Fact-esque: Move the HAVA Deadline Blogswarm Roll Call

DONATE TO the Coaltion for Voting Integrity .... NOW!

In an act of the purest optimism I am going to start the official count of blogs participating in the first post-Alito blogswarm. This one happens to be about a little thing I like to call Our Franchise, how we've lost it and how we're going to get it back.

So far the following blogs have thrown their full support behind the Fitzpatrick Amendment and the Coalition for Voting Integrity, which proposed the legislation to the Congressman. The bill will move the HAVA deadline past the 2006 primaries. It's a very small step but it establishes precedent and it will allow some counties who are struggling to do the right thing (get a voter-verified paper ballot) some extra time to see if they can do it.

While you're here, please donate to the Coaltion for Voting Integrity, which is the nonpartisan citizens' group that got this legislation going in the first place. We have legal bills related to a lawsuit we've brought against PA over inconsistent certification standards, which is another big issue in this whole HAVA mess. You can donate here.

Bloggers who want your vote to count:

Two-time Koufax nominee, The Newsrack Blog
Triple Koufax nominee, The Fat Lady Sings
Koufax nominee, Doghouse Riley
Koufax nominee and fellow Pennsylvaniac, PSOTD
Super-activist, Philly photoblogger, Koufax nominee and Pennacchio campaign volunteer, Albert Yee
Super-blogger extraordinaire, Elayne Riggs
Roxanne, thorn in the side of our favorite crazy racist shrew
Welcome the Daily ....PEPPER, who reminds us that millions of Americans are upset about unverifiable electronic voting.
Koufax-nominee Dadahead, who got some wacky comments.
LeMew!
Unfogged (excellent name for a blog) swarmed.
Avedon Carol, who is bringing in some Daou Report traffic too, supports a verfied vote.
Pavlov Chien, who weighs in in defense of "state-of-the-art non-verifiable voting" and makes a good case if you're on the wrong side of polling numbers. I would also add that non-verifiable voting makes it easier to get through the daily grind. All that worrying about participating in democracy is stressful.

Parakeet_1

That's better.

I'm very grateful to all those who participated. If you're a blogger who missed the boat, don't despair - we'll be fighting to regain the vote tomorrow too.

Please call your members of Congress today and every day until we get this amendment passed. And then call until we have voter-verified paper ballots and proper auditing nationwide. Then you can rest and enjoy knowing that the person we elected is the person who will take office instead of what we've been enduring for the last five, long, long, terrible years.

Zinn

"[O]ur time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."

The Reverend Al Sharpton

Ray wasn't singing about what he knew, 'cause Ray had been blind since he was a child. He hadn't seen many purple mountains. He hadn't seen many fruited plains. He was singing about what he believed to be.

Mr. President, we love America, not because of all of us have seen the beauty all the time.

But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.

Marx

''With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent will produce eagerness, 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime which it will not scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.''

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