It breaks my heart to even think about it. But if there must be a Plan B, don't count out Chris Dodd.

:spikey:

http://chrisdodd.com/blog/fisa-victory-cou...keith-olbermann

Interesting day for the state of Connecticut. One Senator proves what a slimeball he is while the other proves what a patriot he is.

I wish Dodd had found his patriotism a little earlier.

He was one of the four primary sponsors of the Help America Vote Act, which would have led the way to all electronic voting in the US, if it weren't for citizen action groups who put up a hard fight and are still fighting.

HAVA did not specifically mandate touch screens but was written to imply that states "needed" the current crop of touch screens "for the disabled." I am not against helping the disabled to vote but what happened was they were USED to justify getting rid of paper ballots generated by the voter. State and county election officials, wined and dined by corporate voting venders, bought into this to the extent that they fight attempts to regain any honest voting.

Meanwhile, if an honest look is taken at how much the disabled use the machines, sometimes it's as little as two or three people an election. The real reason to push touch screens was that counties would not buy two systems and everyone would have to vote on the beasts. Besides, the machines don't really meet the standards set for disabled voting.

Dodd did this with McConnell in the Senate and Ney and Hoyer in the House. He also signed on to a letter trying to get Congress to ignore the demands from the grass roots for a paper ballot that is generated BY THE VOTER and that can be recounted.

I appreciate what Dodd is doing but I am reminded that even a Republican can look good, doing the "right thing" once in a while, if they have the votes to override the "right thing."

If Dodd would stand up and lead the charge to paper ballots, counted by hand, by citizens, it would go a long way to amend the damage done by HAVA.

HAVA was a shell game brought about, with great speed, after the 2000 election fiasco. Instead of making sure that paper ballots were counted correctly the "solution" adopted by congress, with vender influence (they stood to make a bundle selling the machines) was to dispense with paper altogether.

Please don't for one second buy into the hype about "voter fraud." That's a distraction. There is actually very little voter fraud or voter registration fraud and the current Federal body overseeing that has gone to great lengths to stifle studies that show they aren't.

The real threat is election fraud- who makes the rules and who oversees the counting. It has become so bad that in some counties across the country, the corporate venders of voting systems have taken over much of the process.

Do you know if your vote is being outsourced to corporate interests?

The perfect ticket would be Gore/Dodd. Both men have the experience to run the country the way that it should be run.

I'm down with that.

Thank you Senator Dodd, Feingold, Kennedy, Wyden etal! It was a superb and brilliant maneuver! Poor Harry lol.

I rather like Dodd. He's the only other Democrat I'd vote for.

Chris Dodd is responsible for sponsoring one of the most crippling pieces of legislation for honest, accountable voting in the nations history, and yet people support him because he takes a stand here and there.

What good does it do to have a "Rah Rah" moment when you've been responsible for undermining the fabric of representative democracy- the ability to cast a vote and HAVE IT COUNTED AS YOU CAST IT.

Take back the vote first- without it, nothing you do is going to matter. You'll be allowed to "think" you have the power of the vote, but you don't- not while corporate machines, easily hacked, with no proof of how you cast your vote or that it was tallied correctly, control the outcome of elections.

Dodd was four square for that destruction and stands behind it to this day, as far as I know.

I think it was Stalin who said that it matters not about voting- it's who counts the votes that matters.

Scrape away occasional moments of enlightenment by some of the congresspeople and examine the damage they have done to our freedoms by their other actions.

Dodd has hacked at the basic foundation of our form of government.

That is not someone I could support for the highest office of the land. :bad:

I can find fault with Chris Dodd on the voting act, God knows no one is more concerned with protecting our right to have our votes counted fairly than Al Gore supporters. But then, I can find fault with every candidate. There is no Al Gore besides Al himself. Taken as a whole however, I tend to like Chris Dodd, and I think he deserves more consideration as a candidate. He's as good a Plan B, in my opinion, as anyone else available. I'm just saying that he personally this week prevented a terrible bill that would have granted retroactive immunity to corporate lawbreakers from becoming law. Good for him.

I agree Patsy, that could be a fine winning ticket :Y:

Senator Harry Reid has amply demonstrated his capability of backing down.

Now we just need him to back down to us, instead of to George W Bush and Dick Cheney

:spikey: