Free Republic

By now, just about everyone knows that IL Governor Rod Blagojevich has reportedly been caught on tape as saying that “Obama's Senate seat was “*expletive deleted* valuable” and that “it wasn't something to be given away for free”. The scenario is that ‘Blago’ - as he is called by both supporters and opponents - was being taped by the Feds as part of another investigation. And, if true, just about everyone concluded, among other descriptors, ‘how stupid’ ‘Blago’ must be. But now, ‘Blago’ has shown he can also be ‘politically clever’. Rather than wait to see what the Feds will...

ST. LOUIS -- A voter registration recruiter working for the group ACORN has been indicted on two felony counts of voter registration fraud. Deidra Humphrey, 44, of East St. Louis, is expected to appear in U.S. District Court in St. Louis this week after a federal grand jury indicted her on the charges Dec. 31, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. Humphrey is accused of submitting forged and false voter registration cards for the November general election, including forging cards for nursing home residents, U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said Monday.

Ellen Sauerbrey became an unwilling expert on election fraud following her 1994 bid to become Maryland's governor, which she lost to Democrat Parris Glendening. All during election night as precincts reported in, Sauerbrey remained ahead. Then, close to midnight, results started pouring in from precincts in Baltimore City, giving Glendening a 5,993-vote victory. It was the closest race in Maryland in 70 years. To this day, Sauerbrey and her running mate, former Howard County police chief Paul Rappaport, believe the election was stolen by Democratic party operatives who stuffed ballot boxes and altered voting machines after the polls were closed....

Proposal would drop voting booths for mailed ballots on island If Councilwoman Brenda Ford had her say, Hawaii County would be the first in the state to abolish voting booths in favor of a vote-by-mail program. The County Council is set to discuss a nonbinding resolution Wednesday that would encourage the state Legislature to establish mail voting on a trial basis in the 2010, 2012 and 2014 elections for Hawaii County. If enacted, this county would follow Oregon and most of Colorado in mail voting.

The 2010 midterm elections and the resulting battles over redistricting will shape the future of both political parties. A case challenging the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is being offered to the Supreme Court, highlighting these political stakes. And President-elect Barack Obama's Justice Department is about to take center stage in this fight. The Constitution requires legislative districts be redrawn after each decennial national census. The 2010 midterm elections will determine the makeup of all 50 state legislatures. With few exceptions, these legislatures will then draw new lines of all congressional districts, as well as many state legislative...

Cincinnati (AP) - A Connecticut man has admitted that he did not live in Ohio when he cast an early ballot for the presidential election in Cincinnati. Kevin Duffy, of Manchester, Conn., pleaded guilty in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on Monday to attempted false voter registration. The 24-year-old's attorney says Duffy got "caught up" in the excitement of the election while visiting his sister in Cincinnati. He cast his ballot Oct. 4 during a weeklong period during which new voters could register and immediately cast a ballot. Duffy later told county elections officials not to count his vote. He...

The Canvassing Board overseeing the vote recount for Minnesota’s tightly contested U.S. Senate race isn’t quite done examining disputed ballots, but using their numbers the Minnesota Star Tribune issued a projection Saturday night that Al Franken will pick up 270 votes when the board is finished. Currently the board is determining voter intent in disputed ballots. If the projection proves correct, Franken will beat incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman by 78 votes. Vote totals have changed a lot since Nov. 4, when Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. Correcting typos cut Coleman’s margin to 215, and a recount by all the...

Sen. Norm Coleman saw his lead over Al Franken in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race dwindle to just two votes Thursday. Meanwhile, a key court ruling put hundreds of improperly rejected ballots in play and promised the recount would drag into the new year.

Minnesota State Canvassing Board review of challenged ballots in the U.S. Senate race Produced by Brett Akagi Live feed provided by The Office of the Secretary of State

The recount will restart around 4:40 PM EST. Coleman is up by 69. The liberals are stealing this but that is no surprise, is it now? I have posted the link for the live video feed.http://www.startribune.com/video/?ls1=1&elr=KArksDyycyUtyycyUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

Here's an example of a vote they say is clearly for Franken: http://senaterecount.startribune.com/ballots/index.php?review_date=2008-12-17&index=35 Here's an example of a vote they say is clearly not discernable: http://senaterecount.startribune.com/ballots/index.php?review_date=2008-12-17&index=25 Inconsistent much? I don't know how long this information will remain out there. What they're doing is fraud.

The Associated Press has done the dirty work of sorting through more than 5,000 challenged ballots in the Minnesota Senate recount, and its analysis should inspire some confidence in supporters of Democrat Al Franken: The AP’s examination of the remaining challenges found: - Fewer than half of the challenges left-about 1,640-are in genuine doubt. Still, that’s eight times more than the current margin between the two men. - In ballots that could easily be assigned, Franken netted 200 more votes than Coleman. But that number was essentially meaningless because Coleman has withdrawn significantly fewer challenges than Franken-that is, the pool...

Tomorrow the Canvassing Board presiding over the recount convenes to consider challenged ballots that were excluded because of their disputed status from the recount. At the urging of the Canvassing Board, both the Coleman and Franken campaigns are reducing the number of ballots they have challenged. The Canvassing Board consists of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie -- the Man from ACORN and George Soros -- and four judges (including Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson). Last week the Canvassing Board unanimously adopted Al Franken's playbook for the recount, taking action that threatens...

12.10.08 VIDEO: Secretary of State Mark Ritchie discusses the Recount of the 2008 Senate Race in Minnesota between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. These remarks are part of a forum held on "The Minnesota Tradition of Fair Elections" hosted by the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. 12.12.08 VIDEO: Ritchie On Counting Improperly Rejected Absent Ballots # # # # # 11.20.08 VIDEO: Minnesota Majority (Standing Together for Traditional Values) blasts commie Soros puppet SOS Mark Ritchie. Announce they are filing a formal complaint with the U.S....

MINNESOTA BALLOTS: LAND OF TEN THOUSAND FAKESDecember 10, 2008 What is the point of having a hand recount of ballots in the Minnesota Senate race if the Democratic secretary of state is going to use the election night totals in precincts where it will benefit Democrat Al Franken? Either the hand recount produces a better, more accurate count, or there was no point to the state spending roughly $100,000 to conduct the hand recount in the first place. But that is exactly what the George Soros-supported secretary of state has agreed to do in the case of a Dinkytown precinct...

l Franken is claiming that absentee ballots that were rejected because they weren’t in compliance with state law should be counted anyway, which poses a direct threat to the orderly application of state election laws. Unfortunately, we can probably expect litigation over that issue and the possibility of further court interference in our election procedures. More troubling, though, is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s remark that the Minnesota Board of Canvassers’ decision to not count the absentee ballots is “a cause for great concern.” If Franken ultimately loses, will Reid refuse to recognize the results of the election or to...

Republicans Fear Al Franken Stealing Votes Sunday, November 9, 2008 8:03 PM By: Phil Brennan With votes for comedian Al Franken mysteriously appearing out of thin air, steadily narrowing the gap between him and Sen. Norm Coleman, the stench of corruption becomes more and more pungent. *Snip* According to the Coleman forces, the ballots were not counted on Election Day and were not kept in sealed boxes. It says the request was made amid "increasing questions about unexplained and improbable shifts in vote counts." The most recent vote tally has Coleman leading Franken by only a couple hundred votes. A...

Here is my e-mail response from the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division: Hello ###### Question History: Patron: (this would be my question!) To the American Memory Team: I am very curious as to why our government does not vet our presidential candidates before their names are placed on the ballot. I have found out as of recently that there is concern that our new President Elect Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen and another candidate named Roger Calero which was on the 2004 and 2008 ballot for president still holds a green card and was born...

The 34-year-old Chester man must serve six to 23 months of home confinement after his sentencing Monday in Delaware County, reports the Associated Press.

A new wrinkle is surfacing today in the recount battle in Minnesota between incumbent U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken -- missing ballots. The Franken campaign today said that it has learned of missing ballots totaling several hundred in various counties. Franken recount attorney Marc Elias said he's also bothered that counties that know they have missing ballots aren't bothering to look for them. Elias declined to identify those counties but acknowledged that the Franken campaign is monitoring reports of several dozen missing ballots in Becker County. Officials can determine they have missing ballots whenever they come up...

Early voting in Presidential elections should be made illegal because it is against the Constitution that specifies one day to be Pesidential elections day which is the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. I strongly believe that one of the most important factors if not the most important factor that we lost this elections is due to early voting. It is a certain way for cheating and fraud. Most of the battleground states were lost because of the early voting. The democrats amassed the necessary votes in the early voting to win. That is how they won Ohio,...

Missing ballots in MN? Posted: Monday, November 24, 2008 6:02 PM by Carrie Dann Filed Under: Congress, 2008 From NBC's John Talty In the hotly contested Minnesota Senate recount, missing ballots could provide another source of rancor between the two candidates. In a Franken camp teleconference call this afternoon, lead recount attorney Marc Elias stressed the need to find missing ballots and encouraged the Minnesota Secretary of State's office to take an active role in the process. “Missing ballots aren’t automatically an indication of foul play, but it should be a serious matter of concern,” Elias said. “We hope and...

A discrepancy over the number of ballots in a box and the number recorded on a computer tape from Election Day prompted a dispute this morning at the U.S. Senate recount underway in Ramsey County. The mandatory statewide recount began last week in the race between Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken. In Ramsey county, there were seven fewer ballots in the box from St. Paul's Ward 5, Precinct 8 than recorded on Nov. 4. Election judges counted the ballots three times before resealing the box amid protests from Franken's observers. County Elections Manager Joe Mansky said it's possible...

A local woman who volunteered to help count ballots in the U.S. Senate recount in Wilkin County probably would not have been allowed to do so if the county auditor had known that she had also worked for a Senate candidate in Otter Tail County. "Had I known that, she probably wouldn't have been part of the team," Wilkin County Auditor Wayne Bezenek, told The Forum of Fargo, N.D. "That would have been the right thing to do." Maggie Vertin spent two days last week in Fergus Falls for Otter Tail County's recount as an observer for Democrat Al Franken....

COLEMAN CAMPAIGN NOT HAPPY WITH FRANKEN'S GAIN IN RAMSEY Mike Roman, Coleman's lead representative in Ramsey County, says he remains unsatisfied with the apparent emergence of 12 new ballots in a St. Paul precinct, but that the campaign's only recourse might be to take the issue to court — a step that would be made by campaign officials superior to him. The issue could be important because, as of Thursday afternoon, Franken had picked up at least 13 more votes than he did Election Day. The concern arose late yesterday when the total number of ballots sorted in Ward 3,...

Challenged ballots: You be the judge by Than Tibbetts, Minnesota Public Radio November 19, 2008 Representatives from the campaigns of Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken have been challenging ballots across the state. It's your turn to play election judge. Tell us how you would rule in the case of these challenged ballots. Use this Minnesota state statute as your guide.This Beltrami County voter cast their ballot for Al Franken, but also put "Lizard People" as a write-in candidate, not only in the U.S. Senate race, but for several others. The county auditor/treasurer ruled that the vote should not be...

The Minnesota senate race is generating a level of heat rare in a Minnesota November. With a filibuster-proof Senate hanging in the balance, it is worthwhile looking to the fine hand of George Soros, operating through a network of fat cat leftwing money bags who have collectively funded a myriad of nonprofit political spawn. At least two entities funded by Soros and his plutocrat wannabe pals hav prepared the soil for the contentious and suspicious process of tabulating and recounting the vote totals of incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken. We have written several times the rising influence...

Attorney fears fraud, says state 'headed for train wreck' in Nov. 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.

For Senate Democrats, 60 seats still a possibilityPosted: Nov 14, 2008 09:50 AM EST By Glenn Thrush and Josh Kraushaar The dream of 60 Senate seats simply refuses to die - with positive signs suddenly popping up for Democrats in all three unresolved races. Around 1 a.m. EST, news that Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich has inched ahead of Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens rekindled flagging Democratic hopes they would reach the mythical filibuster-proof majority. In Minnesota, Al Franken has steadily eroded incumbent Republican Norm Coleman's lead before the recount has even begun - with a highly contentious recount on the...

27,000 county ballots on hold Federal judge or Brunner to decide which to count Saturday, November 15, 2008 3:26 AM By Barbara Carmen and Mark Niquette THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH More than 27,000 provisional ballots, needed to call the closest congressional race in the country, will wait for either a court ruling today or a tiebreaker vote Tuesday from Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The Franklin County Board of Elections split along party lines in a stalemate last night that will temporarily delay counting those provisional ballots. But the board still expects to reveal and certify the official election results on...

As the official recount for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seat slowly approaches, political wonks from across the country are wondering why so many of the miscounted or misreported ballots that have narrowed Norm Coleman’s lead over Al Franken were from Northeastern Minnesota. The Coleman campaign has questioned an additional 100 votes awarded to Franken from a Mountain Iron precinct, and bloggers have been blustering about a 246-vote swing to Franken that came out of Two Harbors.Lake County Auditor Steve McMahon took a little flak from a FOX News reporter over that Wednesday, the same day the Wall Street Journal ran an...

BALTIMORE - The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is permanently cutting off all funding for ACORN in the wake of an embezzlement scandal and allegations of voter registration fraud and political partisanship. The national nonprofit, with more than 1,200 local affiliates, attempts to organize low-income people to advocate for improvement in their communities. Bishop Roger P. Morin of New Orleans said yesterday that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, an antipoverty program run by the bishops' conference, decided that it could no longer be certain of ACORN's integrity or accountability. The bishops had been giving $1.1 million a year to...

No word whether President-elect will campaign for Senate candidate An appearance in Georgia by President-elect Barack Obama on behalf of Jim Martin appears unlikely, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t making his presence felt in Martin’s Dec. 2 runoff against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss. Obama is keeping 25 of his Georgia field offices open for Martin, leaving most of his in-state paid staff on the ground here and importing about 100 field operatives from Southern states to help Martin, according to Matt Canter, a spokesman for Martin’s campaign. Other veterans of completed campaigns are also on their way...

When voters woke up on Wednesday morning after the election, Senator Norm Coleman led Al Franken by what seemed like a relatively comfortable 725 votes. By Wednesday night, that lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday night, it was down to 336. By Friday, it was 239. Late Sunday night, the difference had gone down to just 221 -- a total change over 4 days of 504 votes. Amazingly, this all has occurred even though there hasn’t even yet been a recount. Just local election officials correcting claimed typos in how the numbers were reported. Counties will certify their results...

Mischief in Minnesota? Al Franken's recount isn't funny You'd think Democrats would be content with last week's electoral rout. But judging from the odd doings in Minnesota, some in their party wouldn't mind adding to their jackpot by stealing a Senate seat for left-wing joker Al Franken.

You'd think Democrats would be content with last week's electoral rout. But judging from the odd doings in Minnesota, some in their party wouldn't mind adding to their jackpot by stealing a Senate seat for left-wing joker Al Franken. When Minnesotans woke up last Wednesday, Republican Senator Norm Coleman led Mr. Franken by 725 votes. By that evening, he was ahead by only 477. As of yesterday, Mr. Coleman's margin stood at 206. This lopsided bleeding of Republican votes is passing strange considering that the official recount hasn't even begun. The vanishing Coleman vote came during a week in which...

Minnesota is becoming to 2008 politics what Florida was in 2000 or Washington State in 2006 - a real mess. The outcome will determine if the Democrats get 58 members of the US Senate, giving them an effective filibuster-proof vote on many issues. When voters woke up on Wednesday morning after the election, Senator Norm Coleman led Al Franken by what seemed like a relatively comfortable 725 votes. By Wednesday night, that lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday night, it was down 336, By Friday it was 239. Late Sunday night, the difference had gone down to 221 -...

One thing is certain: the final margin in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race is not certain. On Wednesday morning Sen. Norm Coleman led Al Franken by 725 votes. By Wednesday night the lead was 477 votes. By Thursday night it was 336. As of Sunday night, it's 221. Coleman's campaign manager has called the changes "statistically dubious and improbable." But Hamline University professor David Schultz says the changes are not unusual because counties are double checking for errors right now. "If you look at past elections in Minnesota, the difference of what happens on election day and what's eventually certified can...

Obama's defeat of the heir apparent in his own party and his victory over the much-vaunted Republican machine is a remarkable achievement that owes a lot to his instinct for marketing When the book is written on this election, it should not be titled "The Making of a President," but "The Marketing of a President." Barack Obama's campaign is a case study in marketing excellence. True, it was always going to be a Democratic year. An unpopular war, an incumbent Republican president with rock bottom approval ratings, and many Republican incumbents retiring from Congress as a result all meant that...

(CNSNews.com) - In April, then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in Philadelphia, “I’ve fought to pass the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate. And I will make it the law of the land when I’m president of the United States of America.” President-elect Obama will move into the White House with increased Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, which also support legislation designed to stem the tide of declining union membership. The bill replaces the secret ballot by allowing union organizers to publicly ask workers to sign a card in favor of unionizing. If a bare majority...

“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” - Joseph Stalin * * * * *I have an article in the American Spectator today called "SOS in Minnesota." It's about the ties that Minnesota's Democratic Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, has to ACORN, and whether his background as a community organizer and as an ally of ACORN might affect his handling of the upcoming Senate race recount (Republican Norm Coleman versus Democrat Al Franken). A Democratic non-federal 527 fundraising group, the Secretary of State Project, that raises money to help elect Democrats...

WASHINGTON — A day after John McCain charged that the liberal-leaning voter registration group ACORN "may be perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history,'' it was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is investigating whether the group coordinated the filing of phony applications. Details of the inquiry weren't readily available. McClatchy confirmed an Associated Press report disclosing the investigation and learned that the FBI was attempting to determine if ACORN systematically encouraged the creation of fake voter registrations in several states.

I hate to sound like a Lib from 2000 and 2004, but considering alot the swing states were narrowly won by Obama, how big doese everyone think voter fraud was in this election? Did Obama win this election by fraud? Did ACORN stuff ballot boxes for him?

More on Gordon Smith and Questionable Vote Counting By J. Peter Freire on 11.5.08 @ 2:38PM We received a note that there was a possibility that Multnomah County's election offices were flooded and that the "press was being asked to leave." It sounded sketchy, so I called to check it out. According to Shawn Cunningham in their public affairs office, no press has been asked to leave whatsoever. There's a little bit of water in the basement, "the building was built in 1925," and they needed to move the ballots, which the press is welcome to bear witness to. He...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Chicago voters who cast their ballots early have complained that the huge success of early voting may have cast a huge new potential for vote fraud – by people who might have cast their ballots twice. As CBS 2 Investigator Pam Zekman reports, before giving voters the form to vote, city election judges were supposed to check a sheet listing every voter in the precinct who voted early or absentee. One early voter tried to test the system at a polling place on the city's Northwest Side. She asked CBS 2 to conceal her identity, but wanted...

I am not sure what is going on but the Ohio Secretary of State website is showing McCain slightly ahead with 18.5% of precincts reporting. The SoS is in charge of the vote counts. Now, all the networks are showing the same results for Ohio - Obama up by about 9% with 16% of precincts reporting. How can this be? Are the networks getting a different vote count feed? Also, the vote totals on the SoS website are lower than the networks but the precinct percentage is about the same. Maybe explainable and Obama ends up getting Ohio but I...

From the source: "Arrest this man Ron Jones. How could he be any more blatant about voting multiple times for Barack Obama. He is effectively cancelling out every one of our votes. This is insane! While CNN tries to turn a blind eye on the Voter Fraud that is rampant right now across the country this man spills the beans on live television. They just move on with a small mention of his response…" Click Here to View the Video at ObamaHood.org

Philadelphia was the birthplace of freedom in this nation, given that the Declaration of Independence was signed there. But things have a way of coming full circle when one reads history, and it is happening again: the birthplace of freedom is proving to be the dying place, as well. We can start with a liberal judge removing GOP Election Board members from "at least" half a dozen polling locations. As Amanda Carpenter reports, "A Pennsylvania judge previously ruled that court-appointed poll watchers could be NOT removed from their boards by an on-site election judge, but that is exactly what is...

This is a great U Tube page for Voter Fraud Videos.In the first one, this lady's Mother has been helped by Liberals to fill out a registration form, but when she goes to vote she finds out she already voted!So these people are helping people fill out forms, and then voting for them.

Watch it at ObamaHood.org