Sunday, August 22, 2010

GOP call ballot access effort fraud. They lie.

In an email by Victor Stabile, a Republican County Chair, he uses the word, "fraud." The loop size on a signature, the use of a middle initial, an brief of a townships such as Pgh instead of Pittsburgh, and other wingnut claims is not real world fraud.

From different sources:

If that name, Victor Stabile, is familiar, he was the person behind the effort to keep Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr of the ballot by, in essence, saying the LPPA can't substitute candidates from what's on the ballot access petitions. I can't vouch for the origin of the email below, but if it's really from Stabile, it's certainly in-character. Mark

PS -- Tell me again, what's the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats?--

Subject: Great News From: "Stabile, Victor P. (HB)"Date: Tue, August 17, 2010 2:33 pm To: "Stabile, Victor P. (HB)

"Dear Friends: I am very pleased to report to you that challenges to the Green, Tea Party, and Libertarian candidates for state-wide office have been successful and these third party candidates will not be appearing on the November 2010 ballot.

If you recall, I sent you last week an article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review which blew the whistle on the Onorato campaign for staging a Tea Party candidate backed by Onorato's union friends in Philadelphia to run for Governor under the Tea Party label. We can now say it did not succeed.

I would be remiss in not recognizing the fantastic organizational job and resources devoted by our Republican State Committee through Luke Bernstein and his staff to organizing the challenges to these third party candidates. I also would like to recognize the number of counsel, including RSC Counsel Lawrence Tabas, Ron Hicks, Dauphin Chair John McNally, and, who like yours truly, devoted many hours and legal ability since last week to working in the Commonwealth Court to document the rampant abuse in these petitions. Voters do not get disenfranchised when fraud is uncovered. Unfortunately, this seems to be the process we are left with to deal with these situations until this type of impropriety is prosecuted.

OK, now that this is done, time to get out and elect our Republican candidates! All my best.

Victor P. Stabile, Chairman, Cumberland County Republican Committee

Another voice gives another opinion.
Un-American Republican and Democratic Cowards Steal Your Right to Vote
Posted by: "Regan Straley"reganstraley@yahoo.com

"Wisdom begins with calling a thing by its proper name."- Ancient Chinese Proverb

Un-American Republican and Democratic Cowards Steal Your Right to Vote for the Candidate of Your Choice . . . Again

Pennsylvania' s Electoral System is a National Disgrace which Demands Your Immediate Attention.

As of today, it appears that the rapacious two-headed beast known as the Demopublican party--which never tires of hoovering the livelihoods out of your paychecks and pensions and giving it to war-profiteering, bonus-addicted corporate executives who pocket most of the pillage and toss the pesky spare change out into clamoring throngs of starving Third World slave laborers--will once again be successful in making sure that you have no real options in the upcoming Fall elections.

Principled third-party and independent political candidates for statewide office in Pennsylvania were required this year to obtain 19,082 petition signatures from registered voters in order to appear on November's ballot alongside the soulless Republicrat sell-outs who are allowed on with a mere 2,000 signatures. Due to some anomalous twist in the cosmic wormhole which should keep Stephen Hawking busy for decades, they were all able to do it.

Early on the morning of Monday, August 9, a cadre of delusional young Doc Marten-wearing Republican and Democratic lackeys who think they will somehow be spared the consequences of their bosses' corruption, bloody froth oozing from their fanged pie holes and briefcases full of "legal" documents handcuffed to their quivering, alcohol-soaked wrists, could be seen camped out on the portico of the Pennsylvania Department of State eagerly awaiting their opportunity to deny your right to fair and free elections. Within hours, sleep-deprived but determined representatives from the state's Libertarian, Tea, and Green Parties would ascend the steps proudly carrying more than the requisite number of signatures needed to qualify their gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidates, only to be met by a zombified cabal of recent Political Science graduates armed in all their ass-kissing Establishment glory with reams of superficial objections and inane technicalities.

Competition- averse, pseudo-conservative Republicans like our next unscrupulous governor, Tom Corbett, and U.S. Senate wannabe Pat Toomey have all but ensured that you won't be given the opportunity to vote for any Libertarian or Tea Party alternatives. The delicate little schoolgirls on the Democratic side who are afraid of a challenge, executive-mansion mongerer Dan Onorato and the phoney "outsider" lusting after the Senate meal ticket, Joe Sestak, have reduced their Green Party opposition to Mickey Mouse status and left progressives with nowhere to turn for real participatory democracy, sustainable economics, equitable healthcare distribution, or ecological sanity.

"Keeping candidates off the ballot is as bad, if not worse, than denying one the right to vote," said Lou Jasikoff, Chair for the Northeast Pennsylvania Libertarian Party. "Currently we have men and women dying in Iraq and Afghanistan to ensure free and open elections there and yet both the Democrat and Republican parties found it necessary – even in light of 'bonusgate' – to choke off access to the ballot and to give citizens less choice."

"We submitted over 19,000 signatures as required by law," said Mel Packer, derailed Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate, "an accomplishment of major proportions for a grassroots campaign such as ours. Sestak is showing his cowardice with this challenge. Instead of competing with me in the marketplace of ideas, he's simply kicking me off the ballot.

"In 2004 and 2006 respectively, Pennsylvania' s well-greased Democratic machine successfully pulled this same un-American stunt on Ralph Nader's presidential campaign and Green Party U.S. Senate hopeful Carl Romanelli. The Democrats' concerted effort to restrict Green Party ballot access has since mushroomed into what we now refer to as "Bonusgate," in which Democratic officials have been caught red-handed using state employees on state time to comb relentlessly through Green Party petitions looking for names they can present to politically- appointed judges as possibly invalid, all on your dime.

Despite the recent convictions of former Democratic State Representative Mike Veon and a number of state Democratic staffers--as well as the promise of future convictions against former Democratic House Speaker Bill DeWeese and top aides-- Nader and Romanelli remain on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees they've been ordered to pay to the Democrats' shysters for their hard work in trashing the right of Pennsylvanians to vote for the candidate of their choice. The working-class Romanelli alone is in the hole for $80,000 and is in danger of bankruptcy, all because he had the unmitigated gall to run for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania as something other than a Democrat or Republican.

Folks, I know you're busy trying to feed your families and pay your mortgages, and I know this can all be pretty confusing and difficult to comprehend at times, but if you have any interest at all in correcting the state's and the nation's nosedive into a bottomless morass of economic depression, government corruption, and never-ending illegal militarism, you really need to awaken from your corporate-induced stupors and start paying attention.

As for Libertarians, Greens, and Tea Partiers, please consider anew my tired and oft-repeated mantra to at least temporarily bridge the vast philosophical wastelands between you, pool all available resources, and slay the corporate dragon of Demopublicanism. A Coalition of the Sick and Goddamned Tired, if you will.

Only after thatwill real debate be possible.

Regan Straley  http://libyahill.blogspot.com/
I am on the side of Regan, not Jim Roddey and not Wayne Fontana, D, PA Senate district 42, who used his bonusgate efforts to run without any opposition in 2006.

http://fixpa.wikia.com/wiki/Fontana_Folly_and_Bonusgate_Proof_to_queer_election_in_2006

1 comment:

e b bortz said...

Thanks Mark for posting this. Let me send along a link to an article I wrote recently on PA's Elaborate Scheme against Free and Fair Elections:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/50946

Also, people might want to contact their state legislators in support of the Voter's Choice Act, Pennsylvania SB-252.

for democracy & voting rights,

Ed Bortz
Green Party candidate for U.S. Congress, District 14
(on the Nov ballot)