Big changes in a few days for public financing advocate Just $6

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From: Just $6

Change is coming to Just Six Dollars

In the spirit of sweeping change ushered in by the recent elections, we want to give you a preview of some truly exciting and groundbreaking changes that will be coming to Just $6 in the next few days.

Thanks to your support, our work in building and consolidating a broad-based movement behind public funding has paid off. Now - with a new president committed to our cause, a new Congress and a newly energized public - the time is ripe to turn the promise of public funding into reality.

That means we have to have bigger, stronger platform capable of promoting a new kind of campaign finance, with masses of small citizen donors at its core.

To meet these challenges, Just $6 will be changing and growing, too. In just a few days, Just $6 will become You Street -- a powerful new communications initiative that will bring the public into public funding in ways we have never done before. For a YouTube video preview of You Street, please click here.

When you've seen the video, we'd love your feedback - please take a moment to post a comment on YouTube. If you like what you see, please help us spread the word. Tell your friends about it, and make a donation to help us keep building our web presence and growing our movement.

Be on the lookout for another major announcement from us in the coming days. As a supporter of public funding, we know you'll be as excited as we are. Stay tuned!




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New congressional earmarks database from LegiStorm

Image by Phillip Ritz via FlickrGovernment reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: LegiStorm

LegiStorm launches earmarks database

We are proud to launch the latest free LegiStorm resource, a free searchable database to track the explosive growth of legislative earmarks.

The earmarks database builds on other LegiStorm data so users can find important connections between otherwise unconnected facts, such as between earmarks and the corporate-sponsored travel or personal financial holdings of members of Congress and their staff.

"Earmarks have been at the center of several congressional scandals in the past few years, and openness in the process can help combat potential abuses of the earmark system," said Jock Friedly, a former Capitol Hill investigative reporter who is the founder and president of LegiStorm. "LegiStorm is proud to integrate earmarks data with our other data sets in order to bring deeper insight and increased transparency to congressional and executive spending."

LegiStorm's official press release is available here.

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Tell your congress members you want honesty in the titles of their bills

A US House committee in session.
Image via WikipediaThis is not an earth-shattering proposition. It won't put a major dent in our national debt. It won't create millions of high-wage jobs. However, it is an improvement in the ethical culture of Capitol Hill. And that would be a very pervasive influence on its legislation.

We are all familiar with the some-time double-talk of the Bush administration. For example, they are fast-tracking the opening up of land to shale oil drilling. Its high environmental costs and heavy use of water are well known. However, the Bush administration, instead of acknowledging the costs involved in shale oil drilling, is only concerned with conducting a public relations spin campaign about their self-informed political decision.

One move to eliminate this double-talk from our own representatives is to reform the naming of bills in congress. Who wouldn't want to vote for the "Peace and prosperity 2008" bill? Or how about the "Environment Recovery Act". Let us title our bills with accurate descriptions of the action involved, instead. Then, an honest debate of these bills will bring all sides of their issues to light for negotiation.

If you feel the same way about abusive double-talk of government initiatives, send a message to your two US Senators and your Representative. Tell them you want honesty and transparency in their communications about important bills, not slick public relations gimmicks that avoid healthy debate.


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Send President-Elect Obama's transition team your change ideas for the next four years

President-Elect Barack Obama's transition to the White House is well underway. His web site www.change.gov has the latest information. It is also a place where any citizen can tell Obama what changes he/she would like to see in America in the next four years.

During his historic presidential campaign, Obama used the latest internet technology to get his grassroots supporters very active online. Now, his open government leadership is in view with his citizen's message initiative. To send your own thoughts to an Obama administration in transition, please go to An American Moment.


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Defining 'reform' for today's government

The term 'reform' has been as of a very large and open tent in the current language of politics. All Things Reform is an aggregation of most government reform groups in the USA. We follow their action alerts, newsletters, databases and blog posts; our political calendar covers their events and awards presented throughout the year.

To encapsulate the definition of 'reform' in the political sense, we follow a technique of our teachers and professors by breaking up 'reform' into a defining term for each of the word's letters:

Ready
Ethically
For
Orderly
Reconstruction
Matters

'Reform' has been used to define political movements, techniques, attitudes and parties for hundreds of years. All Things Reform refers to today's movement of government reform issues as represented by electoral, campaign finance, ethical and fiscal watchdogs and public interest groups. May 'reform' carry on its activist, powerful message of 'ready ethically for orderly reconstruction matters' for a better government, from the local to the federal level.


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Tell your congress members to return Election Day to voter-verified ballots

Image via WikipediaThis voting season leading up to General Election Day (and beyond in some districts) has been a success. No major breakdowns. That is, you can only assume so, as most of the voting machines used does not produce a voter-verified ballot. So was it a success? We shall never know.

As a result of the ballot-counting problems during the 2000 presidential elections, electronic voting machines replaced the old punch card ballot machines across the US. Now, most voter machines cannot verify whether they calculate correctly the vote totals.

Trust in government relies on the transparency with the voters of ballot counts. Only machines using voter-verified ballots qualifies for this solution. The paper ballot- though not high tech- is nevertheless a hard record of each vote that can be counted before the public.

The federal government in Washington, DC has the power to reform our voting systems across the country. Tell your US Rep. and two US Senators to write and pass a bill mandating the use of voter-verified ballot machines, and renew trust to a greater level between we, the people and our elected representatives. Additional information on this campaign for the 2010 elections can be found at www.PaperBallot.info.


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Contact your congress members to pass a bill for Washington DC full representation

Public Citizen rights under Creative Commons

According to Public Citizen's Citizen Vox post, "D.C. residents can die in combat but have no say in Congress", the outlook for getting voting representation for Washington, DC citizens has nevertheless recently improved. President-Elect Obama has already pledged his support for congressional representation for Washington, DC residents. Now, we the people from all across the country must see that a bill passes both houses of congress and reaches his desk for its final signature.

Poignantly, Veteran's Day was the date of a public rally for DC voting rights; residents of Washington, DC have fought and died in defense of this great nation. DC residents are citizens of the USA; they pay their federal taxes and have all of the rights of every other citizen in this country, except having their own full representative in Congress.

Let's send to President Obama's desk a bill that will have passed both the US House and US Senate. The political environment is particularly ripe for this after the recent federal election changes in power. For passage of DC Representation please contact your congress members and let them know the time is right for 'taxation with representation'!


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Tell your congress members: public financing of elections is a proven winning technique for financing campaigns across the USA

The President delivers the Annual State
of the Union Address in the House
chamber.
Image via WikipediaThe Brennan Center for Justice article, "Also a Winner: Public Funding" gives overdue accolades to public funding and its success this past election season. Several states use clean elections in their legislatures and statewide offices; several cities also use it. There is now a documented and statistical history of this system of financing candidate campaigns; it resoundingly proves public financing's early proponents.

The US Congress now has plenty of case studies of recent successful elections to bring change to its campaign finance system to clean elections. The candidates have loved it- they have enjoyed much more interaction with voters. The constituents have loved it- they have enjoyed much more trust in government decision-making. Public financing of elections has been and will continue to be a win-win situation for honest and accountable government, and for we, the people. Let your own congress members know of the established benefits of changing over to clean elections today!


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President-Elect Obama is much more a 'reformer' than a 'progressive'

Image via WikipediaWe congratulate Barack Obama on his campaign victory for US President. In Washington terms, many consider him, while of course a Democrat, of being a 'reformer'. Democratic 'progressives' promote some government reforms, but I haven't heard that label put on Obama very much.

President-Elect Obama acted as a candidate and as US Senator against several key 'progressive' issues. These included energy, environment, defense spending, and tax policy.

As a 'reformer', however, he reached across the aisle for earmark spending reform, campaign finance reform, ethics reform, and government openness and transparency reforms.

All Things Reform looks forward to watching Obama bring much-neglected reforms to today's federal government. He will do this with cutting-edge communications technologies. For the latest news and updates on President-Elect Obama's transition period up to Inauguration Day in January, please check out www.change.gov.


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Some write-in votes may get neglected during Election Day vote-count

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From: Ballot Access News

The Hazards of Getting a Write-in Vote for President Counted

October 31st, 2008

No group of voters (except for ex-felons and felons, and residents the District of Columbia, and of the U.S. territorial possessions) is treated worse than voters who cast a write-in vote for president, even if the presidential candidate has filed for write-in status.

States don’t tally any write-in votes for president until December, and sometimes January. Certain areas of the country illegally don’t count them at all. Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and the District of Columbia all refuse to provide a tally for the declared write-in candidates. In the case of the District of Columbia, this is especially egregious, since a D.C. court explicitly ordered such tallies for declared write-in presidential candidates, in 1975, in the aftermath of the Kamins v D.C. Board of Elections lawsuit. Also, in the case of Oregon, the State Supreme Court ruled in 1945 that the Oregon Constitution protects write-in votes.

New York city habitually fails to count any write-in votes for the declared write-in presidential candidates. The Board says it is too much work to take down the heavy rolls of paper from the mechanical voting machines and look at them. About 15 counties in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, also regularly fail to tally any write-in votes at general elections. A proposed lawsuit to challenge this behavior in Pennsylvania has been talked about for almost two years now, but the attorneys still have not filed it.

[Ballot Access News article accepts comments]


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VoteWatch follows breaking election news in the key swing states

Image via WikipediaGovernment reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: ProPublica

ProPublica’s VoteWatch

VoteWatch culls breaking news on voting issues from around the web, focusing in particular on key swing states where problems (ranging from voter registration to machine malfunction to alleged fraud or suppression) are anticipated. You can see the latest news below, but if you see a report that we haven’t caught, please let us know.


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Fiscal Voter Guide to the 2008 Presidential Election

Government reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

Promises, Promises: A Fiscal Voter Guide to the 2008 Election

Promises, Promises: A Fiscal Voter Guide to the 2008 Election presents a summary of the major
policy proposals and the costs of the policies forwarded by Senator McCain and Senator
Obama’s presidential campaigns. Each candidate’s policies are broken into four categories:
tax, health care, energy, and other spending/savings. Policies that would enlarge the deficit
(or reduce the surplus) are shown as negative numbers, and those that would reduce the
deficit (or increase the surplus) are shown as positive numbers. The guide is not intended
to express a view for or against either candidate or any specific policy proposal.


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Instructions to 'Protect the Count' on election night

Image via CrunchBaseGovernment reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: Black Box Voting

BBV ALERT: "The Count" starts in 2 days: Instructions for Protect the Count

Black Box Voting was asked by YouTube to prepare an easy to follow public education program for Protecting the Count on ELECTION NIGHT and the days that follow. We collaborated with Videothevote.org and Election Defense Alliance. YouTube has created a Channel called Video Your Vote. The Black Box Voting Protect the Count series contains important information and several video clips never before made public.

Please distribute immediately and as widely as you can. EASY INSTRUCTIONS: View the videos that best fit your location.

1. Protect the Count - most locations in America(4 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKU
Takes 90 minutes on Election Night. You can even go out after polls have closed. Please also view video # 3, because it shows what to look for to identify tampered poll tapes and the kinds of small errors on tapes that can appear with memory card tampering. Upload any video you take to http://www.videothevote.org - Post link or comments for what you found in the state and jurisdiction at http://www.blackboxvoting.org

2. Protect the Count - Absentee / Central Count (8 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZp3rA1XXjw
(Applies to 13 states with CENTRALLY COUNTED ballots and/or HEAVY ABSENTEE VOTING)
These are the most challenging Protect the Count locations.

3. Protect the Count - New England / New Hampshire(5 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV4M12w6tY4
If you live anywhere in New England and can drive to any voting machine location in New Hampshire to observe and video poll closing, please do so. If you live anywhere in America that has polling place results tapes, please look at this video to see what tampered tapes look like.
Contact Protect the Count - New Hampshire organizers at protectthevote@gmail.com
You can view the list for which New Hampshire locations use voting machines here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/157/157.html

4. Protect the Count - New York (9 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmSn4qLdgbU
New Yorkers are probably in the best shape for Election 2008, but not for long. This shows the details of how the counting of the lever machines proceeds after polls close, and gives you the details of the fight New Yorkers will have on your hands in 2009.

I'm counting on you to be as proactive as possible to fight for your voting rights. The actions in the Protect the Count series are self-serve, simple to do, and designed for just grabbing a neighbor or a buddy and taking action. Don't worry about blanketing every area or organizing the whole state. Just pick a place and DO it. I guarantee it will be a fascinating and important experience, and could provide THE crucial evidence in the very undesirable event that the election turns out not to be fair.

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org


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