Jan 28: A Paper Jam Roils California Vote
Ralph Vartabedian and Richard C. Paddock report for the Los Angeles Times: "In a series of controversial decisions last year, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified the vast majority of electronic voting machines in the state, arguing that they were vulnerable to tampering and have defects that could corrupt vote counts. As a result of her order, about a third of California counties are scrambling to prepare for the Feb. 5 presidential primary, printing millions of paper ballots, acquiring new optical scanners and pressing into service optical scanners normally used to count absentee ballots."

Some California Locations to Use Paper Ballots During Primary
John Wildermuth, The San Francisco Chronicle, reports: "San Francisco probably won't see a repeat of November's vote-counting fiasco, but the February 5 presidential primary could be a long night - or week - for other counties across California."

Jan 19: GOP Figure Contracted to Deliver E-Voting Machines in Maryland
Kim Zetter, Wired Magazine, "A family-owned trucking firm that has a contract to deliver Diebold electronic voting machines to 14 voting districts in Maryland is headed by the former chairman of Maryland's Republican Party, Wired News has learned."

Jan 11: Kucinich Seeks New Hampshire Vote Recount
Stephen Frothingham, writing for The Associated Press, reports: "Democrat Dennis Kucinich, who won less than 2 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, said Thursday he wants a recount to ensure that all ballots in his party's contest were counted. The Ohio congressman cited 'serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors' about the integrity of Tuesday results." Meanwhile, The Hill's Walter Alarkon reports, "Former Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry's (Mass.) endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama could boost the Illinois Democrat with partisans, but it also risks reminding voters of Kerry's painful 2004 loss and his record of gaffes."

The Voter ID Fraud
Garrett Epps writes in The Nation: "There's a war on across the country over who will be allowed to vote in 2008. One of the key battles in the election was fought on January 9 before the Supreme Court."

Jan 10: Voter Confusion Over Michigan Presidential Primary
From Detroit, Margaret Talev, reporting for McClatchy Newspapers, writes: "What's the point? That's what many Michiganders are wondering about their presidential primary elections next Tuesday in this important manufacturing state whose hard luck can be seen as a possible harbinger for many of the nation's blue-collar workers."

Jan 5: Can You Count On These Machines?
Clive Thompson, The New York Times, reports: "As the primaries start in New Hampshire this week and roll on through the next few months, the erratic behavior of voting technology will once again find itself under a microscope. In the last three election cycles, touch-screen machines have become one of the most mysterious and divisive elements in modern electoral politics. Introduced after the 2000 hanging-chad debacle, the machines were originally intended to add clarity to election results. But in hundreds of instances, the result has been precisely the opposite: they fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways."

Jan 4: Voter ID Challenges Could Have Big 2008 Impact
Keith Perine for The Congressional Quarterly reports, "A pair of closely watched voting rights cases headed to the Supreme Court next week could have a greater effect on the 2008 elections than anything happening in Iowa or New Hampshire."

Kucinich Files Lawsuit After Party Denies Him Place on Ballot
The Associated Press: "Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, along with supporter Willie Nelson, [...] filed a lawsuit to get Kucinich on the ballot in Texas after they say the Texas Democratic Party rejected his application."

Ohio to Offer Paper Ballots in March
Bob Driehaus reports for The New York Times, "All 57 counties in Ohio that still use the touch-screen voting machines that were found to be unreliable in a statewide study must provide paper ballots to any voters who request them for the presidential primary in March." Kirk Johnson, of The New York Times, reports that in Colorado, "With less than year before the November balloting, and the current system mostly in shambles after testing by the secretary of state last month found problems in voting machines across the state, the legislature is braced for a fight over what to do next. County clerks, who administer the elections, are counting the days, and the dwindling options."

Jan 2: A Tale of Political Dirty Tricks Makes the Case for Election Reform
Adam Cohen writes for The New York Times: "When Mr. Raymond opened a political telemarketing firm, he was hired by a Republican challenging a New Jersey Democratic congressman. Mr. Raymond's company - in a plan he says he hatched with the challenger's advisers - called liberal Democrats and urged them to vote for the Green Party candidate. Those same advisers, he says, gave Mr. Raymond another assignment: to call white households asking them to vote for the Democrat, using the voice of, as he puts it, a 'ghetto black guy.' He also called union households, using voices with thick Spanish accents." Meanwhile, David Espo reports for The Associated Press, "In the final days of a close campaign, likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa report receiving phone calls providing unflattering information about all three of the party's major presidential hopefuls."

Jan 1: Critical Flaws Seen in Electronic Voting Machines
George Merritt, reporting for The Associated Press, writes: "With the presidential race in full swing, Colorado and other states have found critical flaws in the accuracy and security of their electronic voting machines, forcing officials to scramble to return to the paper ballots they abandoned after the Florida debacle of 2000. In December alone, top election officials in Ohio and Colorado declared that widely used voting equipment is unfit for elections." 

Dec 28: When Will We Know Who Really Won in Iowa?
Truthout's Scott Galindez on the Iowa caucus - how the process works and what it means.

Dec 26: The Work Remaining
The editors of The New York Times write, "It has been nearly a year since the United States attorneys scandal broke, and much has changed. Many people at the center of the scandal have fled Washington, and new laws and rules have been put in place making it harder to use prosecutors' offices to win elections. Much, however, remains to be done, starting with a full investigation into the misconduct that may have occurred - something the American people have been denied."

Dec 22: As Primaries Begin, the FEC Will Shut Down
Matthew Mosk, reporting for The Washington Post, writes: "The federal agency in charge of policing the torrent of political spending during the upcoming presidential primaries will, for all practical purposes, shut its doors on New Year's Eve."

Dec 18: Colorado Voting Machines Tossed Out
George Merritt, The Associated Press, writes: "Colorado's secretary of state has declared many of the state's electronic voting machines to be unreliable, but said Tuesday that some of them could still be used in November if a software patch was installed."

Dec 17: Ohio Elections Official Calls Machines Flawed
Bob Driehaus, of The New York Times, reports, "all five voting systems used in Ohio, a state whose electoral votes narrowly swung two elections toward President Bush, have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election, a report commissioned by the state's top elections official has found."

Dec 15: Justice Department's Voting Rights Chief Resigns
Greg Gordon reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "The Justice Department's voting rights chief stepped down Friday amid allegations that he'd used the position to aid a Republican strategy to suppress African-American votes."

Republicans New Plot to Rig the 2008 Election
Johann Hari writes for the Seattle Post-Seattle Post-Intelegencer: "the Republicans are trying to exploit the discontent with the Electoral College among Americans in a way that would rig the system in their favor. At the moment, every state apart from Maine and Nebraska hands out its Electoral College votes according to a winner-takes-all system. This means that if 51 percent of people in California vote Democrat, the Democrats get 100 percent of California's electoral votes; if 51 percent of people in Texas vote Republican, the Republicans get 100 percent of Texas' electoral votes. The Republicans want to change this - but in only one Democrat-leaning state, California."

Nov 26: California State Official Sues E-Voting Firm
According to Technology News Daily, "Secretary of State Debra Bowen has filed suit against Election Systems & Software Inc. (ES&S) for nearly $15 million after a four-month investigation revealed the company had repeatedly violated state law."

Nov 6: Voter Intimidation May Plague Election Day 2007
Steven Rosenfeld, from AlterNet, reports, "Tough new voter identification laws, fervent anti-immigrant rhetoric, officials who won't follow federal election law, challenges to college student voter registrations, electronic voting machine failures - these are problems that voting rights groups and Democrats will be monitoring as a handful of states vote on Tuesday, Nov. 6."

Nov 3: New Life for Initiative to Apportion Electoral Vote
Jennifer Steinhauer, The New York Times, writes: "Republican donors are pumping new life into a proposed ballot initiative, considered all but dead by Democrats a month ago, that would alter the way electoral votes are apportioned in California to the benefit of Republican presidential candidates."

Oct 13: Voting Machines Giving Florida New Headache
Abby Goodnough, The New York Times, says, "Across the nation, jurisdictions that experimented with touch-screen voting after 2000 are starting to scale back or abandon it based on a growing perception that the machines are unreliable and concern that they do not provide a paper trail in case questions arise."

Sep 27: GOP Says They'll Continue RAcist Voter Suppression Tactics
Steven Rosenfeld reports for AlterNet: "In 2004, Republicans used a Jim Crow-era tactic to target the voter registrations of a half-million likely Democratic voters -- often minorities -- for Election Day challenges in nine states, a national voting rights group has charged in a new report." Also, Greg Gordon reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "Ohio and Florida, which provided the decisive electoral votes for President Bush's two razor-thin national election triumphs, have enacted laws that election experts say will help Republicans impede Democratic-leaning minorities from voting in 2008."

Sep 23: In 2008, Bush v. Gore Redux?
Bob Herbert of The New York Times says, "Right now it's just a petition drive on its way to becoming a ballot initiative in California. But you should think of it as a tropical depression that could develop into a major storm that blows away the Democrats' chances of winning the White House next year. And it could become a constitutional crisis."

Sep 12: Voter Purging: A Legal Way for Republicans to Swing Elections?
Steven Rosenfeld writes for Alternet, "The Department of Justice's Voting Section is pressuring 10 states to purge voter rolls before the 2008 election based on statistics that former Voting Section attorneys and other experts say are flawed and do not confirm that those states have more voter registrations than eligible voters, as the department alleges."

Sep 9: E-Voting Bill Opposed by State, Local Officials
Writing for The Congressional Quarterly, Kathleen Hunter reports: "Strong opposition from state and local officials is threatening to derail an election-machine bill originally slated to come to the House floor Thursday."

Aug 26: Florida Primary Found in Violation
The Boston Globe's Susan Milligan writes: "Democratic National Committee officials yesterday ruled that Florida's January 29 presidential primary is in violation of party rules and gave Florida Democrats 30 days to find a solution or be frozen out of the nominating convention next year."

Aug 23: Electronic Voting Company May Be Banned in CA
Kim Zetter reports for Wired.com: "California announced that it plans to hold an administrative hearing on September 20th to discuss the fate of Election Systems & Software for violating state election codes. ES&S, the top voting machine company in the country, is being accused of selling at least five CA counties a version of its AutoMark ballot marking system that hadn't yet been tested or certified for use in the state or the country."

Aug 22: Stacking the Electoral Deck
The editors of The New York Times write: "The Electoral College should be abolished, but there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. A prominent Republican lawyer in California is doing it the wrong way, promoting a sneaky initiative that, in the name of Electoral College reform, would rig elections in a way that would make it difficult for a Democrat to be elected president, no matter how the popular vote comes out. If the initiative passes, it would do serious damage to American democracy."

Aug 21: GOP Power Grab Scheme in California Could Swing 2008 Election
Senator Barbara Boxer writes in The Huffington Post: "Just when you thought it was safe to start thinking about having a Democrat in the White House, along comes a cynical power grab by Republican operatives. And unfortunately, it's happening right here in my own state of California. If you haven't heard already, Republican strategists recently announced plans to begin raising money for a dangerous initiative that would radically change the way California apportions our electoral votes in presidential elections."

Ohio E-Voting: Not-So-Secret Ballots
Declan McCullagh reports for CNET News, "Two Ohio activists have discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems and Software and used across the country produce time-stamped paper trails that permit the reconstruction of an election's results - including allowing voter names to be matched to their actual votes." 

Aug 11: States Seek Change in Presidential Election Process
Jennifer Steinhauer reports in Saturday's edition of the New York Times that lawmakers, voting rights organizations, and political party leaders, "frustrated by a system that has marginalized many states in the presidential election process, or seeking partisan advantage ... are stepping up efforts to change the rules of the game, even as the presidential campaign advances."

Aug 7: Millions of Women Still Fail to Cast Ballots
Jacqueline Lee, writing for Women's eNews, reports that "many women's votes are missing from the count. In the last presidential election, eight million women registered but did not vote; another 36 million potential female voters were not registered at all."

Aug 5: 39 California Counties' Vote Systems in Question
Hector Becerra and Jordan Rau of The Los Angeles Times report: "County election officials scrambled on Saturday to develop contingency plans for the February presidential primary election after California's secretary of state imposed broad restrictions on electronic voting machines that she said are susceptible to hacking."

Is California GOP Trying to Steal the 2008 Election?
Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter says, "Our way of electing presidents has always been fertile ground for mischief. But there's sensible mischief - toying with existing laws and the Constitution to reflect popular will - and then there's the other kind, which tries to rig admission to the Electoral College for strictly partisan purposes. Mischief-makers in California (Republicans) and North Carolina (Democrats) are at work on changes that would subvert the system for momentary advantage and - in ways the political world is only beginning to understand - dramatically increase the odds that a Republican will be elected president in 2008."

Aug 3: DNC Announces Unprecedented Election Protection Project
PRNewswire reports, "Democrats to conduct nationwide survey of administration of elections as part of an ongoing commitment to protecting the rights of every American."

Aug 1: Florida Voting Machines Can Be Hacked
Marc Caputo reports for The Miami Herald, "Reversing an unofficial policy of denial, the Florida Secretary of State's office has conducted an elections study that confirmed Tuesday what a maverick voting chief discovered nearly two years ago: Insider computer hackers can change votes without a trace on Diebold optical-scan machines."

July 30: Votescam
"Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all 55 of California's electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each Congressional district," writes Hendrik Hertzberg for The New Yorker.

July 28: Scientists Hack Voting Machines to Prove Tech Weaknesses
"Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state," reports Christopher Drew in Saturday's edition of the New York Times.

July 26: Emails Detail RNC Voter Suppression in 5 States
Truthout's Jason Leopold and Matt Renner report, "Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry."

Purple America
Bob Moser of The Nation asks: "Just how, exactly, could there be controversy over a national political party organizing nationally - especially after years of pissing billions into an ever-shrinking 'target' slice of the country, ceding wider and wider chunks of territory and disdaining the grassroots while Republicans built a powerful army of ground troops? The DNC's 50-state project is relatively inexpensive, compared with the costs of the 30-second TV ad blitzes the party has increasingly relied on to target voters in Ohio and Florida. Salaries for the state parties run to about $8 million annually, considerably less than 10 percent of the DNC's budget and downright humble compared with what the GOP and its affiliates spend for similar party work."

July 25: Are Voter Registration Drives Being Shut Down?
"After the wave of successes in 2004 voter registration drives by groups like ACORN, a half-dozen states passed severe laws that scared off voting activists - and now the Senate is weighing in," reports Steven Rosenfeld of AlterNet.

July 24: Rove Briefed Foreign Diplomats on GOP Election Strategy
Paul Kane reports for The Washington Post, "White House aides have conducted at least half-a-dozen political briefings for the Bush administration's top diplomats, including a PowerPoint presentation for ambassadors with senior adviser Karl Rove that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008 and a 'general political briefing' at the Peace Corps headquarters after the 2002 midterm elections."

July 21: Democrats Drop Plans for Voting Reforms Before '08 Election
The New York Times's Christopher Drew writes: "Democrats in Congress who are trying to redesign the nation's voting system generally share the same goals: an affordable, easy-to-use system with durable paper ballots that can be used by the disabled without help from poll workers. But yesterday, House leaders failed for a second day to reach agreement on the outlines of a new system."

July 20: Overhaul Plan for Vote System Will Be Delayed
"Overhauling voting systems before next year's presidential election had once been a top Democratic priority, primarily to allow greater accountability and be certain that all votes registered on computerized touch-screen systems were counted. But state and local elections officials told Congress they could not make the changes in time for the balloting in November 2008, particularly in light of the extra workload involved in preparing for next year's much-earlier presidential primary season," reports Christopher Drew of The New York Times.

July 18: Bush Government to Poor Voters: We Don't Want You to Vote
"State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for public assistance, despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame," writes Steven Rosenfeld of Alternet.

July 2: GOP Links to Vote-Fraud Push
"A New Mexico lawyer who pressed to oust US Attorney David Iglesias was an officer of a nonprofit group that aided Republican candidates in 2006 by pushing for tougher voter identification laws - an activist group that defended tighter voter identification requirements in court against charges that they were designed to hamper voting by poor minorities," reports Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers.

May 31: US Attorney Targeted for Supporting Voting Rights
At a time when GOP activists wanted US attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger's office was expressing deep concern about a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.

May 23: Labor Wielding Clout in US Presidential Race
With a weakened Republican president and Democrats given a solid chance to win, US labor unions see next year's presidential election as a chance to revive their clout, experts and activists say.

May 22: The Fraudulent Fraud Squad
The death of the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) says a lot about the Republican strategy of raising voter fraud as a crisis in American elections. Presidential Adviser Karl Rove and his allies, who have been ghostbusting illusory dead and fictional voters since the contested 2000 election, apparently mounted a two-pronged attack. One part of that attack is at the heart of the current Justice Department scandals. But the second prong may have proven more successful. This involved using ACVR to give "think tank" academic cachet to the unproven idea that voter fraud is a major problem in elections.

May 21: Efforts to Stop "Voter Fraud" May Have Curbed Legitimate Voting
During his four years as a Justice Department civil rights lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky went so far in a crusade against voter fraud as to warn of its dangers under a pseudonym in a law journal article. Now, amid a scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, Congress is beginning to examine allegations that von Spakovsky was a key player in a Republican campaign to hang onto power in Washington by suppressing the votes of minorities.

May 11: The Globalization of Electronic Election Theft
From Ohio and California to Scotland and France, the disputes surrounding electronic voting machines have gone truly global. E-voting machines have already been extensively studied and condemned by a wide range of expert committees, commissions and colleges. Now the secretaries of state in Ohio and California are subjecting e-voting to still more official review.

May 10: Politics Could Cloud Election Panel's Work
The six-person Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign-finance laws, is entering the presidential election season with three temporary commissioners who have not been confirmed by the Senate, two commissioners whose terms have expired but who have not been replaced, and one vacancy. As a result, most of the commissioners who are now passing judgment on campaign-finance fights will also be looking ahead to their own confirmation battles - a process that threatens to intensify the politics surrounding an agency that was set up to resolve disputes over election rules in a bipartisan manner.

May 4: Florida Acts to Eliminate Touch-Screen Voting System
Florida legislators voted on Thursday to replace touch-screen voting machines - installed in 15 counties after the troubled 2000 presidential election - with a system of optical scan voting. The new system is scheduled to be running in time for the 2008 presidential election.

May 3: 2006 Missouri Election Was Ground Zero for GOP
Six months after freshman Missouri Senator Jim Talent's defeat handed Democrats control of the US Senate, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight US attorneys show that the Republican campaign to protect the balloting was not as it appeared. No significant voter fraud was ever proved. The preoccupation with ballot fraud in Missouri was part of a wider national effort that critics charge was aimed at protecting the Republican majority in Congress by dampening Democratic turnout.

April 26: Are Rove's Missing Emails the Smoking Guns of the Stolen 2004 Election?
"Emails being sought from Karl Rove's computers, and recent revelations about critical electronic conflicts of interest, may be the smoking guns of Ohio's stolen 2004 election. A thorough recount of ballots and electronic files, preserved by a federal lawsuit, could tell the tale," write Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman.

April 24: The GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad
Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis ask: "Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election? The answer appears to be yes."

April 23: Why France's Elections Matter to US
Serge Halimi's masterful recounting of how UMP candidate Sarkozy has used the American Republican's playbook to undermine social solidarity in France reviews the tactics still in use in the US, while Jordan Stancil vividly reminds US progressives of the importance of the European laboratory for social welfare that a Sarkozy victory could dismantle.

April 22: Court Rejects Blocking Arizona Voter Law
A federal appeals court on Friday rejected an attempt to halt enforcement of an Arizona law that requires voters to show identification before casting a ballot and submit proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

April 19: Administration Tried to Curb Election Turnout in Key States
For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written records.

April 18: The Fraudulence of Voter Fraud
"When Rove talks about protecting 'ballot integrity,' that is shorthand for disenfranchising Democratic Party voters. When Republicans talk about voter fraud, they are referring to illegal voting by individuals, as opposed to vote fraud - systematic attempts to steal an election by an organized group of partisans. This emphasis on voter fraud has convinced eight states to pass laws requiring voters to present official photo identification in order to cast a ballot - laws that studies have shown suppress Democratic turnout among voters who are poor, black, Latino, Asian-American or disabled," says Joel Bleifuss.

US Attorney Who Wrongly Convicted Woman Kept His Job
Adam Cohen writes: "Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was re-elected - and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United States attorney put an innocent woman in jail."

April 17: House to Begin Probe Into Florida Election
A House task force will take the first steps Tuesday in an investigation of a Florida Congressional election decided by 369 votes amid complaints that voting machines failed to count thousands of electronic ballots. The House, which has final authority over its membership, typically waits until legal challenges are completed before taking action. But Florida Democrats last month asked the House Administration Committee to begin reviewing the election after reports of an anomaly in the touch-screen voting machines that recorded about 18,000 skipped votes in Sarasota County.

April 12: In Five-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud
Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

April 11: Federal Panel Altered Findings on Voter Fraud
A federal panel responsible for conducting election research played down the findings of experts who concluded last year that there was little voter fraud around the nation, according to a review of the original report obtained by The New York Times.

March 24: Veterans Speak Out in Historic March to the Pentagon
On March 17, 2007, anti-war activists from around the country gathered near the Vietnam Memorial and marched to the Pentagon. This event, led by veterans and military families, evoked another anti-war demonstration that followed the same route almost 40 years ago when America was divided by Vietnam, and which many observers saw as a turning point in the movement against the war. Truthout's Geoffrey Millard covers this march and talks to veterans.

March 16: Presidential Nominations Could Be Decided by February
In the not-so-distant past, general-election campaigns for president started on Labor Day, kicking off a nine-week contest between the Democratic and Republican nominees. Now, thanks in part to action taken Thursday, party nominations may be settled effectively by next Valentine's Day, sending the two major-party nominees on a nine-month slugfest for the White House.

March 7: E-Voting on Trial in Columbus, Ohio: The Squire Case
The Squire v. Geer case is more than just a mere election challenge lawsuit; the reliability of electronic voting was on trial last week in a small courtroom in Franklin County, Ohio. Voting rights activists see the issues before the court as going to the heart of democracy itself, and whether or not election results obtained through the computerized voting machines can be trusted.

March 2: Kucinich Comes Back for '08
Kucinich was the only Democratic candidate in the 2004 presidential primaries to vote against the war in Iraq. Three years later, the Iraq war has cost the lives of more than 3,000 American servicepeople and untold thousands of Iraqis. And once again, Kucinich, relentless in his call for withdrawing troops, is vying for the nation's top job. Daniel Sturm speaks with Kucinich about his decision to run again for president and his position on the war.

Feb 28: States Work on Proposals to Make Voting Easier
Proposals designed to make voting easier and ballots more secure are beginning to advance in several states. The proposals range from allowing voters to register up until Election Day, to expanding the use of absentee ballots and early in-person voting. Several states and Congress also are promoting paper trails for electronic voting machines.

Feb 13: High Time for Voting Reform
Marie Cocco writes: "For those who despair that it's way too early to start thinking about the 2008 presidential election - and who doesn't? - there is a more productive way to spend political effort: Start working to ensure that the vote goes better in 2008 than it has in any election since the catastrophe of 2000."

Feb 2: Florida Shifting to Voting System With Paper Trail
Governor Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida's counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Jan 3: Study Indicates Electronic Voting Systematically Flawed
Three advocacy groups created a report about last year's midterm election that focuses on 1,022 complaints regarding electronic voting equipment from 314 counties in 36 states. The 23-page report concluded that "electronic voting in its current form is systematically flawed..."

Jan 1: House Democrats Object to Florida Election Outcome
Democrats said Friday that they would open the new Congress by formally objecting to the election result in Florida's 13th District, in the hope that the Democrat who is contesting the narrow outcome there will ultimately take the place of the Republican whom the state has certified as the winner.

Dec 18: Instant Runoff Voting Is Catching On
"Political reforms such as redistricting reform, fusion, and campaign finance reform have been floundering at the ballot box in recent years, rejected by voters in several states. But another political reform, instant runoff voting, has been quietly racking up impressive victories," writes Steven Hill.

Dec 16:Kucinich Says He Can "Save Presidency for Democratic Party"
Speaking to a reporter about the Iraq war and his run for the White House in 2008, Democratic senator Dennis Kucinich said, "People aren't looking for the Democrats to be better managers of the war, they want the Democrats to end the war and to bring our troops home."

Dec 12: Gore Doesn't Rule Out '08 Run; Kucinich Is In
"I am not planning to run for president again," Gore said last week, arguing that his focus is raising public awareness about global warming and its dire effects. Then, he added, "I haven't completely ruled it out." Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich said Monday he is planning another bid because his party isn't pushing hard enough to end the Iraq war.

Dec 11: The Road to Reliable Elections
"Two influential federal advisory groups have added their voices to an emerging national consensus that voting machines must produce a voter-verified paper record if they are to be trusted.... Their analyses should give further support to members of Congress who plan to push next month for a strong federal law requiring voter-verified paper records," says the New York Times.

Dec 8: Sweeping Changes Expected in Voting by 2008 Election
By the 2008 presidential election, voters around the country are likely to see sweeping changes in how they cast their ballots and how those ballots are counted, including an end to the use of most electronic voting machines without a paper trail, federal voting officials and legislators say.

Dec 3: GOP Pays $135K in New Hampshire Call Jamming Suit
State and national Republicans will pay $135,000 to settle a suit involving a scheme to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote calls on Election Day 2002.

Dec 1: Security of Electronic Voting Is Condemned by Federal Agency
Paperless electronic voting machines used throughout the Washington region and much of the country "cannot be made secure," according to draft recommendations issued this week by a federal agency that advises the US Election Assistance Commission. The assessment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the government's premier research centers, is the most sweeping condemnation of such voting systems by a federal agency.

Nov 30: Ohio County May Junk E-Voting Machines
Officials in the state's most populous county are considering scrapping touch-screen voting machines for the 2008 presidential election.

Nov 29: Vote Disparity a Mystery in Florida Election For Congress
The race for Florida's 13th Congressional District has been surrounded by a contentious mystery: Why were there no votes for Congress recorded from more than 18,000 people who chose candidates in other races? The answer is central not only to the outcome of the election, which for now has been won by Republican Vern Buchanan by a mere 369 votes and is in litigation, but also to the ongoing debates over whether the electronic voting systems in use nationwide can yield reliable tallies and recounts.

Nov 24: When Votes Disappear
"There were many problems with voting in this election - and in at least one Congressional race, the evidence strongly suggests that paperless voting machines failed to count thousands of votes, and that the disappearance of these votes delivered the race to the wrong candidate," writes Paul Krugman. "As far as I can tell, the reason Florida-13 hasn't become a major national story is that neither control of Congress nor control of the White House is on the line. But do we have to wait for a constitutional crisis to realize that we're in danger of becoming a digital-age banana republic?"

Nov 22: Missing Votes in FL-13 Favored Dems
The group of nearly 18,000 voters that registered no choice in Sarasota's disputed congressional election solidly backed Democratic candidates in all five of Florida's statewide races, an Orlando Sentinel analysis of ballot data shows. Among these voters, even the weakest Democrat - agriculture commissioner candidate Eric Copeland - outpaced a much-better-known Republican incumbent by 551 votes.

Nov 18: Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked
A major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in US House and Senate races across the country is indicated by an analysis of national exit polling data. These findings have led the Election Defense Alliance to issue an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results - and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment.

Nov 15: War, social inequality and the crisis of American democracy--Part Two Life-and-death questions of democratic rights that resound through our history have emerged, yet an election campaign is conducted where they are not discussed and cannot be examined.

Nov 14: War, social inequality and the crisis of American democracy--Part one The election to be held on Tuesday will be highly significant. It will tell us something about the political environment and conditions that exist in the United States.

Nov 12: Florida Recount, 2006-Style
On Monday Florida will begin its first recount for a federal election since the botched 2000 presidential contest, but this time there will be no hanging chads. It is the reliability of touch screen electronic voting machines that will be in the spotlight.

Nov 10: Important vote for SEP candidates in US elections Nearly 12,000 voters cast ballots for Socialist Equality Party candidates in New York, Michigan, Illinois and Maine during Tuesday’s US mid-term elections. The vote, in the face of the myriad of restrictions aimed at keeping voters from hearing the views of third party candidates, was significant and indicative of the growing audience for a socialist alternative.

Nov 8: Pushing a Progressive Agenda for the Democrats
Dean Baker writes: "The Democrats have scored an important electoral gain for the first time in 14 years. It is now incumbent on progressives to ensure that this victory is not squandered. In addition to maintaining pressure for a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, there is a long list of economic items that we should be pushing the Democrats to support. At the top of the list must be the demand to carry through on one of the Democrats' key campaign promises: reforming the Medicare prescription drug benefit."

Democrats Take Control of the Senate
Democrats wrested control of the Senate from Republicans Wednesday with an upset victory in Virginia, giving the party complete domination of Capitol Hill for the first time since 1994.

ACORN Celebrates Minimum Wage Increase Victories
ACORN members in four states - Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, and Ohio - celebrated the overwhelming success of ballot initiative campaigns to raise the minimum wage. They also applauded the successful efforts of other coalitions which passed wage increases in Nevada and Montana.

Stem Cells Win, Abortion Ban Defeated
A Missouri ballot initiative to promote stem cell research, a topic that blew up into a national controversy over the reach and effectiveness of political ads, was approved by voters last night by a margin of 51-49.

Jason Leopold: Historic Democratic Victory
Despite widespread problems with electronic voting machines, long lines that stretched several city blocks in some states, hours-long waiting at the polls, and GOP intimidation tactics aimed to drive away predominantly Democratic and minority voters, the public turned out en masse Tuesday and helped shift the balance of power in Washington, DC, to Democrats for the first time in 12 years.

Nov 7:

Nationwide Problems With E-Voting Machines, Volunteers Report
Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts Tuesday, delaying voters in several states and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead.

Virginia: FBI Looks Into Voter Intimidation
Just ahead of today's election, state officials alerted the US Justice Department to several complaints of suspicious phone calls to voters about where they cast ballots and their preferences for the Senate.

New Rules, Machines Frazzle Poll Workers
Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts early Tuesday, delaying voters in Indiana, Ohio and Florida and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead.

Nov 5: Why Do So Few People Vote in the US?
Government of the people, by the people, will be missing a lot of people Election Day. It's a persistent riddle in a country that thinks of itself as the beacon of democracy. Why do so few vote?

Nov 4: Are You Voting for the Terminator's Terminals?
"If you are a California voter, you might have heard about the big celebrity protests in Malibu a few weeks ago. Led by actor Pierce Brosnan, everyone from Barbra Striesand to Sting showed up to protest a planned LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) terminal that BHP Billiton wants to build 14 miles off the coast at Oxnard ... There are many reasons for neighbors to be upset about this kind of industrial development off their coast ... But this is much more than a 'not in my back yard' concern," writes Kelpie Wilson.

Our Eyes Are Wide Open
"If Diebold designed their ATM machines the way they design their voting machines, none of us would have a dime left in our bank accounts. Such remarkable facts are usually not the result of incompetence, but of design. When the top man at Diebold promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, you are allowed to be a little paranoid," says Doris "Granny D" Haddock.

Nov 3: Political Amnesia?
"Unless you happen to live in Southern Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama, you're unlikely to have heard from office holders or their challengers the one word that was supposed to be a defining issue of the 2006 mid-term elections. The word is Katrina," writes William Fisher.

Nov 2: Inside the Shocking HBO Diebold Film
HBO's "Hacking Democracy" (premiering tonight at 9 p.m./ET) tells the story of Bev Harris. Harris set out to investigate the electronic voting systems and stumbled upon shocking revelations about the vulnerability of the software and hardware. Harris went on to form the watchdog group BlackBoxVoting.org.

The Great Divider
The New York Times editors write: "As President Bush throws himself into the final days of a particularly nasty campaign season, he's settled into a familiar pattern of ugly behavior. Since he can't defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Mr. Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies."

Is There a Scandal in the House?
It's a scandal-filled election this year with two bribery convictions, one money-laundering indictment, two sex scandals, one Russian contracting fiasco and $90,000 stashed in a freezer. The string of scandals could cost the Republicans their majority in the House.

Nov 1: Election campaign reveals Democrats' lurch to the right With the US midterm elections just a week away, Democratic Party leaders and candidates are waging the most right-wing campaign in the party’s history. The essential content of this campaign is a pledge to continue the Bush administration’s policies of militarism abroad and social reaction at home.

Diebold Demands HBO Cancel Documentary on Voting Machines
Diebold Inc. has insisted that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, "Hacking Democracy," is scheduled to debut Thursday, five days before the 2006 US midterm elections. The film reveals that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results.

Hispanic, Asian, Native Citizens Face Voting Barriers
Voting rights groups are concerned that millions of US citizens with limited English proficiency could have problems when trying to vote this year. The groups worry voters will either have trouble finding ballots in languages they understand or will experience intimidation and discrimination at the polls.

Oct 31: The Torture Election
Jonathan Schell writes about the November elections: "The stakes, as President Bush likes to say - and on this point he is correct - could scarcely be higher. But they include one stake he never mentions: the future of constitutional government in the United States, which his presidency and his party have put in serious jeopardy."

Social Security Is on the Ballot Next Week
Dean Baker writes: "With the Congressional elections fast approaching, one issue that has received remarkably little attention is Social Security. While it is understandable that the public would attach a higher priority to ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Social Security has barely registered a blip in public opinion surveys on the list of issues on voters' minds."

Iraq violence 'linked to US vote'
US Vice-President Dick Cheney says Iraq militants are seeking to influence mid-term polls by stepping up attacks.

Oct 30: Florida E-Voting Machines Already Flipping Votes
After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors - and a caution against the careless casting of ballots. Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen - the final voting step.

Can This Machine Be Trusted?
The US's new voting systems are only as good as the people who program and use them. Which is why next week could be interesting. In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them - 90% - will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. When that many people collide with that many high-tech devices, there are going to be problems.

Oct 29: 11 Charged in GOP Vote Fraud
The Orange County district attorney's office has charged 11 people with fraudulent voter registration stemming from a Republican registration drive this year that resulted in dozens of Democrats unwittingly being signed up as Republicans.

US Investigates Voting Machines' Venezuela Ties
The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Oct 27: US Warned of Ballot Box Chaos as Elections Near
Six years after the emergence of the now infamous "hanging chad" in the 2000 presidential elections, monitoring groups warn that technological glitches and hackers could throw next month's mid-term elections into chaos.

Recipe for a Cooked Election
"A nasty little secret of American democracy is that, in every national election, ballots cast are simply thrown in the garbage. Most are called 'spoiled,' supposedly unreadable, damaged, invalid. They just don't get counted. This 'spoilage' has occurred for decades, but it reached unprecedented heights in the last two presidential elections. In the 2004 election, for example, more than three million ballots were never counted," writes Greg Palast.

Andy's Election
William Rivers Pitt writes: "In the summer of 2005, my friend Andy Stephenson passed away due to pancreatic cancer. Andy had devoted years of his life to sounding an alarm over the unbelievable flaws in the new electronic voting machines that had been foisted on the American public by the Help America Vote Act ... Andy Stephenson lived and died trying to warn us about these things. The good news, for Andy and for us all, is that these news reports are drawing much-needed attention to the problem. The bad news, simply, is that the problems still exist, and may come to determine who holds power in America after January."

Oct 26: Statistical Issues in Elections
An open letter from the American Statistical Association says: "There will be over 500 major elections this fall, and thousands more local and state races. On November 8th, many Americans will wake up not knowing whether a candidate they voted for won. Projecting from past experience, we can expect between five to twenty federal elections and dozens of local elections to be within plus or minus 2% - too close to call given current technology. Procedures for resolving the uncertainty should be thought about now, before partisans start arguing for methods that seem likely to benefit them. Statisticians can help develop credible procedures."

Jason Leopold: Severe Election Problems Seen in 10 States
A nonpartisan organization tracking election reform across the United States released a report Wednesday warning that 10 states are likely to experience severe problems on November 7 because of electronic voting machines and new voter identification laws that could call into question the results of some races.

Oct 25: Voting Problems Loom in US Election
Long lines and long counts threaten to mar next month's US Congressional elections. "In close elections, it may be days and weeks before a winner is known in a particular race," said Paul DeGregorio, chairperson of the US Election Assistance Commission, created to oversee a 2002 election-law overhaul.

Florida Judge Throws Out Ban on Exit Polls
A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a Florida law that prohibits exit polling within 100 feet of a voting place, finding there was no evidence that such surveys were disruptive or threatened access to voting.

Voting Machines Will Not Display Virginia Democrat Webb's Name
US Senate candidate James Webb's last name has been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters. Although the problem creates some voter confusion, election officials claim this will not cause votes to be cast incorrectly.

Oct 24: Media Challenges Ohio Exit Poll Rules
Ohio's new guidelines on conducting exit polls on Election Day, written after a judge threw out the old rules, are vague and confusing and should be rejected, a coalition of national news organizations argues in a lawsuit.

Elections to Watch
James Zogby writes, "I, like many others, am deeply troubled by the 12 Democrats who supported the shameful administration-endorsed legislation on detainees, but it is inconceivable that such a bill ever would have seen the light of day had the Senate or House Judiciary Committees been under the leadership of the likes of Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy, or John Conyers."

Chicago Voter Database Hacked
As if there weren't enough concerns about the integrity of the vote, a non-partisan civic organization today claimed it had hacked into the voter database for the 1.35 million voters in the city of Chicago.

Oct 21: Officials Probing Possible Theft of Voting Software in Maryland
The FBI is investigating the possible theft of software developed by the nation's leading maker of electronic voting equipment, said a former Maryland legislator who this week received three computer disks that apparently contain key portions of programs created by Diebold Election Systems.

Oct 19: Ohio Lawsuit to Reinstate Hundreds of Thousands of Purged Democratic Voters
"Put pressure on the democrats to bring suit. I would urge the DNC - the party can't let this stand. They could proceed to Federal court and argue that this is a civil rights case - against blacks and young people. They could file their own suit. There are a lot of ways they could do it procedurally. They could intervene as an independent party. They could join our lawsuit, I would welcome any action by them," says Ohio voting rights activist and attorney Dr. Bob Fitrakis.

Oct 18: Bush's Former Elections Chair: E-Voting Ripe for Fraud
Soaries was appointed by George W. Bush as the first chair of the commission created by the federal Help America Vote Act in the wake of the 2000 presidential election debacle. In the interview, available for the first time, Soaries excoriates both Congress and the White House, referring to their dedication to reforming American election issues as "a charade" and "a travesty," and says the system now in place is "ripe for stealing elections and for fraud."

Oct 12: AP, Networks Sue Over Florida and Nevada Exit Poll Laws
A Florida law that bars exit polling near voting places violates the press's rights under the First Amendment. A lawsuit has been filed by the Associated Press and five television networks.

Oct 11: The Paranoids Are Right
"Sometimes, paranoids are right. And sometimes even when paranoids are wrong, it's worth considering what they're worried about. I speak here of all who are worried sick that those new, fancy high-tech voting systems can be hacked, fiddled with and otherwise made to record votes that aren't cast, or fail to record votes that are," writes E.J. Dionne Jr.

Oct 6: Registrations Faked in GOP Voter Drive
At least five apparently bogus voter registration forms were submitted to the Metro Nashville election commission by a worker with ties to the Republican National Committee, and up to 150 other registrations have been called into question.

Oct 1: Ohio Justices' Campaign Cash Under Scrutiny
In the weeks before the 2004 election, Justice O'Donnell's campaign accepted thousands of dollars from the political action committees of three companies that were defendants in the suits. Two of the cases dealt with defective cars, and one involved a toxic substance. Weeks after winning his race, Justice O'Donnell joined majorities that handed the three companies significant victories. Justice O'Donnell's conduct was unexceptional.

Sept 30: Diebold Added Secret Patch to Georgia E-Voting Systems in 2002
Top Diebold corporation officials ordered workers to install secret files in Georgia's electronic voting machines shortly before the 2002 elections, at least two whistleblowers are now asserting.

Sept 29: Former Pollster Describes 2000 Election Theft
Former UNH professor and pollster David Moore contends that his new book about the 2000 presidential election - titled "How to Steal an Election" - is not partisan. Moore said he knows it's a "hard sell," but he argues the book simply explains how George W. Bush took the presidency that was rightfully won by Al Gore.

September 26: What Would Real Election Integrity Mean?
"A voting system that cannot assure that every vote is accurately counted is fundamentally broken," write Evan Frisch and Arianna Siegel. "We must recognize this broken system as a far greater threat to our democracy than the threat of undocumented or "criminal" voters, and make its correction our highest priority."

Consumers See "String-Pulling," Believe '06 Election Affecting Gas Prices
Almost half of all Americans believe the November elections have more influence than market forces. For them, the plunge at the pump is about politics, not economics.

September 21: Will the Next Election Be Hacked?
Fresh disasters at the polls - and new evidence from an industry insider - prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reports.

Keep Away the Vote
The New York Times states: "One of the cornerstones of the Republican Party's strategy for winning elections these days is voter suppression, intentionally putting up barriers between eligible voters and the ballot box. The House of Representatives took a shameful step in this direction yesterday, voting largely along party lines for onerous new voter-ID requirements. Laws of this kind are unconstitutional, as an array of courts have already held, and profoundly undemocratic. The Senate should not go along with this cynical, un-American electoral strategy."

Election Dysfunction
"One hundred and eight democratic nations in the world have explicit language guaranteeing the right to vote in their constitutions, and the United States - along with only ten other such nations - does not," writes John Nichols. "As a result, the way we administer elections in this country changes from state to state, from county to county, from locality to locality. The Secretary of the Commonwealth must fight for a Constitutional amendment that affirmatively guarantees the right to vote in the US Constitution."

Sept 20: Georgia Law Requiring Voters to Show Photo ID Is Thrown Out
Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. said the law, pushed by Governor Sonny Perdue (R) to fight voter fraud, violates the state constitution because it disenfranchises citizens who are otherwise qualified to vote.

Sept 19: Hotel Minibar Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines
Report shows that Diebold voting machines are easy to tamper with. The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine - the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus - can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.

Sept 17: Major Problems at Polls Feared
An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat - this time on a national scale.

Who's the Next Target in the Abramoff Probe?
Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney has admitted his role in Washington's influence-peddling scandal, but prosecutors still have other politicians in their sights.

Sept 16: Colorado Lawsuit Seeks to Ban Computer Voting
Voting on computer screens is so vulnerable to massive fraud that Colorado's November election is "headed for a train wreck," says an attorney who is seeking to have the equipment barred at trial next week. An expert would need just two minutes to reprogram and distort votes on a Diebold, one of four brands of computerized voting systems attacked in the suit, says attorney Paul Hultin.

September 15: Judge Says Voter ID Law Is Unconstitutional
A Cole County judge Thursday tossed out a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying the measure violated Missourians' fundamental right to vote.

September 14: Princeton Scientists Create Vote-Stealing Program for Diebold AccuVote-TS A group of Princeton computer scientists said they created demonstration vote-stealing software that can be installed within a minute on a common electronic voting machine. The software can fraudulently change vote counts without being detected.

September 12: Judge Won't Block Arizona Voter ID Law
A federal judge on Monday refused to block a law that requires Arizona voters to present identification before casting a ballot. Democrats charge that this will disenfranchise seniors, minorities, students and others who tend to vote Democratic.

Sept 8: Ohio Judge Orders '04 Ballots Be Preserved for Legal Examination
A federal judge ordered Ohio's county elections boards on Thursday to preserve ballots from the 2004 presidential election, a move activists hope will help prove accusations of fraud.

The Myth of Fair Elections in America
"The debacle surrounding the Republican victory in 2000 demonstrated to the world that America's electoral process is wide open to abuse," Paul Harris writes, and "America's system of voting is now even more suspect, more complicated, and more open to abuse than ever before."

Sept 7: Bush and Lieberman Pollster Made Up Poll Results
The owner of DataUSA Inc., a company that conducted political polls for the campaigns of George W. Bush, US Senator Joe Lieberman and other candidates, pleaded guilty to fraud for making up survey and poll results. Tracy Costin pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Costin, 46, faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when she is sentenced November 30.

Sept 5: In Search of Accurate Vote Totals
"It's hard to believe that nearly six years after the disasters of Florida in 2000, states still haven't mastered the art of counting votes accurately. Yet," write the editors of the New York Times, "there are growing signs that the country is moving into another presidential election cycle in disarray."

September 4: 11 of America's Worst Places to Vote (or Try)
We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws - a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework, US elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery. Mother Jones provides a list - partial, but emblematic - of American democracy's more glaring weak spots.

Sept 1: Activists Want Ohio Election Chief Out
Activists filed a civil-rights lawsuit Thursday claiming Secretary of State Ken Blackwell deprived people of their voting rights during the 2004 presidential election, and are seeking to have him removed from overseeing the general election in November.

August 31: Ohio to Delay Destruction of Presidential Ballots
With paper ballots from the 2004 presidential election in Ohio scheduled to be destroyed next week, the secretary of state in Columbus, under pressure from critics, said yesterday that he would move to delay the destruction at least for several months.

August 29: Watch Out for Voting Day Bugs
Deployment and use of new electronic voting systems technologies on a large scale virtually guarantee big surprises and unintended consequences: sudden system crashes, corrupted data or painfully slow systems. It will be essential this year that jurisdictions have backup and contingency plans that anticipate a wide range of possible failures in their electronic voting systems, including those that occur in the middle of the voting process on Election Day (or days).

Kerry Finally Slams Ken Blackwell
An email sent by Senator John Kerry criticizes GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell for his dual role in 2004 as President Bush's honorary Ohio campaign co-chairman and the state's top election official. "He used the power of his state office to try to intimidate Ohioans and suppress the Democratic vote," said Kerry's email.

August 28: Judge Blocks Florida Voter Registration Law
A federal judge on Monday declared a new Florida voter registration law unconstitutional, ruling that its stiff penalties for violations threaten free speech rights and that political parties were improperly exempted.

August 21: Two States Join Iowa and NH as Early Primary States
Democrats agreed to shake up tradition Saturday by wedging Nevada between Iowa's leadoff caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in the 2008 presidential nominating calendar and adding South Carolina soon afterward. The addition of Nevada's caucuses and the South Carolina primary to a presidential calendar long dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire is intended to give a greater voice to Hispanics and blacks - minorities critical to Democrats' success.

August 18: Republicans Losing the "Security Moms"
Married women with children, the "security moms" whose concerns about terrorism made them an essential part of Republican victories in 2002 and 2004, are taking flight from GOP politicians this year in ways that appear likely to provide a major boost for Democrats in the midterm elections, according to polls and interviews.

August 17:  Ohio Voting Problems Deemed Severe
Problems with elections in Ohio's most populous county are so severe that it's unlikely they can be completely fixed by November, or even by the 2008 presidential election, a report commissioned by Cuyahoga County and released Tuesday says.

 "CAFTA 15" Democrats May Survive Labor's Wrath
One year after labor groups vowed to punish 15 Democrats who joined Republicans in the US Congress to approve a Central American free trade pact, most have easily won their party's nomination to run again. Democrats still angry about the US-Central American Free Trade Agreement now must decide whether to vote against the "CAFTA 15" in the November general election and possibly thwart their party's best chance in years of recapturing the House of Representatives.

Democrats Craft National Message on Economics, Run as Wal-Mart Foe
Across Iowa this week and across much of the country this month, Democratic leaders have found a new rallying cry that many of them say could prove powerful in the midterm elections and into 2008: denouncing Wal-Mart for what they say are substandard wages and health care benefits.

August 16: Pennsylvania Sued Over Electronic Voting Machines
Voter advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop Pennsylvania counties from using "paperless" electronic voting machines, saying that such systems leave no paper record that could be used in the event of a recount, audit or other problem.

August 15: Violations by Military Recruiters Up Sharply
percent in one year, a rise that may reflect growing pressure to meet wartime recruiting goals, according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday.

GOP Backed Voter Suppression
"The efforts of Republican lawmakers in Georgia, Indiana and, most recently, Missouri" writes Jabari Asim, "seemed aimed at making it as difficult to vote  beneath our spacious skies as it is in war-torn Third World nations."

August 13: Eavesdropping and the Election: The Question of Timing
The New York Times's December 16th article that disclosed the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping has led to an important public debate about the once-secret program. And the decision to write about the program in the face of White House pressure deserved even more praise than I gave it in a January column, which focused on the paper's inadequate explanation of why it had "delayed publication for a year."

August 10: Voter Suppression in Missouri
"Missouri is the latest front in the Republican Party's campaign to use photo-ID requirements to suppress voting. Missouri's new ID rules - and similar ones adopted last year in Indiana and Georgia - are intended to deter voting by blacks, poor people and other groups that are less likely to have driver's licenses," writes the New York Times.

August 9: California Voters File to Stop Use of Electronic Voting Systems
VoterAction has announced that California voters are challenging the use of the Diebold TSx touch screen voting system and that they have filed a motion for preliminary injunction in state court.

August 2: The Shame of Not Being Mexican
"In the United States, our two big political parties never nominate a candidate of, by, or for poor people. Nonetheless, we have now established a pattern of stolen elections, and we have NOT taken over our nation's capital to demand justice. This fact alone would make me ashamed right now not to be a Mexican," laments David Swanson.

August 1: Worst Ever Security Flaw Found in Diebold TS Voting Machine
"Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant. If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS - and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver," says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert.

July 26: Tech Trouble in the Voting Booth
The National Research Council reports: "Some jurisdictions - and possibly many - may not be well prepared for the arrival of the November 2006 elections with respect to the deployment and use of electronic voting equipment and related technology, and anxiety about this state of affairs among election officials is evident in a number of jurisdictions."

Black and Blue
"The problem with policies that favor the economic elite is that by themselves they're not a winning electoral strategy, because there aren't enough elite voters," writes Paul Krugman. "So how did the Republicans rise to their current position of political dominance? It's hard to deny that barely concealed appeals to racism, which drove a wedge between blacks and relatively poor whites who share the same economic interests, played a crucial role."

July 25: The Diebold Bombshell
"Most computer scientists have long viewed Diebold as the poster child for all that is wrong with touch screen voting machines. But we never imagined that Diebold would be as irresponsible and incompetent as they have turned out to be," write David Dill, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons.

Democracy in Crisis
In an interview with Brad Friedman (of BradBlog), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explains that "the Republican Party, the Republican National Committee, has been using old-fashioned, Jim Crow, apartheid-type maneuvers to steal the last two national elections."

Suit to Block Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machines Remanded to State Court
A US District Court judge has sent the lawsuit Holder v. McPherson back to state court. This is a victory for the voters of the state of California and is a first step in stopping the use of Diebold touch-screen voting machines in the state.

Blowing the Whistle on Diebold
On July 13, the Pensacola, Florida-based law firm of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed a "qui tam" lawsuit in US District Court, alleging that Diebold and other electronic voting machine companies fraudulently represented to state election boards and the federal government that their products were "unhackable."

Voting rights under attack across US States move to enact new restrictions.  This assault has taken two major forms. First, state governments are passing laws requiring individuals to present additional identification when they vote. Second, a number of state governments are enacting legislation placing strict limits on voter registration drives.

Federal Judge Rules Georgia's Voter ID Card Law Is Illegal
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Georgia law requiring voters to present government-issued ID cards violated the United States Constitution by discriminating against minorities, the poor and the elderly.

Why Is Bush Spying on Democrats?!?
"Every time Democrats and progressives speak out about George W. Bush's spying on Americans without mentioning that he may also be spying on Democrats, they're playing into Karl Rove's 'National Security Frame' and actually strengthening Republican electoral chances in November," writes Thom Hartmann.

July 3: Pascarella and Palast: Stealing It in Front of Your Eyes
"We've said again and again: Exit polls tell us how voters say they voted, but the voters can't tell pollsters if their vote will be counted." Matt Pascarella and Greg Palast write, "In Mexico, counting the vote is an art, not a science - and Calderon's ruling crew is very artful indeed. The PAN-controlled official electoral commission, not surprisingly, has announced that the presidential tally is too close to call."

A Loss for Competitive Elections
"Instead of standing up for a fair electoral landscape, the Supreme Court produced a ruling that did little to ensure the vibrancy of American democracy, and that itself had an unfortunate whiff of partisanship," writes the New York Times Editorial Board.

What They Did Last Fall

GOP Paying Legal Bills of Alleged Vote Tamperer

None Dare Call It Stolen - the Election

Team Bush Paid $8 Million for Dirty Tricks to Suppress Votes

New 'Theft' Charges in Ohio's 2004 Election

Diebold E-Voting Machines Rejected After possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting system, California has rejected Diebold's flagship electronic voting machine because of printer jams and screen freezes, sending local elections officials scrambling for other means of voting.

Did Bush Steal 2004 Election?

Katherine Harris to Run for Senate in 2006

Ohio's Election Theft Scandal Re-Fired

Democrats Sue over Indiana Voter ID Law

An Open Letter to Howard Dean by Dennis J. Kucinich

Chairman of Voting Reform Panel Resigns

New Pope Intervened in US Election in Bush's Favor

GOP Wants Photo ID for All Voters

Ohio's Blackwell Ridicules Election Fraud "Conspiracy"

Elections Run by Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste

Spiking News That Could Have Made Kerry President

Why We Must Question Our Elections

Ohio's GOP Attorney-General Launches Revenge Attack on Election Protection Legal Team

Secret History of a Reelection

Study Cites Human Failings in Election Day Poll System

Bush Victory Does Not Compute

Congress Ratifies Bush Victory After Challenge

Heroes

Democrats rubber-stamp Bush victory in Electoral College

Boxer Not Willing to Pull Punches

MSNBC Vote Fraud Video (Must See)

Ohio's Official Non-Recount Ends, New Mexico Fraud Investigated

Kerry Files Motion to Protect Ohio Vote Evidence

Video Supporting Ohio Vote Fraud Claim Revealed

In Ohio, 1 in 50 Votes Didn't Count

Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed

What Counts in Ohio Recount

For Some Election is Far from Over

MoveOn to Democratic Party: 'We Own It'

The Democrats' Da Vinci Code

Recount Reverses Washington [State] Election Outcome, Legal Challenges Looming

Litigating the Election

MIT Scientist Backs Berkeley Voting Report

Judge Denies Demand for Early Ohio Recount

New Hampshire: Presidential Ballots to be Recounted

Who Counts in Ohio? By Steve Weissman

Evidence Mounts that the Vote Was Hacked

JUST COUNT THE BALLOTS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS

More Voting Questions Raised

Bush's 'Incredible' Vote Tallies

The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy

Voters Fail to Back Bush Priorities

Saving Your Right to Vote

'Fired Up' Kerry Returning to Senate

The Loonies Have Taken Control

New York City Bewildered by Election Results

Corporate PACs Favored Republicans 10-to-1

GOP Looks to Break up 9th Circuit

Many Who Voted for 'Values' Still Like Their Television Sin

US pokes its nose into disputed Ukraine election: Who the hell asked you, Mr. Powell?
 

CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT! 
FLORIDA'S COMPUTERS HAVE ALREADY COUNTED THOUSANDS OF VOTES FOR GEORGE W. BUSH

The US postal service hunts 58,000 postal ballot papers missing in the key marginal state of Florida.

BBC TV Reveals New Florida Vote Scandal
Republican "Caging List"

The Cracks in Bush's Crown

Technical glitches and queues tarnish Florida's new early voting system, brought in after the 2000 election fiasco.

Vote and Be Damned

Jeb Bush Ignored Felon List Advice

The Scary Little Man

Bush v. Kerry (2): The Full Debate Transcript

Checking the Facts, in Advance

Golly GE, Why Big Media is Pro-Bush

Democrat Edwards backs war, austerity in vice presidential debate

Republicans Destroy Democratic Voters' Registration Forms

Misleading Assertions Cover Iraq War and Voting Records

Transcript: Vice Presidential Debate

Shooting the Messenger Doesn't Discredit the Message

Kerry vs. Bush on Health Care

Kerry Hits Nail on Head

Bush-Kerry debate: two candidates committed to war

Transcript: First Presidential Debate

Next President Could Name Three Supreme Court Justices

Democrats back fourth Bush tax cut for wealthy, business

More Troubles for Diebold

Revision Thing

Sum of a Glitch

California to Sue Diebold over False Claims

Senator Backs Voting Machine Bill after Firsthand Experience with Glitch

Marine Declares War on Bush

Missing: A Media Focus on the Supreme Court

Where were the Democrats on August 29?

President Declares "Ownership Society"

NAFTA: Trading Away the Environment?

John Kerry "The World is a More Dangerous Place"

The politics behind Kerry’s Iraq speech

Iraq takes centre-stage in the US election campaign as John Kerry and George W Bush trade insults.

Final Tally Awaits the Police and Protesters
Tells Convention He's Ordered Invasion of Social Security Trust Fund

Kerry-Edwards: Democrats finalize their pro-war, millionaires’ ticket

Support the Socialist Equality Party
in the 2004 US elections

Kerry Challenges Bush on Iraq-9/11 Connection

Bush By Numbers: Four Years of Double Standards

Vote for Bush or Die

The fight to end the war means opposing both Bush and Kerry

Kerry Links Iraq War to U.S. Economic Woes; Cheney Remarks Spark Anger

Voter ID Problems in Florida

President Bush promises to build a safer world and a better America, in his address to the Republican convention.

US President George W Bush has given one of the biggest speeches of his re-election campaign, at the end of the Republican Party convention.

Trial of Saddam Scheduled to Coincide with U.S. Elections

Straight Talk :a rhetoric-busting issue guide.

The effects of U.S. government policies on the planet are so enormous that some people have suggested—with more than a little justification—that every person on earth should get to vote in U.S. presidential elections.

ABC Plans More Coverage for RNC Than for Dem Convention, Including During Monday Night Football

A Chill in Florida

Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

How John Kerry Busted the Terrorists' Favorite Bank

George W Bush says his rival for the presidency, John Kerry, was the "more heroic" for having served in Vietnam.

RESUME :GEORGE W. BUSH

Swift Boat Writer Lied on Cambodia Claim

Foreign Monitors to Report on U.S. Presidential Vote

Veteran Retracts Criticism of Kerry

Bush Campaign Stories

VENEZUELA FLORIDATED

BUSH COORDINATING WAR ON TERROR WITH ELECTION

July Surprise: Osama and the Election

US 'may delay vote if attacked.' US officials are said to be examining how to postpone the presidential election in the event of a terror attack.

In Bush's War Room, the Gloves Are Always Off

Report: Touchscreen Voting Flawed in Florida

Florida Judge Rules: Media Can See List of Purged Voters

Florida Purges Valid Black Voters

Second probe ordered of felon list barring vote

Democrats, Republicans to spend $1 billion in US presidential campaign

Bush Gives Contract to Tax Traitor/Campaign Donor

1.9 Million Black Votes Didn't Count in the 2000 Presidential Election

New York Times: Candidates' Iraq Policies Share Many Similarities

Kerry Backs Off Statements on Vietnam War

Diebold May Face Criminal Charges

Diebold Machine May Get Boot

Protesters jeer Bush in Atlanta on King’s birthday 

President Bush Bypasses Congress Appointing Charles W. Pickering to the Federal Appeals Court, Candidates Slam Bush

Criticism of Electronic Voting Machines’ Security is Mounting

Make Vote Printouts too Costly for MD