More Corruption Aimed Squarely At Your Vote
By electing clean Secretaries of State in 2010, we can ensure fair elections in 2012 across the country. We’re endorsing great candidates who support our goals – and we need your help to get them elected!
We’ve helped to elect 11 of 13 election reform candidates in key states like Minnesota and Ohio. Winning in these states has made a difference already, and now we’re gearing up for more wins in 2010.
By making a small contribution you can make sure unethical Secretaries of State like her and Ken Blackwell, never get to suppress our votes again. Dollar for dollar, the SoS Project is one of the most effective political investments you can make.
Since we launched in the fall of 2005, we have engaged in eleven races and have backed the winning candidate in nine states, including: Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa, Oregon, New Mexico, Montana, Nevada, West Virginia and Missouri. We lost only in Michigan and Colorado (and there by a tiny margin).
In 2008, we ran a sophisticated, highly targeted campaign in Montana which made the difference in a major upset – ousting the incumbent Republican Secretary of State. Most analysts anticipate a tough 2010 Senate race in Montana, and it is critical to have a fair Secretary of State in place. In Oregon last year we helped beat back a late unexpected surge to capture a critical open seat.
We are proud of our 2006 victory in Minnesota, where long time reformer Mark Ritchie pulled off a major upset, with our support. He was under fierce media and legal scrutiny as he oversaw the recount of the Franken/Coleman senatorial race, and operated with transparency and integrity, such that the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled to uphold the extremely close election results, finally sending Franken to the Senate, where his vote is much needed.
We pride ourselves on being fast, nimble, and strategic in our spending. Potential donors should know that the SoS Project’s startup and overhead costs are already fully funded. So your contributions go to providing money directly to candidates in targeted races and independent expenditure campaigns in critical states, not to our operational costs.
We seek donations to our SoS Strategic Fund for three purposes:
- to establish state political committees that will conduct innovative independent expenditure campaigns.
- to build a reserve that can be deployed, where legally permissible, to benefit the races where it will matter most in the hectic final days before the election.
- to grow the donor base for crucial down ballot races by spreading the story to new donors through paid online and social network marketing and activism campaigns.
The Secretary of State Fund, a non-federal 527, can accept unlimited contributions.
Who are these people? According to their website, they are:
Becky Bond works for a socially progressive mobile telephone company based in San Francisco. She serves on the board of the New Organizing Institute* and ActBlue.com*.
Lola Elfman is has served as an organizer and trainer for The New Organizing Institute* since 2007, she served as Internet Director for Phil Angelides’ campaign for California Governor*, and was a consultant with M+R Strategic Services*.
Megan Hull was a Project Director for Democracy Reform at the Center for Civic Participation*. In 2004, she was a Co-Director of the coalition that investigated polling place problems and vote counting irregularities in Ohio and New Mexico.
Michael Kieschnick is a social entrepreneur based in San Francisco. He is also a board member of the League of Conservation Voters, among other progressive organizations.
What they forgot to tell you was who else is on their team.
According to Matthew Vadum at American Spectator:
The founders of the Secretary of State Project, which claims to advance “election protection” but only backs Democrats, religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 (Katherine Harris) and in Ohio in 2004 (Ken Blackwell).
The secretary of state candidates the group endorses sing the same familiar song about electoral integrity issues: Voter fraud is largely a myth, vote suppression is used widely by Republicans, cleansing the dead and fictional characters from voter rolls should be avoided until embarrassing media reports emerge, and anyone who demands that a voter produce photo identification before pulling the lever is a racist, democracy-hating Fascist.
The group was co-founded in July 2006 by James Rucker, formerly director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and Moveon.org Civic Action. “Any serious commitment to wrestling control of the country from the Republican Party must include removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count,” said another co-founder, Becky Bond, to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2006.
Its website claims, “A modest political investment in electing clean candidates to critical Secretary of State offices is an efficient way to protect the election.” Indeed. Political observers know that a relatively small amount of money can help swing a little-watched race for a state office few people understand or care about.
In 2006, the Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee endorsed Ritchie and donated to his campaign. According to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, contributors to Ritchie’s campaign included liberal philanthropists George Soros, Drummond Pike, and Deborah Rappaport, along with veteran community organizer Heather Booth, a Saul Alinsky disciple who co-founded the Midwest Academy, a radical ACORN clone. One article on Ritchie’s 2006 campaign website brags about the fine work ACORN did in Florida to pass a constitutional amendment to raise that state’s minimum wage.
It was revealed during a panel discussion at the Democratic Party’s convention in Denver this summer that the Democracy Alliance, a financial clearinghouse created by Soros and insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, approved the Secretary of State Project as a grantee. The Democracy Alliance aspires to create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups-a kind of “vast left-wing conspiracy” to compete with the conservative movement. It has brokered more than $100 million in grants to liberal nonprofits including ACORN. The aforementioned Pike and Rappaport, who gave money to Ritchie’s campaign, are members of the Democracy Alliance.
According to IRS 8872 disclosure forms, the Secretary of State Project received donations from Democracy Alliance members including Soros, Rob Stein, Gail Furman, and Susie Tompkins Buell.
The 2008 election was a magnificent one for the Secretary of State Project and our savvy group of supporters helping to win 4 of 4 races! Not only did we help oust a republican Secretary of State incumbent and win three other seats, but we also witnessed returns (as noted above) from our 2006 work to elect Secretaries of State in key presidential battleground states. In Montana alone, we launched a highly targeted campaign to put Linda McCulloch over the top by just 5,305 votes. In a state where Senator John Tester won his seat by less than 1% of the vote, Secretary of State Linda McCulloch will be able to ensure that every vote is counted when he runs for reelection in 2010. Our campaign made the difference.
According to Rebekah Chauhan in a blog on Brevard Tea Party:
Mark Ritchie, a Democrat and former community organizer, largely controlled the electoral process that seated Al Franken as the 60th Democrat in the Senate. Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman led Democrat Al Franken by 341 votes and the Democrats controlled 57 seats in the Senate, compared to the Republicans’ 40. The Minnesota seat was the only one that Democrats could try to steal. Franken was endorsed by ACORN Votes, ACORN’s federal political action committee. Minnesota’s secretary of state isn’t a Democrat by happenstance. Ritchie, who defeated two-term incumbent Republican Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006, received an endorsement and financial assistance for his run from a below-the-radar non-federal “527” group called the Secretary of State Project. The entity can accept unlimited financial contributions and doesn’t have to disclose them publicly until well after the election. The founders of the Secretary of State Project, which claims to advance “election protection” only backs Democrats. The secretary of state candidates the group endorses sing the same familiar song about electoral integrity issues: Voter fraud is largely a myth, vote suppression is used widely by Republicans, cleansing the dead and fictional characters from voter rolls should be avoided until embarrassing media reports emerge, and anyone who demands that a voter produce photo identification before pulling the lever is a racist, democracy-hating Fascist.
…In 2006, along with Minnesota’s Ritchie, SoS Project-endorsed Jennifer Brunner (Ohio), who defied federal law by refusing to take steps to verify 200,000 questionable voter registrations, trounced her opponent, 55% to 41%.
To establish “election protection” against similar disappointments in subsequent political races, SoSP in 2006 targeted its funding efforts on the Secretary of State races in seven swing states — Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado, and Michigan. Democrats emerged victorious in five of those seven elections — all except Colorado and Michigan. As USA Today reported at the time: “The political battle for control of the federal government has opened up a new front: the obscure but vital state offices that determine who votes and how those votes are counted.”
Multiple sources on the ground in New York’s 23rd Congressional district confirm that ACORN is expected to be actively protesting the election results in Clinton County, New York tomorrow. This move comes on the heels of a legal win for the Hoffman camp today as it was ruled that all poll watchers would have to be registered voters of NY 23.
Rob Ryan, spokesman for the Hoffman campaign, states that the legal decision is all about ballot security and that the move by ACORN is not a surprise.
“The Working Family Party is desperate, Today’s poll show that Doug Hoffman is drawing votes from all Demographics”.
While the focus tomorrow will be on securing a win for Hoffman, Ryan says there are still worries about:
“voter intimidation, absentee ballot fraud and groups like ACORN/Working Families Party and big labor stealing the election from the people of the 23rd district.”
Brian Suozzo voted with an absentee ballot in the Working Families Party primary on Sept. 15 because, as his application stated, he was “at home recovering from medical procedure.”
Jessica Boomhower’s application said she would be attending a “work conference in Boston.”
Michael Ward couldn’t vote in person because he was “taking care of elderly parent.”
Kimberlee Truell was on a “Bus trip to casino,” as was Miguel Vazques.
The only problem with these absentee ballot records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y., is that they’re phony, voters and investigators say — and they’ve prompted what’s being called an unprecedented investigation of suspected voter fraud.
Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out — enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the city council and county elections in November to the Democrats. Candidates would have been able to run both on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines in two weeks, and that could have given the Democrats the general election.
A special prosecutor is investigating the case and criminal charges are possible. New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Lynch ruled that there were “significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the election process.”
Among the reasons cited on the fraudulent forms for absentee voting: “traveling to Buffalo,” attending a “screen printing conference in Syracuse,” “working late shift,” “working construction,” and “home — ill.”
“Someone took my signature and voted with it and I felt extremely violated,” Suozzo told Fox News. He is a soft-spoken 28-year-old environmental engineer who says he never saw, let alone signed, the Working Families Party Absentee ballot application that carried his supposed signature. He was flabbergasted that someone would vote for him and submit it.
“The whole thing seems dirty to me,” Suzzo said. “You wonder how often this happens and people don’t get caught.”
He says he did not have any type of medical procedure, adding “I haven’t been to the hospital in years.”
“I feel that I was gypped,” Boomhower said, ruefully. “I didn’t get to cast my vote on my own.”
Boomhower, a 28-year-old home health care worker, says three men came to her door asking her to sign a ballot application. It wasn’t until after the election that a private investigator brought her the news that an absentee ballot indeed showed she had voted, when she actually had not.
“I can’t believe they thought they would get away with this,” she says angrily, noting that the false claim that she was in Boston could have jeopardized her job. “I don’t want to see this get tossed aside,” she told Fox News.
Michael Ward, whose ballot said he was taking care of an elderly parent, said “I got one parent left, and he lives in Albany and takes care of himself.”
“They tried to steal an election,” says Bob Mirch, the majority leader of the Rensselaer County legislature who suspected voter fraud and started the investigation after being alerted to a large number of absentee ballot application requests that were noticed by the Republican Board of Elections commissioner .
“Not only does it undermine the system, but if these people were allowed to do this, we could never have a fair election… I’ve been doing this for 35 years, when I saw this, it sends a chill through my body right now.”
…The Working Families Party has recently gained strength, and controversy, in New York. Republican and Democratic candidates in the Empire State can also run on third party lines, such as the Working Families Party, as well as the Liberal, Conservative, and Independence parties, among others. The extra line means extra votes that could bring victory.
Hillary Clinton garnered 2.7 percent of her total votes from the WFP line when she first ran for Senate in 2000, which increased to 5 percent of her total vote in 2006. In September, Clinton’s former campaign manager for her 2000 Senate run, New York City Councilman Bill DeBlasio, who has been endorsed by the WFP, beat two long-established politicians in the Democratic primary. Critics also accuse the Working Families Party of having a long association with the troubled activist group, ACORN. Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s CEO, is one of the party’s co-founders. The New York Times reported this month that “Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, worked with ACORN in New York to set up the Working Families political party and sat on the party’s board with Ms. Lewis.”
The WFP has also endorsed New York Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was one of only seven Senators who voted against cutting federal housing funds to ACORN in September.
…”We caught this isolated incident, but how many times has this happened?” asks Suozzo, one of the registered Working Families Party voters who didn’t even know about his vote.
Boomhower is blunt about politicians: “They’re corrupt. I’m sure this goes on a lot in politics, but its very rare that they do get caught.”
What’s unfolding in Troy may prove voter fraud does exist, and threatens honest elections.
Soldier For Liberty 
The system is rigged; there are no fair and square wins. The system sucks.
Morally bankrupt, war-and-fear mongering leaders are traitors to the American
dream of self government; free of big government tyranny and oppression.
Considering the shocking torture and contemptible official lawlessness
exposed throughout the war on terror and that the facts show our out-of-control drug policies foster violence, racism and official lawlessness, these policies have become a horrifying shame, an atrocious
dishonor, too ghastly to be ignored.
Most Americans, had they been asked, would NOT have wanted the killing of
innocents to avenge the killing of innocents. Terrorism is mutual suffering.
Non-government organizations (NGOs) in unprecedented numbers worldwide are
calling for de-nuclearization, de-miltarization, economic justice and
responsible corporate behavior. They know education and the nonviolent path
are key to make this sea change in our behavior that will save and sustain
life as we know it.
Let ethics and the free market rule! The free market is a more powerful and efficient regulator than government. The SPIRIT of 1776 was the HOLY SPIRIT and is our TRUE NORTH!
Colleen McCool
November 10, 2009