Boing Boing » elections

Icelandic Pirate Party lands three seats in Icelandic parliament

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:21:45 +0000

The Icelandic Pirate Party has won three seats in its national Parliament in the Pirates' best-ever showing on the world stage. They form a small part of the opposition to the "center-right" Independence Party (Americans, please note that the Independence Party would be considered socialists by present US mainstream political standards). One of the new Pirate parliamentarians is Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Icelandic MP who volunteered for, and campaigned for Wikileaks. The Icelandic Pirate Party is only ~~five~~ nine months old!

The three new Icelandic lawmakers include Jón Þór Ólafsson, a business administration student at the University of Iceland; Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, a computer programmer; and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a well-known WikiLeaks volunteer and former member of parliament from 2009 to 2013.
Birgitta is also one of three activists involved in a WikiLeaks investigation currently underway in the United States. In November 2011, a district court judge found that prosecutors could compel Twitter to give up specific information on the three accounts, including IP addresses, direct messages, and other data. In January 2013, a federal appeals court in Virginia ruled (PDF) that Birgitta and the two others have no right to find out which other companies the government sought information from besides Twitter.
The trio, along with other members of Iceland’s digerati (including Smári McCarthy, who also is one of the organizers of the International Modern Media Initiative), founded the party just five months ago.

Pirate Party wins 3 seats in Icelandic parliament for its best result worldwide [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica]

New Brazilian environmental political party based on social networking

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:19:41 +0000

Gmoke sez, "Former Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva and recent Green Party Presidential candidate (she came in third to force a run-off election) launched the Sustainability Network in Brasilia on 16 February, 2013 and seeks to collect the required 500,000 signatures by September 2013 to become a legally recognized political party. From Sustainability Network's political manifesto (PDF):

We believe that networks, as a means for meeting and organising, are an invention of the present that bridge to a better future. Therefore, it is through networking with society that we want to build a new political force, with alliances underpinned by an Ethics of Urgency, aiming to construct a new model of development: sustainable, inclusive, egalitarian and diverse.

Former Brazilian Minister’s New Party Mixes Sustainability, Social Media · Global Voices (Thanks, Gmoke!)

(Image: José Cruz/Agencia Brasil (CC BY 3.0))

Ron Paul wants to expropriate RonPaul.com from his supporters without compensation

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:42:57 +0000

From RonPaul.com:

Earlier today, Ron Paul filed an international UDRP complaint against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org with WIPO, a global governing body that is an agency of the United Nations. The complaint calls on the agency to expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation and hand them over to Ron Paul.
On May 1st, 2008 we launched a grassroots website at RonPaul.com that became one of the most popular resources dedicated exclusively to Ron Paul and his ideas. Like thousands of fellow Ron Paul supporters, we put our lives on hold and invested 5 years of hard work into Ron Paul, RonPaul.com and Ron Paul 2012. Looking back, we are very happy with what we were able to achieve with unlimited enthusiasm and limited financial resources...
...At the same time we offered him RonPaul.org as a free gift so we could keep using RonPaul.com and he wouldn’t have to use something like RonPaulsHomePage.com.
Incredibly, Ron Paul’s lawyers are trying to use our FREE offer of RonPaul.org against us in an attempt to demonstrate “bad faith” on our part!

Of course, they also offered to sell him the .com domain and their mailing list for $250k.

Ron Paul Calls on United Nations to Confiscate Domain Names of His Supporters (Thanks, Redjade!)

Michelle Bachmann stiffs her campaign staff, they retaliate by ratting to the feds

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:51:53 +0000

Senior campaign staffers who worked for Michelle Bachmann in the 2012 race say that she's refused to pay them unless they sign an NDA promising not to disclose any criminal and unethical activity they witnessed on the campaign. Now it seems that some are fed up with dickering with Bachmann for what they're owed, and are just going to the feds with their tales of corruption and crime:

[Peter Waldron, a widely known evangelist enlisted by the Bachmann campaign for outreach to Christian conservatives], formerly Bachmann's national field coordinator, is accusing the campaign of improperly dipping into money from MichelePAC to pay longtime fundraising consultant Guy Short for presidential campaign work he performed in the critical final weeks ahead of Iowa's caucuses last year.
Waldron also alleges that the campaign concealed payments to Iowa state campaign chairman Kent Sorenson, a state senator who abruptly left the Bachmann camp to join then-U.S. Rep. Ron Paul's insurgent campaign. Under Iowa Senate rules, Waldron maintains, Sorenson could not perform paid work for a presidential campaign.
...One of those involved in the payment dispute is Barbara Heki, who sued the campaign last year over the use of a database listing the names and e-mail addresses of thousands of Christian home-school families. Although the campaign eventually agreed to pay $2,000 for the list, the lawsuit continues, as does a separate criminal investigation.

Ex-Bachmann aide alleges campaign finance violations [Kevin Diaz/Star Tribune]

(via DailyKos)

(Image: Michelle Bachman speaking., a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from n3tel's photostream)

Time magazine: the GOP is "full of it" and the press won't call them on it

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 19:35:41 +0000

A stirring editorial in Time by Michael Grunwald calls out the US press for failing to report on contradictions in the GOP's platforms (for example, condemning Obama for not cutting Medicare enough while also telling people to vote against him because he wants to cut Medicare). Grunwald cites many examples of this, and says that the press is so anxious to appear nonpartisan that they're simply unwilling to state the obvious: the party's strategy is based on saying whatever is convenient at the moment.

I’ve written a lot about the GOP’s defiance of reality–its denial of climate science, its simultaneous denunciations of Medicare cuts and government health care, its insistence that debt-exploding tax cuts will somehow reduce the debt—so I often get accused of partisanship. But it’s simply a fact that Republicans controlled Washington during the fiscally irresponsible era when President Clinton’s budget surpluses were transformed into the trillion-dollar deficit that President Bush bequeathed to President Obama. (The deficit is now shrinking.) It’s simply a fact that the fiscal cliff was created in response to GOP threats to force the U.S. government to default on its obligations. The press can’t figure out how to weave those facts into the current narrative without sounding like it’s taking sides, so it simply pretends that yesterday never happened.
The next fight is likely to involve the $200 billion worth of stimulus that Obama included in his recycled fiscal cliff plan that somehow didn’t exist before Election Day. I’ve taken a rather keen interest in the topic of stimulus, so I’ll be interested to see how this is covered. Keynesian stimulus used to be uncontroversial in Washington; every 2008 presidential candidate had a stimulus plan, and Mitt Romney’s was the largest. But in early 2009, when Obama began pushing his $787 billion stimulus plan, the GOP began describing stimulus as an assault on free enterprise—even though House Republicans (including Paul Ryan) voted for a $715 billion stimulus alternative that was virtually indistinguishable from Obama’s socialist version. The current Republican position seems to be that the fiscal cliff’s instant austerity would destroy the economy, which is odd after four years of Republican clamoring for austerity, and that the cliff’s military spending cuts in particular would kill jobs, which is even odder after four years of Republican insistence that government spending can’t create jobs...
Whatever. I realize that the GOP’s up-is-downism puts news reporters in an awkward position. It would seem tendentious to point out Republican hypocrisy on deficits and Medicare and stimulus every time it comes up, because these days it comes up almost every time a Republican leader opens his mouth. But we’re not supposed to be stenographers. As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day.

I'm all for pointing out this sort of thing whenever it arises -- including pointing out that Obama's "most transparent administration in history" is the most secretive in history. It's the press's job to hold politicians to account for their public utterances and to point out contradictions. If the press committed to calling out BS whenever it arose, we could, in fact, produce a who-lies-most scorecard, without letting anyone off the hook for lying less than the other guy.

Fiscal Cliff Fictions: Let’s All Agree to Pretend the GOP Isn’t Full of It

Staffers for millionaire/wrestling magnate/failed GOP Senate candidate say they were stiffed, got bad checks and condoms: "you're screwed"

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:45:10 +0000

Linda McMahon (a wrestling magnate who built up the WWE with her husband Vince McMahon) is a failed Republican Senate candidate in Connecticut with a reported net worth of $500M, who has spent a reported $100M on a pair of failed Senate bids. She has also reportedly stiffed her staffers, who claim that they were sent bounced checks from the campaign, and, when they complained, were sent more rubber checks, along with a condom and a message saying "you're screwed." From CBS:

Campaign staffer Twaine Don Gomes was reportedly among the first to make the matter of the bad checks public knowledge through local news media – an action which allegedly inspired the campaign to send a second check with something extra.
“Basically he handed me a check with a condom in it, told me I was screwed,” Gomes told WTNH. “That’s the rudest gesture you can ever do to a person, it’s like spitting in a person’s face.”

Checks Issued By McMahon Campaign Reportedly Bounce

Portraits of LA voters

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 10:19:49 +0000

Dan sez, "Two LA-based photographers shot photos of voters 'to document and celebrate the diversity of the Los Angeles electorate. All photographs were taken outside of polling locations across the city on Election Day, November 6th, 2012.' I especially like this one.

(Thanks, Dan!)

Nation unsure how it feels about video of President Obama crying

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 14:29:13 +0000

This "candid" video of President Obama tearing up as he thanks his staff and tells them "I'm Really Proud of All of You" is interesting. The rate at which this became viral is astonishing. Why do we mock John Boehner (other than the fact he's orange, and an asshole) but laud this clip as an example that Obama is "human" and "has a heart"? The public reaction to this particular video, released by the Obama campaign team, is interesting.

Maybe I'm projecting, but I think he might be crying for all those innocent people in Pakistan who lost family members in the 300+ drone strikes he authorized during his first term as president. Or maybe the innocent not-terrorists who are detained at Guantánamo because our military held them as terrorists, but can't manage to figure out how to set free now.

Like many others, I am glad Obama won, and I agree that he seems more "human" than his opponent. But his first term was no golden age of transparency and human rights. May we all hold the government more accountable, and demand change, on these and other vital issues during his second term.

Warcraft-playing Maine senate candidate wins, despite opponents anti-orc smears

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 13:58:33 +0000

Remember Colleen Lachowicz, the Democratic candidate for the Maine senate whose GOP opponent attacked her for playing World of Warcraft?

She won.

Here's Robert Long on the Bangor Daily News:

Gamers from around the world soon rushed to her defense, making more than $6,300 in contributions via the website ActBlue to two political actions committees that supported her campaign. Those donations prompted the Maine Republican Party to file a complaint against Lachowicz with the Maine Ethics Commission.
The commission determined Nov. 1 that Lachowicz, a Maine Clean Election Act candidate, did not coordinate with the PACs for the fundraising and voted 5-0 not to proceed with an investigation.
As of Tuesday, outside groups had spent more than $184,000 on the contest, according to Maine Ethics Commission figures. That’s the fifth highest amount of outside spending for a 2012 Maine Senate race, according to the commission’s data. Of that total, more than $81,000 was spent to oppose Martin.

‘World of Warcraft’ candidate vanquishes opponent in Waterville (via Kotaku)

Too bad Megatron didn't win the elections

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 23:35:15 +0000

"All Hail Megatron!," a photograph by Justin Rampage shared in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool. He explains:

Goofy Photoshop that I made based off of this original reddit post by BergerKing80. You can also download a Facebook timeline header image created by redditor nerdwithme. reddit, Imgur.

Update: Justin first posted this on Laughing Squid.

Modern political ads are bo-RING

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:01:20 +0000

Election night's over, and in the Vintage Ads group, spuzzlightyear's closed it off with ten magnificent political ads from times gone by. Here are a couple of my favourites.

various political ads....

Donald Trump calls for revolutionary overthrow of American government

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 08:19:03 +0000

He deleted it, but Wil Wheaton saved it for posterity.

Electoral College college

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 23:22:11 +0000

It's time for some American Democracy 101. Every election cycle, it frustrates me to no end that most news outlets spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the latest polls without explaining the significance those polls actually have on the outcome of a presidential election that isn't truly decided by the voters. My Halloween wish this year was for someone to explain the electoral college to me, and Twin Cities journalist Frank Bures has obliged*.

This piece has actually been around since 2000, but I think it's a nice explanation of what the electoral college is, where it comes from, and why it's going to matter to you tonight.

The only votes that count in this election will be cast in mid-December by the 538 members of the electoral college. That's who you and I will vote for on November 7: electors for Bush or electors for Gore, and their votes are the currency of presidential politics. Each state gets as many electors as it has representatives and senators. In all but two states, the winning party takes all the state's electoral votes.

...At first, in several states, there was no popular presidential vote. For decades after 1787, in states like Delaware, New York, and Georgia, the legislatures chose the electors. In South Carolina, there was no popular vote for the chief executive until 1860. But today, party loyalty prevents electors from acting as the free agents envisioned by the founders. In 99% of the cases, the electoral vote is a formality.

...Electors tend to be either ordinary people—teachers, carpenters, middle managers, retirees, and lawyers' or party activists sent to the state capital for half an hour of raw power. Some, like Marc Abrams, a 1996 Oregon elector I talked to in the course of researching this article" are blasé about choosing the most powerful man on earth. They voted in a room in the Capitol basement. It took about twenty minutes, and hardly anyone noticed they were there. When I asked Abrams how it felt, he said, "It was sorta cool. "

Read the full story at Byliner

*Of course, I also wished for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. And for a million dollars to be placed, in my name, in a Swiss bank account.

Image: doris day, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from velvettangerine's photostream

Ohio GOP Secretary of State orders secret, last minute, unaudited software updates to voting machines

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:00:13 +0000

Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has asked voting machine giant ES&S to install last-minute, unverified, custom firmware updates on the state's voting machines. This is highly irregular, and the details of it are shrouded in secrecy and silence -- the few, terse statements from Husted's office on the matter have been self-contradictory and unhelpful. On Salon, Brad Friedman tries to untangle the mess, and concludes that it's impossible to say what the new software in Ohio's voting machines actually does, nor why unaudited, unapproved software should be added to voting machines in a critical swing-state at the last minute, but that it's highly suspicious and possibly illegal.

I’d like to have been able to learn much more before running anything on this at all, frankly. But the lack of time between now and Tuesday’s election — in which Ohio’s results are universally believed to be key to determining the next president of the United States — preclude that.
So, based on the information I’ve been able to glean so far, allow me to try to explain, in as simple terms as I can, what we currently know and what we don’t, and what the serious concerns are all about.
And, just to pre-respond to those supposed journalists who have shown a proclivity for reading comprehension issues, let me be clear: No, this does not mean I am charging that there is a conspiracy to rig or steal the Ohio election. While there certainly could be, if there is, I don’t know about it, nor am I charging there is any such conspiracy at this time. The secretive, seemingly extra-legal way in which Secretary of State Husted’s office is going about whatever it is they are trying to do, however, at the very last minute before the election, along with the explanations they’ve given for it to date, and concerns about similar cases in the past, in both Ohio and elsewhere, are certainly cause for any reasonable skeptic or journalist to be suspicious and investigate what could be going on. And so I am …

One thing that Friedman doesn't say is that this all wouldn't be such a problem if voting machines produced voter-verified paper audit trails of their actions. That is, after you vote, the machine could print out a paper record of your vote, move it into position in front of a plastic widow so you could verify the vote, and then move it along into a locked audit-box. Virtually every other kind of digital tabulating device does this, from EEGs to ATMs to cash-registers. The technology is trivial. And it would give us the ability to verify, after the fact, whether the votes had been correctly counted and transmitted from each machine.

Update: Friedman updates via Twitter: "The machines in question are the tabulators. The machines already have 'paper trail'."

Is the GOP stealing Ohio?

Ad for Canada's CCF party, 1957

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:09:04 +0000

Here's a 1957 political ad for Canada's Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner to the modern left-leaning New Democratic Party (now the official opposition). The CCF are responsible for Canada's national health care system and many other progressive reforms (all under assault by Harper's government). I like the first point: "Your vote counts just as much as a millionaire's. Be sure to use it."

Vintage political ad: Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, 1957

Voter suppression: targeting the poor, the old, and students

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:16:00 +0000

The Atlantic's Andrew Cohen describes the seven-hour early voter lines at polling stations in Democratic strongholds like Miami, where Republican officials like Governor Rick Scott has reduced the number of early voting days, making it harder than ever for working people with marginal incomes to vote.

When the remaining restrictions were challenged in federal court, a George W. Bush appointee said there was no proof that the reduced hours would "impermissibly burden" minority voters. How many hours in line must a Florida voter wait before the burden upon her becomes an "impermissible" one? If Florida's election officials, and its Republican lawmakers, and its state and federal judges, all were required to stand in line for seven hours to vote those long lines would go away forever. You know it, I know it, and so do those officials.
How about Ohio, another "battleground" state governed by partisan fiat. Its election rules are administered by a secretary of state, Jon Husted, who just a few years ago was the GOP speaker of the state house. Like their counterparts in Florida, Ohio's Republican lawmakers sought to restrict wildly popular early-voting hours around the state. And again the federal courts blunted the impact of their new rules. So what has Husted done? He's focused his energy this weekend ginning up ways to justify discarding provisional ballots cast by his fellow citizens.
These are just two recent examples. There are more. But they all have a few core things in common. In each instance, elected officials are making it harder for American citizens to vote and to have their votes counted. And in each instance, the partisan restrictions are designed to impact the elderly, and the poor, and students. The Constitution gives power to the states to handle elections. But what we are seeing is one party's systemic abuse of that power to disenfranchise likely voters of another party. Don't believe me? Let's go to the videotape.
In Pennsylvania, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai was caught on tape this summer boasting about his colleagues' success: "... First pro-life legislation -- abortion facility regulations -- in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done." In Ohio, the Republican Party chairman of Franklin County, which includes Columbus, was even more blunt. Doug Preisse said, "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban -- read African-American -- voter turnout machine."

No One in America Should Have to Wait 7 Hours to Vote (via Waxy)

(Image: It's a long, long line to vote early today here in Columbus, Ohio., by finneganlatimes/Michael Finnegan )

Warren Ellis on the dismal American election

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:00:49 +0000

It's been so long since Transmetropolitan ended that I sometimes forget how totally incandescent Warren Ellis is when he's talking politics. His latest Vice column, "My Last Column About the Presidential Election (Really)," was a good reminder.

President Obama's fairly grim, toothless, meandering and perfunctory presidency gained excellent contrast from an assemblage of GOP candidates so demented and corrupt that even to so describe them would be an insult to the many hard-working demented and corrupt politicians extant today. It was an array of desperate, shambling criminals (and Jon Huntsman, who presumably was there on a bet) that may have been unprecedented, even in the stinking cesspool of American politics, in its lunatic evil. The "winner" of the GOP race was always going to be the one who didn't shit themselves on stage. But the GOP itself couldn't win, because, of the bunch running, the best you could hope for was a candidate who didn't shit themselves on stage.
Which is exactly what the Republican party got. A man who's only coherent when he's lying. Any solid political points he might have made have been washed away in a tide of dissembling, flipflopping and outright bullshitting. Broad swathes of the party fail to summon enthusiasm for him. The Koch brothers, who could surely have amassed mighty forces to Romney's advantage, have provided only perfunctory support. And his mealymouthing about Big Government have put him on the wrong side of not only New York but also New Jersey, whose well-liked Republican governor Chris Christie has been effusive in his praise of the President even as Romney was being pelted with his own words about disbanding the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
My concern is this. The radical elements in the GOP will be able to claim that Romney was never their guy, and will take the next four years to place some genuine nutters, with serious backing, in line for the 2016 candidacy. Not the scrag-ends and barrel-scrapings they slapped on to the stage for this year's farce. The idea of the Democrats being conscious and organised enough to have a real player in place for 2016 – because there's no way in hell they can run Joe Biden -- is kind of funny.

My Last Column About the Presidential Election (Really)

Obama granted fewer pardons than any other modern president

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:37:33 +0000

"A former brothel manager who helped the FBI bust a national prostitution ring. A retired sheriff who inadvertently helped a money launderer buy land. A young woman who mailed ecstasy tablets for a drug-dealing boyfriend, then worked with investigators to bring him down." All denied clemency by President Obama, along with hundreds more. A ProPublica data review shows he has granted pardons at a lower rate than any other president in our era: about 1 of every 50 individuals whose applications were processed by the Justice Department, compared to 1:3 for Ronald Reagan and 1:8 for Bill Clinton.

4 year old is tired of hearing about Bronco Bama, Mitt Rominey, and the elections

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 18:40:26 +0000

Elizabeth Evans says, "This is my four year old daughter, Abigael, after hearing one too many mentions of the election."

"The election will be over soon," Elizabeth tells her child in the video.

Video Link.

(via David Carr)

XKCD's massive map of Congress's political leanings since the start

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 22:00:43 +0000

Just in time for election season, XKCD's Randall Monroe has busted out another of his amazing, wall-sized infographics, this one depicting the swings to the left, right and center of the senate and the house, through all of US electoral history.

Congress

Colbert to Trump: I'll pay $1M to your favorite charity if you let me put my balls in your mouth

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:06:42 +0000

Stephen Colbert has raised the stakes on Donald Trump's offer to donate money to a charity of Obama's choice in exchange for his school transcripts and passport details: Colbert will divert $1M from his SuperPAC to Trump's favorite charity if Trump allows Colbert to put his balls in his (Trump's) mouth.

Steven Colbert makes $1 million dollar charity offer to Trump to “stick his balls in his mouth”

Voter fraud is a fraud

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 02:05:44 +0000

The New Yorker's "Voter-Fraud Myth" by Jane Mayer is a good, fair, investigative piece tracking the rise of the Republican orthodoxy that says that voter fraud is rampant, and that it favors Democrats. Mayer makes a reasoned, factual case to show that there is no substantial voter fraud problem (much-vaunted incidents like the scores of dead voters in Georgia were later revealed to not have a single verifiable instance of a dead person voting). Mayer also shows how anti-fraud measures disproportionately target young people, poor people, and visible minorities. This is a great piece to refer to when discussing the subject with friends who've been convinced that voter ID laws amount to anything other than partisan voter suppression.

Von Spakovsky offered me the names of two experts who, he said, would confirm that voter-impersonation fraud posed a significant peril: Robert Pastor, the director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management, at American University, and Larry Sabato, a political-science professor at the University of Virginia. Pastor, von Spakovsky noted, had spoken to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights about being a victim of election fraud: voting in Georgia, he discovered that someone else had already voted under his name.
When I reached Pastor, he clarified what had happened to him. “I think they just mistakenly checked my name when my son voted—it was just a mistake.” He added, “I don’t think that voter-impersonation fraud is a serious problem.” Pastor believes that, compared with other democracies, America is “somewhere near the bottom in election administration,” and thinks that voter I.D.s make sense—but only if they are free and easily available to all, which, he points out, is not what Republican legislatures have proposed. Sabato, who supports the use of voter I.D.s under the same basic conditions, says of the voter-impersonation question, “One fraudulent vote is one too many, but my sense is that it’s relatively rare today.”
Hasen says that, while researching “The Voting Wars,” he “tried to find a single case” since 1980 when “an election outcome could plausibly have turned on voter-impersonation fraud.” He couldn’t find one. News21, an investigative-journalism group, has reported that voter impersonation at the polls is a “virtually non-existent” problem. After conducting an exhaustive analysis of election-crime prosecutions since 2000, it identified only seven convictions for impersonation fraud. None of those cases involved conspiracy.

The Voter-Fraud Myth

Shocking, vicious attack-ads from the dirty presidential race

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 01:22:16 +0000

Redditor Aspirin742 and his six-year-old daughter Elissa are both contenders in a hard-fought election for President of their house. The campaigning has gotten really ugly.

My 6 year old daughter and I are having an election for President of the House (imgur.com) (via Super Punch)

How's Your News, Election 2012: developmentally disabled reporters go to GOP and DNC

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:51:06 +0000

Boing Boing has spotlighted "How's Your News" in years past, and I'm delighted to see the team reassembled to cover the 2012 presidential elections. The project features a team of reporters with various developmental disabilities roaming the halls at the Republican and Democratic national conventions, interviewing big TV news personalities and politicians: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Diane Sawyer, Karl Rove, Sen. Rob Portman, Herman Cain, Anne Coulter, Jesse Jackson, Rep. Michelle Bachman, Olivia Wilde, Sen. Barbra Boxer, Stephen Baldwin, Piers Morgan, Jared Leto, Sen. Pat Leahy, Rep Barney Frank, and many more.

Download the hour-long documentary for $5. I watched it last night, and I strongly recommend. It's not "political," in the sense that it's not advocating a particular party or candidate; it's more about the culture of news and the surreality of what it's like to be at a convention. I've been inside that beast, and this is the most accurate capture of that weird world I've seen. Also, if you work in TV news? There are some scenes in this film that will prove to you, without any doubt, that politicians tend to spew prepared talking points as answers to questions, even when the questions are unintelligible non-word vocalizations.

Above, a trailer. Below, an exclusive clip, and a Boing Boing Q&A with director Arthur Bradford, and Matt Stone ( South Park, Book of Mormon ), who backed the project and is a big fan.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker have been involved with Arthur Bradford and "How's Your News" for 15 years. Matt tells Boing Boing, "It is a great relationship and a totally cool thing." Arthur also directed "The Making of South Park: 6 Days to Air," and received an Emmy nomination for that documentary.

Boing Boing/XJ: Matt, I know you're a big news junkie, what do you get out of watching this that you don't out of, say, reading the New York Times or watching CNN's coverage of the political conventions?

Matt Stone: Even to a news junkie like me, the current incarnation of the political conventions are pretty absurd. The regular news dutifully tries to distill the psychodrama and bullshit into a horserace of political power. How's Your News always puts a smile on my face because they so effortlessly resist that narrative. I need more How's Your News in my life. I am a huge fan.

Boing Boing/XJ: Arthur, my question to you, why are you doing this project?

Arthur Bradford: I've been making these How's Your News films for over fifteen years now. It really just just started as a lark at this summer camp I was working at. We wanted to make videos which we could show after dinner at the camp and have people laugh. When Matt and Trey got in touch way back in 1996, before they became famous, I thought it was both great and weird that people I didn't know enjoyed these videos. Over time we became friends and if it weren't for their encouragement, and later, financial help, this whole project would not exist. I like making these films because I think they are pure - we have the same motivations we did back at the summer camp, just wanting to make people smile and surprise them. I know of no less pretentious people than the reporters from How's Your News? I have learned so much from watching them approach and converse with the various public figures they meet. I honestly believe you can learn quite a lot about a person by watching the way he or she interacts with a person with a disability. In that sense I have found that the conversations which take place before our cameras are often more revealing than the supposedly hard hitting interviews we see on major networks. What I particularly like about this latest film is the chance to watch the way political figures, and the many handlers surrounding them, work so hard to manipulate the way they are portrayed in the media. Often the most interesting part of the interview for us is not the actual interview at all. It's the slightly uncomfortable negotiation which takes place beforehand as we ask them if they will speak with us. I liked being able to include those discussions in this new film. In the past we didn't have the freedom, or good sense, to do that.

Arthur Bradford: Over the years we have endeavored to produce How's Your News in many different ways, as a film festival entry, a DVD, an HBO documentary, and even an MTV series. This latest version, a completely independent, pay-per-view online stream/download, is truly the best form of distribution yet. For those of you who feel frustrated by commercial news media, I really urge you to support this kind of thing. Not to get on a high horse, but hey, this is It's the future of independent media. It's a very good thing.

Boing Boing/XJ: What's it like working with the correspondents?

Arthur Bradford: I've known all of them for so long now, they are some of my oldest friendships. And I do mean friendships. I first met Jeremy when he was just a kid, seven or eight years old. He was a crazy little ball of energy and we all wondered what he was going to be like when he grew up. Would people still think he was cute and charming? He's grown up now and, well, you can decide. Sue calls me up at least once a week, usually more. She is relentless when she's got something on her mind. This latest "How's Your News?" project came about in part because of her prodding. She was leaving messages on my phone saying, "Is this How's Your News horse dead or what? Come on!" Bobby is like an uncle to me. He was an usher at my wedding and plays with my children. I honestly don't know of anyone who can so easily mix and mingle with such a wide array of people. You could take him to a Hell's Angles rally in the morning and he'd have everyone hugging him and then attend a formal White House luncheon an hour later and he'd be cozying up the the Secretary of State. He'd know just how to behave immediately. It's a skill few of us have.

I hold our reporters to a high standard. I often feel like I'm the coach and they are my team. I have to assess who is feeling good and who will interact in the most interesting way with a given interviewee. I sometimes get frustrated with the reporters if they ask banal questions or act shy. I let them know it when I think they can do better. But I never feed them questions. That doesn't come off well. The questions need to come from them. If they are not having a good time and showing genuine curiosity then it's not enjoyable to watch. I find directing How's Your News to be exhausting and draining and usually after each one is done I swear I'll never do it again. But then Sue and Jeremy starting calling me up and we end up hitting the road. And in the end I'm glad we do it.

Download the documentary.

(All images courtesy Arthur Bradford)

Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium: Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly's debate kicked ass

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 20:37:49 +0000

Last night's Bill O'Reilly/Jon Stewart debate, the "Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium," just crushed it. This is the best 90 minutes of video you're gonna see this month, and is unquestionably the best presidential debate of the season.

Update: In the comments, Patrick McGorrill adds, "Also available from www.therumble2012.com where they're using the Louis CK model. 90 minutes of DRM-free, HD video, for $5." That is a stone bargain.

Here's the Guardian's Amanda Holpuch with a recap:

The economic discussion focused on O'Reilly and Stewart's disagreement on government spending. O'Reilly said he thinks too much money is given to "slackers" who "mooch" off the government through welfare and other subsidies, though he supports social security. Stewart took issue with O'Reilly's determinations of what things are acceptable to be subsidised by the government.
"Why is it if you take advantage of a tax break as a corporation you're a smart businessman, but if you take advantage of a tax break as a person you're a moocher?" Stewart said.

Jon Stewart lays into Bill O'Reilly in presidential debate spoof

68,000 Texans no longer have to prove they're not dead in order to vote

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:07:19 +0000

68,000 Texans will no longer have to prove that they aren't dead in order to vote in the next election. The state of Texas has settled a suit brought on behalf of 68,000 "potentially deceased" Texas voters who shared a birthdate and a partial Social Security match with a person appearing on a federal death register. These people will now be able to vote, unless Texas can prove they're dead. Another 12,000 voters will still have to prove that they're not dead before casting a ballot. More from Lowering the Bar:

Under the previous rules, voters were identified as "potentially deceased" if there was at least a "weak match" (such as a birth date plus a partial Social Security number) between their information and the federal death records the state was consulting. The weakly matched dead made up 68,000 of the 80,000 people who received a letter from voting officials telling them they would be removed from the rolls if they didn't speak up. Under the settlement, the burden shifts to officials to prove those people are really dead; the remainder ("strong matches"), who are much more likely to be dead, will still have to prove otherwise if they can.
"Today's order [approving the settlement] is another step toward improving the integrity of the election system," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who had unsuccessfully tried to defend the state's original plan. I think it's actually the same step, but 85% smaller.

Texas Settles With Previously Dead Voters

Maine GOP attack-flier condemns Democratic candidate for playing an orc rogue in online game

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:58:52 +0000

A flier distributed by the Maine GOP attacks Democratic state senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz for playing an orc assassin rogue in World of Warcraft, using quotes she's made about the virtual violence her imaginary fairy-tale creature gets up to in order to imply that she is unfit for office. Timothy Lee has more on Ars Technica:

"I love poisoning and stabbing! It is fun," the flyer quotes Lachowicz as saying. The candidate is apparently a regular commenter at DailyKos, a liberal blog. And the Maine GOP has mined the site looking for what it regards as damning comments. Most of Lachowicz's remarks were posted in 2009 or 2010, most likely before she began her current campaign for office.
"I can kill stuff without going to jail," she wrote in December 2009. "There are some days when this is more necessary than others." The flyer points voters to a website, called "Colleen's World," that highlights more cases where she describes virtual violence she committed in the online world.

Candidate for Maine State Senate attacked for Warcraft character

TV news programs ignore false claims in the thousands of political ads that pay their bills

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 00:49:33 +0000

Josh Levy from Free Press sez, "My colleague Tim Karr just released a report exposing the billions spent on political ads around the country -- and how that money is pocketed by local TV stations. Are these stations offering any local news coverage to debunk the lies in these ads? Are they exposing the deep-pocketed interests behind the groups buying ad time? The short answer is: No. The local stations we looked at in the report provided no local stories exposing the special interests behind these ads, and only one station among the 20 surveyed devoted even a few minutes to investigating whether these ads told viewers the truth."

Here are some details from our new report, Left in the Dark: Local Coverage in the Age of Big-Money Politics:
* The Super PACs vs. Justin Bieber: The hundreds of hours of local news that aired in the two weeks prior to Wisconsin's June 5 recall election included no stories on the 17 groups most actively buying time on Milwaukee's ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates. While these stations were ignoring the impact of political ads, they found time to air 53 local news segments on Justin Bieber.
* Fact-Check Fail: The ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas and Milwaukee did not once fact-check the claims made in political ads placed locally by the nation's top-spending Super PACs and independent groups, even though these groups had spent tens of millions of dollars on frequently deceptive ads in those markets.
* Hush Money: Cleveland's four affiliate stations provided no coverage of the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity, despite airing the group's anti-Obama attack ads more than 500 times. Americans for Prosperity has reportedly spent more than $1.5 million to place ads on Cleveland television stations.
* News Out of Balance: Affiliate stations in Tampa aired on average more than 200 political ads a day throughout August. Yet only one station, WTSP, devoted news time to fact-checking any of the most prominent groups buying these ads. In a single segment running less than three minutes, WTSP rated an Americans for Prosperity ad as false, a finding that didn't stop the station from running the group's anti-Obama ads more than 150 times that month.

TV Stations Accept Political Ad Cash -- and Leave Viewers in the Dark (Thanks, Josh!)

Study: Republican state voting laws "will disenfranchise 10,000,000 Hispanic US citizens"

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:47:56 +0000

Today, a civil rights group called Advancement Project will publish a report on the new voting laws passed in 23 Republican-led states. The report (not named in Patricia Zengerle's Reuters article and not yet up on the Advancement Project site) claims that 10,000,000 Hispanic voters will be disenfranchised by the new laws, which place hurdles between voters and the ballot box, such as presenting certain types of ID. The rubric for these laws has been that "everyone" has the types of ID specified in the statutes, and the common refrain in response to critics is "Who doesn't have a [driver's license|passport|non-driver ID|etc]?" The Advancement Project's point appears to be that these specific 10 million citizens, who are otherwise legally entitled to vote, don't have the necessary papers or can't meet the qualifiers imposed by the state governments.

According to Reuters, national polls show 70 percent or more support for Obama among Hispanic voters.

The new laws include purges of people suspected of not being citizens in 16 states that unfairly target Latinos, the civil rights group Advancement Project said in the study to be formally released on Monday.
Laws in effect in one state and pending in two others require proof of citizenship for voter registration. That imposes onerous and sometimes expensive documentation requirements on voters, especially targeting naturalized American citizens, many of whom are Latino, the liberal group said.
Nine states have passed restrictive photo identification laws that impose costs in time and money for millions of Latinos who are citizens but do not yet have the required identification, it said.

Voting laws may disenfranchise 10 million Hispanic U.S. citizens: study (Thanks, Deborah!)

Internet Voter Registration Day: pledge to vote, and get your friends to pledge, and scare the piss out of SOPA-loving DC insiders

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:21:21 +0000

Tiffiniy from the SOPA-killing activist group Fight for the Future sez,

Remember when we worked together and beat back internet censorship and SOPA, and changed the world earlier this year? 2012 is a historic year for our basic rights on the web - the year the internet came alive and fought for free speech and freedom. Sites like Boing Boing depend on an open and free web, and so doesn't much of what you love and do on the web.
Unfortunately, Congress still only cares about the opinions of likely voters. If everyone who cares about internet freedom stays at home this election, Congress will bring back SOPA. That's why we've been working on a campaign to turn out a massive number of internet users at the polls, and we're asking people to join us tomorrow for Internet Voter Registration Day, right before a bunch of state deadlines, by pledging that you'll vote, and register if you need to: internetvotes.org.
Washington insiders thought SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA were all 'certain to pass.' How did the internet win against those bills? Because people stood up to protect free speech and the transformative power of the internet in their lives.
Let's dramatically increase the number of people egging each other on to vote, which has shown to get people to the polls. The first thing we're asking people to do is to get our friends to pledge and register to vote starting Tuesday, National Voter Registration Day (right before a bunch of state deadlines with time to send in your forms). Then we'll work together to mobilize millions of internet users to get to the polls. People can use our tools to see which of their friends are voting and registered, mobilize their audiences into voting blocks for their cause, site, or group, get important voting information, and make sure their friends go vote.

Promise to vote for the internet in 2012 (Thanks, Tiffiniy!)