3: Paula Delaney (Dem)
Alachua County Commission District 5: Rodney Long (Dem)

I voted to retain all the Justices and Judges; Jeb! would only appoint worse ones.

8Th Judicial Circuit Group 9 Judge: Harvey Baxter
County Judge: Walter Green

Florida Constitutional Amendments
1 Hell NO! (requires notification of parents for minor's abortion)
2 NO! (makes it harder to get amendments on the ballot)
3 NO! ( decreases percentage lawyers can get in medical malpractice cases; helps corporations the most)
4 NO! ( would allow slot machines to entice the poor to waste their money and lives away)
5 YES! (increases the minimum wage to $6.15)
6 NO! (would repeal the high speed train. We need mass transit f_ck the highways!)
7 YES! (allows patients to see a record of doctors adverse medical incidents)
8 NO! ( would stop any doctor with 3 malpractice incidents from practicing medicine in the state. #7 is a better way to deal with this)

Local Initiatives
Campaign Finance Reporting: Yes!
Limit Local Campaign Contributions to $250: Yes!
.5% sales tax for Parks and Recreation: yes
.5% sales tax to repair county and city roadways: yes

So there you have it, that's how I voted. I hope you vote that way too, but do what you feel. Please feel free to email with any comments.

As a former Nader campaigner I think the following email would be helpful to any of you wonderful people who are thinking of voting for Nader this time.

MEDIA ADVISORY – October 20, 2004

Contact: Michelle Mulkey & Mike Smith, 415-901-0111; Sara Flynn,

212-584-2000



3 Million Alternative Newsweekly Readers To See Ads Placed in 10 Swing

States Urging Nader Supporters To Vote Kerry

---

Barbara Ehrenreich, Bonnie Raitt & Tim Robbins To Headline

Telephone Press Conference Tomorrow, Friday, at Noon Eastern Time -

                              ---



Large ads are being placed in more than 20 alternative newsweeklies

urging Nader supporters living in 10 swing states to vote for John

Kerry in 2004. The ads promote a statement by over 70 former Nader

supporters including Noam Chomsky, Jim Hightower, Susan Sarandon, Ben

Cohen, and Cornel West endorsing voting for Kerry in all swing states.



“Our goal is to reach voters who have been almost entirely neglected

in this campaign: swing voters on the left,” said John Weiss, publisher

of the Colorado Springs Independent.  The ads will run in the following

states where the race is close and Nader is on the ballot: Colorado,

Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada,. New Hampshire, New Mexico

and Wisconsin.



“No one has gone after these millions of likely voters,” added John

Pearce, founder of TheUnityCampaign.org. “With almost every prominent

member of Ralph Nader's own, hand-picked ‘Citizens Committee’ for his

2000 campaign publicly uniting behind John Kerry in battleground

states, we have a message that needs to get out. The alternative

newsweekly papers were the perfect vehicle to reach these swing voters.

If enough potential Nader voters hear about this, Kerry will pick up

tens of thousands of battleground state votes.”



Placement of the ads was coordinated by the Alternative Weekly

Network, an advertising cooperative based in Sacramento, CA that

specialized in placing ads in 150 alternative newsweeklies that reach

nearly 20 million readers.



Reporters interested in covering this story are urged to participate

in the following press conference:



WHAT:     Telephone press conference with progressive leaders and

former Ralph Nader supporters urging citizens to vote for John Kerry.



WHEN:        Friday, October 22, 2004, 9:00 am, PDT/12:00 pm EST.

DIAL-IN INFORMATION: 888-455-9655

Conference PASSCODE:  530522

Conference MODERATOR: Parker Blackman



WHO:     Barbara Ehrenreich, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Robbins, John Pearce,

Founder, TheUnityCampaign,  Jeff Cohen, Coordinator, Vote2StopBush.com,

Eli Pariser, Executive Director, MoveOn PAC

Several days before the state's felon voter list was sent to county elections offices across Florida, state officials expressed doubts about its reliability.
The doubts were serious enough that Gov. Jeb Bush was advised to "pull the plug" on the entire project, according to an e-mail written by a state computer expert and obtained by the Herald- Tribune.
Bush refused the request, the e-mail said, and told the Department of State to proceed with the purge of nearly 48,000 voters.
Two months later, after flaws in the list were exposed in the press, the state abandoned the effort to purge voters on the list. Those flaws were revealed after Secretary of State Glenda Hood lost a court battle to keep the list hidden from the public.
Bush said Friday that he was never warned about any problems before the list was released.
But his denial contradicts a May 4, 2004, e-mail in which Florida Department of Law Enforcement computer expert Jeff Long describes how election officials told Bush the list needed to be abandoned.

- Gainesville Sun originally from the Sarasota Herald Tribune
I could rant about this a bit, but I'm really tired and my face hurts from the sunburn I got today waiting to see John Edwards when he came to Gainesville. It was great by the way, more on that later.

It wasn't supposed to happen again. This is the refrain you hear up and down the state this year, from elections officials, voting-rights advocates, civil rights experts and ordinary voters fed up with the reputation for electoral clumsiness that Florida has held since 2000. Or, more precisely, the chant goes, It wasn't supposed to happen again -- but it is. Like meteorologists nervously surveying the Gulf Coast during hurricane season, elections experts who've studied procedures in Florida now see a slow-motion disaster approaching the state. The weather here isn't pleasant: You've got partisan and/or incompetent officials, new and controversial voting technology, extremely litigious candidates, a flood of new voters, and an unbearably close race, with 27 electoral votes -- and the presidency -- hanging in the balance.

Go read this at Salon.

<> Last week 60,000 of us demanded honesty about the draft - and people
took notice. Cable news channels and major newspapers have been buzzing
about the draft ever since.
Other organizations also heard. MoveOn and a group called Win Back
Respect produced a TV ad about this issue. Over a million young people
will see it on The Daily Show, MTV, and ESPN.
You can add to this momentum even more - sign the petition demanding
honesty about our military commitments:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/nodraft

We still need to get the message out. The mainstream media coverage has
focused on unsubstantiated rumors of some "secret plan" for a draft.
They are missing the point.

It's not about a secret plan - we should be concerned about a draft
because, when it comes to meeting all of the military commitments he has
made, George Bush has no plan.

<> -Text of an email from Howard Dean

Last night in the debates George Bush denied that he ever said he wasn't concerned with Osama Bin Laden. But we all know that was a lie. Thanks to Truthout for sending me this:
But during a news conference at the White House on March 13, 2002, Bush said something close to what Kerry quoted. "I truly am not that concerned about him," the president said, according to the official White House transcript.
...
"We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is," Bush said during the 2002 news conference. "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

It seems some Republicans have been shredding Democratic voter registration forms. Horrible, but not surprising. If the charges are true, this is a pretty big deal considering this Voter Outreach of America had 300 employees in Nevada and probably a lot more in the other states its active in. All the more reason to get involved in defeating Bush.

"Computer rooms are not supposed to be hot,"
-Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore (Palm Beach County, FL)
A public test of computer voting machines, scheduled for Tuesday had to be cancelled because of a computer crash. The supervisor of elections blames a power outage in the days after Hurricane Jeanne for causing the problem. She believes that although the computers were not on, being exposed to 90 degree temperatures must have screwed things up. Is that really an exceptable excuse? Add this incident the growing pile of evidence against these computer voting machines. More info on computer voting here.

These people are broadcasting a probably completely slanderous account of John Kerry's Vietnam service coming up soon. The Dems are very upset (with good reason), and of course the evil bastards in charge are smiling. If you want to take action and tell Sinclair and their advertisers that this shit is whack, then follow Josh Marshall's advice:

Now, this site might be of help for identifying who's who at various stations. But let's be very clear: contacting a given affiliate's sales manager and telling them of your displeasure is very much of secondary importance.

Local Sinclair reps are suggesting that callers call their corporate HQ. But, believe me, don't waste your time.

The key is to identify their local advertisers and contact them. You can find information out here or, if you're in a Sinclair market, just watch the evening news show and mark down who the advertisers are. Then contact them directly -- and if possible, place a call. Or better yet, send an old-fashioned paper letter. Actually, scratch that, do both.

From TPM

The truth is, there is hardly an area of life that will not be affected by the judicial appointments made in the coming years.
...
Right-wing legal activist Clint Bolick has said, "This election could be a twofer--we win the White House and the Supreme Court."

If you know anyone who needs to be reminded about the possiblity of Bush picking a few Supreme Court Justices, tell them to Be Afraid. Very Afraid.