Reply #13: Howard Dean on the subject:

[Capn Sunshine]

from a recent interview
HD: I think we need to focus on election officials. County Clerks, Secretaries of State in particular, because the Republicans have been so partisan in exercising their responsibility to help people vote, they‘ve in fact tried to suppress turnout instead of encourage it. Secondly, we, I think we need to try to get laws passed, by referendum if necessary, that says that no voting machines in a particular state or jurisdiction may be used unless they can be recounted by hand. Oregon has such a statute because Bill Bradbury (Oregon’s Secretary of State) got one passed in 2001. We should try to state by state overhaul the election process both by referendum and by electing where possible Democratic Secretaries of State and County Clerks.

Q: In other words, just seizing the thing locally is the way to go….

HD. Well, obviously, we’re not going to get rid of the Bush Administration for the next four years and this Congress wants to suppress votes instead of increase them. So I think the local venue is the best thing we can do.

Q: Do you think it’s too much to hope for that we’ll get any kind of media coverage regarding the Bush Administration’s active plan of disenfranchisement through basically ill equipping the polls, all those shenanigans that were pulled, do you think…

A Well, in order to do that you have to have some proof that that actually happened and while I think suspicion are well justified, we don’t actually have proof that there was a plan to do that, and until we have some proof, it’s not likely that we’re going to get much media coverage. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence and I think we are getting some media coverage on the circumstantial evidence, for example the over vote, Cuyahoga County, The addition of 3500 votes that didn’t exist before the balloting even started, on some of those electronic touch screen voting machines, those things we have to be concerned about, and I think we can get press on them.