I feel ya, buddy. I agree with Governor Dean and his 50 state strategy and his goal to win at the precinct level. It appears that some of the other people in charge want to keep us down and out. Makes you wonder who they really work for...
Great post, PDiddie. Wonder if the brown bag speaker will point out how a little GOTV work in the districts of Democratic incumbents with no formidable opponents could have resulted in several county-wide offices.
It is a sad day when the Democratic vote in the Congressional District deemed the most Republican surpasses all but one of the safe Democratic Congressional races - and just barely - and turnout is greater percentage wise than every safe Democratic Senatorial race and House Race in the County. Guess the most popular politician in town and the safe incumbents wouldn't want to tick off their big Republican donors.
I am totally not happy. The nitwits who vote in my neighborhood elected Dan Patrick by a landslide, a guy that licks up Rush Limbaugh's excretions like he thinks its ambrosia.
Great post, PD!
First, I know many don't know me (yet?) but I am David Marlett, now the ex-CM for Glenn Melancon who ran against the old sleazy elephant Ralph Hall (CD-4). We took a tiny campaign with no money and rammed it right at him. We did the best we could. We had ZERO help from the DCCC or the TDP. And in the process I learned a great deal, just by listening, about the...uhmmm how should I put this...."lack of desired support" from the TDP. When I can on in mid-Sept, we had little time to accelerate to ramming speed and we did. (perhaps you once visited the blisteringly true www.RalphHallofShame.com). And I pooled resources quickly, basically asking all across these 16 counties...are you with me or not? And we had two groups (not like you don't know this): the believers who would work so tirelessly though they felt quite disconnected from any party support, and the pre-defeated, who frankly I wished would stay home as they just pulled the rest down. (Don't get me started on that group.)
But, back to the TDP....sometimes it is helpful to have fresh eyes on the problem. It is time for (read urgently required) a new approach, a can-do piss-n-vinegar solution. I was on the Repub side in the late 80s and first half of the 90s and though I'm not proud of it, I worked for Rove and soaked up a great deal of the demand for party allegiance and discipline. Frankly, the TDP could use a good dose of that, though let's keep "honor" and "truth" in the mix too, shall we. We need to be beating a new drum for 2008...we need to focus on streamlining the campaign process, eliminating redundancies though technology, bolstering not just the candidates of certain races, but the party state-wide. We need new zeal, new belief, new life brought to the tired TDP. Hell, we should have candidates wanting to run as Dems just because of the amazing party support they will get! (ok...that was over the top...but perhaps you get my gist.)
Currently we (www.TrueBlueTexans.com) are surveying most (all?) of the county chairs and a large sampling of Dem candidates up and down the ballot statewide, to come up with the top action items that would make 2008 the year of the Dems in TX. The ideas are flowing, and coming together, and soon a comprehensive plan will be ready for presentment. But....presentment to whom? We are already seeking sit-downs with the Tex Dem power brokers. Clearly it will take some money....but surprisingly less than you might think).
Want to help? Want more info?
Want to be part of the NEW TDP?
Come to www.TrueBlueTexans.com Send us an email. Call me.
Let us know who you are and what you think!
New to the party? An ex-Repub? A Libertarian looking to win one?
Even more welcome.
There are many new voices in the Texas Dem realm. Come lend yours. I dare you.
Tired of trying to get the TDP to listen to your ideas? Try TrueBlueTexans. We are in sponge mode. Try us.
David Marlett
davidm@TrueBlueTexans.com
214-208-2148
David, I really wanted Glenn Melancon to win. I was so disappointed with the results in Texas...as if...
Dave, just tried to go to
www.TrueBlueTexans.com and it is just a GoDaddy add page?????
Mark
from:
http://
electiondefensealliance.o...n_2006_election
Major Miscount of Vote in 2006 Election
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Major Miscount of Vote in 2006 Election:
Reported Results Skewed Toward Republicans by 4 percent, 3 million votes
Election Defense Alliance Calls for Investigation
BOSTON, MA - November 16, 2006
CONTACT: Jonathan Simon 617.538.6012
Election Defense Alliance, a national election integrity organization, issued an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment, after analysis of national exit polling data indicated a major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate races across the country. “These findings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting systems used in the United States,” according to Sally Castleman, National Chair of EDA. "This is a national indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!"
As in 2004, the exit polling data and the reported election results don’t add up. “But this time there is an objective yardstick in the methodology which establishes the validity of the Exit Poll and challenges the accuracy of the election returns,” said Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance. The Exit Poll findings are detailed in a paper published today on the EDA website.
The 2006 Edison-Mitofsky Exit Poll was commissioned by a consortium of major news organizations. Its conclusions were based on the responses of a very large sample, of more than 10,000 voters nationwide*, and posted at 7:07 p.m. Election Night, on the CNN website. That Exit Poll showed Democratic House candidates had out-polled Republicans by 55.0 percent to 43.5 percent – an 11.5 percent margin – in the total vote for the U.S. House, sometimes referred to as the “generic” vote.
By contrast, the election results showed Democratic House candidates won 52.7 percent of the vote to 45.1 percent for Republican candidates, producing a 7.6 percent margin in the total vote for the U.S. House — 3.9 percent less than the Edison-Mitofsky poll. This discrepancy, far beyond the poll’s +/- 1 percent margin of error, has less than a one in 10,000 likelihood of occurring by chance.
By Wednesday afternoon the Edison-Mitofsky poll had been adjusted, by a process known as “forcing,” to match the reported vote totals for the election. This forcing process is done to supply data for future demographic analysis, the main purpose of the Exit Poll. It involved re-weighting every response so that the sum of those responses matched the reported election results. The final result, posted at 1:00 p.m. November 8, showed the adjusted Democratic vote at 52.6 percent and the Republican vote at 45.0 percent, a 7.6 percent margin exactly mirroring the reported vote totals.
The forcing process in this instance reveals a great deal. The political party affiliation of the respondents in the original 7:07 p.m. election night Exit Poll closely reflected the 2004 Bush-Kerry election margin. After the forcing process, 49-percent of respondents reported voting for Republican George W. Bush in 2004, while only 43-percent reported voting for Democrat John Kerry. This 6-percent gap is more than twice the size of the actual 2004 Bush margin of 2.8 percent, and a clear distortion of the 2006 electorate. There is a significant over-sampling of Republican voters in the adjusted 2006 Exit Poll. It simply does not reflect the actual turnout on Election Day 2006.
EDA’s Simon says, “It required some incredible distortions of the demographic data within the poll to bring about the match with reported vote totals. It not only makes the adjusted Exit Poll inaccurate, it also reveals the corresponding inaccuracy of the reported election returns which it was forced to equal. The Democratic margin of victory in U.S. House races was substantially larger than indicated by the election returns.”
“Many will fall into the trap of using this adjusted poll to justify inaccurate official vote counts, and vice versa,” adds Bruce O’Dell, EDA’s Data Analysis Coordinator, “but that’s just arguing in circles. The adjusted exit poll is a statistical illusion. The weighted but unadjusted 7 pm exit poll, which sampled the correct proportion of Kerry and Bush voters and also indicated a much larger Democratic margin, got it right.” O’Dell and Simon’s paper, detailing their analysis of the exit polls and related data, is now posted on the EDA website.
Election Defense Alliance continues to work with other election integrity groups around the country to analyze the results of specific House and Senate races. That data and any evidence of election fraud, malicious attacks on election systems, or other malfunctions that may shed more light on the discrepancy between exit polls and election results will be reported on EDA’s website.
This controversy comes amid growing public concern about the security and accuracy of electronic voting machines, used to count approximately 80 percent of the votes cast in the 2006 election. The Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, in a September 2006 study, was the latest respected institution to expose significant flaws in the design and software of one of the most popular electronic touch-screen voting machines, the AccuVote-TS, manufactured by Diebold, Inc. The Princeton report described the machine as “vulnerable to a number of extremely serious attacks that undermine the accuracy and credibility of the vote counts it produces.” These particular machines were used to count an estimated 10 percent of votes on Election Day 2006.
A separate “Security Assessment of the Diebold Optical Scan Voting Terminal,” released by the University of Connecticut VoTeR Center and Department of Computer Science and Engineering last month, concluded that Diebold’s Accuvote-OS machines, optical scanners which tabulate votes cast on paper ballots, are also vulnerable to “a devastating array of attacks.” Accuvote-OS machines are even more widely used than the AccuVote-TS.
Similar vulnerabilities affect other voting equipment manufacturers, as revealed last summer in a study by the Brennan Center at New York University which noted all of America’s computerized voting systems “have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state, and local elections.”
The most prudent response to this controversy is a moratorium on the further implementation of computerized voting systems. EDA’s O’Dell cautioned, “It is so abundantly clear that these machines are not secure, there’s no justification for blind confidence in the election system given such dramatic indications of problems with the official vote tally.” And EDA’s Simon summarized, “There has been a rush by some to celebrate 2006 as a fair election, but a Democratic victory does not equate with a fair election. It’s wishful thinking at best to believe that the danger of massive election rigging is somehow past.”
EDA continues to call for a moratorium on the deployment of electronic voting machines in U.S. elections; passage of H.R. 6200, which would require hand-counted paper ballots for presidential elections beginning in 2008; and adoption of the Universal Precinct Sample (UPS) handcount sampling protocol for verification of federal elections as long as electronic election equipment remains in use.
The Exit Poll analysis is a part of Election Defense Alliance’s six-point strategy to defend the accuracy and transparency of the 2006 elections. In addition to extensive analysis of polling data, EDA has been engaged in independent exit polling, election monitoring, legal interventions, and documentation of election irregularities.
Commenting by HaloScan
