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Diane Tucker: Freed Academic Haleh Esfandiari: 'Iranians Want Evolution, Not Revolution'

2009-08-26T13:48:07Z

Renowned journalist and academic Haleh Esfandiari used to fly from Washington, D.C., to Tehran every Christmas to visit her elderly mother. This pleasant routine changed dramatically in 2007 when Esfandiari was arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, with a little help from the United States. The soft-spoken intellectual (and grandmother of two) spent months in Evin Prison, sleeping on the floor and enduring harrowing interrogations, until an international outcry hastened her release.

Yesterday I spoke with Esfandiari at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she is the director of the Middle East Program.

At 67 years of age, you were put in solitary confinement in a Tehran prison. The physical stress was horrendous. I'm curious about the mental stress -- was your age a plus or a minus?

Haleh Esfandiari: It was a plus, because whenever I thought about my wonderful life and family and friends, I knew I had already experienced everything a person could wish for. I had a wonderful childhood in Iran. I enjoyed going to college in Austria. I was successful, I think, in my career. So I thought, "If worse comes to worse, and I am sentenced to life in prison...so what? I have had a beautiful life."

Even so, sometimes you daydreamed about being rescued by your husband, Shaul. When he accompanied the rest of your family on a vacation to Kennebunkport without you, did you feel abandoned?

I begged my family to go to Maine. We had planned this vacation together. I told them that if they really loved me, they would honor my wish. My husband, who is Jewish, couldn't come to Iran anyway. The authorities would have arrested him at the airport, and made a showcase out of both of us.

Tell me about the day you received a single white rose in prison.

One morning, one of the female guards walked into my cell, still wearing her veil. From underneath the veil, she pulled out a white rose and silently handed it to me. I was fighting back tears.

You're fighting back tears now.

Yes, just remembering her moving gesture....it really was amazing. I love flowers. I put the rose in a paper cup along with a leaf I had found on the prison grounds. When the rose faded, I placed it between the pages of the one book I had in my cell.

Iranian women once enjoyed so much more freedom than they do today, it's no wonder they poured into the streets to protest the election results. But weren't these women taking a huge risk?

When the Islamic Revolution took place 30 years ago, the new government suspended the Family Protection Law -- the pillar of women's rights. This law covered the age of marriage, the right to seek a divorce, the right to work, and so on. When it was suspended, men once again could take as many wives as they wanted, could take away the children in case of divorce, could stop women from leaving the house. At that moment -- the moment their rights were taken away -- Iranian women started protesting, and they have been a major force ever since. The movement culminated three years ago with the launch of the One Million Signatures Campaign. Some of the campaigners had been jailed, but not deterred.

More than 100 post-election protesters have been arrested for plotting to overthrow the regime -- the same bogus charge you faced. In your case, a tsunami of high-level international support hastened your release. Without global intervention, what will happen to these jailed demonstrators?

I'm very worried about them. I'm especially concerned about Kian Tajbakhsh, the Iranian-American who was in jail with me two years ago. Kian was freed a month after I was, but he opted to stay in Iran. For some reason the authorities have decided to go after him again. As far as I know, Kian has kept a low profile. They must be rehashing old charges, which is a worrisome development.

A number of the more than 100 people who are being put on trial are elite members of the Islamic Republic. They don't want to overthrow the regime, only to open up the system. I hope there will be serious international condemnation of this show trial. I hope the European Union will protest as a bloc.

Many Iranian expatriates would love to speak out against the mass trial, but they're afraid of endangering family and friends back home.

They can convey their fears, unhappiness, and concerns to their congressmen. Luckily, Iranians have representatives in Congress so our voices can be heard. At least, we hope our voices are heard.

In your beautifully written memoir, you said that two decades of authoritarian rule have turned a generation of students into outright revolutionaries. How convinced are you that the Green Wave is home grown, and not the work of foreign agents?

I'm 100 percent convinced the Green movement is home grown. First of all, it was an accidental movement. Mousavi was campaigning in the provinces when a young man came and put a green shawl around his neck. Mousavi thought the effect was beautiful, so he started wearing green, then his wife started wearing green, pretty soon everyone was wearing green. I truly don't believe this was a color revolution like the rose revolution of Georgia, or the orange revolution of Ukraine. This was a grassroots movement for one purpose only when it started -- to support Mousavi and get him elected the next president of Iran.

Yes, the Bush Administration allocated millions of dollars to promote democracy in Iran, but that effort failed. The people of Iran were upset about the money because they wanted change from within.

Students in Iran are surprisingly quiet right now.

They're scared. A mass trial will do that.

Every two or three years, there has been a wave of protests like this in Iran. But this time I think there has been a fundamental change. I don't know how the government is going to gain back its credibility. I'm stunned by the mass trial, which will hurt the regime more than they think it will.

In prison you wrote a children's book to keep from losing your mind. Tell me about the plot.

I wrote the book in my head, because I had no paper in my cell. It's the story of a fairy princess who was born in a castle, where she lives a beautiful life. Then one day she becomes lost in the woods, and stumbles upon many different animals. In the story, I describe her encounter with each animal. Her mother is a fairy, too, and a wonderful woman who watches over the princess throughout her journey. The story ends when the princess arrives back at the castle, bringing all of the animals with her. She puts them in a boat that looks a little like Noah's Ark, which she floats on a lake near the castle.

It was very soothing for me to write this story, because I could imagine telling it to my two granddaughters one day. This mental image kept me going.

After everything you've been through, do you still love Iran?

Yes, I love the mountains...the sea...the blue sky. I love my Iranian family. I love the Iranian people. Every country has good and evil people -- it's impossible to get through life without stumbling over evil people.

I wrote a book about my experience because I believe I would not have been arrested -- and the demonstrators would not be facing trial -- if the United States and Iran had diplomatic relations. It will be difficult to start this process now, because of recent developments. The Ahmadinejad regime does not have legitimacy inside Iran and as a result, they may feel too weak and vulnerable to sit at the negotiating table at this time.

Haleh at age six, wearing her first piece of "real" jewelry -- a brooch from her mother.

* * *

Haleh Esfandiari's memoir of her months spent in solitary confinement in Tehran's Evin Prison is called My Prison, My Home. It will be published on September 1st.

Diane Tucker's other posts on the situation in Iran can be read here, here, here, here, and here.

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Todd Moss: Despite Obama in Ghana, a Bad Month for African Democracy

2009-08-12T16:29:06Z

President Obama's trip to Ghana was a celebration of African democracy. Similarly, Secretary Clinton's ongoing 7-country, 11-day trek across the continent will hit the democracy promotion theme, especially during her stop today in Nigeria.

But it's hardly been a good month for democracy in Africa:

Congo. In the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso won another seven years in office with 79% of the vote. Ok, they held an election, but Sassou has been in power since 1979 (except for 1992-97).

Gabon. Next door in Gabon, Omar Bongo -- who was married to Sassou's daughter -- recently died after ruling that country for 42 years. But Gabon might not be looking at a new era. The ruling party just selected Bongo's son, Ali Ben Bongo, as their candidate to run in the upcoming August 30 elections.

Niger. President Mamadou Tandja won a dubious 92% in a referendum to extend his term and remove term limits. If at first this sounds like a legitimate mandate, consider that the courts ruled the referendum illegal in June, so Tandja just dismissed all the judges. Yikes. Unfortunately, Tandja is far from alone in removing term limits.

Mauritania. In a sad but little-reported event last month, General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz was elected president of Mauritania. The vote was so obviously suspicious that the electoral chief resigned and the opposition rejected the results. The real problem is that Mauritania already had a promising democracy before (who else?) General Aziz launched a coup last August. (Full disclosure: I was the State Dept lead for West Africa at the time of the coup and went to Nouakchott to lay down the U.S. position, so this one especially stings.) For an excellent article on the U.S. response to the coup, see this New York Times Magazine article.

Did I forget any setbacks?

Barbara Simons: The Internet and Voting: Worth Doing Right

2009-06-02T17:53:26Z

Coauthored by Justin Moore.

Recently the Huffington Post published an article about Hawaii's recent Internet and phone-based elections ("America's Newest State Holds America's Newest Election"). The article presents an optimistic and patriotic view of the Everyone Counts (E1C) election system that allows voters to cast their ballots from their home computers or over the phone. It was written by E1C executive Aaron Contorer and is effectively a marketing piece for E1C that exaggerates the scope of the election, overlooks or insults other election methods, and glosses over the formidable technical challenges and dangers posed by the electronic submission of voted ballots.

The election in Honolulu was for neighborhood board members, and thus was not covered by Hawaii's public election laws. That matters because Hawaii's election laws, fortunately, require a voter-verified paper ballot and a post-election hand audit of a percentage of these ballots. Since such verification and audits are impossible with a purely Internet-based voting system, there is no legal way to use the E1C system under current Hawaii state law.

Nevertheless, because this small election is being used to promote Internet voting generally, and because Internet voting schemes are being proposed across the United States, the issue demands thorough discussion.

In response to multiple efforts to allow voting over the Internet in major elections, many of our nation's prominent technology experts have signed a statement cautioning against adopting Internet-based voting systems without first understanding and guarding against the numerous and well-documented dangers. This is not because, as Mr. Contorer suggests, those opposing Internet voting find "[t]he introduction of technology to any process ... scary". The signatories to this statement are not at all intimidated by technology; in fact many are established experts in voting systems who are most certainly aware of the major risks associated with Internet voting.

The article asserts that since we are able to conduct banking and commerce over the Internet, we should also be able to vote over the Internet. This is a common misconception (or misrepresentation) that is often made when attempting to support Internet-based voting. Banks spend considerable time and money to ensure the security of our assets, yet there are still risks. Identity theft and fraud affect millions of Americans and cost billions of dollars each year. When we can detect such fraud it is because we are able to track our money through each transaction from start to finish, including the people associated with those transactions.

However, elections by their very definition disallow this type of explicit end-to-end auditing. Voters must cast their ballot in secret and not be able to prove to others how they voted. Election officials must not be able to tie votes to citizens except in very narrow circumstances as carved out by law. The lack of these basic protections make Internet-based voting a dangerous idea and place it so far from the realm of Internet banking or commerce as to make the author's point moot.

There are significant security issues that any vendor must address before declaring such a system fit for public elections. Yet the author glosses over these security issues raised by Internet voting, referring several times to "military-grade encryption." It is a well-known marketing technique of voting system vendors to tout the strength of their encryption because it sounds impressive. But the fact is that encryption is only a secondary part of any electronic security. It does nothing at all to protect against insider attacks, denial of service attacks, various forms of spoofing, viruses, or many kinds of ordinary software bugs. Even the most secure military computer networks have been compromised, including a recent serious breach of the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project.

Even in the absence of malicious adversaries, software, especially a networked system such as the one E1C sells, is fundamentally difficult to get right. Aviation and military software, written to standards requiring development efforts tens or hundreds of times as costly as voting software, is undergoing constant review and upgrades.

Americans deserve the best electoral system available. There are many options for making elections more accessible, secure, and efficient, and the Internet will have a role to play. Current possibilities that show promise include the easier maintenance of voter registration records and the distribution of blank absentee ballots. But we should not subject our democracy to the costs or risks of current Internet-based voting schemes. Rather than rushing to implement Internet voting systems because we don't want to be "stuck in the past," we should instead focus on improving our elections using innovations that build upon mature and well-understood technologies. Let's leave the bluster and insults behind, and build a reliable, accurate, and secure electoral system of which we can all be proud.

Aaron Contorer: America's Newest State Holds America's Newest Election

2009-05-14T14:45:39Z

For too long we have tolerated the idea that elections should be difficult. If you think voting is inconvenient, too bad for you, say pundits. And if elections are expensive and a logistical nightmare to run, oh well, at least there aren't too many of them.

America's newest state, our southernmost state, has a different idea. Right now, as you read this article on the Internet, citizens of Honolulu are voting in America's first all-digital online and telephone election. Residents of neighborhoods with contested board seats received pass-codes in the mail, along with a Web address and a phone number allowing them to vote at any time, day or night, from anywhere in the world.

While I typed that paragraph, two people just voted. They may have just gotten home from work, or they may be at school, in the library, or even overseas. Someone else will vote at 3:00 am in his pajamas. And all of their votes are being secured using military-grade encryption technology: faster, more reliable, and more secure than if they had voted on paper.

At Honolulu Hale (City Hall) last week, I met a blind Hawaiian woman very interested in her neighborhood board. This month, for the first time ever, she will be able to vote in privacy: a telephone system, not her relative or neighbor, will record her vote and read it back without bias, without disclosure, and without fear of dishonesty. For the first time, she receives her Constitutional right to a private ballot.

I have had the privilege to help build some pretty interesting technology products, including MSN and Windows, but none of them has ever excited me like this. We've used the best technology in this country to increase access to shopping and checking accounts. Now it's time to get serious: we are increasing access to democracy, to the vote.

At dinner recently, a prominent Hawaiian legislator, sad about fading industries, told me that all America has left to export is our values. I love our values too, but had to protest: our technology industry remains one of our country's brightest stars. I am so proud, I told him, so delighted, to play a small part in the bringing together of election science and digital technology -- to protect and advance our finest value, democracy.

In this case the technology manufacturer, a California company called Everyone Counts (where I am Chief of Products and Partnerships), isn't just advancing the art of government. It's also saving taxpayers money, enfranchising voters with disabilities and soldiers overseas, and making life easier for hard-working citizens who may not have time between work and family to go to a polling place but who care deeply about their communities.

What better use of technology? Who would see democracy stuck in the past, a relic of the age before secure encryption, before cash machines, indeed before telephones?

Who would continue our present system in which less than one third of soldiers overseas can successfully vote? Who would leave secure digital communication to the military, while subjecting our democracy to the insecurities of a cardboard box full of papers in someone's trunk?

The introduction of technology to any process is scary. But the time has come. We have been banking online and shopping online for over a decade, and conducting important business by phone for a century. Digital technology, while no panacea, is the best method ever invented for securely delivering information and decisions.

The people of Honolulu, capital of our newest state, have shown true American leadership in pioneering the all-digital online and telephone election. I am deeply grateful to be a part of this project. It had to happen, and it is happening. We will all look back at this event in Hawaii as the most obvious, most natural, least revolutionary, yet most necessary step for American democracy, this blossoming springtime of 2009.

Aaron Contorer is Chief of Products and Partnerships at Everyone Counts, Inc.

Frank Schaeffer: Republicans: "Go To Hell America!" 100% Partisan Vote

2009-01-29T19:51:57Z

Not one Republican vote! Not one! And that is the Republican Party's response to the American public who, as every poll indicates, are begging for less partisanship and more "just get the job done."

The Obama stimulus package passed in the House along strict party lines. So there it is America, we now know who to thank or blame. That being the case the Republicans just painted themselves into an obstructionist corner. They are betting on and praying for national failure. Like Rush Limbaugh, they are hoping the economic recovery fails. They have bet against our future, even against a president who reached out in an unprecedented way to them. Their answer to President Obama's extended hand? A clenched fist! Head in the sand! The "we won't play!" of perennial brats.

The Republican Party just doesn't get it. We are in trouble! And our country's fate and the success or failure of the Obama presidency is now one and the same.

The Republicans could have done a great thing for their party and the country: sent a message to the world -- we stand together! Imagine the impact on tomorrow's stock market, and our enemy's view of America and our standing in the world if instead of a partisan Republican "NO" vote the backing of the recovery plan had been unanimous approval!

If the Republicans weren't stuck in a white man's reactionary country club past -- and I speak here as white former life long Republican -- this momentous vote could have changed American history. It would have changed it not just on this issue but because of the symbolism. It would have told all Americans -- we are at war with our weaknesses, we will prevail, take heart help is on the way.

The Republicans might have then shared the credit, even won a few elections in the future. Now their fate is sealed. Obama will succeed. America won't forget who to thank.

The Republicans have made themselves the enemy of our recovery. They would rater take us all down than let our president have his day. While President Obama is blessed with a large vision, the Republicans are mired in a petty past, a small "victory" in unanimous obstruction passing for a moral "victory."

With this NO vote, the Republican Party sends us this message: we are a group of bad losers, don't entrust us with your future! And: We are betting against you America!

We Americans are wounded. President Obama has arrived with his ambulance as he promised he would. All the Republicans could think of doing was to try and let the air out of the tires. Shame!

Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy For God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (Now in Paperback).

David Suissa: Can War Bring Peace?

2009-01-12T12:04:47Z

I've always been annoyed by the term, "peace camp," the moniker commonly used by left-wing, peace-seeking organizations like Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and, more recently, J Street.

Because those organizations are very noisy about their desire for peace and their abhorrence for anything that smacks of a "military solution," they have crowned themselves with the glorious "peace camp" title.

The implication, of course, is that if you don't share their philosophy for attaining peace, you're in another camp -- if not exactly the war camp, then maybe the stiff-necked, "force is necessary" camp.

In truth, however, I've never met a right-wing Jew who doesn't want peace. The divisive question is always: How do we get there? By being forceful and hard-nosed, or flexible and understanding?

One of the more powerful arguments advanced by the peace camp is that there is "no military solution" to the conflict. War is counterproductive and hardens the enemy. What we need are political solutions through smart and diplomatic engagement, like we achieved with Egypt and Jordan.

I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that wars can backfire and make things worse, as it did with the Second Lebanon War of 2006. That's why I agonized over whether Israel should escalate the war in Gaza and invade with ground troops. Like many others, I asked myself: Can we really win this kind of war? Will it really stop the rockets? What would come next?

Then, I came across something that hit me like a lightning bolt.

It was an item in Investor's Business Daily that reported that Hamas might already have rockets that can reach Israel's nuclear plant in Dimona.

Even if the claim was exaggerated, it made me wonder: If a terrorist entity like Hamas -- one fanatically devoted to Israel's destruction -- ever got hold of missiles that can take out Israel's nuclear installations, would they use them?

Is there any peace-loving leftist who can honestly answer, No, they wouldn't?

If Hamas bombs actually started falling on Dimona or Tel Aviv, would the "peace camp" still be harping against "military solutions" and calling for "immediate cease-fires?" Would J Street still find no moral distinction between the terrorist bombs of Hamas and Israel's long-delayed response to defend its citizens?

Israel, it seems to me, has decided that if it can't eliminate the terrorists' desire to murder Jews, the least it can do is significantly reduce their growing capacity to do so.

There are successful precedents for this approach. In a recent editorial, David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, touched on one: "Operation Defensive Shield, carried out in the spring of 2002, was a carefully planned and effectively executed attack on the Palestinians' suicide-bomb infrastructure in the West Bank that remade the reality in the years ever since -- precisely the kind of goal enunciated for Operation Cast Lead in Gaza."

The new reality that Horovitz refers to is that terror from the West Bank stopped because the enemy realized there was no way it could win a war against Israel. That realization was a prerequisite to restarting the peace process.

Robert J. Lieber, a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University, took it one step further in the Washington Post:

"Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel, not because they embraced the ideas of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, but because they concluded that the effort to destroy the Jewish state had failed and that refusing to come to terms with it was harmful to their national interests. Ultimately, peace will be possible only if most Palestinians and their leaders become convinced that terrorism and violence are a dead end and that they cannot under any circumstances prevail over Israel through the use of force. If today's conflict leaves a seriously weakened and politically damaged Hamas, that result is more likely to enhance the prospects for peace than to weaken them."

Of course, wars are tragic, messy and unpredictable -- one errant bomb can derail the best plans. Lorelei Kelly, an expert in conflict resolution, wrote a powerful anti-war piece in The Huffington Post last week, where she explained that when fighting ideologies, "if you want ultimate victory, persuasion deserves as much firepower as coercion."

Kelly appealed to my intellect, but my viscera still couldn't shake the potential horror of Hamas rockets igniting a nuclear meltdown in the heart of Israel. I have this vision of Hamas terrorists gleefully cracking open a fresh crate of new missiles just arrived from Iran with the capacity to kill several thousand Jews at a time, and doing high-fives in anticipation of using them. Am I paranoid? Maybe. But this should give you an idea of the unlimited faith I have in Hamas' callous disregard for human life, whether Jewish or Palestinian.

From a PR standpoint, Israel is fortunate that the war in Gaza was started not by right-wing tough guys but by centrist leaders who have exerted enormous effort over the years to achieve peace. No one can ever accuse Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni of rushing to war, not when they tolerated thousands of bombs falling on their people before finally responding.

In the end, everybody has their breaking point -- that moment when your survival instinct overcomes everything else. A lot of Jews, from the left to the right, seem to have reached that point.

But survival is one thing, and peace is another. It's far from certain that making war with Hamas will bring peace. The only thing that's certain is that as long as next door neighbors like Hamas pose a terrorist threat to Israel, you can forget about peace -- no matter what camp you're in.

Lee Stranahan: New Coulter Voter Fraud Investigation Reveals Danger To Domestic Abuse Victims

2009-01-11T17:33:46Z

Investigator Joseph Culligan tells me "It was never really about Florida. Ann Coulter must have been laughing about that the whole time." Culligan is talking about the story he helped break in Rush & Molloy's column today in the New York Daily News, Ann Coulter Addresses Voting Issue.

Remember the Ann Coulter "Voter Fraud Felony" story from 2006? Breathless headlines accused Coulter of giving an incorrect address and voted in the wrong precinct. Because so much attention was being paid to the Florida story, it seems that a much bigger, more obvious and easily provable voter discrepancy was overlooked; Ann Coulter appears to have voted twice in the state of Connecticut while living in the state of New York.

That would seem to be a violation of Connecticut law and unlike the Florida allegations, Culligan points out, this isn't a precinct difference - it's an entirely different state with different state and local elections.

Oddly, much of this information was available and even reported in The Daily News during the initial kerfluffle about Coulter's Florida voting address. Nobody seems to have pursued the case or filed a complaint with the state Connecticut. Culligan, an investigator with over 25 years of experience, went a step further.

First, he established that Coulter had claimed her parent's address in New Canaan, CT as her own on voting records. Then he contacted Connecticut to confirm the law. Culligan posted on his website WebOfDeception.com an email from Connecticut staff attorney Ted Bromley that states "It is not enough to claim a relative's house where you may visit. The address must be your residence and the place you live and call home.."

The Rush & Molloy article shows that Coulter's response to these serious allegations is no response at all. She doesn't deny that she lived in New York during the period in question Instead, Coulter launches into her shtick of insulting Culligan and Bromley and then portraying herself as a victim. She refers to Culligan as a 'stalker' and in a passage that makes one question Coulter's grip on reality, says about Culligan and Bromley ' Tell them both thanks for the flowers and also to please stop killing my pets.'

Coulter's 'poor me' routine is particularly ironic given her well publicized attacks on 9/11 widows, single mothers, and women voters. Her pattern of vicious verbal assaults on women may be topped by another aspect of Coulter's victim / attack dog duality - she's taken actions that could actually put abused women in Florida into jeopardy of real physical harm.

In 1999, the state of Florida began a program called 'Address Confidentiality For Victims Of Domestic Violence'. The goal of the program was straightforward; to help keep the whereabouts of victims a secret from their abusers. One aspect of the program allowed victims to redact their names from public records. Another allowed them to use a central 'drop box' address to recieve mail. A p.o. box was established for the program and any mail sent to it would sorted and sent on the program's participants.

During his investigation Culligan discovered Ann Coulter, now a Florida resident, was using this shared p.o. box address. The reasons Coulter uses the address are unknown.

Obviously many celebrities have problems with real life stalkers and Coulter sells books by making provocative statements about all sorts of people. However, the Florida law seems to indicate that the program is for the use of victims of domestic violence only; people the victim has a relationship with, not 'celebrity stalkers'. Again, the reasons Coulter is using this drop box address aren't clear.

What is clear is that Coulter herself is the one who revealed the address publicly. She listed the address herself - though not it's purpose - in a work related and publiclyy accessible database that Culligan was able to access easily. Through standard investigative techniques, Culligan then found a number of other people associated with that same address. After tracking some of those people down, he found out that they were part of the Florida Confidentiality program.

Culligan, who authored the book When in Doubt, Check Him Out: A Woman's Survival Guide told me he was disturbed that a deliberately controversial celebrity like Coulter with the means to protect her own privacy would use a system meant to protect those who don't have the means and then use that supposedly anonymous drop box address for business purposes.

Culligan says that women he spoke to who are part of that program are both outraged and worried for their own safety. He told me, "Some of them are missing limbs from the abuse they've suffered. They don't want anyone to be able to track them down and having high profile Ann Coulter using the same drop box they are for her public business potentially puts them at risk."

Culligan notes that the fact that he was able to track these supposedly anonymous women down through his investigation of Coulter means the anonymity of the entire Florida program is threatened.

Will Republican Governor Charlie Crist act quickly to solve the dangerous situation that GOP hearthrob Coulter and the state of Florida seems to have put these women in? Will anyone file a complaint in Connecticut? Ann Coulter loves controversy but she may end up here with much more than she can handle.

Lee Stranahan blogs at LeeStranahan.com. Without irony. Lee did a 15-minute interview with Joseph Culligan about the Coulter Voter Fraud on BlogTalkRadio

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: Last US House Seat Filled on Grave of Stolen 2004 Election

2008-12-12T13:39:07Z

The last US House seat has been filled by a Democratic County Commissioner in a vote count defined by the ghosts of 2004.

And the provisional ballot system installed by former Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell -- now a candidate for chair of the Republican National Committee -- continues to haunt the electoral process in the nation's premier swing state, a legacy underscored by a landmark election protection conference held just as this final House race was being decided.

Mary Jo Kilroy of Columbus will be the first Democrat to represent any part of Franklin County in Congress since 1982, and the first to represent her 15th Congressional District since the 1960s.

In 2006, Kilroy barely lost to incumbent Deb Pryce as thousands of contested provisional ballots went uncounted. Under then-Secretary Blackwell, voters in Democratic precincts were routinely challenged on minor details and forced to cast provisional ballots to allegedly be counted at a later time.

But thousands were merely pitched in the trash or otherwise negated. Some 16,000 provisionals and 93,000 machine-rejected ballots have never been counted from a 2004 election decided by an official margin of less than 119,000 votes. Independent observers believe a fair vote count would have given Kilroy her House seat in 2006. Also in that election, e-voting machines had statistically unlikely high rates of undervotes in central city polls.

This year, the Ohio Secretary of State is Democrat Jennifer Brunner. Publicly committed to a full and fair voting process, Brunner repeatedly went to court to defend an expanded right to vote and have as many votes counted as possible. Various Republican maneuvers would have eliminated some 800,000 voters and given Ohio to John McCain, had Brunner not fought for voter's rights.

As part of Blackwell's legacy, a shocking 10% of the state was forced to vote provisionally on Election Day, more than 16 times the percentage in Missouri, and 30 times the percentage in Virginia. (Our next article will focus on Blackwell and his candidacy for RNC Chair).

This year, as Pryce retired, Kilroy ran against State Senator Steve Stivers, who successfully petitioned the Ohio Supreme Court to trash some 1,000 provisional ballots, allowing poll worker error to disenfranchise known registered voters. But the bulk survived, giving Kilroy her belated 2,311 vote victory.

Overwhelmingly Democratic, Franklin County has been gerrymandered into three separate Congressional Districts, each including heavily Republican rural areas that have kept the seats in GOP hands. With a Democratic Governor and a 3-2 edge on Ohio's Apportionment Board, the districts are scheduled to be redrawn in 2010.

Fittingly, the Kilroy victory came less than a week after Brunner hosted an historic Election Summit at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus.

Deemed the "first of its kind" by Attorney Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, the conference examined Ohio's provisional ballot aberration. Prof. Ned Foley of Ohio State's Moritz College of Law decried the "over-reliance" that produced 181,000 provisional voters, including one out of every ten that voted on Election Day.

Brunner convened the conference by endorsing "citizen-run elections" where application of the law is "smooth and even."

Noting that GOP challenges to voting rights "all took place in battleground states," she endorsed mail-in and early voting expansion, which in 2008 enabled some 40% of Ohio's 2008 votes to come in before Election Day.

As a result, Election Day waits rarely exceeded one hour. Brunner fought the GOP to provide paper ballots to be used when voting machines malfunctioned, which further reduced waiting times. Nonetheless poor poll worker training and a "lack of high-speed scanners" sometimes slowed things down.

Brunner invited Board of Election officials who disliked her positions to speak at the conference, including Richland County's Deputy Director Jeff Wilkinson, who said her insistence on providing paper ballots cost $24,000 in unneeded administrative costs. Wilkinson said only 708 of 14,700 Richland's voters chose paper over the machines.

Delaware County presiding Judge Al Siegal said Franklin County's "two-line system"-one for paper, one for machines -- could be improved by providing long tables with ballots instead of having one clipboard in a cubicle. E-voting advocate Dan Tokaji, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said paper ballots produced higher rates of under-voting than machines, an assertion repeated by the Columbus Dispatch.

But when Free Press editor and this article's co-author Bob Fitrakis asked a panel why partisan for-profit vendors were allowed to conduct elections and manage poll books on secret, proprietary software, Wilkinson replied that the machines could be observed for accuracy and logic. He failed to mention that accuracy and logic tests do not confirm security.

Meanwhile, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Farrell said the SOS office reimbursed counties for the paper ballots, and that "two lines come in handy" if the e-voting machines fail. Brunner required BOE's to vote in public this year on how machines would be allocated, avoiding 2004's infamous race-based mis-allocations that forced voters to wait up to seven hours in Columbus.

Dr. Ted Allen, an OSU Associate Professor, said voters using machines took two minutes longer to vote on average than those using paper ballots. An expert in "waiting line analysis theory," Allen said that without early voting this year, voters in Franklin County using the same number of machines as in 2004 might have waited as long as 30 hours to vote. Paper, he said, "pushes down waiting times." Allen also stated that without Brunner's early voting reform, waits would have been up to 15 hours on Election Day in Franklin County even with the newly added voting machines.

Peg Rosenfield of the League of Women Voters demanded that Ohio "go back to the signature" in verifying voter registration. Computerized poll books, she said, open the door to provisional ballots and disenfranchisement of the kind that may have cost Kilroy her 2006 race. Rosenfield advocated random audits after each election and scanners that could immediately spot undervotes that would immediately alert voters of their potential omissions.

A major shift at the conference came with Cuyahoga Director Jane Platten, who has taken over a county plagued by irregularities in 2004 and 2006. Platten advocates full transparency and has established "hotlines" for stakeholders including all minor parties on the ballot so they could directly access BOE officials on Election Day.

The big red elephant in the room was underscored by Candace Hoke, Director of the Center for Election Excellence, who complemented Brunner on making "security front and center." The $1.5 million Everest Report commissioned by Brunner has shown that e-voting machines are vulnerable to manipulation. With registration lists in the hands of private partisan vendors like Triad in half of Ohio's counties, without reliable security checks, potential mass disenfranchisement remains a major problem.

The conference underscored the fact that the legacy of J. Kenneth Blackwell and 2004's stolen vote continues to permeate Ohio's electoral process. But the Kilroy outcome and the conference that accompanied it underscored the change that has come to the Buckeye State, and that is likely to push even further toward secure, reliable elections.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection, including As Goes Ohio: Election Theft Since 2004, available at www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. Their radio shows are broadcast at WVKO-AM 1580, Air America in Columbus.

Stephen Zunes: The Disenfranchisement of My Daughter

2008-11-12T15:50:53Z

Published on Monday, November 10, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Growing up in Mississippi and North Carolina in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I have vivid memories of African-Americans hoping to participate in their first election being turned away at the polls, denied their most basic right to vote. Little did I know that near fifty years later, in 2008, my daughter would similarly be prevented from voting.

Her entire adolescence has been under the shadow of the Iraq War, just as my youth had been under the shadow of the Vietnam War. (See my article: A Letter to my Daughter: We Tried to Stop This War.) Rather than becoming angry and cynical, however, Kalila threw her youthful idealism into the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, who opposed the invasion, called for change and promised hope for a better future.

She spent countless hours making phone calls, volunteering at campaign offices, and even skipped a couple of days of classes at her California high school in January in order to travel to Nevada to campaign for Obama in the caucuses.

Though I had volunteered in the presidential campaign of George McGovern in 1972, I was too young to vote that year and subsequent Democratic nominees have failed to inspire me. As a result, I was quite pleased that my daughter would be able to cast her first vote for someone she actually believed in.

Moving to the Midwest to enter college in August, Kalila again became involved with the Obama campaign in the run-up to the general election. Now living in the swing state of Indiana, she decided to register to vote there.

It was not that easy, however. Earlham College is located on the western edge of Richmond, a small rust-belt city near the Ohio border. The lack of adequate public transportation made it difficult for her to get downtown to the Wayne County Courthouse to register. She discovered that in order to register by mail, she needed to provide a utility bill for proof of residence, which was not available for those living in college dormitories.

She had heard stories that at Earlham and a number of the other private liberal arts colleges located in Republican-dominated counties in Ohio and Indiana, registration cards collected on campuses had sometimes mysteriously disappeared. So, she decided to register at the nearby Townsend Community Center, where she volunteers once a week in the America Reads program. Delighted with the fact that she was turning 18 less than a month prior to the election, Kalila had been anticipating her first vote with unbridled enthusiasm. You can imagine my shock when she called home in tears early Tuesday morning saying that she had gone down to her precinct and had not been allowed to vote, having been told there was no record of her registration.

I immediately got on the phone, making a series of calls to try to rectify the situation, with the kind of passion and determination which can only come from a father whose beloved daughter has been wronged. I was able to make little headway, however. The voter suppression hotlines were jammed and the Indiana Democratic Party headquarters was not particularly helpful either, as all the numbers they suggested I call either went unanswered or connected me to voice mailboxes that were full.

As I should have realized, however, Kalila was hard at work herself. Missing her classes that day, she went by the county clerk's office, normally open from 9:00 to 5:00 on weekdays, only to find it inexplicably closed.

At one point, she returned to her precinct requesting a provisional ballot, but she was refused. She sought help from the Obama campaign office and from lawyers they had on call. (During breaks in this arduous process, she worked the phones at the office to help get out the vote in Indiana and Ohio.) Eventually, with two attorneys in tow, she returned to her precinct a third time and again demanded a provisional ballot. Finally, she was allowed to cast her vote.

Given that all the races were decided by a bigger margin than the number of provisional ballots, however, they will presumably be thrown out and her first vote will be never be tallied. Because of the decisive margin of Obama's victory, little attention has been paid to the widespread voter suppression which took place across the country this election.

Kalila told me about other Earlham students registered in Richmond who were also turned away at the polls and classmates registered in their home states whose absentee ballots arrived too late. A number of longtime city residents who also registered at the Townsend Center, which primarily serves Richmond's African-American community, were turned away as well.

There have been countless stories across the country of missing registrations, malfunctioning voting machines, polls opening late, insufficient numbers of ballots or voting machines, voter harassment and other issues, almost all of which took place in predominantly Democratic precincts.

And I can't help but think about all the people who didn't have Kalila's knowledge, resources, persistence and spunk to successfully demand at least a provisional ballot.

Yes, Obama ended up winning in Indiana and the rest of the country. But there will be future presidential elections that will be a lot closer. And, as I am writing this, important Senate races in Minnesota, Georgia and Alaska are so tight that the winners have yet to be finalized.

As a native Southerner, I recognize more than most the importance of defending the right to vote. I remember people dying for that right. Had she been a college student in 1964, Kalila would have likely been among the hundreds of young idealists who took part in Mississippi Summer and other voter registration drives of that period.

Yet defending the right to vote is more than just principle. It is also smart politics. Indeed, it is one of the most important issues there is. For if voter turnout in the United States was as high and as representative of the overall population as it is in almost every other industrialized democracy, the politics of this country would be very different. Not only would the presidency of George W. Bush and its ensuing disasters have never taken place, Congress and most state and local governments would be far more progressive than they are now. Americans not voting under the current system tend to be disproportionately young, minority or poor, the very constituencies which tend to vote towards the left.

It is time to question why people need to go through the cumbersome process of registering to vote ahead of time. Almost every other country with democratic elections allows for same-day registration.

This would dramatically increase overall turnout and would make it impossible to prevent people like Kalila from voting because of supposed missing registration forms. President-elect Obama is a former community organizer, who for a time directed Project Vote! in South Chicago. That experience taught him that the way the Democratic Party can win elections is not just through fighting for the small number of swing voters in the middle, but by expanding the party's base through increased voter registration and turnout.

It was this formula which helped provide him with his impressive victory on Tuesday. As a result, we will soon have a president who is more sympathetic to overhauling the electoral system to make sure that it works and that it is more representative.

Having a larger and more inclusive electorate will result in a substantially higher number of progressive office holders, thereby making our work on virtually every other policy issue easier. We must therefore take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity and make this a political priority in the coming months, for the sake of my daughter and for everyone who still has faith in this country and wishes to exercise their right to vote.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.

Tim Robbins V. Election Board Round 2: They Blame Him

2008-11-11T07:43:03Z

NEW YORK — Tim Robbins' difficulty in voting on Election Day was his own fault, New York City's Board of Elections maintains.

Board representative Gregory C. Soumas wrote a letter to Robbins, telling him that he was not on the rolls at the poll site he visited last week "because you simply went to the wrong poll site."

Mark Crispin Miller: I Wonder If Al Franken Still Is Dismissive of Election Fraud Now

2008-11-07T16:39:23Z

I'm trying very hard to keep from gloating inwardly about Al Franken's plight, since, from
Election Day, 2004, he has always pointedly denied the evidence of fraud by the Republicans.

I was on his show on Air America just days after that election; and every time I noted yet
another piece of evidence that it was stolen, he would reflexively dismiss it with some
asinine banality or misconception. At one point, I mentioned a bizarre anomaly in Florida
(one of many), where the number of votes for Bush exceeded the number of voters in
that entire county.

"Oh, no," Franken said: "We looked into that," he said. "We talked to someone down there
--a Democrat!" I asked him for some more specifics. Just then his producer texted him,
and he read from his computer: "Oh, yeah, here it is. We talked to... the webmaster for the
Secretary of State. And he said there was nothing to it."

That Secretary of State was Glenda Hood, whom Jeb Bush had appointed to replace
Katherine Harris.

When the Conyers Report was published the next year, with an introduction by Gore Vidal,
the author was on "Real Time with Bill Maher" to talk about it--and Franken was on, too.
As ever, he denied that there'd been any fraud committed in Ohio. "I think they won dirty,"
he said solemnly, denying all those crimes and improprieties precisely documented in the
Conyers study (which he evidently hadn't read). He talked on and on in that vein, and
thereby managed to upstage Vidal, whose vital point was lost in all the blather.

On Wednesday, Randi Rhodes said, on her show, that Air America had discouraged her
from talking much about the GOP's election fraud, and suggested that Al Franken had a
hand in it.

This all matters greatly now--and not just because of yesterday's report that the e-voting
machines in Minnesota have turned out to be defective (or "defective"). Maybe Franken
will now face the facts about election fraud more realistically.

What matters most about his long refusal to discuss the problem is that it appears to have
been urged upon him by the Democratic Party, or those in it who were counseling him
as he prepared to run for office. When asked by regular people, as he often was (on his
book tour), exactly why he always pooh-poohed the whole subject, he would say,
"The people I listen to have told me there's nothing to it," or words to that effect.

This raises the larger question as to how, or if, the Democrats will now endeavor to
reform our voting system. The chances are that they won't do an honest job unless
we force them to it.

MCM

Robert Koehler: Our Fragile Dream

2008-11-07T14:01:15Z

It had already been a long day for me, and for the country, when I rode the train downtown to Grant Park on the night of Nov. 4. History was crowding against my thoughts -- my car was full of joyful, youthful, rock-the-vote noise -- as I looked out the window into the Chicago night and saw a bright orange (papaya-colored, really) quarter moon hovering over the horizon, beautiful and strange beyond reckoning.

I had never seen anything quite like it and was shaken with a sense of wonder: Where am I? Am I dreaming?

Later that night I heard a young man from Illinois -- our new president-elect -- say: "America is a place where all things are possible."

I had to listen to him on a giant screen set up in the park a few blocks north of where he was actually speaking, along with several hundred thousand or a million others. All I know is that the crowd was enormous, raucous, loud, young, diverse (but Chicago crowds always are) and wildly excited. A cheer surged in the night, one of many, and suddenly I was drenched from behind with . . . maybe it was water, maybe it was champagne, but probably it was just lite beer.

By then the speaker was telling us how we had overcome fear and cynicism to put our hands on the arc of history "and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day" and for a flickering moment I felt drenched with enthusiasm as well as beer. Yes we did, by God. This was the cry of the night -- yes, we did! We worked hard, we Americans, to get to this moment beneath the papaya-colored moon and the hovering helicopters. I don't know if I've ever felt the raw energy of hope so palpably.

The next morning -- a few hours ago as I write this -- a friend left me a phone message: "I feel as though we've gotten our country back."

I feel this too. I just don't know what it means.

My joy (and relief) that Barack Obama prevailed in this election is enormous -- certainly the size of the Grant Park crowd -- but there's a deeper joy here as well, and an accompanying sense of dread.

"America is a place where all things are possible." That's the problem. Thus 135 million people can turn out on a golden (and in some places rainy) fall day to vote, to put their hands on the arc of history, but a few million more can be purged from the voting rolls before the day began. Indeed, an unknown number of voters or would-be voters ran into problems that sometimes prevented them from voting and -- mainly because of the terrifying uncertainty of electronic voting -- may not have had their votes counted at all, or not counted as they were cast.

Obama won -- his landslide was too big to be denied. But I urge that we not be complacent or smug about this dream we call democracy, because it is a fragile dream: that principled cooperation will hold its own in the arena of history with the naked struggle for power and control. This will only happen when citizenship means being more concerned with the fairness of the electoral process than with who wins. In other words, Barack Obama's victory over John McCain on Nov. 4 was less important than the growth and strength, or lack thereof, of democracy itself.

The fair-elections movement may be the most important democratic development of the last eight years. Our "freedom" isn't taken for granted with quite the complacent arrogance -- even by the media -- that it used to be. And the infrastructure of fair elections, independent of partisan politics, is growing.

Before I went down to Grant Park, I spent most of Election Day hanging out at the Chicago office of the law firm DLA Piper, which provided pro bono space for the Election Protection Hotline volunteers giving help to voters in this part of the Midwest, mostly in Illinois and Indiana. Some 80 volunteers here were on phones helping voters with problems large and small from 6 a.m. till the polls' closing 13 or so hours later. Nationally, Election Protection Hotline fielded 79,343 calls for help or assistance; around 2,500 came in to the Chicago call center.

The most serious problems were from voters whose names weren't listed on the rolls in their precinct; who were being wrongly (in Illinois) required by judges to show identification; and who reported unduly long lines caused by machine malfunction and other problems. The array of potential troubles was formidable. An Indianapolis woman, for instance, called the hotline to report that she'd been told that her early vote hadn't counted because the judge failed to initial her ballot; she needed to re-vote. This she did, but she feared many others either didn't get that call or would have been unable to do so.

Still, this is a day to celebrate both Obama's victory and the huge outpouring of voters who wanted to have a say in this election. I saw long, snaking lines everywhere in Chicago on Tuesday, and I'm sure that was the case across the country. Election Day -- Democracy Day -- isn't a national holiday (yet) but it felt like one.

- - -

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

© 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Erik Ose: Supposedly Safe GOP House Seat in CA Too Close To Call

2008-11-06T16:42:13Z

Prop 8 Hangs In Balance as GOP Lawyers Try To Influence Vote Count

Two days after the Nov. 4 elections, a congressional race in conservative Orange County, California that was dismissed by most observers as a lock for the GOP remains unresolved. Democratic challenger Bill Hedrick is down by 4,600 votes against 16-year incumbent Republican Ken Calvert in the 44th congressional district, but nearly 100,000 provisional and vote-by-mail absentee ballots have yet to be counted.

GOP lawyers are descending on registrars' offices in Orange and Riverside, the district's two counties, trying to influence the vote counting which began Thursday:

Rebecca Martine, Riverside County's chief deputy registrar, said there are 38,000 paper provisional ballots and 9,000 electronic provisional ballots to be counted.

This is in addition to approximately 50,000 absentee ballots still outstanding.

Calvert's team has apparently been having private conversations with the registrar's office in Riverside County, which was the last county in California to report its election results. There were numerous reports from Democratic Party officials, voters and even a poll worker in Riverside County that voters were "forced to use provisional ballots" or "denied ballots entirely" on Tuesday.

Hedrick's campaign today issued a call for all votes to be counted. "We are urging any voter within Riverside or Orange County who voted in the 44th congressional race and were issued a provisional ballot to contact the registrar of voters in their county," said Hedrick communications director Lori Vandermeir, "to demand their ballots be counted."

44th district incumbent Ken Calvert (left), and challenger Bill Hedrick (right)

The fate of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 initiative is still up the air, with the measure's foes refusing to concede before all provisional and absentee ballots are counted. Voters in Riverside County approved the initiative by a heavy 64-36% margin, but provisional votes may skew differently.

If you'd like to ask elections officials to count all the provisional votes fairly, free from influence by GOP lawyers, call the Riverside County Registrar's office at (951) 486-7200, where you can leave a message for Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore.

The 44th congressional district includes San Clemente, home to Richard Nixon's Western White House. It is a GOP stronghold. The Hedrick-Calvert race was rated solid Republican by Charlie Cook's Political Report as of mid-October. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry in the district by 59-40%.

Calvert has been named one of the most corrupt members in Congress for three years running by the independent watch dog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He has served in Congress since 1993. Calvert outspent Hedrick in this race by more than 5-1, raising and spending nearly a million dollars to Hedrick's $150,000.

Despite voting with George W. Bush 94.4% of the time, this fall Calvert distributed mailers without a single mention that he belonged to the Republican party, proclaiming himself "An Independent Voice Working for You." The 44th district has seen a jump in voter registration this year, with Democrats outpacing Republicans, especially in Riverside County. It is the second-fastest growing district in California, adding almost 200,000 new residents since 2000, the majority of that growth in the district's Hispanic population.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise reports Hedrick got an assist from Obama voters:

Republicans still hold a slight edge over Democrats in the Riverside County portion of the district, with roughly 5,000 more registered GOP voters than Democrats. But Hedrick, perhaps aided by the excitement surrounding President-elect Barack Obama, was ahead by almost 6,000 votes in Riverside County, according to the Riverside County registrar of voters.

Voters wait in line in Riverside, CA on election day

National Journal's Hotline on Call blog agrees:

"Calvert...appears to not have taken his re-election seriously enough, and may have gotten tripped up by the big Obama-influenced turnout. An unlikely win by Hedrick would be the story of the cycle."

Although the Obama tsunami wiped out GOP incumbents across the country, this is one congressional contest no one predicted would become a cliffhanger. Help bring public pressure to bear in support of a fair counting of all the votes in this race, which is shaping up as a poster child for meaningful voting reform that takes us beyond the sloppy provisional ballot system. Any form of Election Day confusion that leaves 47,000 citizens in a single county unsure whether their votes will count is not what a true democracy looks like.

Erik Ose is a veteran of Democratic campaigns in North Carolina and blogs at The Latest Outrage.

Bush To Obama: "What An Awesome Night For You"

2008-11-05T00:00:57Z

WASHINGTON — President Bush has called Barack Obama to congratulate him on winning the presidency.

The two-term Republican president told the Illinois senator upon his historic win: "What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters."

Kerry: "Tonight New Dreams Are Born"

2008-11-04T23:33:15Z

Sen. John Kerry released the following statement in response to Sen. Barack Obama's victory:

"Tonight we elected a President who has inspired a majority of Americans with his vision and policies, a man who is principally a leader for these times who happens to also be African American; and because of America's stunning ability to move on and transform, to write a new chapter of our history, Barack Obama will be President during the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights movement and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

McCain Camp Mood: "Great Fight" ... "No Regrets"

2008-11-04T22:56:14Z

MSNBC describes the mood in John McCain's villa:

Senior staffers are gathering to spend time with Senator McCain at the "family villa" they are using tonight on the hotel grounds.

Various senior staffers describe McCain's mood as "good" and "he's fine."

There is a collective sense among staffers that this has been a "valiant effort". And a "great fight" in "historically difficult times."

Other describe a feeling of "no regrets" and members of the senior team contend they "left it all on the table."

One advisor says McCain himself feels "that he let his staff and supporters down."

They continue to watch results and await more actual vote totals.

No details yet on when Senator McCain will appear.

President Obama: Barack Obama Becomes America's 44th President

2008-11-04T22:11:19Z

See below for the results of election 2008!

Daily Kos Map

CNN's Electoral Map

Google Map: Follow Presidential, Senate House Races

CBS News Election Widget

Twitter Proves Its Worth On Election Day: Voter Problems Addressed With 'Votereport'

2008-11-04T20:44:55Z

The hottest trend on Twitter today was tagging your tweets "#votereport." The idea (full description here) was to provide a real-time commentary on voting conditions and report any problems to the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition. But was anyone listening to Twitter's problems? Turns out they were.

We got in touch with the Election Protection team and asked them what they saw on Twitter today:

* On Twitter, as with voting problems that were phoned in to the group's toll-free hotline, only a small percentage of problem reports got followed up on.
* While the number of phone calls was "exponentially higher" (over 50,000 calls) than the Twitter reports, a much higher percentage of Twitter problems were investigated.
* Twitter generated about 20 investigations, while phone calls generated 70 follow-ups.

Palm Beach Ballot Confusion (VIDEO)

2008-11-04T20:03:13Z

The center of voting controversy in 2000, Palm Beach, Florida is back in the news with their 2008 confusing ballot. As Kerry Sanders demonstrated on MSNBC, the ballot is not a simple check box or fill in the dot like most of Florida ballots. Rather, Palm Beach voters have to color in a space to complete an arrow. If they check a box or circle the arrow, their vote is not necessarily counted. He pointed out the lawyers watching the vote tabulation as the confusion set in.

WATCH:

Indiana Polling Place Shut Down By Squirrel

2008-11-04T18:53:16Z

Voting in a portion of Indiana, a key battleground state, was apparently disrupted by a squirrel, CBS Chicago reports:

[V]oters going to one polling location in Hammond discovered that that power was out after a squirrel got into a substation, putting over 1,300 customers in the dark. As a result, voters were unable to cast their ballots on the electronic voting machines. It was unclear how many voters were affected.

This occurred in the Robertsdale community in Hammond. The mayor's office says it is checking to see if any of the polling places are affected.

Chicago Election Problems Surface

2008-11-04T18:35:53Z

The long lines and potentially record-setting turnout have caused relatively few problems in Chicago, but voting has not been without glitches.

Chicago election authorities removed three election judges for improper conduct Tuesday, WBBM reports:

Chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners Langdon Neal says one judge was drunk, one was being abusive and one was impersonating an election judge.

He says someone in the 51st precinct in the 17th ward showed up and claimed to be appointed by a ward committeemen.

Neal says the other judges became suspicious, called the board and learned the person was NOT a real judge.

The person was arrested, according to Neal.

Pilsen voter Lindsay Theo told Chicago Public Radio that she had partially completed her electronic ballot before noticing that there were no judges to vote for and the Constitutional Convention referendum was missing:

THEO: They found out they had been entering in the wrong code for everyone who voted before me.

Election judges submitted Theo's ballot and then had her vote a second time on the full ballot.

THEO: I said, 'Like, is that legal?' and they were like, 'It'll be OK.'

Other voters were registered in two locations. At least one person said he voted in both.

Chicago election officials say they will find and prosecute anyone who voted twice.

The placement of the Con-Con question may have caused voters to inadvertently miss it, Steve Rhodes notes at Division Street:

"I almost missed voting on the Con-Con referendum. After I thought I had completed my voting, I wondered where the Con-Con question was. I even thought it was missing. Then I found it at the very beginning of the ballot, right where I was instructed to 'Start Voting Here.'

"It was shaded in blue, though, almost like a space for official use only or instructions. My guess is others will miss it too - and not go back looking for it."

Three suburban Cook County polling places were ordered to stay open until 8 p.m. to compensate for delayed starts: Willard School in Evanston, Parkview Christian Church in Orland Park and Woodbine School in Cicero Township.

The Illinois Attorney General's office has been monitoring the polls and investigating claims of voter irregularity, the Chi-Town Daily News reports. Voter's who encounter problems are urged to call the AG's hotline: (866) 536-3496.

Indiana Judge: GOP Poll Watchers Violated Court Order On Foreclosure Lists

2008-11-04T17:07:25Z

An Indiana judge ruled on Tuesday that Republican poll watchers violated a court order regarding the correct process for challenging voters on election day, according to the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund.

In late October, Democrats and Republicans in Marion County were ordered not to use lists of voters who had been foreclosed on -- or who had been evicted from their homes -- as the sole basis of any election day challenge at the polls.

For Indianapolis voters in particular, the prospect of having their residency status challenged on the basis of home foreclosure was understandable: last year, nearly 26,000 homes were foreclosed on in the city.

On Tuesday afternoon, the NAACP's legal arm went to court alleging that GOP poll watchers did not have copies of the previous court order, as they said the order itself required. NAACP officials had no knowledge of voters having their eligibility challenged based on foreclosure and eviction lists. But they alleged that at the very least, GOP polling officials were not adhering to the initial court order.

In response, Marion County GOP lawyers responded that all Republican poll workers had been previously trained on the court's standing order.

The judge, John Hanley, agreed with the NAACP, ruling that the Republican workers had failed to follow the previous order to the letter. (Hanley did not address whether or not any GOP poll watchers had improperly challenged any voters today.)

"Our position was that they needed to have the the court order and the credential together," said Jenigh Garrett, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "The court's remedy is that they would have to remove any [poll-watcher] without the order from the polling place. They can't be in the polling place without it."

The issue comes down, essentially, to trust. A Marion County Republican spokesperson said that all poll workers were trained not to use foreclosure or eviction status as the sole basis for any residency challenge. "We did poll training with every single one of our poll workers," said the local Republican official. "We handed them the agreement, letting them know that these foreclosures are not a valid basis to challenge residency."

Democrats, as well as the judge, now want every Republican challenger to carry the court order at all times when present at polling places.

Garrett said the judge was reassured, to some degree, by claims from both Republican and Democratic poll watchers who said challenges had been infrequent so far on Tuesday.

Some Glitches In Cook County Voting

2008-11-04T16:56:55Z

Scattered voting glitches were reported at some area polling places Tuesday.

Cook County is considering keeping three polling areas open an hour past their scheduled 7 p.m. closing time because they opened an hour late, according to a spokeswoman for the Cook County clerk's office. The polling places are the 32nd precinct in Cicero and the 60th precinct in Orland Park, and Evanston Ward 6 Precinct 2. She says they opened late because judges didn't show up.

She also says there was a report of a fight at a polling place in the south suburbs, though she didn't have any details or an exact location. She believes a sheriff's deputy was dispatched to the scene, but there were no arrests.

Kirsten Dunst's Voting Documentary Takes Her To North Dakota

2008-11-04T15:51:36Z

BISMARCK, N.D. — In making a documentary about how the nation votes, actress Kirsten Dunst and filmmaker Jacob Soboroff were drawn to North Dakota, the only state without voter registration.

"It's different than any other state in the United States, and what we're looking at is best and worst (voting) practices," Soboroff said Monday. "I don't know if it's a best practice or ... a worst practice, and that's why we're here."

ProPublica: ProPublica's VoteWatch

2008-11-04T15:35:05Z

Election Day is upon us, and like many other people here, we're posting reports of voting troubles as they come in.

As you can see from a quick scan through the stories on VoteWatch, there have already been accusations of fraud and complaints of href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-dirty-tricks,0,2783
887.story">attempted vote suppression.

But as expected, the dominant issue of the day so far is the expected massive turnout (about href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/03/AR2008
110303280.html?nav=rss_politics">100 million expected today, on top of the 30 million early voters), creating long lines at polling places. Some experts worry that such a high turnout is bound to create disorder for a voting system that has proven a wee fragile in past elections.

We'll be updating throughout the day as reports come in. Please visit ProPublica to read our original reports on voting issues across the country and let us know if you see a report we haven't caught.