Kerry campaign open to reviewing the "evidence" (fwd)

[Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>]

Please forward to all who have specifics on vote fraud.  The send-to
address below is John Kerry's brother at his law firm.  Kerry will
unconcede if there is solid evidence of fraud.  We need first hand
sufferers so please get this info to them!!

There is widespread feeling that Kerry did not lose the election and
that it was taken from him.

There is enough here to warrant investigation and enough to
challenge the results. It's coming from all corners.

I understand that he has until the official count certification in
Ohio to Un Concede which is several days from now.

Anyone who thinks that he should unconcede should give reasons why -
whatever they noticed, particularly in Red Republican Governed
States using electronic machines- and send them directly to Cameron
KERRY, John Kerry's brother at his law firm at the address
CKerry@xxxxxxxxx

They should inform us if they were not allowed to vote provisionally
(for whatever reason- they lost forms, ran out of forms, etc.) I
personally witnessed a number of things as I reported in Texas with
the DCCC. (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee)

If you know anyone in particular in Ohio who tried to vote and was
turned away at the polls please get their information and notify the
campaign.

They should be notified if they experienced lines longer than four
hours -particularly elderly or infirm people. They should be
notified if people were told as has been reported that due to too
many people showing up in African American precincts, particularly
in Ohio where there were too few booths (some only had two or three
for the entire precinct) and told because of heavy turn out they
could vote on Wednesday. If the numbers of these sorts of incidents
creates a percentage margin that exceeds the margin of victory- Un
Concession has to be made to challenge the count.

If people wanted to and tried to vote and were prevented or actively
discouraged from doing so, that is a Civil Rights matter and must be
dealt with in terms of the ultimate count.

  and thPlease pass along this to your listservs so that we may make
Democracy Work in America. We are not a country where he who cheats
best wins.

Cynthia L. Butler BUTLER LAW FIRM, P.C. 1717 K St. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036



The New York Times

November 7, 2004

EDITORIAL

New Standards for Elections

The 2004 election may not have an asterisk next to it the
way the 2000 election does, but the mechanics of our
democracy remained badly flawed. From untrustworthy
electronic voting machines, to partisan secretaries of
state, to outrageously long lines at the polls, the election
system was far from what voters are entitled to.

It's patently obvious that presidential elections, at least,
should be conducted under uniform rules. Voters in Alaska
and Texas should not have different levels of protection
when it comes to their right to cast a ballot and have it
counted. It's ridiculous that citizens who vote in one place
have to show picture ID while others do not, that a person
who accidentally walks into the wrong polling place can cast
a provisional ballot that will be counted in one state but
thrown out in another. States may have the right to set
their own standards for local elections, but picking the
president is a national enterprise.

This is obviously a job for Congress, and it deserves the
same kind of persistent, intense lobbying effort that
reformers have given the issue of campaign finance. But
improvements by the states may be easier to achieve, and
will clearly help prod Congress by their good example.
Advocates should push every level of government to be part
of the solution:

1. A holiday for voting. It's wrong for working people to be
forced to choose between standing in a long line to vote and
being on time for work. Election Day should be a holiday, to
underscore the significance of the event, to give all voters
time to cast ballots and to free up more qualified people to
serve as poll workers.

2. Early voting. In states that permit it, early voting
encourages people to turn out by letting them vote at times
that are convenient for them. And it gives election
officials and outside groups more time to react to voting
problems ranging from faulty voting machines to voter
intimidation.

3. Improved electronic voting. For voters to trust
electronic voting, there must be a voter-verified paper
record of every vote cast, and mandatory recounts of a
reasonable percentage of the votes. The computer code should
be provided to election officials, and made public so it can
be widely reviewed. There should be spot-checks of the
software being used on Election Day, as there are of slot
machines in Nevada, to ensure that the software in use
matches what is on file with election officials.

4. Shorter lines at the polls. Forcing voters to wait five
hours, as some did this year, is unreasonable, and it
disenfranchises those who cannot afford the wait. There
should be standards for the number of voting machines and
poll workers per 100 voters, to ensure that waiting times
are reasonable and uniform from precinct to precinct.

5. Impartial election administrators. Partisan secretaries
of state routinely issued rulings this year that favored
their parties and themselves. Decisions about who can vote
and how votes will be counted should be made by officials
who are not running for higher office or supporting any
candidates. Voting machine manufacturers and their
employees, and companies that handle ballots, should not
endorse or contribute to political candidates.

6. Uniform and inclusive voter registration standards.
Registration forms should be simplified, so no one is again
disenfranchised for failing to check a superfluous box, as
occurred this year in Florida, or for not using heavy enough
paper, as occurred in Ohio. The rules should be geared to
getting as many qualified voters as possible on the rolls.

7. Accurate and transparent voting roll purges. This year,
Florida once again conducted a flawed and apparently
partisan purge of its rolls, and went to court to try to
keep it secret. There should be clear standards for how
purges are done that are made public in advance. Names that
are due to be removed should be published, and posted
online, well in advance of Election Day.

8. Uniform and voter-friendly standards for counting
provisional ballots. A large number of provisional ballots
cast by registered voters were thrown out this year because
they were handed in at the wrong precinct. There should be a
uniform national rule that such ballots count.

9. Upgraded voting machines and improved ballot design.
Incredibly, more than 70 percent of the Ohio vote was cast
on the infamous punch card ballots, which produce chads and
have a high error rate. States should shift to better
machines, ideally optical scans, which combine the
efficiency of computers and the reliability of a
voter-verified paper record. Election officials should get
professional help to design ballots that are intuitive and
clear, and minimize voter error.

10. Fair and uniform voter ID rules. No voter should lose
his right to vote because he is required to produce
identification he does not have. ID requirements should
allow for an expansive array of acceptable identification.
The rules should be posted at every polling place, and poll
workers should be carefully trained so no one is turned
away, as happened repeatedly this year, for not having ID
that was not legally required.

11. An end to minority vote suppression. Protections need to
be put in place to prevent Election Day challengers from
turning away qualified minority voters or slowing down
voting in minority precincts. More must be done to stop the
sort of dirty tricks that are aimed at minority voters every
year, like fliers distributed in poor neighborhoods warning
that people with outstanding traffic tickets are ineligible
to vote. Laws barring former felons from voting, which
disproportionately disenfranchise minorities, should be
rescinded.

12. Improved absentee ballot procedures. Voters outside of
their states, including military voters, have a right to
receive absentee ballots in a timely fashion, which did not
always happen this year. Absentee ballots should be widely
available for downloading over the Internet. Voters should
not be asked, as military voters were this year, to send
their ballots by fax lines or e-mail, denying them a secret
ballot.

This year's election, thankfully, did not end in the kind of
breakdown we witnessed in 2000. But that was because of
luck. There were many places in the country where, if the
vote had been closer, scrutiny of the election process would
have produced the same sort of consternation. In a closely
divided political world, we cannot depend on a margin for
error when it comes to counting votes. We have four years
now to make things right.

---

Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online
at http://nytimes.com/makingvotescount .

Copyright (c) 2004 The New York Times Company.