Malik Rahim - Green Party congressional candidate Louisiana

Daily Greens: Democratizing the Electoral College «

Daily Greens: Democratizing the Electoral College «:

"DC Statehood Green Party leader Asa Gordon spoke at the 2008 Green Party Convention in Chicago on how he has been using litigation to work toward democratizing the Electoral College. For more information, or to get in touch with Asa Gordon, check out his web-site, with great background material at: http://www.electors.us

Related post: A press release from the national Green Party went out about Asa Gordon’s newest lawsuit last week. The blog from onthewilderside is here.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

* GreenPartytakes on Electoral College
* Green Party Protestors Fault Post for Lack of Coverage

Civilians have repeatedly been displaced by violence in DR Congo

"Congo groups 're-arming' in east
By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa editor

Civilians have repeatedly been displaced by violence in DR Congo

Government forces and rebel troops are rearming and recruiting for conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the BBC has learned.

US and European Union officials are warning the situation is increasingly tense despite a January peace deal.

One source said six plane-loads of arms and ammunition had been flown into Goma by the government in the last 10 days.

The defence minister refused to confirm or deny allegations the government was moving weapons into eastern DR Congo.

Chikez Diemu said it was an internal matter for the authorities to deal with.

Human rights groups say that tens of thousands of people have fled as the situation in the area deteriorates." Read more...

Greens launch effort against Electoral College manipulation of presidential elections

Asa Gordon, Chair DC Statehood Green Party Electoral College Task Force
Executive Director Douglass Institute of Government

• Malapportionment of Electoral College votes may lead to a Republican victory despite the popular vote, disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters, especially black voters in southern states

• Green civil action seeks to democratize the Electoral College by enforcing 14th Amendment voter protections, names Vice President Cheney as defendent

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders said today that the outcome of the 2008 presidential election may be affected by the antidemocratic apportionment of Electoral College votes, with the popular vote misrepresented by the winner-take-all system of assigning votes to electors.

"We're in danger of seeing the 2008 election stolen again, as in 2000 and 2004," said Clyde Shabazz, Green candidate for the US House in Michigan (13th District) (http://www.migreens.org). "In Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, we witnessed the obstruction and manipulation of votes by election officials and possible tampering with computer voting machines. But equally insidious is the malapportionment of Electoral College votes, which disenfranchises whole sections of the voting public."

A civil action to protect the voting rights of presidential electors and the voters they represent was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia (1:08-cv-01294) on January 28, 2008, by Asa Gordon, chair of the DC Statehood Green Party's Electoral College Task Force and executive director of the Douglass Institute of Government (http://members.aol.com/digasa/dig.htm).

The action seeks relief against the defendant, Vice President Cheney, who will preside over the tabulation of "unbound electoral states" on January 6, 2009, challenging the recognition of Electoral College votes that are apportioned by states on a winner-take-all basis.

The civil action seeks enforcement of the 'Mal-Apportionment Penalty' provided in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which mandates a reduction of a state's presidential electors and congressional representatives if "the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States... is denied... or in any way abridged."

The civil action alternatively seeks the issuance of a court order providing proportional apportionment of presidential electors.

"If two thirds of the voters in a state vote for a candidate from Party A and one third vote for a candidate from Party B, and the state's winner-take-all rule gives all of the state's electors to Party A, then one third of the voters have been disenfranchised in violation of Amendment 14, Section 2 of the US Constitution," said Jody Grage, treasurer of the Green Party. "We've witnessed in election after election how some states have used the winner-take-all formula to prevent the votes of political, ethnic, and other minorities from being counted."

Mr. Gordon noted that the civil action had the potential to "alter the fate of the 2008 presidential election in a manner different from any presidential election in the nation's history." (http://www.electors.us)

"By refusing to challenge Electoral College malapportionment in 2000 and 2004, which blocked Democratic electors from voting in those elections, the Democratic Party's leaders abandoned tens of thousands of their own voters, just as they failed to challenge the election irregularities in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004," said Mr. Gordon. "Will they fail to challenge malapportionment again in 2008, and hand the Republicans another victory? Barack Obama would not be the Democratic nominee if not for the Democratic Party's proportional assignment of primary delegates. The winner-take-all provisions in the general election present the distinct possibility that Mr. Obama in 2008 will win the popular vote by a considerably larger margin than did Gore in 2000, but will repeat the Democratic loss in the Electoral College."

Mr. Gordon said that African American voters in several southern states* that were represented by proportional assignment of delegates in the Democratic primary, and who were critical to Barack Obama's success, will be lost to Mr. Obama under the winner-take-all rules of the general election.

"If proportional assignment is considered by Democrats to be vital to democracy in their primary elections, why won't they fight for it in the general election?" asked Mr. Gordon, who led workshops for Green presidential electors during the 2008 Green National Convention (http://www.gp.org/speakers/detail.php?ID=29) (http://www.greenparty2008.org/wiki/index.php/Workshops).

As a result of the workshops, several Green electors pledged to presidential candidate (and eventual Green nominee) Cynthia McKinney agreed to institute a program for enforcement of the Reconstruction-Era provision enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

"The 'Democratize the Electoral College' program exposes the hypocrisy and fraud behind charges that the McKinney campaign might 'spoil' the Democratic presidential ticket's chances of winning. Democratic leaders should have to explain why they choose to ignore 13 additional electors from southern states that they'd gain through the Green Party's presidential electors project. Why is the Green Party fighting to give voice to Democratic voters that the Democratic Party will not fight for? Let me be clear -- we're not doing this to assist Barack Obama, but to foster real democracy and voter participation, and to offer Cynthia McKinney as the truly democratic choice for all the people," said Mr. Gordon.

Green Party leaders noted that after John Kerry quickly conceded the 2004 election, Democratic leaders failed to respond to thousands of complaints about voting irregularities in Ohio and other states. Green presidential nominee David Cobb and Libertarian nominee Michael Badnarik launched the Ohio and New Mexico recount efforts and collected the initial evidence that Republican officials had blocked the votes of many African American and young voters (http://www.iwantmyvote.com). Greens raised most of the money for the recounts. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) later held hearings and published evidence of the election theft (http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1101).

Cynthia McKinney and running mate Rosa Clemente were nominated during the 2008 Green National Convention in Chicago, July 10-13.

The Green Party's national platform endorses a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College and providing for the direct election of the president by instant runoff voting (http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/democracy.html#309649).

"Americans don't vote for President. Instead, we vote for an electoral college which was created in the late 1700s to expressly increase the power of the slave states -- and which it is still doing," said Mark Dunlea, an election law attorney with the Green Party of New York State.

* Asa Gordon's civil action observes that the Office of the Federal Register of the National Archives and Records Administration explicitly declares that "the electors in these (Southern) States (ARKANSAS -- 6 Electoral Votes, GEORGIA -- 15 Electoral Votes, LOUISIANA -- 9 Electoral Votes, TENNESSEE -- 11 Electoral Votes, TEXAS -- 34 Electoral Votes) are not bound by State Law to cast their vote for a specific candidate" (http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html).

The civil action was filed on July 28, 2008, to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the adoption of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Since the debacle of the 2000 presidential election, the Green Party in partnership with the Douglass Institute of Government has led the way in educating Americans about their constitutional "right to vote" under the provisions of 14th Amendment, Section 2.

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193
• Green candidate database for 2008 and other campaign information: http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
• Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
• Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
• Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/2008-elections

Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente 'Power to the People' Campaign for the White House http://www.runcynthiarun.org

Mal-Apportionment Penalty Civil Actions http://www.electors.us

"Greens: Enforce 14th Amendment's 'Right to Vote' Provision"
Green Party press release, October 18, 2004
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_10_18_04.html

"Greens Push for Real Electoral Reforms at Carter-Baker Hearings, June 30"
Green Party press release, June 27, 2005
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_06_27.shtml

2008 Green National Convention, July 10-13 in Chicago, Illinois http://www.greenparty2008.org

Cynthia McKinney Accepts Green Party Nomination

Cynthia McKinney Names V-P Running Mate

Rosa Clemente

On July 9, the news leaked out that Cynthia McKinney’s choice for the Green Party vice-presidential nomination is Rosa Clemente, 35, of New York. See here for more about her. Zentronix blog says that the McKinney-Clemente ticket would be the first in U.S. history of two women of color. However, in 1992, the New Alliance Party ticket was Lenora Fulani and Maria Elizabeth Munoz. Also in 1996, the Workers World Party ticket was Monica Moorhead and Gloria La Riva.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has this article about the McKinney campaign. Even though it was published on July 9, it doesn’t contain the news about Rosa Clemente. Instead it says the announcement about a vice-presidential candidate will come on July 11.

Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for the news.

http://www.ballot-access.org/2008/07/09/cynthia-mckinney-names-v-p-running-mate/

Statement by Cynthia McKinney, Power to the People Candidate for U.S. President, on the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic Party's President

(statement issued June 9, 2008)

On Saturday, June 7, 2008, Hillary Clinton announced that her 2008 presidential bid is over, making Barack Obama the first-ever Black presidential nominee of a major party in the history of the United States.

Congratulations to Senator Obama for achieving such a feat!

When I was growing up in the U.S. South in the racially turbulent 1960s, it would have been impossible for a Black politician to become a viable Presidential contender. Nothing a Black candidate could have done or said would have prevented him (or her) from being excluded on the basis of skin color alone. Many of us never thought we would see in our lifetime a Black person with a real possibility of becoming President of the United States.

The fact that this is now possible is a sign of some racial progress in this country, more than 40 years after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But it is also a sign of the deep discontent among the American people, and particularly among African Americans, with the corporate-dominated, business-as-usual politics that has prevailed in Washington for too many years.

Coming from Barack Obama, the word "change" did not appear as just another empty campaign slogan. It galvanized millions of people --mostly young people--to register to vote and to get active in the political system. The U.S. political system needs the energy and vision of all is citizens participating in the political process. Citizen participation is always the answer.

Senator Obama called for healing the wounds inflicted on working people and the poor in our country after eights years of a corrupt and criminal Bush-Cheney Administration. Just as in November 2006, people full of an expectation for change, including those the system has purposefully left out and left behind, flocked to the polls to vote for Senator Obama. Across a broad swath of the people of this country, and from those who are impacted by U.S. foreign policy, there is a real expectation, a real desire, for change.

While congratulating Senator Obama for a feat well done, I would also like to bring home the very real need for change and a few of the issues that must be addressed for the change needed in this country to be real. First of all, a few of the more obvious facts:

United for a Fair Economy (UFE) produces studies each year on the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. entitled, State of the Dream reports. UFE has found that on some indices the racial disparities that exist today are worse than at the time of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For example, infant mortality, where the overall U.S. world ranking falls below Cuba, Israel, and Canada. They also have found that, without a public policy intervention, it would take over 5,000 years to close the home ownership gap between blacks and whites in this country, especially exacerbated because of the foreclosure crisis disproportionately facing Blacks and Latinos today. They have found that it would take 581 years, without a public policy intervention, to close the racial gap in income in this country. UFE has found unacceptable racial disparities extant on economic, justice, and security issues. After analyzing the impact of the Democratic Party's "First 100 Hours" agenda upon taking the Congressional majority, UFE concluded in its 2007 report that Blacks vote in the Blue (meaning, they support Democrats in the voting booth), but live in the Red (they do not get the public policy results that those votes merit). And UFE noted that Hurricane Katrina was not even mentioned at all in the Congressional Democratic majority's 2007 First 100 hours agenda.

United for a Fair Economy is not the only organization to find such dismal statistics, reflecting life for far too many in this country. In a study not too long ago, Dr. David Satcher found that over 83,000 blacks died unnecessarily, due to racial disparities in access to health care and because of the disparate treatment blacks receive after access. A Hull House study found that the racial disparity in the quality of life of black Chicagoans and white Chicagoans would take 200 years to be eliminated without a public policy intervention. The National Urban League in its annual "State of Black America" publication basically concludes that the United States has not done enough to close long-existing and unacceptable racial disparities. The United Nations Rapporteur for Special Forms of Racism, Mr. Doudou Diene of Senegal, just left this country in an unprecedented fact-finding mission to monitor human rights violations in the United States. Dr. Jared Ball submitted to Diene on my behalf, my statement after the Sean Bell police verdict. The United Nations has already cited its concern for the treatment of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita survivors and the extrajudicial killings taking place across our country, that especially target Black and Latino males, and especially at the hands of law enforcement authorities.

I hope it is clear that the desire for change is so deeply felt because it is deeply needed. Politics, through public policy, can address all these issues and more in the favor of the people. We do not have to accept or tolerate such glaring disparities in our society. We do not have to accept or tolerate bloated Pentagon spending, unfair tax cuts, attacks on our civil liberties, and on workers' rights to unionize. We don't have to accept or tolerate our children dropping out of high school, college education unreachable because tuition is so high, or our country steeped in debt.

The 21st Century statistics for our country reflect a country that can still be characterized as Dr. King did so many years ago: the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet.

It doesn't have to be that way. And the people know it.

I have accepted as the platform of the Power to the People Campaign, the 10-Point Draft Manifesto of the Reconstruction Movement, a grouping of Black activists who came together in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to advocate for public policy initiatives that address the plight of Blacks and other oppressed peoples in this country.

Among its many specific public policy planks, the Draft Manifesto calls for:

* election integrity, if our vote is to mean anything at all, all political parties must defend the integrity of the votes cast by the American people, something neither of the major parties has done effectively in the past two Presidential elections;

* funding a massive infrastructure improvement program that is also a jobs program that greens our economy and puts people to work, and especially in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Hurricane survivors, treated as internally displaced persons whose right to vote and right of return are protected, play a meaningful role in the rebuilding of their communities;

* recognizing affordable housing as a fundamental human right, and putting a halt to the senseless destruction of public housing in New Orleans;

* enacting Reparations for African Americans, so that the enduring racial disparities which reflect the U.S. government's failure to address the reality and the vestiges of slavery and unjust laws enacted can be ended and recognition of the plight of Black Farmers whose issues are still not being adequately addressed by USDA and court-appointed mediators despite a US government admission of guilt for systematic discrimination;

* acknowledging COINTELPRO and other government spying and destabilization programs from the 1960s to today and disclosing the role of the US government in the harassment and false imprisonment of political activists in this country, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, the San Francisco 8, Leonard Peltier, including restitution to victims of government abuse and their families for the suffering they have long endured;

* ending prisons for profit and the "war on drugs," which fuels the criminalization of Black and Latino youth at home and provides cover for U.S. military intervention in foreign countries, particularly to our south, which is used to put down all social protest movements in countries like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and elsewhere;

* creating a universal access, single-payer, health care system and enacting a livable wage, equal pay for equal work, repealing the Bush tax cuts, and making corporations and the rich pay their fair share of taxes;

* establishing public funding for higher education--no student should graduate from college or university tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt;

* ensuring workers' rights by 1) repealing Taft-Hartley to stop the unjust firing of union organizers, ban scabbing, and enable workers to exercise their voices at work and 2) enacting laws for U.S. corporations that keep labor standards high at home and raise them abroad, which would require the repeal of NAFTA, CAFTA, the Caribbean FTA, and the U.S.-Peru FTA;

* justice for immigrant workers, including real immigration reform that provides amnesty for all undocumented immigrants;

* creating a Department of Peace that would put forward projects for peace all over the world, deploying our diplomats to help resolve conflicts through peaceful means and overseeing the orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from the more than 100 countries around the world where they are stationed, and an immediate end to all wars and occupations by U.S. forces, beginning in Iraq and Afghanistan, and slashing the budget for the Pentagon.

The Power to the People Campaign has visited 24 states and I believe there is already broad support across our country for these policy positions. The people deserve an open and honest debate on these issues and more. I encourage the Democratic Party and its new presumptive nominee, Senator Obama, to embrace these important suggestions for policy initiatives.

--

"And advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses, p. 60

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

-- Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time

Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention

Register Today!

As you all know, the 2008 Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention is coming to Chicago, July 10-13. This year's event is shaping up to be one of the best events of the year. Please visit http://www.greenparty2008.org/ for all of the information related to the convention, including registration and the link to reserve your room at the headquarter hotel, the Palmer House Hilton. Staying at the Palmer House is a very important aspect of this convention, as the party needs to fill its allocated rooms to get the best rates onspace, and most of the convention activities across the weekend will be at the hotel.

The nomination vote will take place on Saturday, July 12 at the Symphony Center. As part of the Nominating Convention day, the Green Party will host keynote speeches from Malik Rahim, Kathy Kelly, and Cliff Thornton.

Malik Rahim is a long-time community activist from New Orleans, a former Black Panther, and in the last election was the Green Party candidate for Mayor of New Orleans. Malik co-founded the Common Ground Collective/Relief, an organization that provides short term relief to victims of hurricane disasters in the Gulf region. Please visit http://www.commongroundrelief.org/ for more information.

Kathy Kelly Is a familiar name to many Greens. Kathy co-founded Voices in the Wilderness in 1996, an organization that worked to end the sanctions on Iraq. She has visited Iraq and other locations in the Middle East on several occasions. Voices in the Wilderness has since become Voices for Creative Non-Violence, and you can read more about Kathy's recent work at http://www.vcnv.org/.

Cliff Thornton Jr. is a long-time social justice activist who has done much work on drug policy reform, recently receiving the Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action from the Drug Policy Alliance. Cliff was the Green Party's candidate for Governor of Connecticut in 2006, and is currently co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. Read more about Cliff's organization Efficacy, Inc. at http://www.efficacy-online.org/.

Numerous workshops will be held across the days of the convention, with expert activists from across the country discussing an array of issues, including foreign policy (especially Iran and the Middle East), immigrant rights, GLBTIQ rights, campaign school workshops, and much more. Attendees will have the ability for much education and continued learning.

The national Green Party's Annual National Meeting Committee and the Illinois Green Party's convention host committee urge you to register as soon as you can and to reserve your room at the Palmer House Hilton. It is most financially helpful to the party to have the attendees staying at the Palmer House, our headquarter hotel. Downtown Chicago is an epicenter of activity, especially in the summer months. With Grant Park and the magnificent Lake Michigan only a couple of blocks away the location is awesome. Attendees are encouraged to come early or stay longer to see the attractions that Chicago has to offer, and to visit the neighborhoods where Green Party activity has been steadily increasing for years.

More speakers, workshops, and events will be announced in upcoming weeks. Also visit http://www.greenparty2008.org/ for new information as it becomes available, as well as for registration, room reservation, and other general questions.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you in July.

Green Party of the United States Annual National Meeting Committee
Illinois Green Party Convention Host Committee



Email: office@gp.org
Office: PO Box 57065 Washington, D.C. 20037 202-319-7191 or toll-free (US): 866-41GREEN

Letter From Elaine Brown, Former Chair of the Black Panther Party

My dear Sisters and Brothers,

Help us FREE CHIP FITZGERALD! Chip has been in prison for over 38 years now! He will go before the California Board of Parole Hearings on July 2, 2008.

Chip was a member of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1969 when he was shot and wounded by police.—This was the year the FBI pledged to wipe out the Party, the year the Party’s L.A. office was assaulted for over five hours by several hundred members of the LAPD’s new SWAT Team, the year so many Party members were killed by police, including Walter Touré Pope and Fred Hampton.—Over a week later, Chip was arrested and charged with assault on police and the murder of a security guard. He was sentenced to death. When the death penalty was outlawed in California, his sentence was commuted to life with the possibility of parole.

Chip continues to believe in the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed people, and, despite the hardship of all these years of incarceration, heroically recognizes that his captivity is the result of his dedication and commitment to that struggle, a result we welcomed when we dedicated our lives to the Party and the Struggle.

On behalf of the Committee to Free Chip Fitzgerald, I’m asking you to sign our online Petition to the California Board of Parole Hearings advocating for Chip’s parole. The Petition can be easily accessed on our website: www.freechip.org. And, I’m asking you to pass it on, send out this email to every single person and organization you know, to all your email lists, urging everyone to sign the Petition and pass it on to their contacts! We want 100,000 signatures by June 30, 2008!

With love for the People,

Elaine Brown