Letters to the Editor
SB
Published Letters: 388 Editor's Choice: 18
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Intimidation in Virginia
[Read the article: Virginia Senate: Welcome to the back-and-forth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The local NBC affiliate, NBC29, has a story about apparent voter intimidation in the Webb/Allen race:
Accusations of Voter Intimidation
Reported by Crystal Cameron
November 07, 2006
One of the most heated senate campaigns in the country is about to come to an end. Incumbent Republican George Allen and his Democrat challenger Jim Webb have been fighting tooth and nail this election season.
This race is still up for grabs at Tyson's Corner in northern Virginia where Webb's camp is getting ready for what they hope is a victory party Tuesday evening there are new allegations of voter intimidation.
Jean Jenson with the state elections office has confirmed that the FBI is investigating complaints about voter intimidation and voter suppression. They say that residents in six northern Virginia counties, Webb's stronghold, were called from people posing as Webb volunteers and given wrong information about polling locations.
One man was told that he was registered in New York and told that if he voted he would be arrested. In all actually, the man is registered in Arlington.
Also, a mailer was issued to discourage voters to skip this election unless they voted Republican.
The Webb camp and their lawyer issued a statement earlier Tuesday accusing the Republicans of orchestrating this effort to suppress and intimidate. Jensen says these incidents appear widespread and deliberate.
Thirty percent of the vote is expected to come from northern Virginia, a heavily Democratic area.
http://www.nbc29.com/Global/story.asp?S=5647340&nav=menu496_1
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Jimmy Carter
[Read the article: FBI investigates vote-suppression charges in Virginia]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]was interviewed on NPR recently, and said among other things that the electoral system in the US would not qualify for observation by the Carter Center because it's too flawed.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6439233
DE: Mr. President, one final question, if you will. Here in the U.S., we have a very hotly contested election on Tuesday that could change the balance of power in the Congress. Voters across the country are concerned here about the voting process. Some have expressed concerns about voting machines and whether they will be working, others have accused officials of trying to intimidate certain groups of voters. Is there a need for a poll watching system of outside observers at U.S. elections?
JC: As you may know after the 2000 election which was a total debacle, President Gerald Ford and I headed a major blue ribbon commission and recommended changes in the voting procedures that largely were passed by the Congress. And then, after the 2004 election, which still showed some major problems, former secretary of state James Baker and I headed a similar commission and made some recommendations, very few of which have yet been implemented.
But there's no doubt in my mind that the United States electoral system is severely troubled and has many faults in it. It would not qualify at all for instance for participation by the Carter Center in observing. We require for instance that there be uniform voting procedures throughout an entire nation. In the United States you've got not only fragmented from one state to another but also from one county to another. There is no central election commission in the United States that can make final judgment. It's a cacophony of voices that come in after the election is over with, thousands or hundreds of lawyers contending with each other. There's no uniformity in the nation at all. There's no doubt that that there's severe discrimination against poor people because of the quality of voting procedures presented to them. Another thing in the United States that we wouldn't permit in a country other than the United States is that we require that every candidate in a country in which we monitor the elections have equal access to the major news media, regardless of how much money they have. In the United States, as you know, it's how much advertising you can by on television and radio. And so the richest candidates prevail, and unless a candidate can raise sometimes hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, they can't even hope to mount a campaign, so the United States has a very inadequate election procedure.
DE: I think an unprecedented more than $2 billion has been spent on advertising this year.
JC: I would say that neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party would consider seriously a candidate to be president who couldn't prove in advance that he or she could raise $100 million. That's a gross travesty of what democracy ought to be, and I hope that someday our nation will change those rules.
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John Healey?
[Read the article: Answered prayers?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"But the race became a nail-biter, especially after Rep. Joel Hefley, whose seat was up for grabs Tuesday night,"
It says Hefley in the article I'm reading, did they correct it?