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News Releases

  • Electronic Machines with No Paper Trail Questioned

    THOM HARTMANN Hartmann is author of the recent article “The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy — Privatizing the Vote” and the book Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights. He said today: “Why are we allowing corporations to exclusively handle our vote, in a secret and totally invisible way? … Particularly a private corporation founded, in one case, by a family that believes the Bible should replace the Constitution; in another case run by one of Ohio’s top Republicans; and in another case partly owned by Saudi investors? … About two years ago, I wrote…

  • Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?

    TERESA FEDOR Ohio State Senator Teresa Fedor said today: “There was trouble with our elections in Ohio at every stage. It’s been a battle getting people registered to vote, getting to the ballot on voting day and getting that vote to count. There is a pattern of voter suppression; that’s why I called for [Ohio Secretary of State] Blackwell’s resignation more than a month ago. Blackwell, while claiming to run an unbiased elections process, was also the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. Additionally, he was the spokesperson for the anti-business, anti-family constitutional amendment ‘Issue 1,’ and a failed…

  • Election Day Turmoil

    RALPH G. NEAS People for the American Way Foundation President Neas said: “The Election Protection ‘Nerve Center’ at People For the American Way Foundation’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, continues to operate as a voter assistance and coalition information clearinghouse, with 34 computers and 55 telephone lines. … On Election Day, information will pour into the Nerve Center from the field offices and legal command centers around the country. Reporters are free to call the Nerve Center at (866) 204-1941 or People For the American Way Foundation at (202) 467-4999 to get the latest information.” More Information More Information CHELLIE PINGREE Common…

  • Study Finds 100,000 “Excess” Civilian Deaths Since Iraq Invasion

    The leading medical journal The Lancet has just published a study on civilian mortality in Iraq since the invasion. LES ROBERTS Co-author of the report, Dr. Roberts is an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He said today: “Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths, and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that the collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results…

  • * Provisional Ballots * Instant Runoff Voting Implemented in San Francisco * Voter Rights * The Right to Cast a Vote That Counts

    MILES RAPOPORT Rapoport is the president of Demos, a non-partisan, non-profit organization. He said today: “The question of whether to accept provisional ballots cast at the wrong polling place pits voter access not against the worthy goal of fraud prevention, but instead against more mundane concerns of administrative convenience. As a former secretary of state, I certainly sympathize with the difficulty of administering elections, especially when voter interest is high. But election officials must not let the challenges of a full Election Day workload get in the way of one of their core duties: facilitating ballot access to all eligible…

  • * Disappeared Weapons * Iraqi WMDs

    The 380 tons of high explosives missing from al Qaqaa in Iraq have become an issue in the waning days of the presidential campaign. The New York Times reports the explosives were there when U.S. soldiers arrived, but when local Iraqis asked the soldiers to guard them, they “were told this was not the soldiers’ responsibility.” KSTP-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul reports that one of its film crews “in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons.” More Information IMAD KHADDURI A former nuclear…

  • New Evidence of Voter Blacklist in Florida?

    ION SANCHO Sancho, the Supervisor of Elections for Leon County in Florida, said today: “The possibility of a statewide program to ‘challenge’ African-American voters in Florida on Election Day raises the specter of obstruction, chaos, and ultimately, voter disenfranchisement. During a recent interview, investigative journalist Greg Palast showed me a list of hundreds of African-American citizens registered to vote in Jacksonville. He told me the list came from the Republican Party.” Sancho added: “Florida has a seldom-used voter challenge provision in its elections laws, allowing partisan poll watchers to challenge voters coming in to vote. In the 16 years I…

  • Perspectives on the Cost of War: * Iraqi Family * American Families * U.S. Soldiers * U.S. Taxpayers

    KHALID JARRAR FAIZA JARRAR RAED JARRAR The Jarrar family lives in Baghdad, and has set up a blog listed below. Khalid Jarrar said today: “The costs of war have been so many innocent souls, Iraqi and American souls, and the destruction of a country. … Explosions outside our home are common. … There isn’t any political process, there is a military process that is hoped to accomplish political goals. The government is planning to attack, with the help of the American army, anyone who doesn’t agree with it. The resistance is widely respected by Iraqis, terrorism is widely condemned. People…

  • Eyewitness Accounts of Actions by Republican-Funded Organization; Group Accused of Voter Registration Fraud in Three Swing States

    Librarians in Oregon and Pennsylvania are providing eyewitness accounts of voter registration activities of Sproul and Associates, a group which has received $488,000 from the Republican National Committee. Employees of Sproul and Associates in Nevada have said that they witnessed supervisors tearing up completed registration forms from Democrats. The Associated Press has reported that “a [Nevada] state judge refused to reopen registration for Clark County residents whose voter applications might have been destroyed by [the] Republican-funded group. … Officials at the Nevada secretary of state’s office, the state attorney general’s office and the FBI said they were looking into whether…

  • Bush Rebuffed Plan for Other Nations’ Troops in Iraq; U.S. Setting Stage for Rigged Iraqi Elections?

    Newsday has reported that “President George W. Bush rebuffed a plan last month for a Muslim peacekeeping force that would have helped the United Nations organize elections in Iraq, according to Saudi and Iraqi officials.” The paper reported: “As a result, the UN continues to have a skeletal presence in Iraq, with only four staff members working full time on preparing for elections set for the end of January. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has refused to establish a new UN headquarters in Baghdad unless countries commit troops for a special force to protect it. … Diplomats said Annan accepted the…

  • Health Care: More Uninsured

    QUENTIN YOUNG, M.D. The national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, which today released an analysis of Census data figures, Young said: “The number of uninsured climbed by 833,000 to 44.3 million in 1998, according to data released by the Census Bureau. Though the Census Bureau claimed that children’s health coverage had not…

  • Budget Battle?

    DEAN BAKER “The public debate over the budget has almost completely missed the real issues,” said Baker, an economist at the Preamble Center. “The debate has been portrayed as a dispute over whether to spend the surplus on social programs or whether to pay it out in tax cuts. In reality, the projected surplus is…

  • Russian Scandal

    As congressional hearings on the Russian financial scandal continue, the following analysts are available for interviews: JANINE WEDEL Author of Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe and associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, Wedel said: “As more becomes known…

  • Hurricanes and Climate Change

    ROSS GELBSPAN Author of The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription, Gelbspan said: “The ferocity of Hurricane Floyd — like Hurricane Mitch, which last year killed 9,000 people in Central America — is part of a pattern of extreme weather which results directly from early-stage global warming. Warmer surface waters fuel…

  • Just Back From East Timor

    Despite Indonesia’s agreement to an international force in East Timor, the violence there continues. The following people, most of whom were UN-accredited observers for the late August vote, have recently returned from East Timor and are available for interviews: BARBARA NASH A UN-accredited observer with the International Federation for East Timor, Nash just returned on…

  • East Timor and Economic Summit

    KRISTIN SUNDELL A UN-accredited observer with the International Federation for East Timor and national field organizer with the East Timor Action Network, Sundell recently returned from East Timor. She is in contact with others who are just returning and have witnessed the brutality there. More Information AMY GOODMAN and ALLAN NAIRN Goodman and Nairn have…

  • East Timor: What’s Going On?

    News reports from East Timor indicate that the Indonesian army and the militias are now working together openly to wreak new terror on the streets of East Timor’s capital, Dili. The following analysts and commentators are available for interviews: JOSE RAMOS-HORTA Jose Ramos-Horta is winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize and the International Representative…

  • Labor Day: Key Issues

    LAURA JONES A recent study by the 2030 Center, a public policy institute that advocates for the economic interests of young adults, examined the threats to job security due to increases in temporary work. Jones, communications director for the 2030 Center, said: “As Americans race to the beach this Labor Day weekend, an army of…

  • Election Context in East Timor

    Indonesian-backed forces have increased their violence in recent days as Monday’s UN-organized referendum on self-determination approaches. In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor with tacit U.S. backing. In the 24 years since, 200,000 people have died, a third of the population. Interviews are available with the following analysts: LYNN FREDRIKSSON Washington representative of the East Timor…

  • U.S. Bombing of Sudan: One Year Later

    A year ago — on August 20, 1998 — the U.S. government launched cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan, claiming retaliation for the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya two weeks earlier. Key assertions by U.S. government officials — that the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was producing chemical weapons and that it was…

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