Monday, March 21, 2005
Did Anyone Hear About The Hearing In Ohio?
Three hours from now, a hearing is scheduled to take place in Columbus, Ohio, and this time Katherine Harris...I mean...J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of State, is supposedly going to be able to fit it into his busy schedule (I imagine he's busy making speeches to fundies to get funds for his Governor race, probably speeches against those homosexuals who want to marry...I don't imagine he figures on foraging for funds from the African Americans whose votes he wouldn't count last November).
Even though Rep. Bob Ney, the Chairman of the House Administration Committee, blasted Mr. Blackwell in February ( link) for not attending the last meeting held in Washington (Mr. Blackwell was in town - I believe - looking up an "old" friend of Dick Morris'), the fact that he's got an R next to his name probably means nothing is going to come out of the hearing. Well, nothing we'll like anyway. I'm sure they'll figure out a bunch more tricky ways to bring back the Jim Crow laws on election day and earn money for voting machine companies so that they can give more money to the Republican Party and ensure that democracy remains the law of the land (what land I'm not quite sure).
Speaking of election machines. The Raw Story reports that the tremendous work done by Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog and the Velvet Revolution has resulted in something that we will like: "Twenty-three members of the United States House of Representatives will announce on Monday their support for the Velvet Revolution “Divestiture for Democracy” campaign. The initiative, launched in February by a coalition of more than 80 progressive organizations, seeks to ensure transparency and accountability in American elections by forcing companies that manufacture vote-tabulation systems to open their technology to greater public scrutiny."
California Rep. Maxine Waters and Michigan Rep. John Conyers (I live in Brooklyn but I claim Conyers as my Rep. too) are the two House members who did all the hard work making this happen. Here's the rest of the heroes' names and where they hail from (copy-and-pasted from the Raw Story report): John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Sam Farr (D-CA), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Rick Boucher (D-VA), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), William D. Delahunt (D-MA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Corrine Brown (D-FL), Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Robert Wexler (D-FL), James Oberstar (D-MN), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Donald M. Payne (D-NJ), Barney Frank (D-MA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), George Miller (D-CA), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) and Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ). Brad told The Raw Story that “big names” in the Senate will be signing on as well (I assume that means Boxer and Kerry, the best two Senators we have, and probably even that Senator from New York who has been pissing me off a lot lately but if she signs on I'll blog something nice about her).
(I'd like to give a shout-out to The Common Ills for being one of the few bloggers to blog about the Ohio hearing, as well as the report in The Times a few days ago about provisional balloting which T.C.I. e-mailed me about and I'll be blogging about shortly.)
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