I was just reading an article about a husband and wife that were arrested in TX for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts to a repub event. Once the event was over they dropped the charges and released them.
I will look for the article.
Here is a news article about something that is clearly wrong (whatever happened to standing silently while security threw the bums out?) and a looney request (does anyone need to request election monitors for US elections, sounds strange to me, but 13 members of Congress did). Enjoy the read and try not to vent too much venom, depending upon your politics.
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08/05/2004 16:40:21 EST N.M. GOP to Continue Asking for Pledge
By RICHARD BENKE
Associated Press Writer
RIO RANCHO, N.M. - Republicans in New Mexico say they will keep asking some people who want to attend Bush-Cheney campaign events to sign an endorsement pledge before receiving tickets.
"If we feel our event will get disrupted again, we will use the same method to make sure it's a positive event," Republican Party spokesman Yier Shi said Thursday, defining positive as "without interruption, without debate - just (without) disruption, period."
Shi said the GOP campaign plans to correct errors and omissions in the pledge: "I ... herby (sic) endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States." Besides correcting the spelling of hereby, it will make clear what office Bush is running for, Shi said.
Last week, some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President Dick Cheney speak Saturday in this town near Albuquerque were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse President Bush. The Bush campaign described the measure as a security step designed to avoid a disruption it contended had been planned by anti-Bush activists.
The Kerry campaign and an anti-Bush group, America Coming Together, denied it planned any disruptive protests.
Bush campaign spokesman Dan Foley said people calling for tickets from an ACT telephone line underwent screening. Others seeking to attend the speech but giving false names were denied tickets, Foley said.
A representative for ACT, Courtney Hunter, responded: "To the best of our knowledge, no one called from our office misrepresenting themselves. These types of evasive tactics are occurring all over the county as the Bush-Cheney campaign refuses to allow Americans into their events."
Two men who had sought tickets were presented the endorsement pledge when they picked up their tickets two days before the event. One of them, John Wade of Albuquerque, said he signed the pledge but then changed his mind. He returned the tickets and took back the pledge, he said.
"I got to thinking this is not right," Wade said. "They're excluding people - that's what has me so upset."
The other man, Michael Ortiz y Pino, said he refused to sign the pledge and was refused tickets. He said he was asked if he associated with veterans, pro-life, gun rights or teacher groups and was asked for his driver's license number, told it was for "Secret Service stuff."
Kerry campaign spokesman Ruben Pulido Jr. said the Kerry campaign had not attempted to screen Bush supporters out of Kerry's appearance at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque in July. About a dozen Bush supporters attended, waving flip-flop beach sandals over their heads and chanting "Viva Bush."
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The Bush administration has invited a team of international observers to watch the presidential election in November.
Paul V. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, reported the invitation in a letter to Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, who led an effort by 13 House Democrats to request U.N. monitors for the elections.
The Democrats, who released the letter Thursday, want to avoid a repeat of the civil rights violations and disenfranchisement of voters they say characterized the 2000 election in Florida and elsewhere.
"Our elections certainly should be fair and free and transparent, and we know the last election was not," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., one of the group.
It's not quite the United Nations, but Kelly wrote that the Bush administration has invited a team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 55-state security organization. OSCE also sent a small group to Florida in 2002 for that year's elections.
"We anticipate that once again the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will deploy an election observation mission to the U.S.," Kelly wrote.
Lee welcomed the move while saying she and others would continue to push for U.N. monitors.
Details of the mission, including its size, have not yet been determined, according to an OSCE spokeswoman.
Last month the House passed an amendment to a foreign aid bill barring federal officials from using money from the act to ask the United Nations to observe the Nov. 2 election.
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The Republican National Committee chairman says the party's national convention later this month will have its most diverse delegation ever - but he won't release the identities of the delegates.
While Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie was boasting about the gains the GOP is making among blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, he said the national party has left it up to individual states to decide whether to publicize delegates' identities.
His reason: Web sites that invite protesters to "show them the kind of welcome they can expect in New York."
Of the 4,788 delegates and alternates to the convention, Republicans said 171 delegates are Hispanic (297 including alternates), 165 delegates are black (290 with alternates) and 76 delegates are Asian-Americans or Pacific Islanders (104 with alternates).
___
Associated Press Writers Erica Werner and Will Lester in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
And the way that the Florida Presidential election was conducted in 2000 was certainly not any better than what we saw in these types of Banana Republics. And then, in the 2002 mid-term elections, using electronic voting machines for the first time, Florida "lost" the voting records, and hence, any audit trail. Then, when the press made a stink about this a couple of weeks ago, as a rationale for having independent auditors oversee the election, they magically "found" the disc with the records on it.
Frankly, this is incredibly suspicious. What plausible reason do we have to believe that any state that is run by Jeb Bush, is MORE committed to an electoral process that's beyond reproach, than he's committed to his brother's re-election? Especially after the example in 2000, where he recused himself from the election dispute, and then UN-recused himself when it looked like some of the Florida State Supreme Court decisions in the dispute went against the Republicans.
Frankly, we have ZERO confidence in the state of Florida's ability to conduct a fair and acurate election in November, given their track record over the 2000 and 2002 elections. That is why it is critical that someone who is independent, without any agenda toward either of the parties, needs to oversee the Presidential count in Florida. And other states might well have the same issues - even with bias in the opposite direction.
Unless something change over the next ~3 months, the electoral votes of Florida could again determine who takes the oath of office in January 2005. You can bet my sweet ass (I give you permission, since I am very sure of this one) that both parties will have all polling places in Florida covered with their "observers". The stakes are too high. If you read any unbiased news account of what is happening in that state now, you would have to agree that both the republican and democrat "watchers" and "vote getters" are very active there, even at this time.
So the Dems had observers there, and they make a royal stink about it. It still will get arbitrated by the U.S. Supreme Court, who already has no credibility on this issue, because Scalia's bare majority opinion in Bush v. Gore was so completely political in nature that even HE said it should never be viewed as establishing any type of legal precedent.
If they won it through incompetence and bungling, they still stole it.
/Zin
Will "created methodsand conditions for vote exclusion and miscounting in order to ensure that their candidate won" do? It IS more accurate.
But you are right it ought not to have come down to that.
Regarding the Cheney Speech and the alleged "pledge" requirement, I live in NM and it was certainly a hot topic on the local "yakkity yak" radio call in shows last Friday. There were lots of callers that tried to set the record straight. These were people that actually went to get tickets. They all said were asked if they'd like to sign a pledge of support for Bush-Cheney, but it was NOT, I repeat NOT, a requirement for them to obtain tickets to the event.
I was just reading an article about a husband and wife that were arrested in TX for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts to a repub event. Once the event was over they dropped the charges and released them.
I will look for the article.
Sorry, but I was wrong, I first said it happened in TX. It was a couple from TX and they were arrested in WV.
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why even go there? Bizarre move by the Bushies. If they held people to it its pretty clear violation of several voting acts.
i think it is a tempest in a teapot. Shows a level of wierdness that we can do without, but really is not a factor in the race.
Makes for great interplay here, tho'.