The great Yogi Berra said it best: 'It's Déjà vu all over again.'  Except instead of the boys of October, we're talking about the long lines and broken machines of November. Allegations of election fraud and voter suppression were once rarities, today they're business as usual for the American voter.  It's time to stop throwing taxpayer dollars at a broken system.  Oregonians have a solution — Vote by Mail.

For more than a decade Oregonians have been successfully voting by mail.  Up to three weeks before Election Day, ballots are sent to all registered voters, giving busy families time to research their votes and carefully mark their ballots, which are then either dropped in the mailbox or delivered to secure drop boxes at libraries, county offices and other convenient locations.  Trained election officials then match the signature on each ballot against the signature on each voter’s registration card, before processing the vote. Read more...

After an hour of radio this morning into Corpus Christi, we enjoyed good wishes from South Texas, as the front page of the Brownsville Herald heralded the South Texas poll, where Radnofsky leads Hutchison 52-40. I did work South Texas hard, and enjoyed several dozen visits, as the ride there is beautiful and diverse, especially if the route gores by the intercoastal waterway. We've spent two wonderful family vacations in the last two years on Padre Island, where my husband and I honeymooned long ago. And the small towns are loaded with Native American artifacts and stories of conquistadores and LaSalle's adventurers and heroes of the Texas revolution and pirates and a huge share of war heroes.

I've seen two Medals of Honor at local Texas museums in the last 6 months. Pioneer women's stories and early newspapermen dominate, as do oil and agricultural history. And the birding ... The best in the world. So it was very pleasing to know how strong the campaign has been in the RGV (Rio Grande Valley), which recently hosted a Pachanga for me on a ranch outside of Mission. Folks care about education, scant social services and overtaxed school districts, water, health care and treating our veterans fairly. (South Texas, lacking any VA hospital, is disproportionately represented by wounded, aging and retired vets). Read more...

From the war in Iraq to our economy, President Bush and the Rubber Stamp Republican Congress are out of touch and in denial.

Since President Bush took office in January 2001, real incomes have fallen, while the costs of health insurance, gasoline and home heating, and attending college have soared. Millions of Americans are working hard and are unable to get ahead. Republicans' record budget deficits are passing trillions in debt on to our children and grandchildren. Republicans' misplaced priorities of more tax cuts for the wealthy and more record deficits have put the American Dream for the next generation at risk.

On Iraq, Republicans have abandoned the 'stay the course' slogan, but they are still fully committed to the 'stay the course' strategy. Just last week, President Bush said that the U.S. was winning in Iraq and Vice President Cheney said the Administration is going "full steam ahead" with its failed Iraq policy, despite the U.S. Central Command judging the situation in Iraq to be near chaos, with "violence at all-time high, spreading geographically" and four highly respected military newspapers saying of Secretary Rumsfeld, "His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised...Donald Rumsfeld must go."

But tomorrow is our opportunity to make a change.

Read more...

Tuesday’s election will be a fundamental moment for deciding the future of our country. It will also be a major marking point for the debate about How to run our elections, which began in earnest after the election of 2000, continued through the 2004 election, and rages today.

What will Tuesday bring, and where ought the debate go after that? Well, to state the very obvious, we are all hoping that the elections will go smoothly, that voters will participate in significant numbers, and that their votes will be clearly and fully counted. But there are many barriers and potholes—before, during and after Election Day itself—that suggest that may not be the case. Here are a number of things that could thwart the ability of eligible voters to register and cast a vote, and have that vote properly counted—and therefore erode confidence in the entire process. Read more...

There are two election process issues facing the nation this November:
* Can the polls be opened on time?
* Will voters trust the results?

The large deployment of new technologies is what drives the first question. Poll workers are often people who do not see computers often in their everyday lives. Turning on these new high tech machines in scores of thousands of polling places at 6 AM is going to be a challenge. Only machines designed for usability and jurisdictions that invest appropriately in training will lead to a "yes" to the first question.

The second question is more complicated and has several parts. Having accurate results is a very different question than trust. In a voluntary system such as our democracy, trust is certainly as important as accuracy. Even if the new machines cannot be tampered with, some will likely have bugs. In our opinion, only an unambiguous paper ballot solves the trust and accuracy questions. But not all paper ballots do so. Here's why: Read more...

The images from 2000 are burned into our collective memory. Election officials peering through magnifying glasses to examine hanging and pregnant chads. At a recent Congressional hearing these images were projected on a screen with the intent of muddying the debate over the growing demand for transparent, auditable, and verifiable voting systems. But when I see those pictures, I see democracy at its best: election officials going the extra mile to determine the intent of every voter. Recounts are essential to ensure a sound, healthy democracy and with the increasing dependence on software to count votes, the imperative to verify election results is even stronger.

Since recounts invariably take place in the overcharged political climate of a hotly contested campaign, recounts are most often marred by real or perceived manipulation. Many states have recognized that mandatory random audits can serve to alleviate much of the concern about electronic voting machines and de-politicize what should be a routine aspect of administering elections. Read more...

The nation is one day away from the conclusion of a hotly contested mid-term election season. What we can say is that many eyes will be watching the outcome-some with partisan hopes and others to monitor the use of electronic voting systems. The National Committee for Voting Integrity (NCVI) is leading one of the many efforts to ease the use of electronic voting this election season by providing recommendations to assist voters and election administrators for the November 7, 2006 election.

The guidance was developed with the assistance of the Brennan Center for Justice and addresses the use of electronic voting systems in the upcoming national elections. NCVI and the Brennan Center warn that the recent implementation of electronic voting systems will make ensuring that all votes are accurately counted a difficult and challenging task. The ad hoc measures of thousand of citizens, groups, and nonprofits have filled the role of the federal government in trying to facilitate the implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Read more...

In my second run for Congress against a well-established incumbent, I have developed a particular appreciation for the difficulties faced by challengers.

A popular misperception is that the incumbent is the biggest problem for a challenger. It's simply not true. The first task for a challenger is to get the voters to know who you are. The incumbent generally does not matter for this task. At some point you may need to show why you're better than the incumbent, but if the voters don't even know who you are, you're not going to get there.

Consider a NY congressional district. There are roughly 660,000 people in each district, with 450,000 registered voters. How do you let these people know who you are? Sending each voter one postcard would cost about $100,000, and one postcard is not going to do the job. Read more...

The verdict is just and the sentence appropriate for the mass murderer Saddam Hussein. However, the verdict will not end the violence in Iraq or return our troops to safety. President Bush must withdraw our troops from Iraq without delay.