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"After the 2000 election, partisanship in the office accelerated. It has skewed enough elections since then that a sufficient number of Americans should be concerned," he said. "We are worse than many third world countries" in holding fair and nonpartisan elections.
And now there is a quiet, below-the-radar but major effort to target secretary of state offices in order to influence the outcome of upcoming elections.
Since 2006 the Democracy Alliance, a left leaning influence group funded by George Soros among others, has had remarkable success in targeting and claiming Secretary of State's offices in 11 of 13 critical states they targeted, including Ohio, Minnesota and Iowa.
Called the Secretary of State Project (SOSP) its aim is to target and capture the obscure, often overlooked office and implement election rules changes that give democrats a better chance of winning a plurality. Among those changes that SOSP calls "election protection," are a loosening of voter registration requirements and a lessening of efforts to prevent fraudulent voting, according to Matthew Vadum, a political analyst with the Capitol Research Center.
'The thing that is amazing is that they can get the office for as little $100,000 in campaign funding because no one pays attention to it, and they get to control election opportunities in a state. It is cheap," Vadum said.
He said SOSP is currently targeting three states in the 2010 election: California, Michigan and Minnesota. In total they count for 82 electoral votes.
Vadum says that because of chaos and demoralization the Republican Party has not formulated a response to the SOSP or tried to match their efforts.
Perhaps nowhere is the impact of the new influence of the Secretary of State had a more profound than in Minnesota, where Mark Richie defeated incumbent Republican Secretary of Sate Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006.
Ritchie, a former community organizer, said at his inauguration that he owed his upset victory to the Secretary of State project.
According to Kiffmeyer, as soon as Ritchie took office he began dismantling much of the framework that had been assembled to ensure honest voting in the state. It was that loosening of election controls, she argues, that lead to the eight month standoff between incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken in what was one of the closest Senate race ever.
Kiffmeyer is "absolutely sure" that Ritchie's efforts to eliminate voting regulations ensured Franken's victory.
"The first thing he did when he got into office was to dismantle the ballot reconciliation program we started. Under that program districts are required to check that the number of ballots issued by matching them with the number of ballots cast," she said, "that way we know immediately that the vote count is accurate."
But that isn't what happened, she said. We now have 17,000 more ballots cast than there are voters who voted and no way to determine what went wrong. Why anyone would eliminate that basic check, I don't know," she said.
Months after the election was finally settled, two activist/ computer experts have pieced together the consequences of what they say was the loosening of the rules.
In a telephone interview from Minneapolis, Dan McGrath and Jeff Davis, who have formed a small research-watchdog group called the Minnesota Majority, say that their computer assisted-examination of the voting records from the 2008 election show that Al Franken's 312 vote margin of victory can be attributed to Ritchie's dismantling election rules. Specifically they charge that Franken's victory can be attributed entirely to illegally cast votes by convicted felons.
"We used an algorithm that cross-checked voting records against criminal records using first name, last name and date of birth and found that 1400 convicted felons had voted illegally in Minnesota," Jeff Davis explained. "Most of those came from Ramsey and Hannifin counties (i.e. Minneapolis)," he said explaining that they were heavily Democratic strongholds and, by almost any measure, would have been predominantly Democratic votes.
The two said they had forwarded 460 names of felons who records show voted in the last election to the Ramsey County prosecutor's office.
Paul Gustafson, spokesman for the Ramsey county prosecutor's office, said that the office was looking into the claims. "To date 26 felons have been charged with vote fraud and investigations were continuing in 186 cases submitted by the group," he said. He also said that 243 cases had been determined to be unfounded.
"These cases can be time consuming and difficult," Gustafson said, "because felons often don't stay at the same address and can be hard to find."
McGrath said he was surprised at the number of "unfounded" cases and wondered if politics might have played a part in the outcomes. "The prosecutor is running for governor and may not want to look too closely at the figures," he said.
Mark Aiken, spokesman for Ritchie's office declined comment on the voting discrepancies and the SOSP involvement in the state.
Is everything and everyone involved in politics corrupt? My faith in the system diminishes on a daily basis.
"After the 2000 election, partisanship in the office accelerated. It has skewed enough elections since then that a sufficient number of Americans should be concerned," he said. "We are worse than many third world countries" in holding fair and nonpartisan elections.
And now there is a quiet, below-the-radar but major effort to target secretary of state offices in order to influence the outcome of upcoming elections.
Since 2006 the Democracy Alliance, a left leaning influence group funded by George Soros among others, has had remarkable success in targeting and claiming Secretary of State's offices in 11 of 13 critical states they targeted, including Ohio, Minnesota and Iowa.
Called the Secretary of State Project (SOSP) its aim is to target and capture the obscure, often overlooked office and implement election rules changes that give democrats a better chance of winning a plurality. Among those changes that SOSP calls "election protection," are a loosening of voter registration requirements and a lessening of efforts to prevent fraudulent voting, according to Matthew Vadum, a political analyst with the Capitol Research Center.
'The thing that is amazing is that they can get the office for as little $100,000 in campaign funding because no one pays attention to it, and they get to control election opportunities in a state. It is cheap," Vadum said.
He said SOSP is currently targeting three states in the 2010 election: California, Michigan and Minnesota. In total they count for 82 electoral votes.
Vadum says that because of chaos and demoralization the Republican Party has not formulated a response to the SOSP or tried to match their efforts.
Perhaps nowhere is the impact of the new influence of the Secretary of State had a more profound than in Minnesota, where Mark Richie defeated incumbent Republican Secretary of Sate Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006.
Ritchie, a former community organizer, said at his inauguration that he owed his upset victory to the Secretary of State project.
According to Kiffmeyer, as soon as Ritchie took office he began dismantling much of the framework that had been assembled to ensure honest voting in the state. It was that loosening of election controls, she argues, that lead to the eight month standoff between incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken in what was one of the closest Senate race ever.
Kiffmeyer is "absolutely sure" that Ritchie's efforts to eliminate voting regulations ensured Franken's victory.
"The first thing he did when he got into office was to dismantle the ballot reconciliation program we started. Under that program districts are required to check that the number of ballots issued by matching them with the number of ballots cast," she said, "that way we know immediately that the vote count is accurate."
But that isn't what happened, she said. We now have 17,000 more ballots cast than there are voters who voted and no way to determine what went wrong. Why anyone would eliminate that basic check, I don't know," she said.
Months after the election was finally settled, two activist/ computer experts have pieced together the consequences of what they say was the loosening of the rules.
In a telephone interview from Minneapolis, Dan McGrath and Jeff Davis, who have formed a small research-watchdog group called the Minnesota Majority, say that their computer assisted-examination of the voting records from the 2008 election show that Al Franken's 312 vote margin of victory can be attributed to Ritchie's dismantling election rules. Specifically they charge that Franken's victory can be attributed entirely to illegally cast votes by convicted felons.
"We used an algorithm that cross-checked voting records against criminal records using first name, last name and date of birth and found that 1400 convicted felons had voted illegally in Minnesota," Jeff Davis explained. "Most of those came from Ramsey and Hannifin counties (i.e. Minneapolis)," he said explaining that they were heavily Democratic strongholds and, by almost any measure, would have been predominantly Democratic votes.
The two said they had forwarded 460 names of felons who records show voted in the last election to the Ramsey County prosecutor's office.
Paul Gustafson, spokesman for the Ramsey county prosecutor's office, said that the office was looking into the claims. "To date 26 felons have been charged with vote fraud and investigations were continuing in 186 cases submitted by the group," he said. He also said that 243 cases had been determined to be unfounded.
"These cases can be time consuming and difficult," Gustafson said, "because felons often don't stay at the same address and can be hard to find."
McGrath said he was surprised at the number of "unfounded" cases and wondered if politics might have played a part in the outcomes. "The prosecutor is running for governor and may not want to look too closely at the figures," he said.
Mark Aiken, spokesman for Ritchie's office declined comment on the voting discrepancies and the SOSP involvement in the state.
FOXNews.com - States' Secretaries of State Are Tipping Balance of Power
I didn't quote the Al Franken bit because he was a Dem, I quoted it because it was the most recent. But you'd rather blather about me being a partisan hack. What an idiot.
Pssst . . . did you note my comment before the article? Please point out where I said 'Dem'. It's wrong regardless of which side does it, hence my sentence 'my faith in the system diminishes on a daily basis'. Guess you missed that. And you call me a hack.
I didn't quote the Al Franken bit because he was a Dem, I quoted it because it was the most recent. But you'd rather blather about me being a partisan hack. What an idiot.
Pssst . . . did you note my comment before the article? Please point out where I said 'Dem'. It's wrong regardless of which side does it, hence my sentence 'my faith in the system diminishes on a daily basis'. Guess you missed that. And you call me a hack.
I didn't miss anything. You cherry-picked, which made it appear that this group of individuals got going on limiting the powers of secretaries of state only because of perceived manipulation by Democrats (even, gasp, the allegation that George Soros was involved).
I didn't quote the Al Franken bit because he was a Dem, I quoted it because it was the most recent. But you'd rather blather about me being a partisan hack. What an idiot.
Pssst . . . did you note my comment before the article? Please point out where I said 'Dem'. It's wrong regardless of which side does it, hence my sentence 'my faith in the system diminishes on a daily basis'. Guess you missed that. And you call me a hack.
I didn't miss anything. You cherry-picked, which made it appear that this group of individuals got going on limiting the powers of secretaries of state only because of perceived manipulation by Democrats (even, gasp, the allegation that George Soros was involved).
thanks for staightening that out---I feel much better knowing that everyone does it.
I didn't miss anything. You cherry-picked, which made it appear that this group of individuals got going on limiting the powers of secretaries of state only because of perceived manipulation by Democrats (even, gasp, the allegation that George Soros was involved).
thanks for staightening that out---I feel much better knowing that everyone does it.
our secretary of state sent reid a letter saying brown had won the election even though it takes 10 days to certify it. brown will be sworn in on 2/11.
nikke tsongas won a special election in 2007. galvin sent the same leterr, and she was sorn in within 48 hours.
did i mention tsongas is a democrat?
thanks for staightening that out---I feel much better knowing that everyone does it.
our secretary of state sent reid a letter saying brown had won the election even though it takes 10 days to certify it. brown will be sworn in on 2/11.
nikke tsongas won a special election in 2007. galvin sent the same leterr, and she was sorn in within 48 hours.
did i mention tsongas is a democrat?
how long did it take them to certify Franken?
I didn't quote the Al Franken bit because he was a Dem, I quoted it because it was the most recent. But you'd rather blather about me being a partisan hack. What an idiot.
Pssst . . . did you note my comment before the article? Please point out where I said 'Dem'. It's wrong regardless of which side does it, hence my sentence 'my faith in the system diminishes on a daily basis'. Guess you missed that. And you call me a hack.
I didn't miss anything. You cherry-picked, which made it appear that this group of individuals got going on limiting the powers of secretaries of state only because of perceived manipulation by Democrats (even, gasp, the allegation that George Soros was involved).
and why did it take Franken so long to be certified?
Actually, Ken Black rejected democratic voter registrations suddenly purporting to enforce a regulation concerning the weight of the paper. Also failed to deliver sufficient numbers of voting machines to dem districts in Ohio during the 2004 election so that in dem districts people were standing in line up to 10 hours.
And Katherine Harris (who also happened to head baby bush's florida campaign) manipulated the Florida election in 2000...
and why did it take Franken so long to be certified?
More fake outrage from the right.
S'matter, fauxnews is complaining because maybe their repub secy's of state won't be able to manipulate the system any more?
And honestly, I'm getting very bored of them takling about George Soros... but look who it IS who's talking about Soros... RUPERT MURDOCH's fauxnews. (how many media outlets does newscorp own again???)
and why did it take Franken so long to be certified?
The results were contested because of how close it was.
