JK celebrated Election Night 2006 with some familiar faces.

<!-more->

Mahalo!  

    -- Ted

Road Report from Ted Chiodo:

After I accompanied John and Vanessa Kerry to vote, I split off from the staff gaggle and headed down to 56 Roland Street and the Deval Patrick headquarters. It was a fast drive down 93 north although somewhat more scenic and indirect due to the many detours and construction sites. I pulled into the parking lot at Patrick headquarters around 11:49 and was happy to see large number of Democratic bumper stickers.

Upon my arrival, I was met by the energetic Libby DeVecchi. Libby is a spokesperson for the soon-to-be governor; she led me through a maze of hardworking staffers, rally signs, and tenacious volunteers to the Deval Patrick Headquarters phone bank. <!-more-> The room was filled with the buzz of people making the ever important GOTV calls. Doughnuts and sugary treats were placed around a large center table and volunteers manned phones around the walls of the large room. I snapped some pictures hoping to catch the energy and hope flowing through the room. It was a sight of beauty to anyone who has been involved with politics. The future of this country lies in your hands today. It is up to you to get to your polling station and send a message. Make sure your family, friends and neighbors have all voted too.

It’s time for a change—let’s make it a great one!

Mahalo!

    -- Ted

 

We at johnkerry.com are pleased to be participating in the EP365 (Election Protection) monitoring and rapid response operation. Here’s a roundup of reports that we’ve confirmed.

Again, remember the number to report any voting irregularities or problems: 1-866-OUR-VOTE

Reports are coming in from across the country about problems with the new, paperless voting machines. In some localities, election officials were unable to get the machines started on time, resulting in long lines and people leaving to go to work. In at least one county, the courts have ordered the polls to stay open later to make up for these morning delays, and there are addiitonal requests pending before a number of other courts. Here are some of the problems which voters have encountered around the country. We will update you as we get confirmation of problems in other states.

Robo-Calls

In Virginia, ABC is reporting that the FBI has joined the investigation of intimidating pre-election robo-calls in that state, following an official complaint from the Webb campaign to the Justice Department. Action is being requested in VA to keep polls open late. <!-more-> As has been widely reported, over the last few days, Republican phone banks have flooded homes in as many as 30 Congressional Districts. The caller first mentions the Democratic candidate – but then criticizes the candidate. Voters hang up, thinking the call was generated by the Democrat, and the phone rings again. It is only reported at the end that the calls are sponsored by the NRCC.

Problems with Electronic Voting Machines

OH, IL, IN, FL, UT – Major problems with voting machines are being reported throughout the country including programming errors, lack of familiarity with the machines by election staff, malfunctioning machines, etc.

Glitches delayed balloting in dozens of Indiana and Ohio precincts, and Illinois officials were swamped with calls from voters complaining that poll workers did not know how to operate new electronic equipment.

Florida officials, working to avoid a repeat of the vote-counting debacle of 2000, fielded extra voting machines, paper ballots and poll workers. In the Jacksonville suburb of Orange Park, Florida, voters were forced to use paper ballots after an electronic machine broke. AP News report

IN – Voters in Delaware County were not able to cast votes in the morning because of machine problems at ALL precincts. A Court Order has been granted to keep the polls open until 8:40 pm – we have a copy of the court order. Story is being covered by 6News.

PA – Channel 4 Action News has received several reports of non-working machines in several areas of Allegheny County. Paper ballots were brought to some but not all precincts. Malfunctioning machines and voter confusion are prevailing in various precincts in Lancaster County as well.

FL – In Broward County 10 of 14 voter booths failed to work in District 23A and other Deerfield Beach voting locations.

 

Road Report from Ted Chiodo:

With 12 hours and 45 minutes left until the end of the 06 elections, John Kerry and his daughter, Vanessa Kerry, arrived at the Massachusetts state house to vote.

The early morning breeze was blowing from across the bay as JK and Vanessa walked down to the polling place on Beacon Hill. The lines were short, signs clearly marked the polling place and everyone was in good spirits. JK and Vanessa were smiling and shaking hands with voters as they exited the first floor polling station.

Today is the day we have all been looking forward to. And now it’s time for all of us to do our part along with JK to turn the state houses and Congress blue. God Speed and Good Luck!

Back soon with reports from GOTV efforts in Massachusetts today.

Mahalo!

Let’s get to it!

   —Ted

 

The Boss has recommended some action items.

But don’t just take our word for it, click here and let The Boss tell you about it.

Then click here and here for more of The Boss’s recommended reading list.

And then do what he says—

Use your voice. Vote on Tuesday.

 

1-866-OUR-VOTE is the only national voter assistance hotline staffed by live call center operators trained to provide state-specific assistance to all voters. Lawyers, poll monitors and additional volunteers will be mobilized in 16 key states across the nation to assist voters in the days leading up to the election and on Election Day. The non-partisan Election Protection Coalition is sponsoring the hotline and a poll location website: www.mypollingplace.com.

Led by People For the American Way Foundation, the NAACP, and the Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights Under Law, Election Protection (EP) has operated in every election cycle since 2001, and is the nation’s most far-reaching nonpartisan effort to provide voter assistance and protect voter rights. The services will include bilingual assistance for areas with a heavy concentration of Spanish-speaking voters.

Here are some other resources we’ve spotted while surfing

DO MORE THAN VOTE! Every hour until the polls close, there is more you can do. Check out www.domorethanvote.org to get plugged into Get Out The Vote (GOTV) activities or check out some of the GOTV resources we featured earlier.

Protect your vote—

www.ep365.org Sponsor of the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline

A list of all state Democratic party HQ contact info

League of Women Voters

 

Count My Vote A site run by the grassroots online organization, democrats.com; it has a strong collection of links

Protect My Vote This site has a Spanish version that is the most complete Spanish site we’ve seen

videothevote.org/ Video the Vote — we featured it before but it bears repeating.

Moveon’s Call for Change It’s not too late to Call for Change <!-more->   From VoteTrustUSA—5 things you can do to protect your vote:

1. Vote!

Whether you vote on November 7th or by early voting or absentee ballot, the only way to be sure your vote won’t count is if you don’t vote.

2. Find out if you’re registered and where to vote.

For many states, you can find much of this information at www.CanIVote.org. You can also call your county election office.

3. Verify Your Vote

If you’re voting on an electronic voting machine equipped with a paper trail printer, be sure to confirm that your vote is recorded accurately on the paper record. If there is a problem notify the poll worker before casting your vote.

4. Bring Identification

If your state requires a photo ID (Arizona, Indiana, and Florida) bring a photo ID. In every state, if you are voting for the first time and you registered by mail, you need to bring identification with you to the polls.

5. Election Protection Hotline

If you encounter any problem in the voting process call 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) for English or 1-888-VEY-VOTA (1-888-839-8682 para la ayuda en espanol).

For Extra Credit Be A Pollworker!

Give a day for democracy! Many counties still need pollworkers. Elections are run by people and working at the polls on election day is a way they everyone can make a difference. Call your county election office and volunteer to work on election day. You can find out more at www.pollworkersfordemocracy.org.

 

The New York Times editorial spoke for many of us today.

First, they noted something unusual that’s about to happen.

On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican Congressional candidates for the first time in our memory. Although Times editorials tend to agree with Democrats on national policy, we have proudly and consistently endorsed a long line of moderate Republicans, particularly for the House. Our only political loyalty is to making the two-party system as vital and responsible as possible.

That is why things are different this year.

Then they built their case for why it’s happening and we have to say, it sounds an awful lot like some stump speeches we’ve heard.

To begin with, the Republican majority that has run the House — and for the most part, the Senate — during President Bush’s tenure has done a terrible job on the basics. Its tax-cutting-above-all-else has wrecked the budget, hobbled the middle class and endangered the long-term economy. It has refused to face up to global warming and done pathetically little about the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Republican leaders, particularly in the House, have developed toxic symptoms of an overconfident majority that has been too long in power. They methodically shut the opposition — and even the more moderate members of their own party — out of any role in the legislative process. Their only mission seems to be self-perpetuation.

The current Republican majority managed to achieve that burned-out, brain-dead status in record time, and with a shocking disregard for the most minimal ethical standards. It was bad enough that a party that used to believe in fiscal austerity blew billions on pork-barrel projects. It is worse that many of the most expensive boondoggles were not even directed at their constituents, but at lobbyists who financed their campaigns and high-end lifestyles.

<!-more-> Then they threw in this

For us, the breaking point came over the Republicans’ attempt to undermine the fundamental checks and balances that have safeguarded American democracy since its inception.[...] But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits. Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the president’s ability to do whatever he wants.

Followed by this:

Congress, in particular the House, has failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation ... allowed Mr. Bush to avoid answering any questions about whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.

After the revelations about the abuse, torture and illegal detentions in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Congress shielded the Pentagon from any responsibility for the atrocities its policies allowed to happen. On the eve of the election, and without even a pretense at debate in the House, Congress granted the White House permission to hold hundreds of noncitizens in jail forever, without due process, even though many of them were clearly sent there in error.

And they concluded with this punch:

This election is indeed about George W. Bush — and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.

We’re glad to see the New York Times finally reaching the same conclusions that John Kerry has been speaking out about here and here and here and here.

 

We’ve been impressed by the creative ways that are available for anyone to get involved in GOTV for this midterm election.

[Editor’s Note: The moderating team will approve comments left overnight first thing in the morning. Thanx.] <!-more-> Pachacutec at FireDogLake rounded up a few of them in “Blue Army: Bring It On” including one of our all-time personal fav’s, A Beginner’s Guide to Canvassing by EricS at dailykos.

• Contact Do More Than Vote and use their easy interface to get connected to the right volunteer organization for you in your area. DMTV is now up to 57 chapters in all competitive states, but even if you’re not in one of their towns, they have ways you can help. There’s a DMTV update below.

• Nervous about the idea of door knocking? Don’t be: people are very welcoming, especially this year. Look at the polls: people have Had Enough and they want change. Here’s a great introduction to canvassing from a diary at Dkos (hat tip to Blue Army member xyz).

• Volunteer to become a poll worker. It’s not too late in most places, and they need people on standby as well, in case people get sick or don’t show up. Let’s not just complain about fairness at the polls; let’s become part of the solution. To sign up, go here. They’ve been asking for poll workers in my area onthe radio, so I’m sure your area could use help, too.

• Volunteer for Howard Dean’s new army through your local Democratic Party. Just show up at your closest party office and they can put you to work.

• Party at the Polls with Working Assets on election day. This is a project to organize local, community-oriented events at or near polling stations on Election Day in order to boost community turn-out. These are non-partisan events, so not everyone is interested. Although, if you know what neighborhood you’re turning out, they can be very partisan. By linking voting to a nearby party, they hope to boost turnout. Today is the last day to sign up, so people can get the stickers, buttons, fliers, and kit in time.

Pachacutec also included this one which you’ve seen elsewhere on johnkerry.com:

• MoveOn has a great online interface that can allow you to phone bank from your home for any race in the country where help is needed. It’s called Call for Change, and it’s fantastic. Please let me repeat: you can stay at home and help out anywhere in the country. This utility is as potentially groundbreaking for our side as ActBlue has been. MoveOn’s whole year has been geared up for the next few days, and they need you to attend a house party (over 4000 nationwide) to hook up for base mobilization. Here’s a diary with loads of direct volunteer feedback about the MoveOn stuff this cycle. Check out the testimonials in the comments!

And last but not least, here’s a diary that bluerevolt at dailykos put together that everyone can use.

It lists every House, Senate and gubernatorial race in the country with links to the campaign sites as well as to other GOTV websites. So find the races close to you, call them up or just show up at the door or pick one of the other creative ways to be involved.

Just go do it – GOTV!!

 

The whole world really will be able to watch the upcoming election as it plays out at the polling place level. On video. On the Internet.

Video the Vote is organizing citizen journalists to document what happens at polling places in every state. The project is a classic example of using the Internet to put the distributed power of thousands of citizens to work to document how America votes: the long lines, the Republicans’ racist challenges, the disputes over voting machines switching votes from one party to another, and on and on. You name it, and this time, there’s a good chance there’ll be at least one citizen journalist there to record it all on video.

Three independent videographers created Video the Vote: Ian Inaba of the Guerrilla News Network, John Ennis of Shoot First, and James Rucker of ColorOfChange.org. Here’s how the Video the Vote website describes the evolution of this project, which has acquired some large partners as election day approaches:

The three [Inaba, Ennis, and Rucker] originally sought to provide a platform to help independent filmmakers coordinate their efforts on election day—documenting election problems and pushing those stories into the mainstream media. The idea morphed into a populist program where ordinary people could participate. They’d simply agree to be on-call to document any Election Day problems that arise in their area; the only requirements being, a digital video recorder, a cell phone, and broadband Internet access, and agreeing to respect governing election law.

Since starting, several organizations have partnered with us to make Video the Vote a success, namely Common Cause, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, The League of Young Voters Education Fund, People for the American Way Foundation, and Rock the Vote.

If you’ve got a video camera, you can sign up and bring voting problems to light as they occur, on video that will seen around the world on Video the Vote. (And don’t forget to consult the rules and regulations for your state that govern the use of video in polling places before you hit the On button. See the VTV site for more info.)

Thanks to friends, both known and unknown, Republicans and Democrats, who’ve been stepping up for John Kerry and fighting back against the Republican efforts to question Kerry’s support of our troops.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, got it exactly right in his column today:

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team’s real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry’s mangled gibe at the president.

Here’s a sample of comments from Democrats and Republicans that echo Friedman’s conclusions.

Andrew Sullivan, conservative columnist and blogger

“I know it’s politics. I’m not naive. But it’s also revealing about someone’s character that he could authorize and exploit such a thing. Most fair-minded people will have to concede that, in retrospect, this was a very, very, very low blow. It hadn’t sunk in for me till last night how low. In retrospect, this incident says much more about Bush than about Kerry. I’ll bet I’m not the only one mulling that over this morning.”

SOURCE: Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish Blog DATE: November 2, 2006

<!-more-> Congressman Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio:

U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, leading in late polls over Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, warned Democrats on Wednesday against GOP scare tactics and deflected the controversy surrounding a comment about Iraq by 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

“Of course, they (Republicans) are using it as a rallying call because they want to change the subject. John Kerry stumbled on a joke, it didn’t come out right,” Brown said in an interview. “The people who should apologize are George Bush and Mike DeWine for sending our troops into battle without body armor and without examining the cooked intelligence.”

SOURCE: Associated Press Cincinnati, Dan Sewell DATE: November 1, 2006

Congressman Charlie Rangel, Democrat of New York:

Rangel: It was a bad joke, but clearly anyone would know that a guy that has been in combat would never do anything to insult the brave men and women that are there. It was the President, who knew he made a big mistake, that took it to polarize the armed forces, and I think that was a cheap shot by the president of the United States. SOURCE: Charlie Rangel interview on MSNBC DATE: November 2, 2006

Bill O’Reilly, Conservative Pundit and Host of The O’Reilly Factor:

“Bill O’Reilly, host of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor (10/31) said, “I don’t believe that John Kerry meant to demean any American military member, I just don’t, and I think that fair-minded people know that would be political suicide for the senator and he wouldn’t do it…” SOURCE: The Frontrunner DATE: November 1, 2006

U.S. Senator Jack Reed, Democrat, Rhode Island:

MSNBC interviewer: Does that, as some critics would say, bespeak a mindset that John Kerry has about the troops themselves?

REED: I don’t think it bespeaks that mindset. I think what people should also recognize, that Senator Kerry is a combat veteran, was decorated. He has been there, on the front lines. He’s seen his comrades serve and sacrifice.

And I think, in his heart of hearts, he understands what young soldiers and Marines and sailors and Air Force men and women are doing in Iraq and across the globe. He was quite clear, he misspoke.

SOURCE: U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) Is Interviewed on MSNBC DATE: November 2, 2006

Congressman Dave Obey, Democrat, Wisconsin:

U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wis., defended critical remarks U.S. Sen. John Kerry made about President Bush’s policy on the Iraq war, saying Kerry “correctly described the buffoonery that accompanied the president’s mishaps.”

Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran, has incredible respect for the country and the armed forces, Obey said at a Democratic Party rally attended by about 150 people.

“He was talking about the idiocy of the policies pursued by the guy in the big White House,” Obey said. “I ask you, when was George Bush right about anything with respect to Iraq, and when was Dick Cheney right about anything?”

SOURCE: Associated Press, Chippewa Falls Wisconsin DATE: November 2, 2006

Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. U.S. Senate Candidate of Tennessee:

FORD: I’m a Christian, and I think everybody deserves a second chance. He made clear what his intent was, which was to challenge the policy we have on the ground in Iraq, which I think is widely believed to be not working in many quarters. We all share the same goal of winning. [...]

….I take a person at their word. You know, when Vice President Cheney mistakenly shot his friend while they were out hunting, he said he was sorry and didn’t mean to do it. I believed him.

SOURCE: Representative Ford is Interviewed on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” DATE: November 1, 2006