Do you think your vote's going to count this year? Think again. Unless you take action now, your vote may already be lost. Award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast, who uncovered exactly how the election was "won" in 2000, teamed up with activist, attorney, broadcaster and writer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to find out if democracy was in a better state (Show me more...)

From Greg Palast's and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s investigative comic Steal Back Your Vote!

Copy it, print it out, spread it everywhere - and download the complete 24-page comic for free at www.StealBackYourVote.org. Hope isn't enough.  Rove-proof your ballot.

And get a stack of print copies before we run out. Hand'm out on the voting line - non-partisan, so it's OK. We'll send them out via priority mail in time for the election. (Donate $100 and get a free copy of The Election Files DVD)

1. Don’t don’t don’t Mail In Your Ballot—unless...

For those of you who mailed in your ballot, please tell me, what happened to it?  You don’t know, do you?  I can tell you that officially, three-fourths of a million absentee ballots were never counted last time, on the weakest of technical excuses. And you won’t even know it. Furthermore, tens of thousands of ballots are not mailed out to voters in time to return them - in which case you’re out of luck.  Most states won’t let you vote in-precinct once you’ve applied to vote absentee. Every time I hear of a voter going “absentee” to avoid computer screens, I want to “go postal” myself.

But for gosh sakes—don’t throw out  your ballot if you have a mail-in. Either mail it in, making sure to include ID if required (you first-time voters) or, better, WALK it into your county clerk’s office. (Show me more...)

Fired US Prosecutor levels new charges against GOP operatives.

Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Huffington Post

Virtually the entire mainstream electronic media drank ACORN Kool-Aid this month brewed up by the Republican National Committee. Almost no one seriously challenged John McCain's comical assertions that ACORN, a grassroots voter registration group, "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

While the Republicans had the distracted media searching for links between Obama and ACORN, RNC operatives were busily completing one of the most massive voter suppression and purging efforts in American history, stealing hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes across the embattled swing states and striving to arrange chaos and endless lines at the voting booths next week.

First the facts about ACORN. Months ago, we obtained, as part of our investigation for Rolling Stone magazine, the Republican's list the GOP alleged were the very worst cases of vote and registration fraud by ACORN and similar groups. We went through the names the GOP asserted were "obviously, undeniably and clearly fraudulent" voter registrations.

First, there was Melissa Tais, a dubious ACORN registrant. Her two voter registration forms show, admittedly, suspiciously different signatures. Republicans suggested Melissa was part of a massive fraud to allow Democrats to vote twice.

They were wrong. Ms. Tais, a Cerrillos, New Mexico, waitress, told us she had signed one form on a table and one form holding the paper in her hand. Hence, a second, wobbly signature.

Then there was Patricia White, who Republicans claimed was a fictitious voter. When we filmed her at home in Albuquerque, she seemed real enough.

And so on, through the entire GOP list -- not one fraud. And these were their best cases out of the five million "illegal voters" who Republican leaders claim have infiltrated America's voting rolls.

The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC's election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. "We took over 100 complaints," from the GOP, he told us, "We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn't find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico."

Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. "They were looking for politicized -- for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases."

Read the rest of the article at HuffingtonPost.com

Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are authors of an investigation of vote suppression in the current Rolling Stone, and a comic book voter guide, "Steal Back Your Vote," both available for download at StealBackYourVote.org. (Show me more...)

Excerpted from Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Steal Back Your Vote" investigative comic. You can download all 24 pages at www.StealBackYourVote.org.

Odd thing about the 207 voters of precinct 999 in Dona Ana County, New Mexico.

Not a single one could choose between George Bush and John Kerry in 2004.

Or at least that’s what their ballots said.

The Secretary of State at the time told me, “Some of those people just can’t make up their minds.” Dirt-poor Dona Ana is 63% Hispanic and the precinct is made up entirely of overseas voters, mostly the Chicano soldiers in Iraq or on duty. The machines say that Hispanic soldiers don’t care who becomes their commander-in-chief.

Or maybe, the machines failed to register their votes.

Few Americans realize that in 2004, 1,389,231 ballots were never counted because they were “spoiled.” How do ballots spoil? They get left out of the ‘fridge? No, they’re supposedly unreadable, blank, or just somehow lost in the machines.

Here’s an unfun fact: not everyone’s vote spoils the same.

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that the chances of an African-American voter losing their vote is 900% higher than a white voter. Hispanic votes vanished at a rate 500% higher than Anglo votes.

Something’s rotten.

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Go to www.StealBackYourVote.org to download the guide for free or pick up print copies of the investigative comic book by Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  Every donation you make for copies of the comic allows us to send more out to low income groups in states like Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado.

Get the guide now - all copies will be sent out via priority mail. If your group would like to distribute the Steal Back Your Vote guide please contact keri (at) gregpalast.com for special rates.

After you've picked up the comic book get the t-shirt. Wear it into the polling place and tell them that they can't steal your vote! Support the fund by picking up the Steal Back Your Vote t-shirt by the cool people over at Clothing for the American Mind. A portion of every purchase goes to support the Palast Investigative Fund. (Show me more...)

So, these ten nuns walk into a polling station and... Oh, you’ve heard that one?

What you didn’t hear is that, besides the Sistersof the Holy Cross who lost their vote because their drivers licenses expired, 144,896 other legal voters were told to scram in this year’s primary —all caught attempting to vote without a license. The rejected were, disproportionately, African-American,according to data from the University of Washington.

Apparently, the idea for this racially rancid rule came to Karl Rove while he was buying his Pampers: “If I try to cash a check at a grocery store, I have to show an ID. Why not for voting?”

The answer, Karl, is that for a century, Indiana folks have voted without photo ID with not a single known case of voter identity theft. It’s true the law nabbed Shirley Preiss, a 98-year old Democrat whose driver’s license expired. Drop that ballot, Shirl, and no one gets hurt.

Santiago Juarez sees some truth in Rove’s remarks. We met with Santiago in Espanola, New Mexico, where he was running a registration drive among low-riders, the young Mexican-Americans who cruise the street in hopping, bopping, neon-outlined Chevys. He says, “The same poverty and racism that keeps these kids from getting credit cards keeps them from getting ID.” A young Mexicana he escorted to the polls was turned away from her first-ever attempt to vote for failure to produce an ID to the white pollworker’s satisfaction, despite Santiago’s protest.

“She said, well, something you can’t print, and refused to try again. She said, ‘They don’t want me to vote, anyway.’” (Show me more...)