[Jane of Arc]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051107T.shtml (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051107T.shtml)

"Now the issue has spread worldwide. Widespread cries of theft and fraud erupted in Ukraine, just before the US 2004 election. A forced re-vote ousted the "official" winner.

In Mexico, leftists contend the recent presidential election there was stolen just as Bush did it in the US, with some of the same personnel pulling it off.

Now similar cries are coming from Scotland and France. May 3 elections in Scotland using new electronic counting systems resulted in as many as 100,000 votes being classed as "spoilt papers." (About 90,000 such ballots from Ohio 2004 remain uncounted to this day).

Complex methods of tabulating and weighting the Scottish votes yielded "chaos." Several vote counts were suspended. In some races the tally of rejected ballots was greater than some candidates' winning margin. "This is a temporary interruption to one small aspect of the overall process," says a spokeswoman for DRS, the company responsible for the vote counting technology.

The language in France has not been so polite. A watershed presidential election has just been won by Nicolas Sarkozy, a blunt right-wing Reagan-Bush-style extremist over the socialist Segolene Royal. Sarkozy is a hard-edged authoritarian whose intense anti-immigrant rhetoric matches his support for the American war in Iraq and his avowed intent to slash France's social service system, including a public health program widely considered among the best in the world."

[Jennifer_SFBA]

Considering that political candidates with political positions who never won elections before are being elected now to the detriment of the people and in favor of the wealthy, is there not a world-wide, neo-conservative, New World Order conspiracy going on? Think globally, connect together and act locally. The internet is a good place to connect together with activists in other countries to share our common experiences and to work for our common goals by being inclusive and acting locally.

[Wafflepudding]

In 1986 in Mexico, Carlos Salinas "won" the presidential elections after a "bug in the system" crashed the electronic vote counting system, suddenly giving him a large margin of victory over the leftist candidate. That same president signed NAFTA a few years later, to the detriment of both Mexican industry and the American working class. Coincidence? probably not.

We've seen the writting on the wall for a long time now, it's about time we start doing something about it.

[JamesP]

Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election Records Are Destroyed or Missing

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/073107C.shtml

Steven Rosenfeld, of Alternet, reports: "Two-thirds of Ohio counties have destroyed or lost their 2004 presidential ballots and related election records, according to letters from county election officials to the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner. The lost records violate Ohio law, which states federal election records must be kept for 22 months after Election Day, and a US District Court order issued last September that the 2004 ballots be preserved while the court hears a civil rights lawsuit alleging voter suppression of African-American voters in Columbus."