The Dallas Morning News has an old-fashioned telephone poll of the Governor’s race (for which you can see some not-terribly-informative crosstabs here in PDF form), and the results are quite similar to those newfangled robocall polls.
With just over a month to go until Election Day, 38 percent of likely voters back Mr. Perry’s re-election, according to a statewide poll conducted for The Dallas Morning News.
[…]
“There is an anti-Perry vote, and clearly somebody should have been able to beat him. But the anti-Perry vote is split three ways,” said pollster Mickey Blum.
The top vote-getter wins; a candidate need not exceed 50 percent of the vote, and there is no runoff.
If the election were held today, independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn would get 18 percent of the vote, Democratic nominee Chris Bell would get 15 percent, and independent Kinky Friedman would get 14 percent, according to the poll.
As for Mr. Perry, his level of support has remained effectively unchanged through much of the political year, said Ms. Blum.
“He hasn’t won anybody. He hasn’t lost anybody. But he’s likely to win because his opposition is divided unbelievably,” she said.
The telephone survey of 828 likely voters was conducted by Ms. Blum’s firm, Blum & Weprin Associates Inc., between Sept. 26 and Oct. 3. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, meaning results could vary by that much in either direction.
So, Perry in the 30s but above the 35% danger zone. The other three bunched up, with Strayhorn doing better than she does in SurveyUSA and Zogby and about as well or a little worse than she does in Rasmussen. Friedman in last place.
And then there’s Chris Bell.
Ms. Blum said Mr. Bell’s problem is that most voters still don’t know who he is. According to the survey, two-thirds of likely voters don’t know him well enough to have an opinion.
The Democratic nominee doesn’t even have majority support within his own party. Mr. Bell, a former congressman from Houston, is attracting only 39 percent of Democratic voters and only 37 percent of black voters, the most reliable constituency within the Democratic Party.
Ms. Blum said she could not recall a contest “in any state, anywhere, anytime, that the Democrat is not [dominant] among black voters,” she said.
Blacks were 8% of the sample, so we’re talking at most 70 respondents. This could just be a weird result, especially given that Strayhorn had 26% black support. If there’s a groundswell of black support for Strayhorn, I’m not aware of it.
As far as Bell’s level of support among Democrats in this poll goes, we’re back to some old familiar territory. I won’t bore you with another retelling of my argument against this. I kind of wish they’d polled the Senate race alongside the Governor’s race in this survey. If they had, and if they’d gotten a result that was equally similar for that race to the robocall/online polls, some 30-35% of respondents would have said they were voting for Barbara Radnofsky. Call me crazy, but I have a hard time believing that half – more than half, even – of self-identified Radnofsky supporters would then fail to push the button for Chris Bell. If you can explain that, by all means, knock yourself out in the comments.
I mean, I’m not so egotistical as to think that my assumptions about this race can’t be wrong. I could certainly find out on November 7 that all my skepticism amounted to so much hot air. But if I’m wrong I want to understand why. I keep asking the same questions, and I keep not getting any satisfactory answers. I brought up the Senate race here because I don’t think Radnofsky has a higher level of name recognition than Bell does. I figure that in these polls, what some people hear is “Radnofsky’s the Democrat, I’m voting for the Democrat”, and they answer accordingly. Do you believe Bell won’t get some of that, in the voting booth if not on the telephone? I do, so I remain dubious of results like this. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong. It’s where I’m coming from, and you can take it for what it’s worth. The only poll that matters is in 34 days, and at that time we’ll know what’s what.
Let’s see if his showing at the debate changes his name recognition. It’s his only chance.
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More and more are calling themselves Democrats. Less and less are calling themselves Republican.
So many strong, brave, good problem solving Democratic candidates…
Maybe, a little help now with evidence, proof and following the Texas Constitutional requirement for numbered ballots in observably honest elections, instead of No Evidence polls or No Evidence electronic air-voting.
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The Texas Democratic Candidate who is abiding by the laws of the Texas Constitution and is working to put evidence back into our elections:
http://www.texaspopulists.com/node/1226
David Van Os Sues Secretary of State and County Clerk in Travis County
Submitted by Sarah Gonzales on Fri, 06/16/2006 – 6:28pm.
Progressive Populist Caucus Co-Founder and Attorney-General candidate David Van Os followed up on remarks before the General Caucus and, along with Steering Committee Member Sonia Santana, filed a lawsuit to block further unconstitutional use of direct-recording electronic voting machines and procedures. Please read these petitions. They are not long and easy enough for any member to understand.
The machines and procedures immediately in question — Hart InterCivics are the most widely used in Texas. They have been the subject of numerous complaints by PPC members and a few party officials but have not yet become as notorious as machines from Diebold or ES&S, also “certified” by the Secretary of State and involved in recounts and contests in both parties all across Texas.
The recount problems noted in the suit were also the subject of litigation discussed in the General Caucus by Larry Veselka. The unresolved recounts are devastating to Democratic participation and voter morale.
Democrats in Harris County, including Gerry Birnberg, County Chairman, James Goodwille Pierre, candidate for County Clerk, and others have also seen an urgent need for the sort of injunctive relief requested by the plaintiffs.
John Robert BEHRMAN, Executive Vice-Chair of the Progressive Populist Caucus, said, …
“For me, the most surprising and important aspect of this lawsuit is direct application of our state constitution. Do they even read the constitution up in the capitol any more? ”
“The people and parties conduct elections. They are a check, the ultimate peaceful check, on government. The lawmakers’ and the bureaucrats’ lack of respect for our constitution are a gross insult to both parties and to the people.”
“There is no underestimating the gravity of this matter: Some of us send our children to war in order to uphold our constitution. These two-bit peddlers and bureaucrats should not trifle with it, but they have!”
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It is Yellow Dog Democrat Time.
http://bobgeiger.blogspot.com/2005/02/what-is-yellow-dog-democrat.html
A Yellow Dog Democrat is an unswerving party loyalist. The term comes from the 1928 presidential election, when Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to support fellow Democrat Al Smith. Instead, Heflin chose to support Republican Herbert Hoover who would become president and lead the country into the abyss of the Great Depression. Many Alabamans disagreed with Heflin’s choice and in retaliation popularized the line “I’d vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket.”
The label stuck and, for many of us who strongly oppose the ideology of the Republican party, it illustrates the lengths some Democrats will go to support our ticket. In short, a Yellow Dog would never vote for a Republican.
There has seldom been a time in our national dialog when the lines between party ideology have been so clearly defined. If you are a Democrat, it is imperative that you vote for candidates who share your values and beliefs and reject those who proudly join and support George W. Bush under the Republican banner.
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http://www.voterescue.org/
Parallel Elections
VoteRescue will be holding a Parallel Election action this Election Day (November 7th). We are currently in need of volunteers to assist before and on Election Day.
Parallel Election Details
Our Next Meeting…
Please come and bring a friend who is also concerned about our votes being stolen by electronic voting machines. We will be having an important discussion of upcoming actions and events to get the word out to all Texans that hand-counted paper ballots are the most accurate, 100% transparent, least vulnerable to fraud and totally corporate-free voting system there is and we, the voters, want this system NOW!
For more information call Karen Renick at (512) 496-7408 or Contact Us via email.
In Texas:
http://www.voterescue.org/contact.html
…………
And other resources:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
and
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm
and
http://electiondefensealliance.org/
Welcome to the Election Defense Alliance
ABOUT EDA:
* The purpose of EDA is to help build and coordinate a comprehensive, cohesive national strategy for the election integrity movement, in order to regain public control of the voting process in the United States, and to insure that the process is honest, transparent, secure, subject to unambiguous verification, and worthy of the public trust.
* To accomplish this purpose, EDA will provide resources, strategic planning and coordination opportunities for a nationwide network of citizen electoral integrity groups and individuals already working at the national, state, and local levels.
* The urgent goal of these activities is to amplify the effectiveness and size of the election integrity movement by empowering and connecting existing groups and encouraging the creation of new ones.
* EDA seeks to provide connection, coordination, and focus, to eliminate duplication of efforts, to create a clearinghouse for the sharing of materials and other resources, and to facilitate coordinated decision-making about strategic priorities and tactical approaches in the election integrity movement.
CURRENT FOCUS:
* Our immediate goals are to build connections, activate our working groups, and prepare for citizen oversight and response for Election Day 2006.
* We invite all citizens and groups who wish to coordinate, collaborate, and share resources for election monitoring, data analysis, and citizen oversight activities to also create a log-in account here, join a working group, or affiliate with the EDA.
* Our working group forums provide resources and discussion areas arranged according to tasks and project types. Future content areas will include spaces for networking and sharing resources arranged geographically by state.
* The EDA website project will serve the election integrity movement, but it depends on citizen activists to help add, catalogue and distribute the materials here. One of the powerful features of the EDA website is that all working group members may add and share many types of content.
WHAT’S INSIDE:
* Please explore our website and share information found here with your friends, family and fellow activists. You will find many educational materials in our Resources page for reading, listening and viewing.
* Check the EDA Blog for election integrity news and action alerts, and join other citizens on critical action initiatives at our Take Action page. Feel free to explore further and if you have suggestions for content areas or content, please write to us.
Thank you for visiting and thank you for helping to restore fair and accurate elections in America.
ELECTION DEFENSE ALLIANCE
Join Today
http://electiondefensealliance.org/
………………….
via:
http://www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/
from:
http://www.crisispapers.org/essays6w/escape.htm
The “F” Word and How To Escape
From Its Clutches
By Bernard Weiner, Co-Editor
The Crisis Papers
October 3, 2006
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN DO IT
What’s to be done? It’s clear that Bushism rules inside Congress and within the D.C. beltway, with the exception of many high-level officers in the military. But, and this may be our saving grace, Bushism does not rule out in the country, where most citizens live.
Virtually every poll taken in recent months indicates a deep and growing antagonism toward Bush programs and policies — especially by traditional conservatives appalled at the extremists who hijacked their party. The anxieties of these voters tend to focus on the phony way the country was conned into the war, the thoroughgoing bungling and corruption of America’s occupation of Iraq that is resulting in so many Americans and innocent Iraqis being killed and maimed, the stagnant economy and its horrific effects on the put-upon middle class, and the organized corporate looting and personal immorality in the GOP era of government.
Even though the Republicans won’t initiate honest investigations into the culture of corruption that lies at the heart of its rule in Washington — with Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley and the NIEs being just the visible parts of the immoral icebergs floating in the Potomac — more and more Americans have wised up and know what must be done. There must be a clean-sweep change of direction and personnel.
If it’s impossible right now to get rid of the villains at the top, since the Republicans will not introduce resolutions of impeachment against Cheney and Bush, the only other available option is to begin cleaning out the mess via the ballot on November 7. First order of business: to clean up the corrupted mess that is the voting process/vote-tabulation. Corporations that own the voting and vote-counting machines and the software that controls them must no longer have free, unsupervised opportunities to manipulate the results.
THE ORDER OF PRIORITIES
snip
Here’s how I view the order of priorities for us all in the weeks remaining before the midterm election: act to ensure honest voting processes and especially honest vote-counting (which may necessitate suing local election officials for not taking care to ensure the rights of voters); remove the rubber-stamp Republicans from control of Congress; begin investigations into what went wrong and why, and try to ensure those abuses of power can’t happen again; refashion America’s foreign/military policy to regain our rightful authority and respect in the world; start working for the 2008 election to weed out Democrats who act like Republicans.
snip
…we understand the true goal at this moment in history: To break the momentum of the extremists in control of our government. The only way to do that right now is to defeat the Republicans in the House and/or Senate. After we achieve that victory, then we can work on purging the Democratic party of its turncoats and wimps. But not now, not when a defeat of the thugocracy is within our grasp on November 7 if we all work together with that common goal in mind.
November 8 should belong to those who, probably for the first time in their lives, are suspicious and afraid of their own reckless, incompetent government. That’s a majority of the American people. Let’s you and I join that majority to celebrate the beginnings of a return to a government of which we can feel proud again.
…………….
And what real journalism looks like:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
And
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/citizensclass.html
Bill Moyers
CITIZENS CLASS
Are you an informed and engaged citizen? Bill Moyers returns to investigative journalism with MOYERS ON AMERICA, a series of three documentaries on issues affecting democracy — money in politics, the environment, and internet neutrality. You can connect, reflect, and respond to these hotly-debated topics by joining the MOYERS ON AMERICA Citizens Class. This national dialogue will take a hard look at some of today’s most pressing issues and ask: What do you think?
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and finally…journalists may want to take it up as a challenge…
from:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Study_Daily_Show_as_substantive_as_1005.html
Study: Daily Show as ‘substantive’ as network news
10/05/2006 @ 10:08 am
Filed by RAW STORY
“No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign,” was compiled by Julia R. Fox, an assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University, and two graduate students who compared broadcast nightly newscasts on July 26-30, Aug. 30-31 and Sept. 1-3 in 2004 to episodes of The Daily Show from the same period. The study will be published next summer by the Journal of Broadcast and Electronic Media.
………………
Start practicing saying “NO” to Republicans.
From Former
Houston Young Republican:
Future of the Republican Party
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
ID: 194416 – 3 – 10/06/2006 – 0:56 – $29.95
Viguerie, Richard A. Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com
Richard Viguerie talks about the future of the Republican Party in Congress and the state of the Bush presidency. Mr. Viguerie has called for the immediate resignation of any House Republican leader, including Speaker Hastert, who may have known about former Congressman Mark Foley’s improper contact with underage pages and took no action.
Richard Viguerie is the author of Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.
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OUR RIGGED ELECTIONS
The Elephant in the Polling Booth
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/printArticle.cfm
By Mark Crispin Miller | 10/01/2006
To say that this election could go either way is not to say that the Republicans have any chance of winning it. As a civic entity responsive to the voters’ will, the party’s over, there being no American majority that backs it, or that ever would. Bush has left the GOP in much the same condition as Iraq, Afghanistan, the global climate, New Orleans, the Bill of Rights, our military, our economy and our national reputation. Thus the regime is reviled as hotly by conservatives as by liberals, nor do any moderates support it.
So slight is Bush’s popularity that his own party’s candidates for Congress are afraid to speak his name or to be seen with him (although their numbers, in the aggregate, are even lower than his). It seems the only citizens who still have any faith in him are those who think God wants us to burn witches and drive SUVs. For all their zeal, such theocratic types are not in the majority, not even close, and thus there’s no chance that the GOP can get the necessary votes.
And so the Democrats are feeling good, and calling for a giant drive to get the vote out on Election Day. Such an effort is essential—and not just to the Democrats but to the very survival of this foundering Republic. However, such a drive will do the Democrats, and all the rest of us, more harm than good if it fails to note a certain fact about our current situation: i.e., that the Democrats are going to lose the contest in November, even though the people will (again) be voting for them. The Bush Republicans are likely to remain in power despite the fact that only a minority will vote to have them there. That, at any rate, is what will happen if we don’t start working to pre-empt it now.
Even though this election could go either way, neither way will benefit the Democrats. Either the Republicans will steal their “re-election” on Election Day, just as they did two years ago, or they will slime their way to “victory” through force and fraud and strident propaganda, as they did after Election Day 2000. Whichever strategy they use, the only way to stop it is to face it, and then shout so long and loud about it that the people finally perceive, at last, that their suspicions are entirely just—and, this time, just say no.
Snip
More noticeably, Rolling Stone ran Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s, comprehensive study of Ohio, “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?” a piece the media could not ignore because its author was too famous. Thus Kennedy appeared on some shows that had been closed to all us other analysts, although his piece relied explicitly on our research; and even he was treated like a fantasist, or a felon, by the likes of Neil Cavuto, Tucker Carlson, Wolf Blitzer and Charlie Rose. Aside from those interrogations (and a decent head-to-head with Stephen Colbert, who let him finish several sentences), Kennedy too was disrespected by the media, which either blacked him out or put him down.
In short, the awful truth about 2004 has been denied by right and left alike and, strange to say, more loudly on the left. Indeed, whereas the right has largely chosen to avoid the issue, the only journalists who have purported to “debunk” the “theory” of Bush and Cheney’s stolen re-election have been liberals and progressive (and, ordinarily, excellent reporters): Mark Hertsgaard at Mother Jones; Russ Baker at TomPaine.com; David Corn at The Nation; and, above all, Farhad Manjoo at Salon.
Their “refutations” of the case are largely based on the mere exculpatory say-so of a few unconscious (or complicit) Democrats. And yet, although the work of these debunkers has itself been thoroughly debunked (and Manjoo, therefore, quietly assigned to other topics), it has done much to propagate the myth that there’s “no evidence” that Bush & Co. subverted our democracy. Such denials have been persuasive not because they are well argued but because the truth is terrifying, and a lot of people (including those reporters) very badly need a reason to believe that all is well. Such wishful thinking has kept “the liberal media” from dealing with the direst threat that our democracy has ever faced.
And yet most of our fellow citizens sense that threat. A Zogby poll in August found that only 45 percent of the American people felt “very confident” that Bush was re-elected “fair and square,” while the rest either doubted it or were “not at all confident” about it. The numbers of the blithe have been decreasing as the people have learned more and more about BushCo’s fascistic antics in 2004—and, as well, about the fatal flaws in the e-voting systems that the Republicans have been aggressively promoting since 2000. (Some Democrats have abetted them.)
The flaws of such systems have been exposed repeatedly by activists like Bev Harris, Brad Friedman, Clint Curtis, Lynn Landes, Earl Katz and Bruce O’Dell, and have also been solemnly detailed in many academic studies from, among others, NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice; Princeton’s Center for IT Policy; RABA Technologies; SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation); the U.S. Government Accountability Office; and a cohort of computer scientists at Johns Hopkins, Rice and Stanford universities.
snip
Read together, all those exposés and studies tell of a close and wholly illegitimate relationship between the corporate vendors of those voting systems and Bush/Cheney’s GOP. Three of the four firms that sell those systems Diebold, ES&S and Hart InterCivic have tight links with the party. The fourth, Sequoia, has also tended to malfunction in Bush/Cheney’s favor.
Now we have strong evidence of a covert partnership between those interests that “count” some four-fifths of U.S. votes and the party that controls our government. In a follow-up piece for Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., quotes the shocking testimony of a Diebold whistle-blower who, along with other employees, took part in the surreptitious placement of a software “patch” in the company’s machines in Georgia (whose electoral system had, just weeks before, been privatized through a secret contract with the Secretary of State). The order came directly from Bob Urosevich, president of Diebold’s e-voting machine division. “We were told not to talk to county personnel about it,” says Chris Hood, a consultant to the company. And what about that patch? “We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn’t do,” Hood noted. “The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done.”
All this happened one sticky day in August 2002. On Election Day, some ten weeks later, the official outcome of the vote baffled everyone: Senator Max Cleland, a Democrat whom polls showed had been leading his opponent, Saxby Chambliss, by five points, lost by seven points. In the race for governor, Democrat Roy Barnes, who had been leading Republican Sonny Perdue by eleven points, lost by five. Both losses were inexplicable, and Cleland’s was especially poignant. A war veteran and triple amputee, Cleland was quite popular in Georgia, whereas Chambliss was unknown—and a chickenhawk to boot, a “bad knee” having kept him out of Vietnam. Chambliss’s attack ads had cast Cleland as a traitor, because he had voted against establishing the Department of Homeland Security. And now the people of the Peach State had apparently been swayed by their fear of terrorism into believing that those ads were right.
snip
SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY—We must delve into the recent past, not to quibble over ancient numbers but to find out where we really are today. For what happened in some states four years ago, and in most states two years ago, is still happening now, and in more states than ever: a vast, complex and incremental process of mass disenfranchisement—which is, in fact, the only way the Bush Republicans could ever get “elected,” as their program is not conservative but radical, irrational, apocalyptic: i.e., unacceptable to most Americans, liberals and true conservatives alike.
This is why they’ve gerrymandered Texas and (less visibly) Virginia—and also why they’ve packed the Supreme Court with comrades disinclined to outlaw gerrymandering (unless it’s Democrats who try it). This is why they are dead-set against repealing state laws disenfranchising ex-felons—and also why they’ve used the “war on drugs” to jail as many likely Democrats as possible. (This would also help explain the post-Katrina diaspora, and especially the out-of-state internment of over 70,000 Louisianans.) And this is why the Bush Republicans push e-voting machines in every state, and program them to flip votes cast by Democrats into votes “cast” for Republicans, and systematically provide too few machines to Democratic precincts, and keep on arbitrarily removing Democrats from voter rolls, and “challenge” would-be voters at the polls, and simply throw out countless ballots of all kinds, and spread disinformation on Election Day. These are just some of the devices that were used not only in Ohio to ensure Bush/Cheney’s “re-election,” but in every state where they could pull it off—on both coasts, in the Midwest, and throughout the South.
snip
We need a massive turnout in November—but not because it will put Democrats in power. We need the biggest turnout ever, as a protest on behalf of free and fair elections in America. Such a turnout will make it that much harder for the Bush Republicans to spin their victory as legitimate. (This is why the GOP in several states, including Maryland and Colorado, is urging people to vote absentee next month: to make the opposition appear that much smaller.) But more important, such a turnout will prepare people for the crucial fight to come—the effort to save our democracy.
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